This week, I am exploring childhood trauma and how it is at the root of many of the issues that plague us in our adult lives. Riana Milne joins us; she’s a therapist who’s been helping individuals attract and keep emotionally healthy love for over 21 years.
Riana shares the top ten traumas we experience in childhood and how those traumas impact us. This episode is not about blaming or shaming– instead it’s about understanding why we’ve adopted certain coping behaviors and offer strategies towards healing.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- Riana walks us through her Childhood Trauma Checklist – identifying 10 traumas experienced in our young lives. (5:17)
- How childhood trauma shows up in love relationships. (29:54)
- The typical timeline for getting trauma out of the brain and body. (37:57)
- Mindset for success – a two-part healing process.(37:59)
- Five things in an emotionally healthy, evolved and conscientiously aware relationship.(42:05)
I know you’ll find this episode enlightening and perhaps see some of yourself. If you want to dig further, Raina has a free ebook called Attract Healthy Love Now (also great if you’re already in a relationship!).
Resources mentioned in this episode
Riana’s free e-book: Attract Emotionally Healthy Love Now!
Riana’s website
Love Beyond Your Dreams, Riana Milne
Riana Milne MA is a Certified, Global Life and Love Trauma Recovery Coach, a Cert. Clinical Trauma & Addictions Professional, a Certified Mindfulness Coach, #1 Bestselling Author, the Host of her Podcast called Lessons in Life & Loveâ„¢, an Educational Speaker, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor for over 21 years living in Palm Beach County, Florida.
She was also a Life & Dating Coach for the Docu-Series; Radical Dating – Finding Lasting Love Over 40 (and her client is now happily married!). Riana specializes in helping those who have had past Childhood or Love Relationship Trauma to Heal, Transform & Thrive; leading them to Create the Life They Desire & to Have the Love They Deserve! She offers Coaching programs for both Straight & LGBTQ Singles & Couples globally for ages 16-76.
Riana's #1 Bestseller, LOVE Beyond Your Dreams – Break Free from Toxic Relationships to Have the Love You Deserve – and – LIVE Beyond Your Dreams – from Fear and Doubt to Personal Power, Purpose, and Success addresses Life Difficult Transitions, Personal Transformation, The Mindset for Success, and having Loving Conscious Relationships with yourself and others.
Right-click to download the .mp3
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Riana Milne 00:00
You need to be emotionally healthy because when you are you will never settle for someone who is not. And you're going to be able to identify if their childhood traumas are healed or not healed.
Andrea Owen 00:13
You're listening to Make Some Noise Podcast episode number 393 with guest Riana Milne.
Welcome to Make Some Noise Podcast. Your guide for strategies, tools and insight to empower yourself. I'm your host, Andrea Owen, global speaker, entrepreneur life coach since 2007, an author of three books that have been translated into 18 languages and are available in 22 countries. Each week, I'll bring you a guest or a lesson that will help you maximize unshakable confidence, master resilience and make some noise in your life. You ready? Let's go.
Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am so glad that you are here. Partly because today's episode was so incredibly powerful and helpful for me. I can't wait for you to hear this. Riana Millan is a therapist who has been helping men and women of all ages and all sexual orientations for 21 years. So she's helped thousands of people. And one of the reasons I love having people on here who are therapists and other coaches is because I also want people on here who, whose expertise and wheelhouse is in one that is not mine. And this absolutely isn’t. As most of you know, I'm divorced, I've had some highly dysfunctional romantic relationships, as a lot of you might relate to who are listening right now. And I am lucky enough to be in a really great and secure marriage, it kind of like I say that because I'm kind of like, wow, it just blows me away that I just, I just hit the jackpot with this man. So it also hasn't come without a ton of work on both of our parts. And while I wouldn't necessarily consider myself an expert in romantic relationships, like Riana is, what I know for sure, is that much of the problems and struggles and challenges and baggage that we bring into our romantic relationships, stems from our childhood, and in many times, it's childhood trauma, wherever that is on the trauma scale for you. I know that definitely was the case for me. And this is one of the things that she talks about.
There's a point where she's, she's doing this like 10 checklist, and I was so busy taking notes, I kinda lost my train of thought you'll hear it. But I also want you to have access to a free ebook that she has where she goes more in depth about this. So I'm going to talk about that. I don't know maybe like two thirds of the way through the show. So listen up for that. And if for any reason you can't find the show notes for this episode, because I know that you're gonna want to go and grab the free ebook that she has and check her out, head on over to AndreaOwen.com/393 and you can you can find it on that page.
Alright, so for those of you that don't know Riana, let me tell you a little bit about her. Riana Milne MA is a certified global life and love trauma recovery coach, a certified clinical trauma and addictions professional, a certified mindfulness coach and number one best-selling author. The host of her podcast called Lessons in Life and Love, she is an educational speaker and a licensed mental health counselor for over 21 years living in Palm Beach County, Florida. She was also a life and dating coach for the docuseries Radical Dating: Finding Lasting Love Over 40, and her client is now happily married. Riana specialize in helping those who have had past childhood or love relationship trauma to heal, transform and thrive, leading them to create the life they desire and to have the love they deserve. So without further ado, here is Riana.
