Breaking Free: Overcoming Childhood Trauma with Coach Riana Milne
Overcoming Childhood Trauma and Building Healthy Relationships
In this informative episode, Seth and Pete welcome special guest Riana Milne, a relationship expert and trauma counselor. They have an enlightening discussion about childhood trauma, how it impacts adult relationships, and strategies for healing.
Riana shares profound insights from her decades of experience counseling and coaching couples. She outlines the most common types of childhood trauma and explains how they often sabotage relationships later in life. Riana also provides communication strategies couples can use to overcome dysfunctional patterns. Seth and Pete gain perspective on why people repeat negative cycles and keys to fostering intimacy.
Questions we answer in this episode:
What are the most prevalent forms of childhood trauma?
How do childhood experiences shape adult relationships?
What communication tactics can improve a damaged relationship?
Key Takeaways:
Unresolved childhood trauma fuels toxicity in adult relationships.
People often repeat destructive patterns from childhood.
With counseling, empathy, and new skills, couples can heal.
Plus, we tackle another listener question! Seth and Pete advise a divorced dad struggling to co-parent with his ex-wife. They explain the concept of parallel parenting to minimize conflict.
This episode delivers profound insights about breaking negative cycles. Listen and learn how to overcome childhood trauma to build healthier, more fulfilling relationships.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How To Split a Toaster, a Divorce Podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, what happens when you're younger toaster comes back to haunt you?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson, as always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright. Today we're going back in time. How does your experience as a child impact the relationship you want to have as an adult? What do you do when your unspoken past trauma starts holding you back later in life?
This week on the show, Riana Milne joins us to help us work through just that. She's a number one bestselling author, the host of her own podcast called Lessons in Life and Love, an educational speaker and a licensed mental health counselor for over 23 years. And she joins us from right across our fair state, Palm Beach County, Florida. Riana, welcome to the Toaster.
Riana Milne:
Well, thank you guys. Thanks for having me, I'm happy to be here.
Pete Wright:
Riana, it's great to have you here. We're taking on another different way to look at trauma and recovery. You deal with love trauma, you have to tell us what that is.
Riana Milne:
Yeah, it's people who have suffered for a very long time in a toxic relationship. So being attracted to a partner that can break your heart, so to speak, always originates first with childhood trauma. Childhood trauma leads to love relationship trauma, choosing the wrong partner, not really being educated in knowing what is the emotionally healthy relationship. And just suffering over a long period of time with emotional abuse, verbal abuse, financial abuse, the yelling, the screaming. And over time, this love trauma does impact our health, the way we feel about ourselves, our self-esteem, our mental health, physical health. And it really impacts all areas of our life.
So it's really important that you recognize the signs of the toxic relationship, get out sooner than later, get help. Very often I'm having couples that have affairs and I'm very successful at mending the broken relationship once the couple understands how childhood trauma has such a big impact on the love relationship. So when I'm treating a couple, it's A, B and C, partner A, partner B and C is the relationship, and the dynamics of the toxic relationship.
Seth Nelson:
So I was in court once and I was actually not trying the case. I was in the back of the courtroom, my case was next to be called. And the judge said something very interesting to me and it was about another case came before her and there was an expert that brought forth a study and it was on mice. That basically said, if you, as a child, and the baby mice, you give them a negative stimulus, you shock them and then you give them a treat and then you shock them and you give them a treat. In adulthood, even though it's bad for them, they want the shock, they're used to it. And so it gets ingrained in them these negative things that happen to them are almost their safety blanket. Because they know how it's going to happen, they know how they're going to respond, they know how they're going to react. And it's really hard to break that cycle to go do something positive.
Riana Milne:
It's very true. This is what we would call subconscious behavioral norms. So the norms get carried into the relationship. And getting into brain science a little bit, the brain likes homeostasis. Meaning when people fall in love due to chemistry ... and I laugh because I see all the male profiles online saying, must have chemistry. So that is when-
Seth Nelson:
Chemistry for me is a good mixed drink, by the way. Let me be very clear what chemistry is. Okay.
