"WHO WISHES TO FIGHT MUST FIRST COUNT THE COST." SUN TZU

Divorced men are almost 10 times more likely to kill themselves than divorced women from similar backgrounds (Lamb, 2004). Equal caring of children, close to 50/50, occurs in at most 3% of cases of family separation in family court, even though international studies show it is best for children. More than 90% of non-resident parents are fathers.

Many men spend years rotting, allowing their finances, careers, relationships and health to disintegrate because of interminable conflict over child access. This cocktail of grief and traumatic stress lays waste to everything good in your life if you let it.  

• Are you trapped in conflict with your ex?
• How much have you spent on court so far? 
• Have you seen your child even less since you went legal?
• How much have you not earned because you've been too stressed to work? 
• Do you feel exhausted all day, then struggle to sleep?

If everything you've tried so far hasn't worked, how long are you going to keep doing it? Are you prepared to try another way? Imagine how you would feel if, from this moment, you knew you had done everything right for your child. 

The Ceasefire Method supports you to:

• Normalise your struggle - you are not alone and you have nothing to be ashamed of
• Soothe your body's exhausting fight-flight-freeze response
• Take the heat out of your conflict by understanding its psychological and biological roots
• Make better choices and live again
• Reconnect with your strength, honour and goodness as a man and a father

I created it after being in the situation you are in. The connections you will form with the men in your small group will support you through what has been for me and other group members the darkest time in our lives. If you can't see a way through or even a reason to keep living, I get it, and you are welcome here. 

To engage with Ceasefire material in your own time as a simple online guide with videos and support materials, contact me with a request for Ceasefire Method On Demand.

"Oscar Wilde’s ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’ comes to mind. Zac and my fellow fathers helped me adjust my perspective to see my situation in a new light."

"I'm living! I'm actually living and it's weird. Those experiences are in the past and now this is the present. There have been so many synchronicities. I feel free, on my own two feet. I couldn't have asked for a better start back into my career. The cycle hasn't been broken with my son and my ex, but I have taken responsibility for my own healing. I will be there for him by doing what I need to do to heal, and for now that means I'll be away. I don't know for how long. If it had been another therapist who wasn't spiritually aware I don't think this would have happened. You get it. You drew this out of me. I wouldn't have broken through to this place of authentic living without you. I'm not going to let anyone unconscious affect my life anymore. For the first time in my life, I'm not in constant fear. It feels like a brotherhood with you. I was coming to conclusions myself and doing the rewiring, you were flicking the light switch to give me the full understanding to move forward, else I'd have been stuck. I'd been trying to do this for years and in 12 sessions with you I'm in a different place."

"The sense of connection and feeling understood worked especially well."

"This has been a 12 week journey of reflection and self discovery with a host who brings a wealth of professional experience and a personal dimension, and a group of dads who have been through fire and who helped themselves rise again and be their best for their children. A terrific support network. Thank you Zac."

"Before I thought my priority was the kids, but I've realised I need to be here so I can help them. I was suicidal. I haven't seen my youngest child for 10 months. One day I am going to see that child. I want to be positive and focus more on myself to make sure that happens."   

"I wish I invested in this right at the beginning, every penny spent on myself to improve me as a father." 

"Group facilitated well and excellent camaraderie experienced. Lots of takeaway material to refer to. Good balance of academic based sharing / explanations and open group discussion. The course offers useful tools and explanations to help manage a challenging phase in our life journey. The support network acquired and reference material have and will continue to be a source of strength."

"What worked especially well? The ability to cognitively gauge my state and falsify negative thoughts by understanding how the mind generates them in defence mechanism."

"The experience of the Ceasefire course will stay with me for the rest of my life. It really helped me to gain insight into not only the situation with my ex partner and children, but more broadly in all areas of my life. The empathy and understanding of both myself and others increased ten fold, and I am so pleased I took the plunge and engaged in this amazing programme."

"I've enjoyed the grounding exercises and the feeling of belonging in a small, tight group where we all understand and respect each other. Life often feels overwhelming, there is fear and a lot of stress, so the group became safe place for me in the week."

"I really appreciated being in a place where I could talk about these very tough issues with other dads in similar situations and where there was room to talk about feelings and strategies and not just one or the other. That you are in a similar situation as facilitator was very useful too as you could relate to all of us and us to you too."

"We narrowed down the problem to two things: look after number one and find a way of doing it that works for me; and work on accepting what is hard and makes me unhappy, finding a way of living with sadness, grief and loss." 

"I joined the course because I felt rather alone, struggling with being separated and not seeing much of my kids. I wasn't sure if my case was bad enough to belong in the group. But the day after I decided to join my wife changed the locks on the house, mentioned the police for the first but not the last time, and my world fell apart. The individual counselling and group work formed a safe container for the worst weeks of my life. I realised I was not alone, and that there are some things I can do to at least influence the outcome of the rollercoaster ride I had been forced onto. I wish I could say that my whole external situation improved. In fact it did change, but significantly for the worse as my separated wife became more and more hostile the more reasonable I was being.  But I changed on the inside. I realised I had not been caring for myself or enjoying myself. I understood that I was not somehow defective or a total failure. And I started to live a little.  I thought for the first time about what I actually wanted to do for fun and just did it. This was utterly liberating and exhilarating.  The men I met have become lifelong friends. And I actually wish I had met Zac and learnt his wisdom even earlier on in the process of the implosion of my marriage. You might think you are doing quite well but if you are at all worried about conflict with your separated partner, or are feeling unsure of how to navigate the minefield of untangling a family then this is the course for you." 