Riana, thank you so much for being here.
Riana 04:44
Thanks for having me, Andrea. Hi, everyone. It's nice to be here.
Andrea 04:49
Hi, yay. We're talking about something important. And yeah, not exactly a light topic, but not a whole lot of the topics that I have on this podcast are light. And today we're talking about trauma, as everyone heard in the introduction, and I would, I would love for you to start us off by telling us the top, you have like these top 10 traumas that are experienced during childhood that impact us later on in life, in our relationships in our career, you know, for those people listening who are parents, and and you worked, we were chatting before we started recording and you you were alluding to that there's a misconception that, that some people feel like they don't have these traumas. So can you talk to us about that?
Riana 05:17
Sure. My research shows that nine out of ten people experience at least one to three of the top 10 traumas there are more. And I created the Childhood Trauma Checklist in 2012 as a result of someone I loved, that was sabotaging his life in every direction. And he said to me, ‘I don't know what's the matter with me, I sabotage everything I love’. And me being a psychotherapist, I knew nothing of childhood trauma. And I said, ‘I don't know what it is either. But I'm going to figure it out’. And that's what started my journey into the deep research. And it was really healing for me because I was able for me to get into the forgiveness piece and understand what he had. And when I wrote the book, Love Beyond Your Dreams that went to a number one bestseller, he said oh my god put my picture on the front of the poster child of this stuff, but he was in his 50s. And he finally had the answer of what he was doing and why he was doing it.
So that's how my clients feel when they finally hear this work. And it's like, oh my gosh, finally, I'm getting to the root of the issues, versus just taking a pill for anxiety or a pill for depression. And it just numbs you out, fogged you out and doesn't do anything else. So it's really the root of the issues that occur in your adult life. So it's really important that we look at them. And as I go through them, I want you know, our listeners to understand this is not about being mad at mom or dad at this stage. Like why did you do this, right? It's not about blame. And it's not about feeling any personal shame or embarrassment, either, because keep in mind, you're just an innocent child. A product of your environment. And little child minds just cope the way that they know how. And they're not in full maturity, of course, so they adopt coping behaviors that become normalized over time. And then they come out as an adult, and you wonder why your life's not working.
So you know, this results also comes from my years of working in school systems, working with kids from kindergarten all the way through college, working in a hospital setting in the child and adolescent mental health ward, working in a teen drug and alcohol rehab center, and also working in a rehab center with women who were from the prison system. So all these different populations, different ages five and up were sharing their stories with me and these top 10 cap appearing. So that's where my list came from. So we'll get into the top 10 Andrea.
Andrea 07:58
I have my pen ready.
Riana 08:01
Okay, here we go. The first one is if your parents or caretakers had any addiction. Now there's different addictions as an addiction specialists, also, I named 12 of them, that could have interfered with a parent child bond. So they’re drugs, alcohol, sex, meaning you knew your parent was a chronic cheater, and you held that secret, porn, gambling, hoarding spending, eating, gaming, TV watching, workaholism, and a recent one I added is addicted to social media, where you're on the machines all the time, and the child was just probably on their own machine, you know, just kind of disconnected emotionally. So that's number one.
Number two is verbal abuse or trauma of any kind. So that could be witnessing mom and dad fighting and screaming at each other. It could be they yelled at you. It's also as subtle as verbal put downs like hun go change that outfit, you look fat in that. Or you know, you do you excel like, I remember one for me, I excelled in swimming, and I got my best time and she goes, my mom goes well, it's still not as good as so and so's time. So it's like you never hear a compliment. Nothing's ever good enough. A lot of critical messages, or even not hearing the words I love you. Now I'm a baby boomer and I was on the beach Sunday and I was around four of my peers all of the same age and they're like, yeah, my mom didn't say I love you either. All of us. And my mom said to me once when I asked her, I finally taught her to say the words I finally heard them at 25 years old after I had a baby. And she said, ‘well, we didn't hear those words. We grew up in the Great Depression. It was all about survival and hard work’. Like you know, why would I say those words to you when they weren't said to me? I said because your children need to hear them mom. They're very important. The research shows trav… trauma goes through at least three generations. So if you have some, your parents do and their parents do. I was recently reading something, I'm always keeping up on the studies of trauma and they said, even the Holocaust survivors, their DNA had changed so much that it was passed on to at least three generations, due to their high cortisol and high anxiety levels of being in that horrendous situation.
Andrea 10:28
Those studies are fascinating of epigenetics.
Riana 10:31
Yeah, so it's, it's very interesting. So that's verbal.
