Dating and Relationship Coach Riana Milne Explains Childhood Trauma’s Impact on Relationships

Have you ever found yourself experiencing the same relationship issues while dating new people? It’s hard to put toxic habits to rest, especially if you’re actually in denial and hoping for the best. It’s not a bad thing to be optimistic, but your efforts are better spent fixing the root of the problem. 

Riana Milne guides clients on a transformational journey, helping them address underlying issues so they can do the necessary inner work to achieve their dating goals. 

In 2012, Riana identified 10 childhood traumas consistently apparent in the clients she had been working with and created the Childhood Trauma Checklist. This quiz helps people struggling with toxic cycles in dating and relationships that may be triggered by self-sabotage. 

These traumas are very common, and most people have experienced at least one of them growing up. “If any of those are part of a person’s life, it’s important that they heal them….childhood traumas are going to lead to love and relationship trauma,” Riana explained. “ The first step is healing their childhood trauma after identifying which ones they are.” 

She then began to briefly describe each of them and their major signs. They include any addiction in the household, verbal messaging, emotional abuse and neglect, physical abuse, and abandonment. 

The list of childhood traumas Riana compiled also includes removal from your immediate family, personal trauma, sibling jealousy and bullying, family and community trauma, and mental health and the parents. 

Riana urges clients to ask themselves how their parents fought in their presence when they discussed their issues. Did they yell and scream, or calmly discuss their issues and work as a team to solve them?

Did you receive a lot of put-downs or anger, or did you hear compliments instead? This will greatly define your feelings of self-worth. The type of verbal messaging used plays a critical role in how they will approach conflict in future relationships. 

Physical abuse includes rape and molestation in or outside of the home. The damage of this type of abuse over time manifests itself in the way it causes people to have a negative experience with intimacy. 

How Unhealed Trauma Affects Relationships and Self-Worth

Riana has named two types of abandonment: fault abandonment and no-fault abandonment. “No fault example is a parent dies early or they leave the home for two years to go serve their country in a war,” Riana explained.

“Fault Abandonment refers to a parent who neglects to see their child after a divorce, or they can still be in the home but emotionally unattached and not involved with the child’s interests. Even if you had to live in the aunt’s house or go have to live in someone else’s household, you were removed from your parents,” Riana continued. 

Riana told us these are all forms of abandonment and greatly impact one’s self-esteem; often leading to codependency in relationships.

Personal trauma varies greatly, and it involves a feeling of isolation due to being different or not feeling good enough. Whether it’s race, class, status, body type, or orientation. Oftentimes, clients have felt out of place and experienced bullying and harassment at school or and/or in the home. 

Receiving more praise than your other siblings do from family members can also have a detrimental impact on a child’s self-esteem. Those bullied by siblings or who were part of a family that had a child who required medical attention can experience issues as they did not receive the attention necessary to feel validated in the home. 

Riana explains family trauma as families affected by community trauma. Riana placed community trauma at number 11 when she first created the list. However, over time, she saw the grave impact it had with unfortunate events such as mass shootings. 

As a result, negative trickle-down effects such as a caregiver’s job loss, incarceration, and a family’s relocation greatly affect children as they develop and discover their identities.

Military families are good examples of how relocation can impact a child’s perception of relationships and adapting to events they cannot control. “There’s a lot around family traumas and military families having to move every two to four years here in America that puts the kid as the new kid in school all the time,” Riana explained.

It’s not an ideal situation to be in during the critical formative years, prepubescence, or further into adolescence as it increases the likelihood of feeling like an outsider. Being included, and forming friendships helps a child to feel a sense of belonging.

“I’ve been a school counselor at all grade levels, and even their academic success and ability to focus is connected to having an emotionally healthy household,” Riana said. “Even children of adoption can either feel rejected or totally grateful when they have wonderful parents, but they often will need support when it comes to life transitions, as feelings of abandonment may set it.”

The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma on the Adult Psyche

Riana went on to discuss the impact that a parent’s undiagnosed mental health issues like borderline personality and bipolar can have on a child. 

“Borderline being fast, erratic moods, when they’re good, they’re great when they’re bad, they’re horrid. And the child never knows what they’re going to get,” Riana told us. “Bipolar is manic depressive…depression can show up as anger.” 

Living in fear and uncertainty can make a child feel uneasy, and when unable to express how they feel, these suppressed emotions can manifest as other issues throughout life. Childhood trauma can be generational, so it’s necessary to break the cycle by getting educated and being willing to change unhealthy patterns of behavior. 

Riana came to realize in 2021 that all of us are impacted by childhood trauma during COVID-19 as she noticed how much this event impacted the youth as a whole with stay-at-home orders. Children in the foster care system and experiencing harassment from family were particularly at risk. 

Riana then went on to discuss how child trauma directly impacts adulthood. “Childhood trauma impacts those in life, love, and business…work situations are really tied to love relationships,” Riana stated. 

“The brain likes homeostasis, meaning it likes what it knows. It goes to what is comfortable, whether it’s good or bad,” Riana explained. “There’s an art and psychology to dating successfully.” 

Being self-aware to make the best decisions when dating is important. She describes this as empowered, conscious dating — dating with the skills to know when to walk away and say no thank you. 

Chemistry is not enough for a relationship to be successful. It’s important to ask yourself specific questions to determine whether the person you’re interested in is the right one for you and to make sure you aren’t settling. 

How to Feel Empowered While Healing Childhood Wounds

Riana discussed how she would often see clients who seemed to be experiencing roundabout relationships and feeling stuck. They would constantly date people with similar characteristics and wondered why they were unhappy.

“Before they’re healing, I’ll see them after the third or fourth relationship…falling for the same kind of person,” she told us. “There’s actually a saying: same person, different face, same personality type…we call that our RRS, relationship repetition syndrome.” 

Relationship repetition syndrome occurs when people are stuck and think they’ll be able to change a relationship’s outcome but end up in essentially the same place they were before. 

Riana said she has experienced this herself, and it isn’t possible to change something you don’t understand. She was moved to pursue being a coach after observing patterns in her own marriage that needed work. 

Riana experienced RRS years ago with Partner selection, which, after trying to seek answers in normal therapy and not getting any answers, led her to deeper, intensive research where she discovered unhealed, subconscious Childhood trauma as the direct cause.

Her research led her to write her book, “Love Beyond Your Dreams: Break Free of Toxic Relationships to Have the Love You Deserve,” and create her coaching programs and workbooks containing the solutions to attracting conscious, evolved partners and sustaining emotionally healthy relationships.

She said there’s a spiritual aspect to healing the trauma and achieving the right mindset and belief system.

Riana said she was able to connect childhood trauma to the success or lack thereof in adult relationships, romantic and otherwise. 

“This is where I really put the puzzle pieces between if you had these childhood traumas…all these different pieces came together,” she said. Childhood trauma can negatively impact one’s outlook in life with self-limiting beliefs that can affect business and career. 

If you want more information about healing childhood wounds, how to recognize and correct them, dating skills, and skills for success in all life areas, including your love relationship, visit her website to listen to her podcast and access free resources.