Riana Milne:
So when they get all excited, it's like, yeah, I like this. This is really the brain going for homeostasis, meaning it likes what it knows whether it's good or bad. So it's recognizing the patterns from the past. This is again, subconscious brain work that attracts you to people. So what my job is to teach, what is the emotionally healthy evolved and conscious relationship, how to break the behavioral norms. And to teach people that chemistry is not the best way to fall in love, it's really one of the worst ways to fall in love. And to be more intelligent about the partner that you're choosing.
So there's a lot for us to learn because that's not how we grew up. We grew up looking at romance movies and hearing the fairytales, Sleeping Beauty goes away with the Prince Charming because he's handsome and he kissed her. And that's how you're supposed to fall in love only based on attraction. So there is a higher way, more evolved way to fall in love and to pick your partner for more success. And it's important that we heal the past traumatic norms so that people can do that. Yes, it does take a lot of time.
Pete Wright:
That's what I want to dig into. When you talk about childhood trauma and using Seth's example about the mice. Just what is it that you're doing to help people understand the hidden patterns, the dark patterns that they may be moving forward from their childhood into their current relationships?
Riana Milne:
Well, first I think if we can explain what are the childhood traumas. Most people will say, "Well, I didn't have trauma." Well, the facts are in 2021 is that 100% of us do have childhood traumas. Now in 2012, I created the childhood trauma checklist. From all my work, I've been in this field now 24 years. But I was working with a lot of kids in mental health wards of hospitals, ages five through nineteen, in the school system, I was the trauma emotional counselor for kids kindergarten through college. I worked in a drug and alcohol facility from women from the prison system from ages 16 to 75.
So despite their culture, race, background, income levels, it didn't matter, these top 10 traumas kept showing up. So that's where I got my childhood trauma checklist. There are more than these top 10, but once people say, "Oh wow, yeah, I have four of those. How'd that happen?" Because most people equate trauma with what we call big T trauma. You have a car accident, you lose a limb, that's a big T trauma, obviously.
Seth Nelson:
Abuse.
Riana Milne:
Yeah, experiencing physical abuse, being beaten every day. But the other traumas are what we call little T traumas, which occur more overtime and are usually emotionally based. It's important to analyze because we can't change what we don't know or understand.
Seth Nelson:
All right, let's give it to us, the top 10.
Riana Milne:
So here we go. First of all, it's important that our listeners know that trauma goes through at least three generations. And that trauma impacts a hundred percent of us. So it's not about blame or shame or feeling weird if you have any of these. The first thing is let's identify what you've experienced as a child. And these things happen both inside and outside of the home. So we're not looking to blame mom and dad at this stage of life.
So the first one, did you grow up with any addiction in the household? So not just drugs and alcohol, but sex, meaning you knew your parent was a cheater. Porn use, gambling, hoarding, spending, eating, gaming, TV watching, workaholism, social media or computer addiction. So those are some of the addictions that I've worked with. Number two is verbal messages. So did you hear, I love you, did you hear compliments? Or was it more put downs like, change your outfit, you look fat in that or I'm not sending you to college, that'll be wasting my money. Those are what we call put downs. And how did you see your parents work through an issue? Was there a lot of yelling and screaming? Because that's how you would then tend to handle an issue.
Number three is emotional abuse and neglect. Number four is physical abuse, any hitting, rape or molestation. The next one is abandonment. And there's two types, faults and no fault. So no fault abandonment would happen to be like if a parent died early in your life. Or a parent had to go off to war. Or in my case, my dad was like James Bond, we never knew where my dad was. But he actually did work for the CIA and FBI. But as a kid, I remember, is dad coming home?
Seth Nelson:
Riana, don't tell me anything that you're then going to have to kill me.
Riana Milne:
He has passed on, so now it's safe to share that secret. But we didn't know, as a family, you don't know.
Pete Wright:
That's crazy. Okay.
Riana Milne:
Yeah, so that was one of mine. And then there's fault abandonment, like never being in your child's life. Being in your child's life while the couple stays together, then you're sporadic afterwards after the breakup, or you promise to see them and you break your promises all the time.
Seth Nelson:
That's the old joke of how can I ruin your childhood? I wasn't even there.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that's dark, man.
Seth Nelson:
Okay.
