128: Vienna Pharaon – Unpacking Your Inner World for Better Relationships

"If you’re not taking care of yourself, there’s no way you can show up as your best self for others."
- Vienna Pharaon
Hey guys, welcome back to ONKEN RADIO, the podcast where we explore the body, mind, and soul of the creative entrepreneur. It's my goal to help you take your creativity, business, and life to the next level. I'm so glad you're joining me on this journey!

Today, I'm covering a topic that affects the vast majority of us: romantic relationships. My guest is Vienna Pharaon, and we discuss how our underlying beliefs that we inherited as children impact the way we handle our adult relationships. She is exceptionally well-versed on the inner workings of our minds and how our upbringings affect our interactions with others. I'm incredibly blessed to have the New York-based therapist Vienna Pharaon on the show today. 

Our discussion on building better relationships helped me so much during this time. I recently went through a difficult breakup, so learning from Vienna about how to better approach relationships was incredibly valuable for me, and I know that her advice will help you too. 
Who Is Vienna Pharaon?
Vienna Pharaon is a Marriage and Family Therapist operating out of New York City with the company Mindful MFT. She received her Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy from Northwestern University. 

She specializes in unpacking the connection between relationships and individuals' family backgrounds. She became interested in Marriage and Family Therapy at a young age when her parents went through a painful divorce:
"I wanted to learn and understand what went into creating great relationships. … Why some relationships work and others don't. Why patterns get recreated over and over again, and if there [are] certain things that we can learn that we don't really learn through the family system that we can start to teach. I wanted to start helping people understand the tools and tips that go into creating healthy, long-lasting relationships."
- Vienna Pharaon
She teaches her clients that everything they do is relational, meaning that their relationships with other people shape them. Our current relationships are formed by our past relationships and family dynamics, and we talk about this more in our interview. 

Vienna has also accumulated a lot of attention from her Instagram @mindfulmft, where she shares helpful insights into people's minds so that her followers better understand themselves and others.  

Vienna gave a ton of great relationship and personal advice during our interview, so let's get into it! 
Your Family Background Shapes Your Beliefs
We kicked off the interview by discussing the fundamental problem plaguing relationships these days: communication issues. Communication isn't only about resolving conflict and conveying your needs — it's also about self-awareness: 
"I believe it takes great self-awareness to understand what our own constraints are. Where our own wounds [and] where our own triggers get in the way of communicating what our emotional needs are. One of the most common things we see in therapy is that behind our criticisms and complaints and frustrations of our partners are really just emotional needs that aren't getting met. But without the self-awareness around that, we can't actually have the conversation that's emotional that gets to the core of it."
- Vienna Pharaon
If you lack self-awareness, you're not going to get to the core of your relationship issues in your communication. It's also essential for us to understand why we react in certain ways in particular situations. For example, our defensiveness when handling conflict may be rooted in our family background:  
"A lot of the work that I do is through the family of origin work [is] understanding the families in which we grew up [and] the messages that we received around communication. Let's say, since we're talking about communication now, what were the implicit [and] explicit messages that we...