Know the PLAYBOOK: Change the Game | Podcast

Always a Few Steps Behind? Here’s Why It Feels Like Your Ex is Winning in Court

If you’ve ever walked out of a courtroom wondering “How are they always so prepared… while I’m scrambling just to keep up?”—this one’s for you.

Listen to the podcast here:

Let’s be real: high-conflict custody court can feel like a rigged chess match… and you’re stuck playing checkers with missing pieces.

But the reason your ex seems ten steps ahead isn’t because they’re smarter.

It’s because they’re strategic—and manipulative.

They’ve been running the same toxic playbook for years:

☑️ Charm the professionals

☑️ Weaponize your reactions

☑️ Mix just enough truth with lies to make you doubt your own memory

And because YOU play fair, it can feel impossible to anticipate their moves.

In today's episode of This WILD Journey, we break down:

• How abusers exploit empathy and ethics to stay ahead

• Why your emotional reactions get used as “proof” against you

• The counter-strategy: staying factual, staying consistent, and documenting like a boss

Catch this episode on YouTube:

Meet your hosts: 

🧠 Sarah McDugal – high-conflict communication strategist guiding protective parents through family court chaos with integrity, clarity, and calm under pressure (no tiptoeing, no legalese, no playing nice with coercive control)

🧬 Bren Wise Mays – neuro-sensory wellness provider translating wild-but-true neuroscience into real-world tools for resolving toxic or traumatic stress (no fluff, no fakery, no bypassing—just real regulation)

Together, we blend somatic support, legal strategy, and zero-BS tools to help you stop spiraling and start thriving.

👉 Hit follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
👉 Share this episode in your group chat. 

THINGS MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST

It’s Time to Expose the Playbook

We created Exposing the PLAYBOOK to give you exactly what your ex doesn’t want you to have:

• A 3-step blueprint to name the tactics and shift the power

• Real-life examples of manipulation strategies used in court

• Concrete tools to respond wisely—without reacting emotionally

• Affordable tools—it's just $7!!!

👉 Plus: When you grab the PLAYBOOK, we'll give you our Family Court COMPASS for just $27 (normally $57).

This strategy guide walks you through:

• The 4 realities of how court actually works

• The 5 principles to guide every professional interaction

• The 2 reasons you MUST stop chasing the “why”

• Get both right here.

SUPPORT WILD:

• Join the SCOOP for $17/mo (it’s like our Patreon, but with mega-perks!)

• And check out our workshops for quick, bite-size steps to clarity.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Bren: Welcome back to this wild journey where your body, your brain, and your battle plan come together. I'm Coach Bren, and today we're tackling something I hear all the time from our clients: that nagging, gut churning fear that my ex is always 10 steps ahead.

If you've ever sat in your car after court feeling like the whole hearing was orchestrated before you even walked in, if you've read in an email or a motion from the other side and thought, "how the heck did they spin it like that?"

Or if you're lying awake at 3:00 AM replaying every move you didn't make, then you're not alone.

Sarah, this is one of those topics that hits deep in the nervous system.

So I wanna kick this off by asking you, " why do so many protective parents feel like they're always behind in the game?

Sarah: Well, because honestly, they usually are, and that's just the hard, brutal truth. But it's not because they're lazy or they're stupid or they didn't try hard enough, it's because they're playing checkers while their abusive ex has been playing chess with loaded dice and a backup copy of the playbook they edited themselves.

So here's the hard truth: if you are not wired to manipulate, deceive, and weaponize people and things for power... you're going to struggle to predict the tactics of someone who is.

And that doesn't make you weak. It makes you ethical.

Bren: I wanna pause right there because that's such a powerful reframe. You're saying it's not that they're not strategic, it's that they're not pathological.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. You're not 10 steps behind because you're dumb.

You're 10 steps behind because you're assuming that you're both playing fair. An abusive ex uses control and charm and calculated chaos to stay ahead. Many times, if they're super calculated, they're planning five lies deep. They anticipate your morality and then they exploit it.

And if you don't understand the patterns, it'll feel like they're reading your mind. But they're not.

They're just running the same toxic playbook they've always run, and they're counting on you to not recognize the game.

Bren: You actually created a resource called Exposing the Playbook, which is all about demystifying these patterns, right?

Sarah: Yep. It's a $7 ebook. It's short and it's to the point, but it walks you through the three step blueprint to anticipate your abuser's next move, especially in court. Because once you learn to name the tactics you can stop feeling so helpless!

Bren: Okay, so for

Sarah: and hopeless.

Bren: someone listening right now who feels like they're drowning in confusion. What's one of the first signs that their ex is using a manipulative playbook?