Number three is emotional abuse and neglect. We all basically know what that is. But one of the reports I read even said, if you had a latchkey child, in other words, you were working nine to five to support the family as a single mom, let's say they have to come home from school themselves and let themselves in. Well, in my generation, when I was that single mom, there was no cell phone, where they could just quickly you know, text you ‘Mom, I'm in I'm okay’. That was not existing. So kids that were latchkey, without that correspondence, they were very found to be anxious, and feel neglected, even though the parent was doing the best they can to support them. Right. So that's that one.
Okay, the next one is physical abuse, sexual abuse, rape, or molestation. Now, I've talked to some clients where their childhood, they said, I don't, I can't see any of these traumas. But when I walked to school, I was bullied every day. So remember, these situations happen both inside and outside of the home from in utero, if you had a very nervous or abused mother, up to your young 20. So this could have happened anywhere, anytime.
Okay, the next one is abandonment. And there's two parts that I described fault and no-fault abandonment. So a no-fault abandonment would be if a parent happened to die early, if the parent went off to serve their country in war, or if the parent traveled a lot to support the family. And I could recognize that one, but not right away. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I remember as a kid saying to my mom, when's dad coming home and where is he? She goes, I don't know where he is. And I just thought that was so weird that you're married, why don't you know what? It's been this? You know, where's our dad and I was close to him. So I was always worried if he was okay. So I find in my later life, safety is important, right? So this is how things show up. So you know, things as innocent as that, but that's how he paid his bills, right? Our bills as a family. Okay, then there's fault abandonment, that is never being involved in your child's life, or being involved as a couple stays together if they separate or divorce, then that's often a different story. You don't see the child as much, or there's a lot of promises made and not fulfilled. There's fights around child support and custody and all that drama that kids go through. Or it could even be the parents in the house, but they're not emotionally connected. I hear from a lot of kids I worked with, why do I have to go to visitation to see my dad who just sits and watches football all weekend? And I'm in my room saying to myself, why do I have to be here, you know, so that emotional disconnect, or they don't attend their sporting events or their arts events, those kinds of things? Okay, so that's a abandonment.
Number six is if you're a child of the foster care system, if you were adopted, or you had to go live in other people's homes, or you chose that, like you didn't like being home. I had a client says does it count if I chose not to go home and I went to somebody else's house every day after school, I said, yes, like counts, because you were worried what you were going to walk into. So that that feeling is all around there around home and safety.
Trauma number seven is the one that most people can identify with. I call that personal trauma. So that's if you were ever bullied, you might have been an overweight, you know, chubby child, or skinny and gawky are called names like the nerd. You might have had an asthma problem and had the inhaler and kids were making fun of you because of that. You weren't part of the cool crowd or the sports teams. You know, you were just teased and bullied because you were different. Sometimes you were super smart, and you're teased for that. Or you're the only Afro American student in an all-Caucasian school, or you're coming out as LGBTQ, and you know, you're not accepted for that you feel different because you feel you look different, you don't fit in the society's definition of what a girl should look like or a guy should look like. So all those feelings for our gay and lesbian clients, there's just so many different ways to identify with personal trauma right? There's, that's a big one.
Okay, trauma number eight is sibling trauma. So that could be your sibling bullied you, they were mean to you. It could be they were born with medical issues which demanded more moms and dads time and attention. Or it could even be you perceive them to be the golden child the favored one because they were the athletic star, or more handsome or beautiful, or the smarter child and you were always compared, why aren't you as smart as your brother? Things like that. But you always felt that they were favored.
Number nine has two parts. Used to only be one and the one was family trauma. And family trauma looks like if you came from a dangerous neighborhood, you were always struggling financially to get food, your family might have been military family moving every two to four years. Like in the USA, if that's their protocol, putting the child in a different school each time. It could be a parent was incarcerated. Then on the later list was community trauma. Because when I was growing up, there was not a lot of community trauma going on. You could go out and play and run all over your, parents didn't have a phone to call you. It was just you go out and play all day and then I'm home for dinner. That was the norm. Well, today, community trauma, we're all experiencing the COVID pandemic. So when people don't think they have trauma we all do now. The messages we hear about all this death and dying on TV. Imagine what it's doing to our children. They're afraid to see their parents go off to work, afraid they're going to get the virus, they're afraid to play with their friends, they can't go to school, you know, they're they're masked up, so they're not free to talk or hug their friends. It's it's very weird. And there's going to be a lot of anxiety around safety and an emotional closeness for these young kids growing up, and there were adults. And that's also community trauma is our mother nature events are floods, fires, hurricanes, storms, that impact communities at large. It also includes our mass shootings and our school shootings. Like I said, when I was a kid, we were blessed. We did not have a lot of these events that our young people are constantly going through this and hearing these messages nonstop.
