Focusing Your Practice’s Service Will Cause it To Thrive, with Jianny Adamo of Fearless Love: Ep. 33

Episode Overview

• Episode Topic:
  In this engaging episode of “Mastering Counseling“, we delve into the realm of therapy and personal growth, focusing on relationships, resilience, and empowerment. Our esteemed guest, Jianny Adamo, the Founder and CEO of Fearless Love, LLC, serves as our guide through this insightful journey.
• Lessons You’ll Learn:
  In this episode, you’ll discover valuable lessons in relationship counseling and coaching. Insights into developing a unique approach, strategies for conquering modern love challenges like narcissistic abuse, and the significance of a holistic perspective in therapy and coaching services await. This concise yet informative conversation guides empowering and enduring relationships.
• About Our Guest:
  Jianny Adamo is a distinguished therapist and coach, renowned for her expertise in nurturing enduring relationships and personal growth. She embodies the potential of holistic therapy, empowering individuals to navigate modern relationship challenges.
• Topics Covered:
  In this episode, Jianny Adamo shares her unique approach to relationship counseling and coaching, empowering clients to overcome contemporary love challenges, and integrating holistic perspectives into therapy services. Additionally, we explore addressing communication issues, premarital counseling, and support for clients dealing with infidelity, depression, and anxiety. Jianny also discusses aiding individuals and families through life transitions, recovery from narcissistic abuse, and the role of grief counseling in transformative journeys.

Episode Transcript

Jianny Adamo: So, equipped now to handle just about anything that comes my way through my therapy practice. Attachment traumas. Check. Childhood traumas? Check. Sexual abuse. Traumas? Check. Marital discord and communication. Check. So, I’m pretty, like, in the area of love, marriage and relationships and narcissistic abuse and the healing that needs to happen for us to come back, to be in a healthy space for relationships and ultimately for our mental health and sense of personal freedom. I’ve got it. I’m able to work with my clients in all these aspects because I had to go through that whole paradigm.

Becky Coplen: Welcome to Mastering Counseling, the weekly business show for counselors. I’m your host, Becky Coplen. I’ve spent 20 years working in education in the role of both teacher and school counselor. Each episode will explore what it takes to thrive as a counseling business owner. From interviews with successful entrepreneurial counselors to conversations with industry leaders on trends and the next generation of counseling services, to discussions with tech executives whose innovations are reshaping counseling services. If it impacts counseling, we cover it on Mastering Counseling. Welcome to another enlightening episode of Mastering Counseling, the podcast that delves deep into the world of therapy and in the business of helping others. I’m your host, Becky. Today we have the pleasure of hosting the esteemed Jianny Adamo, a renowned therapist, coach, and the driving force behind the practice Fearless Love. Welcome to our show today. We’re so glad to have your expertise on here.

Jianny Adamo: Thank you. Becky, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today.

Becky Coplen: We are going to go back in time a little bit and ask you about your pivotal life experiences that caused you to create Fearless love and basically carve the path into working on relationships and intimacy.

Jianny Adamo: So, Becky, I opened up my doors of Fearless Love one year after my divorce. I had been in a long-term marriage, and I had fought to keep that marriage going, and we had sought out therapists. We probably saw counseling for at least a good ten years out of our 15-year marriage. We considered each other best friends, so this was not an easy decision to finally pull the trigger and go through a divorce. So, upon my divorce, I moved down to South Florida. So, I needed to start over and I needed a fresh start. I figured I would come to Florida, and while I was walking on the beach one day, early on in those days when I first moved down with a new friend, she asked me, why did your marriage fail? Why did you go through that divorce? And I ultimately said to her, because my husband’s love wasn’t fearless. He lived under a cloud of so much fear, anxiety and craziness, and he wouldn’t even admit it because he wouldn’t even admit that he had anxiety. So, he also had high narcissistic traits. So, therefore, he wasn’t able to accept that. He dealt with a tremendous amount of fears and anxiety and a whole bunch of other things.

