Anatomy of Conflict
Bonus Episode: Why I'm Doing This Podcast
About this episode
In this bonus mini-episode, Ryan goes off-script — who he is, why he started this show, and what drives his obsession with conflict. If you're new here, start here.Ryan started this podcast for the same reason he spent 12 hours a day writing during grad school while his wife worked a coffee shop to keep them afloat — because there's something there he has to get to the bottom of.The honest answer: he wants to get better at this. At mediation. At conflict. At being a partner and a father and a person. And there's almost no gap between what he's personally wrestling with and what he covers on this show. The money stuff with his wife. The imagery/projective/associative cards in his mediation sessions. The Gottman research. He's not presenting these as a detached expert — he has skin in the game.Flannel People Mediation: flannelpeoplemediation.comText Ryan directly: 763-316-8323
In this episode
Key ideas
- In this bonus mini-episode, Ryan goes off-script — who he is, why he started this show, and what drives his obsession with conflict.
- If you're new here, start here.Ryan started this podcast for the same reason he spent 12 hours a day writing during grad school while his wife worked a coffee shop to keep them afloat — because there's something there he has to get to the bottom of.The honest answer: he wants to get better at this.
- At mediation.
- At conflict.
- At being a partner and a father and a person.
More from Anatomy of Conflict
I Use Tarot Cards in Mediations. I Can't Tell You Anything Spiritual Is Happening.
I bought an Oracle deck and I've started pulling cards in mediations. I can't tell you anything spiritual is happening. That's not why I use them.When two people are stuck — really stuck, the kind where they've said the same sentence to each other four times — a card puts an image in front of both of them that neither one owns. Nobody has to defend it. Your brain goes from one groove to another groove, and sometimes that jump is the spark you needed.I've been careful about it. I don't want to be seen as a freak. I want to be taken seriously. So I've done it lightly, and I wanted to talk to somebody who does it all the way.Brennan O'Connor — Soul Coach OC — has been meditating since his early twenties and picked up tarot a few months ago. He's certified in several energy-healing modalities. He also says this: "the biggest thing I know is that I don't really know anything." He's watched people in his own field decide everything is true, and he won't do it.We get into where "spiritual" starts and where it stops. Priming versus synchronicity — my mom died on October 27, so my sisters and I clock 1027 everywhere, and I still can't tell you whether that's meaning or manufacturing. Say "red motorcycle" three times and you'll see red motorcycles tonight. He tells me about waking up and seeing the spirit of a baby lying between him and his wife, and finding out a week later she was pregnant.Then he pulls a live reading for me, on a week I wouldn't describe on tape. Justice. Card 11.The part I keep chewing on: it didn't give me an answer. It gave me a question. Before that I didn't have a question — I had "how do I get through this week."Brennan O'Connor — Soul Coach OC Email: Brennan.OC@gmail.com Instagram: @soulcoach.oc Web: soulcoachoc.com Tarot readings, past-life regression, energy healing, 1:1 soul coaching.Ryan McLaughlin — Flannel People Mediation Divorce and family mediation in Minnesota. 250+ five-star Google reviews. Web: flannelpeoplemediation.com Email: flannelpeoplemediation@gmail.com Phone: 763-316-8323 Free 15-minute consult: calendly.com/flannelpeoplemediation/free15consult
Nobody Leaves Because of the Fighting
Steph Paquin is an LMFT in Minneapolis who mostly sees couples. Her claim: the marriages that end aren't always the loud ones.Not explosive, not infidelity, not one event — but emotionally quiet. Her description of the evening: manage the kids, make dinner, sit on the couch, scroll. No micro-connections, no greetings, not a lot of curiosity. Her line is that it's the absence of connection, not the presence of fighting, that predicts who initiates.Women are usually the ones who call. Men call when there's been an ultimatum. And women's tolerance for inequity, she says, has changed a lot faster than the marriages have.I floated a $30,000 two-week couples intensive at her. She said "yes, and" — then said two weeks of tools is close to oversaturation, because humans need repetition and application is the part that decides it.Steph Paquin, MA, LMFT — thetissueclinic.com. The research she's drawing on is nearly all heterosexual couples; she names that early, and part two is our next convo.
We Got Divorced, Then Started a Company Together
Chris Koepsel and Rebecca Tierney met in law school, got married, had two kids, and got divorced. They now run a company together, with the mission of helping families waddle and wiggle through some of the edgiest hard stuff humans navigate: divorce. I went in wanting the secret sauce. How are y'all managing to work together post-divorce? What I got was a diagnosis. When you split up, everyone tells you to just be good co-parents — but the only relationship you've ever had with that person is the one that was unhealthy enough to end. You're being asked to run a functional partnership on a foundation that already failed.What they describe instead is a conversion: from a relationship built for intimacy to one built for boundaries. Ally is where they like to land. Not friends. Not family. Ally.We also get into why litigation land teaches you the exact behavior you're trying to unlearn, why men white-knuckle a divorce while women project-manage it, and whether any of this work survives AI.Chris and Rebecca run Redefining Family — divorce coaching, co-parenting coaching, and mediation, entirely out of court. redefiningfamily.comFollow Ryan and check out Flannel People Mediation at flannelpeoplemediation.com for future collabs in and around divorce mediation.