And then trauma 10 is mental health issues in your parents. The baby boomer parents didn't go to counseling. So we kind of have to guess. The two most difficult for kids to navigate around as bipolar and borderline personality disorder. Borderline, I simply describe as real erratic moods. When they're good, they're great when they're bad, they're horrid, they can explode and get angry at the littlest thing that nobody else would be upset about. And for a kid, it feels like walking on eggshells all the time. You never know what you're walking into, when you go into the house. They're going to be happy today or they're going to be angry today. So those are some of those messages. And then bipolar is manic depression, depression shows up as extreme fatigue, checking out emotionally or even anger and depression. And manic phase could be a gambling spree and eating binge, a spending spray when you know the family has little money, but you know, mom may be a spender and come home every day with things that you really don't need making the child anxious all the time. So those are the top 10 Andrea right there.
Andrea 18:36
Wow, that's depressing.
Riana 18:40
How many do you have?
Andrea 18:44
Oh, my gosh, well, let me let me look at the list. I wrote them all down. And so remind us is this do you talk about these the most in your book Love Beyond Your Dreams?
Riana 18:52
Well, Love was started right after my book Live Beyond Your Dreams, which is about the Mindset For Success. And then, actually, in my meditations, when part four is, you know, god, what do you want me to know, it's like, you must write the book on love. It's going to be a number one bestseller. And I'm like, oh, I just got done a book. I don't want to write another one. And I go to the beach. And all these ideas just flood to me. And I'm like, yeah, this would be a best seller, I have to write this book. Because all this research kept coming up and coming up and coming up. So Love Beyond Your Dreams: Break Free of Toxic Relationships to Have the Love You Deserve, that came up to 400 pages and I said, I got to stop, but I have more research. And then then I created 150-page workbook that my coaching clients have and that's interactive to work with me. So not all of this is written in there because it became more and more defined as I went on with the research, but it's a really great knowledgeable book and I think I have 350 sources cited in there.
Andrea 19:55
Okay, well, we'll drop that in the show notes for sure. I just I just could feel people going to Amazon like, they didn't get all the notes down.
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Okay, as you heard, because I was writing furiously Riana has the Childhood Trauma Checklist, and if you didn't write it down, or if you did, and you want more information on it, this is fantastic news because she has a free ebook when she asked me if I would, if I would talk about it and I was like 100% Yes. It's amazing how much research shows about the psychology of past childhood and love experience, how that impacts us as adults when it comes to being successful in dating and sustaining our long-term love, love relationships. And I'm just really excited that she has this for everyone. So you can take this a step further than just listening to the podcast. So the checklist is simple and fast. It's an easy-to-use tool that discovers how your past childhood and love experiences may be impacting you today. So if you head on over to the show notes, if you are having trouble with that, just go to AndreaOwen.com/393 and you will see the link to download that it's it's called Why 9 Out Of 10 People Struggle In Life and Love and How To Have the Love You Deserve. So I can't wait for you to have that as a free gift. And let's get back to the conversation.
And I want to just kind of briefly give you a little bit of personal experience because as I was telling you before we started recording, I selfishly am having people like you on. I hired a trauma specialist therapist at the onset of COVID, which I think a lot of people did, because all of our stuff kind of came to light and it was like okay, it's it's time. And what was interesting for me and I wonder if this is not that uncommon is that my father passed away in 2016. And when he did, I felt like like the way that I described it as I said, you know, when you are sweeping up and you realize you haven't swept behind the dresser for a while and then you do and then all the dust bunnies come, come circling up. That's how I felt what happened when my father passed away. And which was that was in 2016. And it just start started this whole cycle.
Riana 23:40
So there are a lot of things still unhealed for you.
Andrea 23:43
It was still some unfinished business is the way that I described it. And that was also directly correlated to a very long relationship I had which ended and now it's been 15 years. But it was, that also still felt like it was unfinished business and this particular person was a narcissist. My therapist is highly suspicious he was actually a sociopath based on some of the stories that I told her. I didn't, I didn't, to me it was normal behavior. But when I would tell my friends stories like the look on their faces was shock.
Riana 24:14
So then it sounds like to me you grew up with a father who had the same type of personality type it was so normalized for you that he might have had a lot of narcissistic or sociopathic tendencies.
Andrea 24:25
Well, here's the interesting thing is that my father was very passive. We were, he was an alcoholic, but he wasn't an obvious drunk. So he was very emotionally detached. And he also because you were talking about abandonment, and it's it's interesting, and I never would have said, oh, you know, I felt abandoned because my parents were married until I was 18. And my father and I were very close growing up, I was an only child but I had older half siblings, and which is another weird dynamic. So I was their only child growing up and then as soon as I turned around 13 and started to change from a child to more of a teenager and my body changed, and he didn't, he basically walked away from our relationship. And there were some, like my mom made a comment to me, I had these pajamas, that I think we're a little bit too big for me. And it showed a little bit of sideboob I think when I was 13, my mom said to me, just sort of casually, she said, your father asked me to tell you to put some more clothes on. And I was, and I will never forget that moment because I felt so ashamed for my body and just also like, oh my god, like to cause a problem like that. It was so confusing and, and also feeling like I had done something wrong, like I should have. I should have known better than to do that. But like, I was just there with my parents. I was still a little kid in my eyes.