Riana Milne:
Or the other one, which is even almost more damaging. You're in the household with that parent, but they don't connect with you, they're like zoned out. And this I heard a lot when I worked with kids. Why do I have to go to my dad's? He just sits there and watch football. I heard that constantly.
Pete Wright:
So that's still fault abandonment?
Riana Milne:
That's fault [inaudible 00:10:03].
Pete Wright:
Like in presence abandoned. Okay.
Riana Milne:
Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
That's the top five, what's six?
Riana Milne:
Okay. That would be adoption, being part of foster care system or needing to go live in another household because your parents couldn't keep you there in the main household. So even if that's grandma or your aunt, you're displaced from your parents.
Trauma seven is personal trauma. This is any way you felt different. You could have been a chubby child, you could have been identified ADHD in the schools and felt different. You could have been skinny and gawky and called a nerd. You could have been the only African American in all Caucasian school. Whatever made you just feel different, you didn't fit in. And this one most people can identify with in some way, this is a big one, but that's personal trauma.
Number eight is sibling trauma. You perceive your sibling to be the golden child, the smarter one, the more handsome and more beautiful, the star athlete. So that's one way. Or your sibling bullied you. Or your sibling could have been born with a medical condition and that commanded more of moms and dad's time and you were kind of just left on the side. Okay, so that's sibling.
Number nine has two traumas now because number 11 had to be brought down. When I first did this list, community trauma was not that big of a deal, so that was number 11. However, community trauma is one of our biggest ones now. That's our COVID impact on our families and our kids, that is our school and mass shootings, that's our mother nature events when whole communities are wiped out by flood, fires, hurricanes. So community trauma has gotten really huge over the past 10, 15 years.
And then number 10 is mental health illness and mom and dad. Now, my baby boomer generation, we didn't see our parents going to counseling. So you kind of have to guess, was mom depressed? Was dad anxious? Did dad have an anger and rage problem? So as I talk to my clients, we kind of dissect that. But the two hardest for children to navigate around is first borderline personality disorder. This is fast trigger anger. When they're good, they're great. When they're bad, they're horrible. And the kid never knows what they're going to get, they're afraid to open the door from school and say, am I going to get screamed at today? Or am I going to get a smile? So it leaves the kid very highly anxious.
The other one is manic depressive. Depression can show up as anger, checking out emotionally or extreme fatigue. And manic phase could be a high and happy phase, but it's often mixed with an addiction. So let's say a shopping spree, they love what they bought. The month later, they're depressed because they can't pay for it. So that's manic depressive. So those are the top 10.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Did we miss eight? I went from sibling trauma to community trauma.
Riana Milne:
Community trauma is number nine with family trauma. So family trauma is living in a dangerous area, having a parent incarcerated, growing up with a lot of lack messages, like we can't pay the bills this week, we're going to have to turn the heat off. Moving a lot, that counts a lot for our military families are moving every two to four years here in the US. So there's more under family trauma, that's just a few examples.
Seth Nelson:
I had three, Pete.
Riana Milne:
That's not bad.
Pete Wright:
I only had two. I can't tell if I won or lost, who knows? Who knows? I was a kid. But the one that really struck out to me is the addiction one because my dad actually stopped drinking when I was very young. His grandfather killed himself with alcohol. It's riddled in our family. You said something earlier that I want to make sure we latch onto, which is you said that trauma comes in three generations.
Riana Milne:
Yeah, at least three generations. But a lot of the new research has even shown that the gene expressions within people who are the off-springs from those who survived the holocaust has been changed. Because of that high trauma of surviving and then the anxiety being passed through the family lineage. So even DNA expression changes.
Pete Wright:
The reason I want to poke at this ... and Seth jump in if you think this is stupid. But the reason I want to poke at this is because I have even as a young person, some real visceral memories of my granddad drunk. Even though I don't really have many tangible memories of my dad drunk. I have a real sort of touch and go relationship with various things that I can be addicted to, that I call addictions. But I think how much of that are things that resonate across the decades, across generations from the way my family has resonated with this particular thing?
Riana Milne:
You have to remember your father went through trauma having an alcoholic Father.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
For sure.