Sarah: Deflection, also called denial. And I'd say this, if the things that they say sound almost true, but then they deny whatever part they've played in the situation, and it leaves you questioning your own sanity afterward... that's not just circumstance, accidental miscommunication.

It's a tactic. Because abusers don't just lie. They lie strategically. And oftentimes that strategic lying includes the use of what they leave out, not just what they do say.

So they'll omit key things and then they mix in just enough fact into the fiction to make you doubt your memory, your feelings, and even sometimes your evidence.

And in court they'll weaponize your reactions to being mischaracterized and misrepresented, as proof that you are the unstable one, even if they provoked those reactions on purpose.

Which is why we 

Bren: talk so much about not taking the bait, staying calm, and documenting everything. Keeping that paper trail tight.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly.

I mean, if you're going to survive this, the process through divorce and custody court... especially with a manipulative, coercive, abusive ex-partner... you're going to need a masterclass in high conflict communication and emotion free communication.

Because they want you to be emotional because emotion makes you look reactive. And reactive makes you look guilty.

So the counter tactic for you, stay consistent, stay factual. Don't argue with the lies. Don't try to prove your truth. Just document it.

And that's what Exposing the PLAYBOOK gives you the framework to do. See the pattern, name the tactic, shift the power.

Bren: I wanna rewind for a second and talk about the shame piece because a lot of clients feel ashamed that they didn't see the manipulations sooner. They'll say, "how did I not know this would happen? Why didn't I prepare for this better?"

What would you say to that?

Sarah: Well, I, I would say a couple of things.

You aren't a failure. You were targeted.

You aren't behind. You were blindsided.

And you were probably never taught how to fight in a battle like this, especially if you have super traits of loyalty and truthfulness and kindness and caregiving.

No one gives you a playbook for surviving what is essentially straight up psychological warfare in family court... until now.

Which is why I wrote Exposing the PLAYBOOK to help protective parents and survivors be able to untangle this. Now, I, I would say one other thing, and that is: stop beating yourself up for what you didn't know.

Instead of spiraling in shame, start studying the tactics now.

Start changing the game now. Don't announce it. Don't make a big deal about it.

But once you know the game, you can change your moves silently. You change your moves.

Bren: So let's say someone downloads, Exposing the PLAYBOOK and starts seeing the patterns more clearly. What's their next best move?

Sarah: So when you start seeing a pattern clearly, when it finally clicks, and I was actually just on a call with a client this last week... they were lamenting to me, "why, why did I let it last so long? Why did I go ahead and let them take advantage of this and spend all the money on that? And why was I so freaking nice when they were just using me?"

So there's three steps.

One, stop reacting and start observing. Your abusive ex wants your attention more than they want your agreement. Don't give them the attention.

Side note here, little sidebar, if you are struggling to stop reacting, if it happens so fast in your body, then you need Bren's Instant Stress RESET, the five day program. Check the show notes for that. Because it will help you stop reacting so that you can start observing if your nervous system is so dysregulated that you need that support.

Now, number two, start documenting like a strategist, like it's your full-time job. Even if it seems silly, even if it seems redundant, every breadcrumb adds up and you need to do this systematically.

Number three, get navigational support. Most likely, you're going to struggle to win this alone. I mean, you might be able to do it... and it might just about destroy you in the process. But it will be so much better and so much easier if you have navigational support.

That's why we offer coaching calls and tactical tools and systems for organizing all of your evidence and worksheets and incident logs, the works, all the tactical tools, inside my Freedom Navigator program for protective parents.

Because strategy without support gets lonely fast. And that's where I teach my clients how to do things like:

-document proof, like you're a private investigator

-organize evidence like you're a paralegal

-leave a paper trail like you're an HR executive, and

-shift your mindset outta survivor mode into strength mode.

Bren: And for today, just to recap, if you've been walking around with that sick to your stomach, feeling that your manipulative, coercive ex is always 10 steps ahead... you're not crazy and it's not hopeless.

They're following a script like it's their textbook. You just haven't read it yet.

Sarah: But once you do the game changes! That's when you can stop feeling cornered. That's when you learn to begin to stop flinching.

You stop writing your texts with shaky hands and start crafting them like a boss who knows the courtroom is watching.

So today, grab Exposing the PLAYBOOK for just seven bucks. It is your first step to reclaiming your power, protecting your peace, and walking into court with your head held high.

Bren: The link for these game changing tools, it's in the show notes. You don't have to stay stuck in survival. You can expose the playbook and shift your mindset out of survival into strength.

Sarah: So until next time, take care of yourself. And remember, you don't have to walk this wild journey alone.