Jianny Adamo: So that’s first of all, that’s how my name, Fearless Love came about. So it came about early on after my divorce. And the reason why I do what I do is that through the ten years, the 15 years that we were married, I had a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. I dealt with a lot of anxiety and depression that was coming from feeling and trapped in a marriage where we loved each other, but we could not understand one another. We were very disconnected at the intimate levels. Some of those deeper levels and some of our values did not match as well. So those things were really tearing us apart. So, I ultimately found my calling going through that pain, going through that suffering. Prior to going through that divorce, I figured out this is my calling in life. I wanted to help as many couples as possible as well as help us. Obviously, in the earlier years, I wanted to help us, and I wanted to help as many couples as possible to get through their pain, to get through their suffering, to get to the other side and to create a happy and harmonious home. So that’s ultimately what brought me into this field.

Becky Coplen: When I was looking at your work, I saw the video and I believe it’s you on the beach. And  I love how you connect that to your story and how you’re very open about your personal life and where it’s brought you today. Even though many hard things, a lot of good has come from it. So, in talking about your practice and helping other couples, how have you helped them with specific, more modern life challenges, especially in cases of narcissistic abuse or betrayal? What are some of the strategies and how do you approach these extremely difficult issues that couples face?

Jianny Adamo: Becky, I’m going to continue on my journey because all of these places where I’ve been in my life have actually unfolded and brought me to the path that I’m on. So first, I’m a marriage counselor and a couple’s counselor because I had to go through a very difficult marriage and ultimately ended in divorce. From there, then obviously I had to become a therapist who could support the people who are divorcing. Half of our population or marriages end up in divorce. So, you would think that once you move on from a bad relationship ship, you let go of the baggage. You started addressing the codependency because I was definitely a codependent partner, that things would clear up and now everything’s going to be fine. My goal was, I’m going to find my next husband within a year because I’m having my children and I’ve already wasted 15 years. I got married young, obviously, so I was on an agenda. I’m like, I need to find my next husband and then start having our family very quickly. So, a year later, I got into a relationship with another man here in South Florida. I didn’t like him. He ultimately triggered my chemistry. He knew how to chase and he knew how to win my love. So I was like, oh, on the fence because I was not interested initially. Ultimately, long story short, the gentleman was or the man was a sweet and charming sociopath who knew how to charm us, who knows how to trigger our chemistry, to manipulate the chemistry and all that wonderful stuff.

Jianny Adamo: They’ve been doing this since they were little. And they haven’t stopped. That relationship ended almost a year and a half into it after many breakups, and it left me in a place very traumatized, in a place that I had never experienced before in my life. I’m normally a very confident woman. I’ve always been. I’m from New Jersey, so I’m very go-getter, intellectual, like, I know my shit and I go after it and I have really a lot of sense of self. And all of a sudden I go through this relationship and now I’m asking questions. I don’t know who I am, I am double-guessing myself. I’m in self-doubt all the time. A bedrock of anxiety and stress. Can’t sleep. The list goes on. The all the PTSD symptoms go on and on and on and on. So obviously eventually I realized I was in a very toxic relationship with a narcissistic, sociopathic individual. So when I started that journey of healing, I started to write my book “From Love Trauma To Fearless Love: 7 Tango Steps for Breaking Free from Narcissists and Predators”. It took about four years to write the book because it took about four years to go through my healing. Through that healing, I was able to understand why I married the man I did. Why I am now had been entrapped in a very toxic, narcissistic, mentally and emotionally abusive relationship as a therapist.

Jianny Adamo: Yes, there was a lot of shame around that. And hello, I’m a therapist and how the heck did I get stuck here? But once you get through and understand who you’re dealing with, you’re like, oh, anybody can get entrapped here unless you understand the signs. So once you become a master of understanding the red flags, then you won’t get stuck there. But otherwise, anybody gets in can get in trapped with them. So the shame eventually evaporates because you’re like, this happens to everybody who gets targeted and has no idea that they just have been targeted. So going through that deep healing allowed me to go through healing of generational, transgenerational traumas in my life through family of origin, and allowed me to heal the childhood wounds that came in from my family and traumas that I experienced in high school. Because I am ultimately a survivor of sexual trauma. Bottom line I was raped in high school by one of my peers back then, when most of us didn’t say anything, so that trauma never got healed. And that ultimately led me to marry someone who I could trust and feel safe with, but ultimately would not be sexually compatible with me or compatible with me and many other aspects of life. So that marriage, even though it was safe, did not represent my long-term partnership. It was a safe space for me not to get sexually abused again.

