Karen McMahon: Getting Your Ex's Voice Out of Your Head

Hundreds of hours in court and a fortune spent getting there, and people still come out holding a signed order that has not made them free. Karen McMahon has coached people who are eight, ten and twelve years past that point, and she says the piece nobody sold them was the inner work.

Karen McMahon is the founder of Journey Beyond Divorce, a coaching team that works with men and women before, during and after high-conflict divorce, and the host of the Journey Beyond Divorce podcast. She has been coaching for fourteen years and is eighteen years past her own divorce, which took three and a half years and included living in her own attic for most of it. She grew up with an alcoholic father and a mother she describes as a rageaholic, and she is candid that she brought all of it to her marriage and had to clean it up afterward rather than carry it into the next relationship.

The idea she and Lisa build the episode around is ownership of your own thinking. Karen's quick diagnostic is to ask what someone wants for a temporary parenting schedule and hear whether the answer opens with their spouse's reaction. She describes the state that creates, where a person walks into negotiation already conceding the other side's frame. She also explains why the focus stays external in these relationships, because the behavior is loud enough to absorb all of it, and what turning that attention back around makes possible.

The practical middle is an exercise she gives clients: write twenty-five positive adjectives about yourself, watch where you stall, then ask two trusted people for theirs and combine the lists. Karen and Lisa differ on where to keep the result. She also offers an image for anyone who feels they should be recovering faster, comparing the aftermath to being hit by an emotional eighteen-wheeler and expecting yourself to run the next week. The last stretch covers self-compassion and the inner critic, why she thinks people with certain family-of-origin patterns end up matched with takers, and what she means by breaking generational chains.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Karen's one-minute test for whether your ex is still running your decisions
• Why the signed order does not end it, and what people are still carrying a decade later
• Why being in the middle of the fight is a workable time to start this, not the wrong time
• The distortion where you come to believe you are the problem, and how it takes hold
• The twenty-five adjectives exercise, and the two people to ask for help with it
• Why expecting a fast recovery is unfair to yourself, and what baby steps actually look like
• How family-of-origin patterns get matched by a high-conflict partner
• Why self-compassion changes how you walk into a courtroom

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The answer that tells Karen who's running your operating system
4:30 Ten years out and still not free
7:30 Shame, legal abuse, and why this one doesn't fade on schedule
8:30 "Every upset is a setup," and the inner critic that moves in
10:00 The distortion where you become the problem
13:30 The 25 adjectives exercise, and the two people to ask
17:00 The emotional eighteen-wheeler, triage, and baby steps
19:00 What the paper doesn't fix, and Karen's own eighteen years
23:00 Self-compassion, the inner critic, and walking into court differently
26:00 "Entitled" isn't a dirty word, and breaking generational chains
29:30 Where to find Karen and her free guide

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Karen McMahon at Journey Beyond Divorce: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.