
Anatomy of Conflict
I Use Tarot Cards in Mediations. I Can't Tell You Anything Spiritual Is Happening.
About this episode
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
In this episode
Key ideas
- 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.
More from Anatomy of Conflict

Nobody Leaves Because of the Fighting
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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.

Women Have an Invisible Line in Their Marriage. Most Men Don't Find Out Until It's Too Late.
Women have an invisible line in their marriages — and most of them don't even know exactly where it is. But once they cross it, it's over. Dr. Sonja Benson has spent nearly 30 years watching the same pattern play out: she's been saying something's wrong for years, he hasn't moved, and one day she stops pursuing. Ryan McLaughlin and Dr. Benson break down why women initiate roughly two-thirds of all divorces, what "burned-out pursuer" actually means, and what discernment counseling is — the decision-making process designed for couples where at least one person isn't sure they want to stay.