Riana 25:51
So yeah, I mean, this is this is an indication that there was childhood traumas still unhealed in your father, right?
Andrea 25:59
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Riana 26:01
You know, the fact that he turned out alcoholic, passiveness often comes from fear of speaking your feelings that we might have had a very toxic or abusive father.
Andrea 26:12
Yeah, he grew up Catholic, altar boy, there was abuse that was never talked about. So very, very much. So he was a twin and his twin brother was very charming, and my dad, was very quiet. And anyway, so yes, it was passed down, never healed. Also, his mother had electroshock treatment for depression in the 1930s. So yes, it's all, it all the puzzle pieces sort of came together after he died. And I started to hear these stories and and figure it all out. And it all pointed to the reason that my therapist says I have a high tolerance for inappropriate behavior.
Riana 26:48
Well, I wouldn’t say I have a high tolerance for it. What has happened is it became normalized for you, Andrea, that's all It was it was all around you and this was just normal in your household.
Andrea 26:59
And nobody talked about it either. So it wasn't…Here’s the part that was confusing that I think might some people might relate. It wasn't obvious. So you know, we hear about these egregious heartbreaking stories from people where there was domestic violence, or there was substance abuse, and you know, and it was just sort of, like wreaking havoc everywhere. That wasn't what it looked like, in my family. Like, I felt like something was wrong, but nobody would talk about it.
Riana 27:42
Right, which was the norm back then.
Andrea 27:44
Right? I grew up, I was born in ‘75. So I'm a Gen X-er, and we still were in the generation of don't talk about it, and maybe it'll just go away.
Riana 27:36
Yeah, yeah. That's, that's very true. So when I do get a client, it's very important that I talk to them about their mom and their dad, and what they went through, and even their grandparents, so three generations is what we kind of look at. And it helps with the healing and the forgiveness part where a lot of people are mad at their dads for how they behaved, and then the compassion and forgiveness can come in, it's like, well, wow, he's suffered too. He obviously had a mother with mental health issues, and he wasn't, you know, if he's passive, that means he was never allowed to talk about his feelings, or he could have been hit or beaten. Back then, you know? So he just learned I'm upset, I just clam up. That's how I handle it. Or the internalizes, as teens, they often turn to alcohol or cutting. Kids that want more control in their household or turned to eating disorders very often, you know, like, eat everything on your plate, this costs a lot of money, and it's like, yell and scream at me, I'll show you I won't eat anything you know. And that becomes an internal control over their parents, because kids are angry.
So there's all these different things. The externalizes tend to get themselves into trouble with the law, or they beat up other kids. Those are the ones that take their anger outward, or, you know, try to suppress it with pot or alcohol. So you start seeing the signs, usually in teenagers, sometimes in children, of course, children can be quiet and depressed and sad and cry. And, you know, I've even had worked with very young kids saying, I don't want to live anymore. I mean, it is very sad. But listeners, like if your kids are saying any messages or giving you signs that they're upset, you must get them to help right away because it doesn't just go away. You can't just ignore it. You have to you know, get them help immediately.
Andrea 29:35
Yeah. Well tell us what are some of the sort of telltale signs or destructive and self-sabotaging patterns that you see whether it's in a relationship or at work, where it might be a clue for someone that there there's something deeper that they need to address?
Riana 29:54
Sure, let's go into how they show up in love relationships. So if there's jealousy and control that usually comes from trauma seven and trauma two, where trauma seven was not feeling good enough, not measuring up feeling different. And the verbal messages you might have heard, like, you're up to no good. I'm not paying for college for you, because you know, I'd be wasting my money. So messages like that will lead to jealousy where you just don't feel good enough. Or so if you had a lack of trust, like you witnessed, you knew your father was a cheater, and you couldn't say anything. And if you're a girl out there dating, you may, you know, have a lack of trust for those men that you're dating when they're not in touch with you all the time. So that's where jealousy comes from. Control again, you had that volatile household. So you may have tried control as a young person.
Andrea 30:51
Oh, I was heavily codependent.
Riana 30:53
Yeah, were you?
Andrea 30:56
Oh, my God got poster child.
Riana 30:57
And then but some kids well find their accolades and get those those messages of ego reinforcement at school when they do well. So this is a lot of the client, I get successful in business but struggles in love. So they're like killing it at the workplace, but their love relationships consistently tend to be messed up. And they can't figure out why. Well, they found one of their coping mechanisms is I'll feel love and success and happiness by being a good student. And then they're used to that pattern of excelling and business brings them happiness, they could also then be prone to workaholism, because that's where they get their ego satisfaction from right. But they have not fixed the love piece. And so that's that's very interesting to say. So they will control in the workplace which can work, but then if they try to control their partners at home, that's when the relationships can fall apart.
Lying and manipulation, which is part of the sociopathic behavior that comes from fear of being hit or screamed at very often. And they kids find, wow, if I become a good liar, I get away with it. And I'm not going to be hit today. So then lying becomes a norm. If you ever knew anyone that lied about everything that's like, why'd you have to lie about that? Oh, just lying about everything, that became so normalized for them. So we have to teach that person to live in integrity and speak their feelings without fear.