"I love it when Zac explains the theory and biological reasons why we behave in a certain way, which helps me understand why I do the same thing over and over again. I find these incredibly fascinating and helpful. I think all separated dads need a support group. While the FNF [Families Need Fathers] groups are good for actionable advice (but no emotions), I feel there needs to be an emotional support group for separated dads. We are never given the opportunity to be vulnerable and show or even explore emotions – so this gives us the safe platform to do so." 

"I've managed to understand how to open up in these sessions. It's not just me alone, it's with others experiencing similar feelings. It really helped me to understand myself. Thank you Zac, I needed these sessions to understand." 

"This journey has given me a strength to deal with my situation and the sadness of being thrown out of my children's life without the unnecessary negative emotions like disappointment resentment at the ex. I have found myself at reaching at a very serene and peaceful place within myself. Extremely grateful to Zac."

By high ground I don't mean the moral high ground. I mean a place from which you can't be overrun. High ground is safe. You can rest here and see what's coming. This is important because according to the United Parenting Federation the suicide rate of parents with arrears with the Child Maintenance Service is 173 times the average: "Parental suicide driven by family law is estimated to exceed 2,000 each year, accounting for 40% of all UK suicide, and leaving behind roughly double that number of children to suffer the trauma of premature parental loss combined with the damage to their own long term life chances. Children who lose a parent to suicide are 3 times more likely to die the same way than a child who loses a parent through illness or accident." 

You can only change what you can control

Children always suffer when their parents can't find a way out of conflict. You can reset the relationship, even if communication has broken down. If you want to avoid the family court system (which is expensive, stressful, lengthy and often counterproductive) or you are panicking because access to your child has been blocked (and it is likely that allegations of domestic abuse are being made against you), the Ceasefire Method offers a way to de-escalate the conflict by understanding the dynamics that are fuelling it and change the ones you have control over.  

Conflict sows mistrust and isn't a long term solution for you and your child. That said, there are short term exceptions, and by the end of the course you may feel that court is the right option for you. Or you may already be in the court process and want to make a phased withdrawal. But this time your decision will be made through sober and compassionate deliberation, rather than a blind survival response. If you hire a family lawyer during divorce proceedings to get child access you should be aware of the long term implications to you, your child and your child's mother.

Your road map out of hell 

Many fathers, including myself, have made costly decisions from a place of panic, fear or anger. When you are locked in the fight, with no clear strategy or exit plan, it's hard to think straight. Fathers lose their jobs because they can't function at work. They fall into debt as they try to fight through the family courts against the odds, with dwindling energy, ability to focus, and the onset of physical and mental health problems arising from chronic stress. You may feel trapped, isolated, judged and unable to express what you're feeling, but be wary of changing tack for fear of letting your child down. You may feel terrified of what's coming in the next court hearing or email. 

Return on investment

The Ceasefire Method is designed to give you return on investment in terms of money, time, stress and heartache. It does this by holding you in a structured and empathic space with a professional psychotherapist (me) for 12 weeks so you can sense check your decisions during what is probably the most frightening high-stakes situation of your life. 

You will be given reflective exercises to do in your own time, designed to help you get the most out of each group session. This process will give you clarity on whether, strategically, you are doing the right thing. 

This is gritty

Not for the faint-hearted. It's a serious commitment to personal development work that will stretch you beyond what you thought was possible. It won't seem fair. But you knew that already – what else was going to work in this situation? 

You have been traumatised. Fighting is a trauma response

Traumatic stress arising from a disruption to parent-child attachment can cause serious illness, and many men have been driven to either kill themselves or give up on their children because the emotional strain of endless conflict makes it too difficult to function in daily life. The family court system (in the UK) is adversarial and tends to create a more protracted conflict which polarises and poisons the co-parenting relationship, creating long term barriers to your child's wellbeing. Children absorb the emotional energy of their parents, even if they can't express or understand it.  

Take extreme ownership

The immense challenge in this situation is to be able to support yourself enough (emotionally, physically and practically) to be able to make good decisions in the best interests of your child. Even when it feels like the other party is doing everything in their power to prevent that from happening. It might even feel like they are doing their best to destroy you. Difficult as this is, you have a choice in each moment about how you respond. You have ultimate sovereignty over yourself. Let's call that in. You have no idea how strong you are.

Move out of your trauma responses

Via grounding techniques to calm your nervous system you will begin to take the space needed to come to terms with your situation and make decisions that serve the long term interests of your child. This will be difficult because there are powerful emotions like grief, anger, rage, disgust, shock, guilt, depression and sadness to work through. One of the scariest aspects of this predicament is that natural trauma responses to losing your attachment bond with your child, such as panic and fear, and the understandable behaviours that arise from them, may be used against you as evidence of domestic abuse or being unfit to parent. It takes a lot of work to govern your own emotional state when someone has that power over you. Taking the power back is a discipline that you are now going to learn.

Stop making decisions from a place of fear and panic

This is a scary place to be. What you need is a framework to understand it, a sense that you're not alone, that you're understood and not judged, and space to begin processing these uncomfortable emotions. You can't remain hyper-vigilant forever, you'll crash and burn, so this is about softening a little. It takes courage to stop prioritising the fight (which is a strategy that cannot work long term anyway). At some point you're going to trust that this does not mean you are failing your child.

Start processing the backlog of emotions 

The Ceasefire Method is my best attempt at structuring this work. The aim is to finish the course with:

• a sense of perspective
• ways to look after yourself that actually work for you
• clarity on how best to serve your child in the long term, strategically and practically
• a calmer nervous system
• your life back (ie you won't be thinking about the conflict around the clock)
• trust that you are going to enjoy your bond with your child
• trust that you are doing the right thing for your child

Forgive yourself. Forgive your ex even if she's not ready to stop fighting 

To transform the conflict dynamic you don't need your ex-partner to agree or even understand. Once you stop fighting, she won't be able to continue fighting on her own.