Riana Milne:
So he impacted dad, who then impacted you. And what the initials are for that is ACO, adult child of an alcoholic. And then I add, or other trauma. And the whole worksheet, actually can get that for free on my website, which is RianaMilne.com, which is one of the four free love tests. The ACOA test will measure, are you still impacted as an adult today from that dynamic growing up under that umbrella? So your dad was probably maybe highly anxious. So again, when you're raised in an upsetting family, you tend to check out and maybe self-medicate. So alcohol or pot or pills or for girls, risky sex, I want to get out of this house, I'm going to go get married. And that then leads to the spiraling of these types of toxic relationships. It's important that we heal the original traumas and then educate what is the emotionally healthy relationship, not settling anymore, being strong and feeling like I am the whole package before you go out and date. And not just dating at a desperation or neediness.
Pete Wright:
Well, I just want to know, what does it look like targeting that kind of childhood trauma? Like in working with you. I'm not saying like let's do therapy on the show. I just want to know-
Riana Milne:
I have done that though many times.
Pete Wright:
Which is awesome and you want to therapize me a little bit, I'm always game to do that kind of stuff. But I'm just really curious, what does it look like for people who are listening to this and hear those patterns in themselves and see those patterns in their family history? What do you do?
Riana Milne:
Okay, let's talk about how do they show up. All right, I've had trauma I recognize, and usually when I talk to someone, it's usually almost double the amount of traumas. They have normalized it so much that they don't even see it as a trauma.
Pete Wright:
That's what I was worried about on this list, that I came up with two, it's probably nine.
Riana Milne:
Yeah. Like I had a woman, we went through physical abuses, no, no. And then 10, 15 minutes later she goes, "Yeah, that's when my dad would hit me and make me go get a switch." I'm like, "The tree branch, you were hit with a tree branch?" She goes, "Yeah, but that was everyone in our neighborhood."
Pete Wright:
Oh my goodness.
Riana Milne:
"That was just how they punished us." She didn't see it as physical abuse. It was so normalized. So I usually find a few more traumas as I'm doing a discovery session for someone.
But how do these patterns show up? Now there's at least 24 patterns, if not a lot more. But these are some of the common ones that I'm seeing. So if you're with a partner that's very jealous and controlling, obviously a toxic trait. This is usually from trauma number two, verbal messaging of you're not good enough and trauma seven where you feel less than. I don't feel like I fit in, I grew up a chubby child, I was a shorter guy and skinny and little and I got bullied by all the big football players. So the guy doesn't feel good enough. And he might've grown up to be a very handsome, successful guy, but these traumas will still maybe stick with him. So that's where the jealous and controlling would come in.
Another one is impulse. So let's say you grew up with a family always struggling for money, you grew up to be successful. Let's say the gentleman is married and he sees the shiny red sports car and he goes, "Ooh, I want that." And he knows his wife wouldn't approve because they're on a budget, he goes, "I'm buying it anyway." That's the impulse. I'm getting it because I deserve it. And he gets it and then they argue and then the family struggles for like three years until the car's paid off. Something like impulse is one of the biggest ways that destroys relationships when there's someone high in impulse. This is the category on the ACOA sheet where cheaters would fall in. My wife didn't want me last night, I'm going to go with the waitress because she likes me. That kind of acting out and cheating is under impulse category.
What a lot of women do is called people pleasing. Now I also have men do that as well, but I see the majority of my women ... and again, keep in mind, as a kid, these are survival strategies just to get them by the day. So if they have an angry alcoholic mother, this could be the older sister getting up and doing all the lunches, getting all the kids dressed for school and getting them to the bus stop, and cleaning the house. Anything so mom's not yelling and screaming at her and the other kids. So this people pleasing bought them peace.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, that's a very interesting point that I was actually going to delve into a little bit is what causes us problems and relationships later in life is what kept us surviving earlier.
Riana Milne:
That's correct.
Seth Nelson:
And to make that change is really difficult. And when you're doing that, and I think this is the right time to dovetail into this question, but if you have more to share before we get to my question, please share what you need to share because this is fascinating and great for our listeners. I'm picturing you talking to a couple that are having marital difficulties and they need to work this out. Now they've picked ... and one of our things is don't pick the same guy over and over again, you're making the mistake. You have to learn how to pick the right guy.
Riana Milne:
Or women, yes.