Impulsivity is from that child growing up with things that they weren't allowed to have. So that might be the guy going out and saying, well, I want this sportscar, I deserve it, I work hard and not discussing that big purchase with his wife. Or making risky choices that destroy your relationship or hurt your partner and you don't even think about them. It's like, well, I want this so I'm going to do it. You know that impulsivity is one of the top ways that relationships become destroyed.
People pleasing is one that a lot of my women do. They can't say no, they overdo for others, and that makes them angry, resentful, burnt out. They used to use this to help you know, feel love, or raise your self-esteem. Let's say there was a girl with an alcoholic mother, miserable in the morning. And, you know, the girl would just say, ‘okay, I'm gonna get my siblings up ready fed lunches made off to the school bus’, and then none of them would get yelled out today. So she was used to being the mini-mom are displeasing her to death, to feel some kind of love. And this might be a woman in a marriage that comes into me and says, Riana, you know my husband and my kids don't love me, like, I love them. I do everything for them. And the man might say, ‘well, I don't ask her to do those things. You know, she treats me like a child’, you know. So we have to re-assess the balance in the relationship like that.
Now abandonment issues, this can lead to clinging, this codependency, high anxiety if your partner's gone, love addiction. So love addiction is interesting. The research shows toxic relationships break up, get back together, break up and get back an average of seven times. And consciously you say I know this person is not good for me. So you'll break up for 10 days, two weeks, and then slowly the messages start again, and the promises are made and to get back together and there's a peaceful period of about 10 days to two weeks and then something else happens. And the reason that these keep getting back together is the abandonment feeling that you had as a child you crave the love so much, even though you know it's toxic. You hang on to what's good in this person. And you try to just forget or deal with the rest. But then when it happens over and over again it whittles away your self-esteem, your sense of empowerment, just your joy and laughter and lightness about life just becomes gone. You just feel frazzled, and then toxic behaviors in the body. The results show up as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, migraines, anxiety, depression, instead of dealing, insomnia, instead of dealing with the real issues. Right? addiction, a lot of addiction.
Andrea 35:36
Well, you just described my life, I don't want to talk about it anymore.
Riana 35:43
With the abandonment from your dad, this would be common then that, you know.
Andrea 35:48
And I was also a pretty severe love addict for a while in my former relationship, it was chronic cheating on both of our ends, but that cycle that you described, made my stomach hurt a little bit. It's just, and I used to say, I would rather be in this relationship than no relationship at all. Like I knew how bad it was…
Riana 36:25
You were so starving for the love feelings. Yeah.
Andrea 35:28
And I was terrified to be alone. Because I, I was conscious enough to realize that once I was alone, I was going to have to deal with all my issues. And I didn't know I didn't want to. But he made the decision for me. He had an affair with our neighbor and got her pregnant and set me free. He did. Yeah, it was it was torturous, it felt like it was it was what I needed. I do think the universe sort of intervened. And I want to shift gears and and because I think so many people are nodding their heads and seeing themselves in what you're describing.
Riana 36:39
Yeah, that's what we would call love trauma, Andrea. You know, when you experience a cheating, something like that, and it's that shock to the body. That lack of safety, that lack of trust, that lack of wanting love so much, and giving this man so many chances, that he just again, threw that away. So that is a type of trauma, which we call love trauma.
Andrea 37:06
For me personally, I felt like I finally got to a point in my life where I knew that it was living in my body, and that I could not just talk my way through it anymore and tell the story. And I was, got really good at compartmentalizing the pain. And the way I described it to people I said, I feel like there's a loop that needs to be closed. And this was before I knew about the stress cycle and closing that loop and and you know, trauma that lives inside your body. And, and that's the reason that I shifted from talk therapy into more somatic modalities and healing. So can you tell us how you, I mean, you can take any one of the many examples that you gave of your clients and the trauma that they bring to you in the clinical setting? How do you work with someone and kind of what's the, I know, it's maybe hard to put your finger on? But like, what is a typical timeline? And what does that look like?
Riana 37:59
Sure. Well, I'm a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, which is CCTP. And all my studies in trauma, say it takes about six months to get trauma out of the brain and the body. Okay, because it stays stored in there. And everyone that comes to me, I describe it as a different puzzle. It depends on the traumas that they experience first, second, the level and degree of severity of the trauma, and third, how are they showing up in life love or business? Okay. So, I also worked a lot with entertainers, I was a model and talent agent for 10 years. So you know, that could show up as imposter syndromes or perfectionism if they are going actress and they always have to be perfect and look perfect, and if they're not, you know, their audience beats them up.
