Graceful Guidance: Tessa Noel On The Impact Of Divorce Coaching

Tessa: It started seven years ago when I found my passion for divorce coaching because I went through my high-conflict divorce. And, during that time, my divorce went to trial. I was faced with not only raising my 10-month-old and 2-year-old at the time but also going through a custody evaluation. Just this whole world where I felt like I needed to learn a different language and no one handed me a how-to book. No one said, “These are the expectations now that you’re going through this divorce and custody battle.” I had a therapist and an attorney at the time, but I needed someone to help guide me, keep me on track, and keep me motivated to go through the process.

So that’s where I found a divorce coach that I worked with. After going through that experience, and then having my own experience with a divorce coach, it gave me the expectation of, “Wow. There’s more resources than we know about.”

We know everybody knows about attorneys. Everybody knows about therapists. But there’s this whole profession that no one knows about. It’s divorce coaching. And so, while I was going through this 15-month trial, and then subsequent hearings and little issues in my high-conflict co-parenting journey, I started taking all the classes I could find to learn how to shield my children from the conflict of my high-conflict divorce because that was the most important thing to me. And, through that, I found the CDC Divorce Coaching program.

It was a big project for me to take on at the time. But I just had such a passion for helping other people who were going through divorce, and cope with their co-parenting struggles.

At that point, I had already started coaching people. But, I wanted it to be more specific, specifically for people who were going through divorce. After I finished my certification program with the CDC Divorce Coaching program, I went through another program called the Co-Parenting Specialist Certification Program. That is where I learned how to help specifically parents who are trying to find child-centered parenting plans, and trying to keep their co-parenting relationship. That’s how my transformation from being in a high-conflict divorce, and then to finding my path to becoming a certified divorce coach and co-parenting specialist. As of today, I’ve been certified as a divorce coach for three years.

Tessa: I do have a large presence on social media right now. But before that, I am listed on the CDC Divorce Coaching Community Directory. And also through Google.

I also feel like divorce coaching is a fairly new practice, but attorneys are seeing now how valuable divorce coaches are in creating credible clients. So, if you have a client who is constantly coming to you for things that aren’t legal issues, not only are you going to have a giant bill for your client, but your client is relying on you for things that aren’t your specialty. Attorneys should focus on what they’re good at, which is legal matters, and having someone who can help guide your client through the process and tell them what to expect, a little bit more handholding, and goal setting, and moving them through the process, then it frees the attorney up to just deal with what they’re good at.

I have been referred by attorneys just saying, “Hey, it would benefit you to look into getting yourself a divorce coach to help you with your communication or to stop creating evidence against yourself. The last thing an attorney wants to deal with is paragraph-long messages that can be used against their client in court.

Caroline: Can you describe the specific services you offer to your new clients?

Tessa: Divorce coaching is a flexible goal-oriented process. So it differs with each client. However, I am trained in specific frameworks to help my client get from point A to point B. If I’m seeing in a session a client who is feeling very stuck, I can help use one of my frameworks to create awareness around their situation that they might not have had before. Some people call this soundboard sessions, being a thinking partner, but I also really like to set goals and have my clients look at their divorce from a different perspective. I like them to see the whole picture. So I will do a coaching framework or a session with them to try to get them to look ahead to the future, see what they want five years from now, and make sure that they’re putting daily habits in place to get them there.

Also, if one of my clients has to prepare for mediation, or doesn’t know how to dress, act, or speak for court, I can prepare them for that as well. There are so many things that you don’t know going into this process. And, not only that, but, “Here’s how to keep these decisions that you’re making child-centered for your child when you’re going through a custody issue.” So, it just depends. I keep my sessions client-focused. For example, this summer we’ve been having a lot of vacation time issues with the clients.

And a lot of times, my clients want me to decide for them, and that’s not my job. What I can do is I can tell them how to change their mindset so that they’re thinking of it in a child-centered way, taking the emotion out of it.

I also call myself a professional expectation manager, because we have clients coming into these situations with wildly unrealistic expectations, whether it be a stay-at-home mom with no income, thinking that she’s going to be able to keep the house, or a father who thinks that because there was infidelity, he gets full custody of the children, just not accurate expectations.

I believe that if co-parents are empowered with the right tools and have their expectations managed, they’re able to navigate these high-conflict situations on their own successfully. So, I am helping clients save money on attorney’s fees, but I’m also helping attorneys not have to deal with the minutiae of a very emotional client who’s going through one of the hardest times in their life. But, there’s a very fine line between unauthorized practice of the law. So, to keep my certification, I am required to take an unauthorized practice of law and ethics certification to renew my certifications.