Seth Nelson:
Right, back and forth. But when they're in the relationship and they've picked the wrong guy so to speak, but they both want to work on this. Is that where basically that guy is like, shit, I'm not the right guy for her and I have to work on my own shit so I can become a better person for myself and then hopefully this works out. Or is it, maybe I become a better person and it still doesn't work out.
Riana Milne:
Well again, there's three entities. And once they understand ... when I do a discovery session, I do not do a couple together. They have to have their own. I'm totally focused on partner A then partner B, and then the relationship after that. Because I said, well, this is what's going on in the relationship because let's say Paul grew up with a screaming, angry alcoholic father and learned if I talk back, I'm going to be hit. So he learned to just shut down and not talk when there's an issue. He learned to be quiet. And the wife sang very white, why won't you talk to me and talk this out? Well, he learned that's not safe.
So when she understands what the patterns were of his trauma and that he understands her patterns of trauma, now they also learn brand new communication skills that nobody taught us. Not in school, not in high school, not in college, not in my triple master's of psychology. This is all based on research. Communication skills with more empathy, kindness, and love to understand what's really going on. Where people learned, I better not talk about my feelings it's not safe. Now they learned, I'm going to talk about it and share and it's like, honey, I know I'm being triggered. This is not you. So now people aren't taking it personally. They're understanding that they're going through something and then they can be more supportive.
So there's a whole lot of couples work we do, but at first, after teaching them communication skills to put out any fires, then I divide them. Then I have to do, again, because I work with LGBTQ couples, as well. So partner A gets their trauma work, partner B gets their trauma work. And then I clearly explain why this is showing up in the relationship. And when it does, this is how we deal with it from this point forward.
Seth Nelson:
Got it, got it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate that explanation.
Pete Wright:
Well, it sounds like from that point on, one of the safest outcomes gets back to your question, Seth, which is, hey, we've done this work individually and now we're coming together and realizing it might be safe to recognize that the relationship was held together by our traumas. And maybe we are better off with other people, maybe this isn't a healthy third entity.
Riana Milne:
Once I heal both of them individually, it's very interesting because they often come from the same trauma pool, the same trauma experiences. So when I say-
Pete Wright:
But traumas are magnetic, right? They bring people together.
Riana Milne:
Well when they are yelling through an issue and they both grew up in a yelling household, they understand how toxic that is, and now they're impacting, let's say, their own children. I said, do you want another generation of this? Or are we going to solve this and learn to communicate with love and empowerment? And then teach your children the same thing. So they really, really want to learn. They're very excited to learn, and it's amazing how I can heal these partnerships once they really understand where the origin of the dysfunction is coming from, and that they do have the ability to heal and change.
So in my program, coaching is very different from counseling. Coaching is very educational, so I have to teach a lot and we have a workbook, 150 pages. So what they write down, I see I have to teach them this. So we work as a team all the time, and then partner A tells me this partner B, and I'm like, "Oh, okay. This is so radically different. We're going to have to discuss this point." And they're perceiving it two different ways. So we work as a team, there's a lot of education, it's healing the trauma, getting the life goals together individually and as a couple. Actually spirituality for healing is really important. Mindset work, we do so much mindset work, living conscious awareness instead of by impulse. Or impulse, which we call false negative assumptions.
Let's say the man is late from work and just a long day. Then the wife's there, "I bet he's stopped at that restaurant to talk to that waitress." And she gets herself all riled up thinking all these false things are going on. Then they come home and they have an argument. So we have to stop all the negative fear-based thinking, all the false negative assumptions that came from her growing up with a cheating father. So it's all these different dynamics and it's very personalized to what the couple was struggling with. But then once we do part B is all the relationship skills that nobody taught us, how to sustain that over time.
For example, someone grows up with abandonment. Let's say emotional abandonment, there was a breakup of the marriage, the girl barely saw her father.
Pete Wright:
Number five.
