Annie Alexander: Why Your Divorce Triggers Feel So Big

Annie Alexander's clients rarely book her for their sleep. They book her for something else, and then the sleep improves anyway, which she says has held in nearly every case she has worked on. What was keeping them awake almost never turned out to be the thing they thought it was.

Our guest this episode is Annie Alexander, a board certified hypnotherapist practising out of Bellingham, Washington, who spent decades as a psychotherapist before moving into this work and now runs a fully remote practice with clients around the world. Lisa brought her on for a reason that has little to do with hypnosis: Annie understands legal abuse, and she does not begin by asking a client in the middle of a custody fight to adjust their attitude. She begins by validating that the system is weighted, which is where the trust to do anything else comes from.

Annie's method is root cause work, run in a defined series of about five to seven sessions rather than open-ended, because she wants to know the tasks and the outcome before starting. The premise is that the current case is real fuel for the fire, but the older material sitting underneath it, often from long before the marriage, is what makes the blaze that size. Take that away and what is left is a lit match: enough to see by, small enough to handle.

She and Lisa go through the practical ground. Why self-advocacy is constant and exhausting, and why expecting your attorney to save you sets you up badly. Why gaslighting gets amplified in litigation, and why naming it is part of the repair. What to do when going through discovery documents starts a physical reaction: put the paperwork down, breathe, and have somebody on the phone with you if you can. The envelope technique, where you seal, label, date and file the triggering item so it has a border around it. And the difference between resolution and adaptation, which is the honest version of what recovery offers.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why older, unrelated trauma is usually amplifying your reaction to the current case
• What changes when a professional validates that the system is weighted before working with you
• Why expecting your attorney to carry the whole case sets you up badly
• How to get through discovery documents without being retraumatized by your own records
• The envelope technique: seal it, label it, date it, file it
• Why sleep improves even when sleep was never what you came in for
• Resolution versus adaptation, and which one is actually available
• What hypnotherapy can and cannot do, including what no practitioner can change

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meeting Annie, and why the court system is weighted
4:30 Validation first, then the work
6:30 The clutter underneath: a client who stopped feeling victimized by her attorney
9:00 Strategic oversight, and why self-advocacy never stops
11:00 Gaslighting amplified by litigation, and why naming it helps
12:30 Paper abuse: getting through documents without reliving them
17:30 The voice in your head years later, and the envelope technique
20:00 The bonfire and the lit match
25:00 Resolution versus adaptation, and the myths about hypnosis
29:30 Sleep, and the thing that was actually keeping her awake

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
🔗 Annie Alexander at Northwest Hypnosis Center: https://www.northwesthypnosiscenter.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.