So it really depends who is in front of me, right? And what are we healing? That's the first thing. So it's a very personalized program that I do, and what, second, are their goals and dreams for their life and their future. And that's the second part and if they're single or a couple. So if they're single, we have to heal the trauma first, teach them the mindset for success to raise their self-esteem, their confidence, get their goals, well defined and start living the life that they really desire. And then then we get them out to date and they learn what is emotionally healthy, evolved and conscious love. Evolved means being your highest and your best self. So I always say be what you want to attract. So I have to make my singles feel like they're the whole package, amazing about their life in themselves, then they go out date. Too many damaged people are out there dating, hoping someone will fix them. And that's why they're not having success in dating As soon as they have this mindset and this feeling about themselves. They have so many suitors. It's kind of ridiculous. We get to choose who we'd like to be with, okay, and we can easily walk away and say very nice person, but not for me.
And then second, if I have a couple, I have to do partner A's childhood trauma, Partner B, and then the third entity is the relationship. How is it showing up? So once I get each one's traumas defined and understood within the south, each one of them, then they start talking about it. And they start understanding that when they show up, for example, a man might have been criticized at work from his male boss. And he grew up with a father that all he did was criticized him so he gets emotionally triggered. He feels that anxiety in his body going up the cortisol going up, it comes through the door in a bad mood, and he starts attacking the wife. Now she takes it personally, oh my god, why is he so mean to me, blah blah blah blah. Well, with a new understanding, he could walk through the door and say, ‘babe, I need an hour to decompress. My boss yelled at me today, I'll be glad to discuss it. But I don't want to put this energy on you’. She understands what his father was like, and now they can have a conversation about, are those messages true? Or not? Or were you just triggered right now? And then what can we do to fix the problem being proactive, not reactive.
So what I work with is, you know, mindsets, very important piece of this, which I call the Mindset For Success, which is written in the Live Beyond Your Dreams book. So it's it's a two-part healing process. You see, it's mind, body and spirit. Spirituality is a big part of this, of faith that you can do what you dream to do a belief system that we put into place that you know, the healing can happen with love and forgiveness and forgiveness is one of the highest spiritual concepts you can do you see, so it's analyzing the trauma, doing the mindset work, and then doing either the dating skills or the couple relationship skills.
Andrea 42:05
Okay, I have one more question for you. And I love the example that you gave of the couple with the the man coming home and either taking his bad day out on his wife or not taking his bad day out on his wife. So can you name five things that are in an emotionally healthy, I love that you call it an emotionally healthy evolved and consciously aware relationship?
Riana 42:27
Yeah, so let me go into consciously aware. Most people, actually, studies show eight out of 10 people have 8 out of 10, negative thoughts, fear-based thoughts. And they don't consciously think about what they say, they write, they do, they text, they just do it. And they don't stop and think and I have this this hand, you know, when you put a hand up like stop this, this questioning that my people do. One: is this good for me, the woman or the man? Two: is a good for my partner? Three: is a good for my children or my extended family for is this decision going? Four: Is it good for me and my reputation or in the job? And five: If in doubt, go without? That's one of my little sayings. Don't do it think a little bit longer.
So being consciously aware in the spiritual world, is it good for you, and is a good for all. Right, that's a universal message is it for the good of all. If it's not, you don't do it. So we learn to go from unconscious behavior, which most people do the full conscious awareness 24 seven. And it's not grueling, you learn to do this and you wish everybody did, because it'd be a much kinder and gentler world. But the full conscious awareness is what you're going for in the relationship. That's what you're looking for. For my couples, I say to them, it's you and me against the world. So you have to put your partner first. Many people here in the US put the kids first. All their sports, all their activities, running them here running them there. They're too tired to have date night, they barely spend any time with each other just family routines. That's it. By the time the kids are out of the house, they divorce. That's typical USA marriage. Okay, so that's the huge mistake. They don't keep dating their partner, they don't make their partner feel special in any way. That's a problem.
I talk a lot about balanced triangles in my programs, but one of them is you, me and us. So the ‘you time’ is your work time. Maybe you're working out, you're reading your meditation, that's the time you spend with yourself. And we have to make sure that's time that's well used, right? Well balanced and same with your partner. But then that big line to make it an equal triangle your ‘us time’ also has to be quality time. So we really define that, like, what are you doing to have a joyful life? Are you taking couples vacation? Are you taking day trips? Are you you know, what is it that you're doing? So we define that, for my singles I say, again, be what you want to attract. You need to be emotionally healthy, because when you are, you will never settle for someone who is not. And you're going to be able to identify if their childhood traumas are healed or not healed. Quite simply, I have 24 questions that my singles ask on date one or date two, to really get to the bottom of who these people are, that are in front of them, and you'll be able to see it before you get emotionally or intimately involved. So we take our times, and we really get to know who that person is. And then also for the singles are your top five to six requirements being met with that person before you get involved? Can you trust them? Are they addiction free? Are they financially secure? For my younger people like 26 to 36 who definitely want marriage and kids? One of the first questions are you know, if it's a woman, and she's asking her male date, are you a man that sees that you want marriage and kids in your future life? Well, yeah, I'll probably get married. And if she wants kids, I guess so. That's a no, no, that's a no. But I found that many of my research reports show that happiest and longest lasting couples are spiritually based. And they practice their faith together. And I don't mean religion. I mean, spiritually evolved. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea 46:40
I love all of this so much. I want to have you on like six more times. Oh, that would be fantastic. Because I have a feeling what's going to happen is people are going to email and and want to know more about certain specific things. And I didn't even get to all the questions I had for you. And I just want to just tag on to what you just said. At 45, I'm almost 46 I what I know now in relationships, I would be dating very differently than when I was 25, and 26.