Riana Milne:
Yeah. So if that happens with abandonment, there could be clingingness, anxiety when your partner's gone. Or let's say before the marriage broke up, dad was cheating then left for the affair. So it's like is he cheating? All this fear-based stuff. The abandonment issues could also lead to love addiction and codependency. And when one partner might say, consciously, I know this isn't good for me, so I'm breaking up. So they break up, but then within 10 days they're back in the relationship again. And the peace cycle is usually two weeks, like 10 to 14 days there's peace. Then there's another argument. So this is what we call the cycle of abuse. But it's usually one or two people with abandonment issues and they say it's better to stay with this than get out of it. Because they don't see happiness on the other side, there's so many-
Seth Nelson:
The devil you know.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Riana Milne:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Seth, how often are you aware that somebody is coming into your office and says, "I want a divorce." And you can see where they are in the mess of their cycles.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, very frequently. And a lot of it, because I've been doing this for so long. And you can figure out some of this based upon how they tell you what the problems are and the words that they use. And then when communication issues come out throughout the divorce process, how they respond. They might be very frank, I don't want the divorce. Some are like, yes, I want the divorce, they might be initiating it. But they doing everything they can to prolong the divorce because they know what happens next. Once you get divorced, that's a whole new chapter in your life and you don't know what those blank pages look like. But you know what the fight looks like, you know what the cycle looks like, and you get comfortable in that.
And so a lot of times they'll come to me with a problem, they'll call, they'll start telling me a story. And this happens to divorce attorneys all across the nation every day. I will stop my clients and say, "You're telling me a story. I don't know what your question is because you're calling me for advice and counsel. So I can't tell you what's important on the story that you're telling me. So start with your question." And it throws them off. And then they'll start telling the story again and I'll be, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm really listening, but I can't tell whether what you're telling me is important or not for me to do my analysis." So I really make them ask the question. Then I get a bit of the story, then I give them a couple suggestions to solve this problem.
And then there's another problem and another problem. So one of the things we do is when early in a case, what are your goals? They can change throughout the divorce process, "But I really want to keep the house." "Okay, why?" "Because I want to keep the kids in good school district, the mortgage payment is low." Whatever, like we get to the underlying reasoning. We don't just take positions, but how do you get there? And so then if I get your top three goals and I have a marital settlement agreement and a parenting plan that covers your top three, and now you're arguing over, as we say on this show, the proverbial toaster. I'm like, you're about to blow up this deal on the toaster, and I just showed you what your goals were when you walked in the door.
Pete Wright:
And that's the question, when they start arguing about the toaster, then they're back into whatever it is, number five, number seven, wherever they are. That's a sign that they haven't finished the work.
Riana Milne:
Well, needing to be right, fear of moving on. I haven't dated for 25 years, this is better than going back out to dating world because I don't know what to do. I get a lot of people like that, both men and women. I haven't dated for years, I don't what to do.
Seth Nelson:
Let me tell you this, right when you said that they have to be right, a frequent thing that I will say to my client, you can be right or you can settle your case. You can't be both. Take your pick.
Riana Milne:
The art of negotiation and what's best for the family and the children is keeping the peace. I have had attorneys send me people and say, "Will you work with them? I'm seeing trauma here." One guy in Palm Beach County, he goes, "I'm seeing childhood trauma. They need to be right. One is people pleasing, one is manipulating, one is totally narcissistic and trying to control the whole process, making his wife look like she has no power in this whole thing." And so yes, I have to try to say, let's work for the family here. Let's go deeper into what's going on with this relationship, and let's at least have you be friends as you're working through this process. Take the yelling out of the household because this is hurting your children. And let's get you civil and working through as a team. And then moving on with supporting each other's mental wellbeing because it is very mentally taxing for people a lot of times.
Pete Wright:
That's something I keep hearing, I think, from both of you. Which is if you don't understand your relationship with these triggers, if you hear something of these kinds of things that we're talking about in yourself, in your relationship, you may find that you are not only sabotaging your relationship, but the same behaviors may sabotage your divorce. Your efficient divorce.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, in a divorce ... and Riana, tell me your thoughts on this. I hope you agree with me, Pete hates that. I feel like in a divorce, whatever your traits are, they are heightened.
Riana Milne:
Oh yeah. Very escalated.
Seth Nelson:
If you're anxious, you're super anxious. If you watch every dime, you're going to watch every penny. It's just everything is magnified. And part of what I do is try to just breathe. Breathe. We'll get there.
Riana Milne:
And one of the worst things is trying to play the children against the other parent.
Seth Nelson:
Riana, that's why I make all my money. Come on now.