Jianny Adamo: So with all of that, obviously I have great depth and understanding now of what happens when love is turned on its head, and now it’s used to exploit, to abuse, to manipulate and control another human being. And when you’re entrapped in that darkness, when love is turned on its head, it is really dark. You don’t know which way is out, how the heck to come back to Earth because you feel like you’re entrapped in some abyss and some dark space, that there’s no door or window. It’s just darkness and confusion and anxiety. So with all of that going through that general, that deep soul healing, I’m now equipped. I’m so equipped now to handle just about anything that comes my way through my therapy practice attachment traumas, Czech childhood traumas, Czech sexual abuse traumas, Czech marital discord and communication Czech. So I’m pretty like in the area of love, marriage and relationships and narcissistic abuse and the healing that needs to happen for us to come back, to be in a healthy space for relationships and ultimately for our mental health and sense of personal freedom. I’ve got it. I’m able to work with my clients in all these aspects because I had to go through that whole paradigm. I had to go through this whole existence of going into that dark place in this world that most of us do not want to go into. But unfortunately, I had to visit that place.

Becky Coplen: Wow, that is so powerful. You taking the darkest points and the phrase that you’re using about turning love on upside down? Yeah, that’s a powerful metaphor. You have really used that and it’s made you so strong. And people, if they’re dealing with such deep hurts, they need to have a person like you that can be confident. I’m sure you’re not shocked by anything that comes your way. So thank you for sharing your personal side of everything and using your healing to help others.

Jianny Adamo: I think you had asked about like, how do I work with them? So when it comes to narcissistic abuse, basically it’s a lot of grief work because there’s a lot of losses the loss of safety, the loss of trust, the loss of love, the loss of security. The loss of just being because you’re not allowed to be anymore. And when you’re being it just a lot of anxiety, it’s the anxiety. And the stress is actually higher than you being in peace and being in a solid place. So there’s a lot of grief work that I work with, any victims of narcissistic abuse or anyone who’s been betrayed in their relationship, obviously. Then there’s the Psychoeducational piece that comes in and learning all the red flags, understanding the manipulations, the emotional blackmail that happens when, again, love is used against you because that’s ultimately what’s happening when we are in a narcissistic, abusive relationship. All of our strengths, all of our capacity for empathy and compassion and love is being used against us every ounce of it.

Becky Coplen: Yeah. And when you mention when you don’t feel safe and you feel betrayed, it’s replaced by fear. I think you would agree, which is such a powerful mechanism, usually for the worse. So can you talk a little more just about mind, body, and spirit and the interconnectedness of that in your therapy and coaching at Fearless Love?

Jianny Adamo: I’m going to continue to connect the thread with my story. So what allowed me to survive such a heinous dark time in my life was what I call these are my wellness hacks. So, the first one is physical fitness. I have been working out for over 25 years. Every day doesn’t mean like I’m lifting weights or sweating bullets every day. I’m not. But I walk or I’ll bike, I’ll go swimming, I’ll head to the gym, I’ll do a yoga class, I’ll do Pilates, I’ll do 20 minutes of weights in my home through like a YouTube class. So, it doesn’t matter what I do. But I am very mindful that every day I engage my body in something that is going to help it stay fit and stay healthy. So, I teach my clients and I help them to create their own agenda, their own program, their own format, whether it’s three times a week, but three times a week, you’re going to go to the gym and spend an hour, whatever it is. So, the first thing that I do at religiously is my physical fitness, and I bring that to my practice with my clients. Then we have the mental fitness. So, when I was going through my healing, what I ended up doing was I psycho plus size going to a therapist. I psycho-educated myself on all of these aspects that were my blind spots. So for me that was the narcissistic sociopath, the mental and emotional abuse. So like I read up on all of these things so I could fully understand what had happened to me. What could I miss? Because again, we’re in self-blame or blaming ourselves for all that has happened, instead of seeing the truth that we were being manipulated the entire time.