But I'm just going to add one more thing. And it's pretty much along the same lines of what you were saying is that I would want to know, from someone I was dating is, are you willing, and you know, I don't expect anybody to be perfect, but are you willing to work on your own stuff? In other words, would you be willing to go to therapy alone and with me? And I would also like more of an interview question. Like, tell me about the last time you took responsibility for something in a relationship where you realized you might have been in the wrong.
Riana 47:38
Mm hmm. I will not throw the word therapy. Therapy and coaching are two really different models. Now. I've been a psychotherapist for 21 years. So I'm both right? But and I never did the typical psychotherapy model, but most of them are, they make you talk and they sit there and they take notes, and they keep asking, ‘how do you feel about that’? I barely asked that question. I was always more of the coach. Solution focused, motivational, inspirational. But coaching is very educational. And a lot of people really are looking for the education, the solutions, like it's a, it's so annoying. What you don't know what you don't know.
Andrea 48:20
Right. And that's directive.
Riana 48:22
Like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what I've been doing wrong. I've read 100 self-help books, relationship books, and I keep getting toxic people. I don't know what I don't know. So that is when they really want solutions, education, research-based solutions that work, right. That's what I offer through coaching globally. As a psychotherapist, I'm limited to working in my state, so I don't even do it anymore. I'm only globally coaching. But it's a very different model. Psychotherapy, you have to give people diagnosis, like they're sick. My clients aren't sick, they're going through a hard time. And I don't like to code anybody. Right? So I get it when some people are turned off to the word therapy. And they would you know, but they may be more prone to life coaching right. Okay, so…
Andrea 49:16
Or personal development workshop. How’s that?
Riana 49:18
Yeah, that element? Yes, definitely. Yeah. It's so different. And usually you walk away just feeling so high and so happy, right? And that's how I like my clients to be. Yeah, they are like, you know, really, really research listeners, the coach that you choose to work with, make sure they're knowledgeable and well trained. And, but it can really change your life and the skills you learn you will use forever. And that's the beauty of it, you know. So…
Andrea 49:51
That's the goal. We don't want our clients to stay with us forever and ever, like we kind of do just because we like working with them so much, but the goal is for them to have tools and strategies to use. I know we're gonna have a lot of links in the in the show notes for people to grab your books and your website. But is there anywhere in particular you would love for people to go to learn more about you?
Riana 50:08
Yeah, the best place to start is my website. So it's my name RianaMilne.com, R-I-A-N-A-M-I-L-N-E.com, and on there, you can get the first 60 pages of both my books Live and Love Beyond Your Dreams under books. There are four free love tests that are very insightful for couples and singles, under quizzes. And on the home page, there is a free ebook. Why 9 Out of 10 People Struggle In Life and Love and that really goes into the childhood trauma piece very deeply. It's like 32 pages. And the Childhood Trauma Checklist is in there as well. And then my podcast, Lessons In Life and Love with Coach Riana Milne, is all over every podcast app, and my YouTube channel has the podcast plus videos. So I think there's like 240 things on my channel now on my Facebook is Coach Riana Milne and that's where I put all my announcements where I'm speaking, my summits, my podcast will be posted there, including Andrea's great podcast.
Andrea 51:16
Fantastic. Thank you so much. And I am just so enjoyed this conversation, it's so important for people to to just understand many times the root of the problem and I would love to have you on again to to continue the conversation. And thank you listeners for being here. I value your time so much. And remember, it's our life's journey to make ourselves better humans and our life's responsibility to make the world a better place by everyone.
Hi there, swinging back by to say one more thing. You know, I'm always giving advice over here on the show and on social media. And a couple of those things is that I'm always telling you to ask for what you want, be clear about it, and also ask for help. So I am taking a dose of my own medicine and I'm going to do that right now. It would be the absolute best and mean the world to me if you reviewed and subscribed to this show, make some noise podcast on whatever podcast platform of your choice. And even more importantly, it would matter so much if you shared this show. Sharing the show is one of the few ways the podcast can grow. And that also gives more women an opportunity to make some noise in their lives. You can do that by taking a screenshot when you're listening on your phone and sharing it in your Instagram or Facebook stories. If you're on Instagram you can tag me @HeyAndrewOwen and I try my best to always re-share those and give you a quick thank you dm and also you can tell your friends and family about it. Tell them what you learned. Tell them a really awesome guest that you found on the show that you started following whatever it is I appreciate so much you sharing about this show.
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