Riana Milne:
That's so toxic on the children. I worked in the schools and the kids would come in crying, then they go home and then they say, "I get yelled at because I don't get good grades on my tests." And here's a fact for your parents, if children are upset, cortisol is up, and memory and learning is down. So if this toxic behavior is going on in this household, and so many kids are misdiagnosed, ADHD, and I said, wait a minute, they're coming from a toxic household. This kid's coming to school because of not sleeping because the parents were fighting all night. So parents have to know that this is impacting their children's success levels. It's proven seven different areas of life is impacted with childhood trauma. One is impaired readiness to learn, difficult problem solving, language delays, poor academic achievement.
So our kids are really being impacted in the schools and they're like, oh, they need better testing or our kids aren't learning. Well, why? Let's get to the brain science here. So it's really important that the parents can negotiate through their differences and try to do a win-win. Okay, the marriage isn't working, we're bringing the split. Let's keep the mental health of our children as sound as we can.
Seth Nelson:
So let me ask you this though, Riana, because I see this a lot and I've seen this because I've been practicing this divorce practice for so long. It is, I've seen kids where they had a parent bashing the other parent through the divorce process. And then that kid ultimately becomes an adult and they figure it out. They figure it out on their own that their mom wasn't that bad or their dad wasn't that bad. And they based that based on how that parent ... the mom dealt with them, doesn't matter what dad said. And ultimately, when they become an adult, let's say mom was bashing dad. They become an adult, mom treats the child like she treated dad. They figure it out, and it actually breaks the relationship and damages the relationship from the spouse, the parent, that's saying the bad things about the other parent.
Riana Milne:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
So every time you say it, you're actually hurting your own relationship with your child.
Riana Milne:
You're hurting yourself. Yes. Yeah.
So I always said ... and the researcher shows. Children do better with one emotionally healthy parent in this single household than in a toxic household where parents are fighting all the time. So if you are the emotionally healthy partner and you hear the other parent bashing, bashing, bashing you all the time. Don't defend yourself to your kids. Instead just say, "Mommy will always love you. I will always be here for you. If you ever have a problem, you can talk to me about it." Just keep focused on who you are with your kids and having as emotionally ... like if they've already split and they're separated, having the emotionally healthy house. Kids come home, there's music playing. You sit and you eat together. You go out and you have fun experiences as that single parent. You be the emotionally healthy parent, no matter what the other parent is doing. I know it's hard because I was bashed that way, and all I could do is just say, "I'm going to be building this relationship and making sure my girls and I are fine."
Seth Nelson:
That's awesome advice.
Pete Wright:
Well, this whole thing has been awesome advice. Riana, tell us a little bit about where ... you've already talked ... you've dropped a little bit of some hints about some of the work that you do. But tell us where you'd like to send people to learn more about what you do to help people through their trauma.
Riana Milne:
Sure, sure. My website's the best place to go, and it's my name. It's RianaMilne.com. And on there you can get right at the top of the page the ebook, How to Have Emotionally Healthy Love: Have the Love You Deserve. And there's four free love tests, some for singles, some for couples. My number one bestselling book is Love Beyond Your Dreams: Break Free of Toxic Relationships To Have the Love You Deserve. 400 pages based on research, the type of personality types that are dangerous to fall in love with. And at the last part is what does the emotionally healthy relationship look like? And I have a podcast called Lessons in Life and Love with Coach Riana Milne. And I do work around the world and I have women, men from 16 to 79 is my oldest right now.
Seth Nelson:
Let's be clear, this 16 year old is not with the 79-year-old.
Riana Milne:
No.
Pete Wright:
Seth, what are you doing right now, man?
Seth Nelson:
I'm being very clear. I'm being a very good lawyer, Pete. I'm just clarifying something that was said. Okay, that's what I'm doing.
Pete Wright:
Oh my goodness. No one thought that when they heard her talk, no one thought that. Until now, you did that. You made it weird. Sorry, Riana.
Riana Milne:
So kids in high school getting nervous about going off to college, a lot of times parents will hire me so the child's not anxious moving from home or in the new environment. So as a global coach, it's wonderful, I work with people around the world. So, I love it.
Seth Nelson:
That's great.