Caroline: So you don’t give out legal advice?

Tessa: I don’t. I’m very careful not to cross that line into legal advice. But then also on the other side of it, I’m very careful not to cross the line into therapy. So most of my clients that I work with do have their attorneys and also their therapists.

Tessa: I think one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever had was a few days ago, one of my clients called just to update me. And she said, “When I first started working with you, I felt like I had lost myself in my toxic marriage. I had lost myself to motherhood. I had lost myself to my toxic marriage. I’d given up on the things that I loved doing. I want you to know that I painted my first picture yesterday.” She’s finding herself again. And she was involved in what she loved again. She said, “I started painting again. I’m doing the things that I love and I feel like I’m myself again. And I’m healing. And I’m on this path. It’s huge because I remember sitting with you in our first session together and you were asking me about my future, what I wanted, and what I loved doing. I was so caught up in my divorce and all the issues that I wasn’t even considering doing the work, healing, and getting back to doing the things that I loved and cared about and finding myself again.”

So, I think it’s a really important step in the healing process after divorce is to focus on yourself again, and not just be so wrapped up in the details of your divorce.

Tessa: Well, I keep my finger on the pulse of new trends through social media!
I would say I now have more clients who are LGBTQ+. And having to navigate a divorce with a same-sex couple is very similar to navigating a divorce with a heterosexual couple. So, it’s not very different, but even the situations, I think, are more unique. And I am so glad that I have a very tolerant, open mindset.

There are very unique situations that people are untangling themselves from. And, I am fortunate that people from all walks of life reach out to me. My practice is inclusive to everyone.

Caroline: How do you show compassion as a divorce coach?

Tessa: That is what’s hard about my job because I do have to manage people’s expectations. And so, there is a specific framework that I work with, it’s called your best self framework, where you’re identifying specific characteristics and traits that are positive and that are going to bring you through this divorce. But then also, we identify what could be holding you back, what is a possible roadblock? And, we work on that. But I have to find the right words.

So if I’ve got a very emotionally charged client, I have to say, “Listen, that is an amazing quality and that you’re a passionate person. And that shows up great in your work and your parenting, but in your co-parenting relationship, we’re going to have to reign that in. And, you’re going to have to resist that urge to be so passionate with your co-parent, because now we’re switching to a business-like child-centered relationship.” So, I try to gently coach people with their permission on these potential characteristics that they have or habits that they have that are going to need to change in order to show up as their best selves.

Caroline: Do you think that there are challenges that your clients face that maybe family attorneys should be more aware of?

Tessa: I feel like, sometimes attorneys try to take on too much. Rather than delegating. So, they are having phone conversations with their client, and they’re constantly trying to manage their client’s expectations or hold their clients’ hands, and they can delegate that whole job to me.

So, it’s not serving an attorney and it’s not serving a client to be having endless phone conversations or constant back-and-forth emails when I can teach your client how to deal with these situations effectively and successfully. I can teach clients how to effectively communicate.

There also are situations where I will sit there with the client and say, “Okay. It sounds like this is a legal question, so let’s write an email to your attorney, asking that specific question. ” When these clients are coming to me, they can’t even think straight sometimes. They don’t know what to focus on. They don’t even know what to ask their attorney. So then, they just rely heavily on their attorney for everything. And it’s showing up in their communications, and it’s ultimately costing a lot of money.

Tessa: There is something I’m passionate about the importance of keeping children out of the conflict of high-conflict divorce. Even when faced with a high-conflict co-parenting situation, even if just one party is learning these effective methods of communication, even if one party is committed to keeping the children out of the conflict, it can make a huge difference. And that’s a big part of why I wrote my recent children’s book, Stella’s Two Homes. I am passionate about helping parents who are going through divorce to keep sight of what’s important and understand how important it is to help guide their children through this process as well. Because children breathe too. And children are seeing what’s happening. And, it affects them.

So, if anything, just keep your eyes on what you want for your children in the future, how you want them to be successful, and happy in their future relationships, and how you want them to look back at this time and say, “Wow, my parent carried themselves well through this when they were going through their divorce. And offered a lot of support. And, I know that they did everything in their heart to really support me through that time.”

Your divorce is a great opportunity to model to your children how resilient and resourceful you can be. But it’s also, unfortunately, the first opportunity to affect them negatively as well. So, it’s important that parents are aware of that and they’re doing everything that they can to help their children through this time as well.