Jianny Adamo: So I also support my clients and help them understand where their blind spots are and the areas that they should go. Psycho educates themselves. They’re reading through YouTube videos, whichever means is easiest for them. And then the third wellness hack is my spirituality. When I was 11, I felt like God actually spoke to my heart and said, I have a calling. So I was like, cool. And I told my parents and they thought that was cool too. Then around age 30 is when I actually heard again in my heart what my calling was. And what I’m doing on this planet is part of my calling to be able to help individuals and couples create safe, intimate marriages and fearless, loving relationships that will stand the test of time that you can create a new legacy for your families to flourish. You do not need to keep repeating the same miseries that have come and been passed down through the generations prior to you, because a heck of a lot of this stuff. When I went through my healing, I realized, oh my God, half of the stuff wasn’t even my fault. It was coming in through the generational traumas that were never addressed and that never healed. So once you start lifting all of this and understanding all of this, all that shame and self-blame evaporates because you’re like, oh, this had nothing to do with me. It was just what I inherited that I just had to look at and release. So anyways, through my spirituality that allowed me to stay, keep the hope and the positivity alive and keep the faith.

Jianny Adamo: So that helped me to keep moving forward in the midst of my pain. Oh, one more thing with the physical fitness. I also started doing Argentine tango dance lessons during the time that I was going through that traumatic experience and writing my book. So ultimately, I use the hobby that I had engaged in dancing Argentine tango and blended it, or married it to my psychology and my therapy, and created this book From Love, Trauma to Fearless. Love seven Tango steps for breaking free from narcissists and predators, so I was able to actually use it as a strength to help educate and empower the victims of narcissistic abuse, the victims of predators, to understand what the lessons on love are, and use it as a reflection so that the protagonist in the book was able to reflect and say okay, after each lesson. These are some of the things that I did not see in my relationship. So these are the some of the red flags. The book has received several awards, and it became an Amazon bestseller when it was released. So. And then coming back to the spirituality. So yes. So physical fitness, mental fitness and spiritual fitness are very important to me. So with my clients, as meditation is proven to be really very important for us. Prayer, the important of a spiritual community group. So I encourage my clients, whatever faith they’re in or wherever they’re at in their faith walk. It doesn’t matter to nurture that, to meditate, to pray, to find prayer partners, to find a community that shares the same faith as them. So this will give a foundation for strength and resiliency for them.

Becky Coplen: This episode is brought to you by mastersincounseling.org. If you’re considering enrolling in a master’s level counseling program to further your career, visit mastersincounseling.org to compare school options via our search tool that allows you to sort by specific degree types, tuition, our costs, online flexibility, and more. Three things that stood out to me. Prayer is huge for me, so I love that. And then breaking those generational curses, as people call them, are huge. And then I did read through your steps with the tango. I love how you brought together dance, which the tango to me always seems like such a fun thing and then incorporating it with your work couples. So lots of good things here going in the angle with our fast paced society and so much is happening in many families. How do you help couples with communication and conflict resolution?

Jianny Adamo: So that’s my baby. Sounds like I could do that with my eyes closed. I could probably do a whole bunch of these with my eyes closed, but that’s okay because I’ve been in practice now for 16 years, so it’s been a while. So back then, when I was still in therapy with my ex-husband, one of our therapists was an Imago therapist. Oh, I loved our sessions with her because she was teaching us healthy communication skills. So to this day, like 20 years later, I’m still using Imago therapy for communication skills. And guess what, Becky, in this modern day, with this fast-paced world, it actually still works really nice. And I do a lot of telehealth sessions, so it means one person needs to be speaking at one time, because otherwise we can’t hear each other. And being able to put them in this structured format to actually help them to understand their partner, to actually become better listeners, to become more empathic as they’re hearing what their partner is saying is priceless. And that’s the beauty of when we are learning techniques and theories that can be timeless because they’re universal truths about who we are as human beings, so they don’t go out of style.