Riana Milne:
I love what I do. And it's amazing how it changes your life in all areas, once you heal that original trauma and then heal any love trauma you've been through. And then go on to have emotionally healthy partner, it means everything. So after divorce, like there is life after divorce. This is what I say to everyone, and you're going to be even better than what you were before. And you will choose better the next time around, so be hopeful.
Pete Wright:
Well, Riana, Milne, thank you so much for hanging out with us today, for teaching us today, for dancing around therapy with me today. I sure appreciate it.
Riana Milne:
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Pete Wright:
And all the links to all of everything that Riana just said are in the show notes. But now, we got to hit the listener question.
Seth, our listener question today comes from anonymous. That's Mr. Anonymous to you.
Seth Nelson:
They were Miss Anonymous or just anonymous?
Pete Wright:
Anonymous. And so here we go, I'll tell you, you'll get it. Hi, I'm the divorced father for several years after a high conflict divorce. We have joint legal custody on paper agreement, but in reality, we're unable to co-parent and the parenting plan is useless. We only use our Family Wizard app in writing, but that's not working well because neither of us are able to communicate with the other. I have no money or interest in going back to court under any circumstances. Bottom line, we couldn't coexist, communicate or resolve conflicts during 15 years of marriage. So how can we possibly communicate now?
I think this is a fantastic question and I wonder if I could add an addendum to it, how could we possibly be expected to communicate now? Is there an expectation that this couple in communication trauma should be able to communicate? Help us.
Seth Nelson:
The answer to that question is simple, yes. The answer to Mr. Anonymous question, a lot of s's there at the end.
Pete Wright:
Right in a row.
Seth Nelson:
First off, let me say this, it's very impressive how he wrote this. Because everything in the breakdown of communication was a we. He did not blame the other parent in this question. So that tells me there's some pretty good communication or at least self-awareness there. That I'm responsible, she's responsible, it's a we problem. Okay. If you are at this point in a relationship, one thing to try, which is heartbreaking, is parallel parenting. And we've talked about on the show before, Pete, but it's parallel parenting is not co-parenting. You do what you're going to do on your time. She's going to do what she's going to do on her time. And you really try to limit your interaction with her and she should try to limit her interaction with you. And you should only be communicating on the biggest issues.
Pete Wright:
So let's do a quick review then, we should put the link to our parallel parenting episode in the notes for Mr. Anonymous. But let's do a quick review. What in your view are the biggest issues?
Seth Nelson:
So where are they going to go to school?
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Extracurriculars. But I have ways to solve that. As you can say ... and I don't know how old these children are, they were married for 15 years, they've been divorced a few years. Did they have the children late in the marriage, early in the marriage? I don't know. But people get in fights over, I don't want the kids to do extracurriculars for that long or I can't afford it. So you just have to realize that the conflict between you and the other parent is the most dangerous thing for your child. So don't have any money for litigation, don't want to go. But if you have money just to help out with the extracurriculars, even if you don't think you should, even if it's a stretch and you have to take something of your discretionary income that you would like to go do something else and it can reduce conflict. Anywhere you can reduce conflict is the way to go. But medical and education, those are the keys. Do not send our Family Wizard message saying, "I'm buying a prom dress. Will you help pay for it?"
Pete Wright:
That's not parallel parenting anymore.
Seth Nelson:
That's co-parenting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
We want to parallel parent. Don't send that. Just buy the prom dress. So the least amount of communication that is conflict in nature, the better.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
It's not easy.
Pete Wright:
Not easy, not easy at all. And so thank you Mr. Anonymous for writing the question. I hope that gives you at least some guidance. Or maybe a little bit of freedom to think about the way you communicate or don't in a new way. And we would love for others of you out there to send in a question. Just visit howtosplitatoaster.com and you'll see a button that says, ask a question. It'll come straight to us, straight to Seth, and get on the show in an upcoming episode.
That's it. I think that's all we have to talk about, Seth, I think we're done. We can finally put a fork in it. We've asked the question. It's time to move on with your legal day. On behalf of Riana Milne and Seth Nelson, you know Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney. I'm Pete Wright, we'll catch you next week right here on How to Split A Toaster, a Divorce Podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to Split A Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson, music by T. Bless & the Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How To Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