Jianny Adamo: We are still using those techniques. They’re still working really well, and including my clients who have ADHD and all these other people who can’t focus. They love it. Why? Because the brain loves structure. And the minute that we put someone with like the ADHD or some other disorders that they can’t connect very well with their partners and give them this structure, maybe at first they have a little bit of difficulty following through, but the minute they understand it, they love it. Love, love, love. Because now they’re heard, now they’re understood. Now they have a pathway to hear their partner and understand their partner. So yeah. So I’m using a lot of that Imago therapy techniques for communication. And I have other trainings with Gottman and emotionally focused therapy and relational living therapy. So I have a whole bunch of other techniques that I use, CBT and a whole bunch of other stuff. But that to me is a home run. The communication skills that we teach through Imago Therapy.

Becky Coplen: I love the timeless Imago therapy paired with the telehealth, and that it does slow people down, right? Because both of us can’t talk on this podcast at the same time and be heard. So that really rings true. I love that. Let’s talk a little bit about people who aren’t married, but maybe dating or even in premarital counseling. What are some of the tools you give them to establish a strong foundation for a future, maybe a more firm relationship?

Jianny Adamo: Obviously, prevention is extremely important. Being proactive. So for couples who are dating people who are recently divorced, highly recommend going into therapy before you get onto the dating scene. And you need to go through a bit of a healing journey. Finish your grief first of why the relationship failed, and also all the hopes and dreams that you had attached to that need to be healed. Like what? You need to reclaim your hopes and dreams so that you can bring them somewhere else. So what? I work with my clients. If they’re working with me on the dating, they’re going to understand their needs, their wants, their non-negotiables, what their values truly are, and so that they can authentically connect with someone who’s already mirroring these important aspects of who this individual is. What happens? I think generally in dating, people are looking for connections and chemistry. Connection and chemistry are great, but it’s going to also tie you up with people who can be toxic, especially if we haven’t healed traumatic experiences from our childhoods. Like me, there are a lot of people like that. We haven’t healed things. So the unhealed traumas, the unmet needs are going to be driving your chemistry. So if you’re only looking for chemistry, well, you’re going to be preparing hopefully to also do the work inside of that relationship.

Jianny Adamo: But sometimes that relationship is very toxic and you’re going to not be able to withstand that situation. And so first we get you prepared and understanding who you are, what you want, and what you need. Also, for a lot of the women, self-esteem is a problem these days. So we have to elevate your self-esteem. Bring up your sense of worth. You need to know that you are worthy of love and to be loved, and that you are the Queen in a relationship. You are the Queen and you should be treated as such. And then if the couple is already dating and they’re coming in for pre-marital, then I support them in teaching them communication skills that are effective, helping them to manage conflict effectively, increasing intimacy. So they’re going to be doing a lot of exercises with me to help them bridge and increase the bonding, the intimacy, the communication, fostering safety ness in their relationship, and also talking about areas that might be issued for them in the days to come, in the future, whatever, whether they need to talk about children, finances, the in-laws, all of that gets flushed out in therapy so that they know how to effectively address all those things.

Becky Coplen: Love that. I help do some pre-marital counseling myself and all those things are so important. Shifting just into a different topic because you have so many skills, we want to touch on several of them. But how would you say fearless love supports clients specifically dealing with infidelity, possibly anxiety and depression from that, and how to move them from that state into a more hopeful and positive focus?

Jianny Adamo: So when we’re dealing with betrayal, we’re dealing now with a sense of trust that has been severed. It’s been broken. In order for trust or healthy relationship to exist, trust needs to be present. Your word needs to be honored. Your agreements need to be honored. And when our words and our actions do not match, now we’re operating out of integrity. We’re no longer dealing with someone who is reliable or dependable, and it creates a severance right there of trust. So the first thing that needs to happen is obviously I’ll get to hear the story of what happened. This is a one-time event. This is chronic. I’ll also need to figure out if it’s chronic. Are we dealing with a sex addiction? Because those things are handled very differently. When people have an addiction, they need to go to a sex addiction specialist. So I will refer the sex addict out. So I will not work with the sex addict alone because I’m not certified in sex addiction. Let’s say it’s not a sex addiction issue, it’s a one-time occurrence. Whatever the situation is, and the person does want to stay with their trade partner and their betrayed partner wants to stay with with their partner. So then I would take them on.

Jianny Adamo: And again, I started out with an assessment. So I’m going to look at all aspects of the relationship for both of them. Many times when there’s like just the one time this thing happened, usually there’s an intimacy disconnection in so that they are not emotionally bonding at the level that they should be and communicating at the levels that they should be. So that will get addressed. And then, of course, the person who has perpetrated the infidelity will now be responsible for creating the bridge back to trust. It is they who have to now be patient with their partner while their partner is still. And a lot of them get into PTSD because it was a complete shocker. They’d have totally trusted their partner and trusted themselves to their mate or their partner. And when this happens, it is a rude awakening. It’s like the rug gets pulled out from underneath you, and the world is no longer a safe place for you. So all of that has to be eventually brought back that the partner who’s done the stepping outside of the relationship is the one who’s responsible for being transparent and meeting the requirements of the partner who was betrayed.

Becky Coplen: That is so important. I know that these things are on the rise and often aren’t talked about, and I’ve talked to many different counselors and therapists and we haven’t gone into this realm. So it’s really good to hear. Even though it can be difficult to talk about, we probably could talk for three hours with all of your skill sets, but is there anything else that you really want to share with our listeners today? Or any advice if someone is thinking about this role or this career?

Jianny Adamo: I’ll start with the advice. I think most of us who pursue mental health or counseling, social work, marriage and family, any of the psychology degrees. It’s because we ourselves have experienced traumatic things in our childhood that we probably are still trying to solve and trying to understand. And then we have usually a ton of compassion and empathy. Thus we want to go like me, go help everybody else who’s got issues and problems and whatever. So we put two good things out together and it’s I think it’s a win-win. So I would say follow your dreams. Don’t let external circumstances, finances, or whatever stop you. Sometimes it does get difficult, like when you’re in private practice, you need to figure out, like where are your clients coming from. And you have to become this master at marketing. And you’re like, I hate marketing, I know I do too, but then you have to become like an excellent person in marketing. So whatever the challenges are, figure it out, follow. And also you’re going to bring your clients to the level that you heal. So I would suggest looking at all aspects of who you are and looking for all different aspects of healing. So like I’ve tried like biofeedback, like I said, I’m spiritual. I’m I try all sorts of things. I’m not just one way or the highway. No. I’m very open to trying and exploring different avenues to bring the healing that I need for myself. And then I have a lot of support systems in place. So this is very important that if you’re going to be healing and supporting others to heal, then you’re going to have a very strong support system for yourself.

Jianny Adamo: And that, thank God, I do have a really strong community that loves me and supports me, and I love them back. So I feel very, you know, strong there. And then just the final words for me is recently I put together a document called “Seven Relationship Fears Keeping Successful People from Being Happy”. That is actually a free gift that you can download on my website. It will be actually there this week, so by the time this airs it will already be live. And it gives you seven relationship fears that most of us are carrying with us because of what has happened to us in childhood and the transgenerational traumas that have come through and then give you what are these fears. How are they affecting you in a relationship and ultimately what to do with that? So I would invite your audience to go to my website, which is fearlesslove.net and download “Seven Relationship Fears Keeping Successful People from Being Happy”. Because at the end of the day, we are created and designed to love and be loved and our freedom is found in loving. That’s where our freedom is found. Anything other entraps us and we become the object of an addict chasing something that is empty. It is only love that fills us in our whole being. And that’s where again, that’s what we’re wired for. It’s what we’re created for, to love and be loved. And that’s what we find. Personal freedom.

Becky Coplen: Jianny, thank you so much. I did check out your website and whether you’re going into this career or not, I would suggest check it out because everyone has these needs, so they’re super important. Thank you for helping us with seeing the ins and outs of these deep hurts people in their probably worst points. So thank you so much for being here with us today. And to our listeners, please comment, check us out on Spotify, on YouTube, and we look forward to continuing the discussion on Mastering counseling. Have a great day! You’ve been listening to the Mastering Counseling podcast by mastersincounseling.org. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the counseling industry.