How a Relationship Expert Turned Toxic Love Into Healing

It's actually a strong, healthy relationship can deal with conflict,

can deal with moments where it turns to shit and you're disagreeing and there's hurt feelings, and you address that you talk about it. Brian Yang is a transformational mentor, speaker, and the founder of Awakening with Brian. Drawing from his own journey through childhood trauma, toxic relationships, and deep personal healing, he helps others break destructive patterns,

rewire their nervous systems and create lasting transformation. When it comes to love languages, it's like, who do you get to become a better version of

“yourself so that you can give that love language that you partner craves?”

And it will make you a better person and it will benefit you not just for your partner. I had a journey that I went through and I had to embody changes. So I'm speaking from a place of embodiment, all the things in lessons and stories and even hot takes their shares to stuff that I have to learn the hard way myself. And so,

the living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. She'll come up with the way you say. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again, Jay Slang, and yeah, we got the great opportunity to talk to some of the best entrepreneurs and disruptors from all around the country.

And like today, the top love experts, and we got a special guest today here, Mr. Brian Yang. I'm so excited to have them on the show, but yeah, introduce yourself. And where are you coming from? And yeah, give us a little intro. Yeah, my name is Brian Yang. You probably find me on social media.

“I flew in from Oregon and here in Florida, I think first time and maybe 10 years I'm here.”

But what I do is I help people heal the impact that their childhood has under current adult relationships. So yeah, you're wearing like a really chill outfit today, you know? Kind of like guru style, right? But yeah, well, the necklace, the vest, it looks really comfortable then. Yeah, it is comfortable. It just fits, you know, how I see relationships that, you know, relationships are a spiritual journey. And it's been something that took me a while to get to,

but yeah, it has the outfit that's very comfortably. Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. I mean, dude, I got to know where you got it. Oh, it's from Israel. All right. There's imported, but what do you want to say to those that I don't, I don't want to be, come off like a guru. I just help people find the love that's inside themselves. Share that you set the deal of the pain that

“often blocks us. I'm sure we're going to talk more about that. Of course. So yeah, I mean,”

happy to have you on the show. We just did your session. How to go. It was fun. I mean, this whole staff was very welcoming. At the moment I walked in, I was just taken care of, held by the hand, every step of the way. Didn't have to think about anything other than just follow your, your guys' guidance and even during the episode that we just shot, your help and support and just getting me through the questions. Yeah. But effectively was very helpful.

Yeah. And so the big question was, right, I guess for love experts is what makes a healthy,

good relationship? Yeah. So I mean, I'll first start with the first misconceptions that people often

things, a healthy, successful relationships you're not fighting, you have lots of dates and sex and it's all this kind of more superficial sort of way of looking at relationships where you're just making each other feel good. Yeah. But truly a successful and healthy relationship is not one that is based off of avoidance is actually a strong healthy relationship can deal with conflict, can deal with moments where it turns to shit and you're disagreeing and those hurt feelings.

And you address that. You talk about it. You do what's hard. Yeah. It takes courage. Yeah. All right. So the courageous relationships and it takes a lot of work to get there, but successful relationships do what's hard and they don't get stuck on, they might blame it first, but they don't end on that. They realize that, ah, something about this moment stirred up some past stuff and history, which is mine and I can see that happen for you. I can see how that

hurt you. There's an acknowledgement of each other's struggles and they can repair and ultimately

move on between the beyond the conflict and actually really reconnect without getting stuck

They hurt feelings. They think the other person's wrong for causing it and maybe they kind of

talk about it, but then for the most part they sort of just don't really resolve it. They sweep it under the rug and it blows up the next fight over no. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people are like, oh yeah, I dream of the relationship that has no fight, no drama, right? Yeah. And we all know the Honeymoon Stage also well, right? But I guess to get to that, you know, that real relationship you got

“you got to work through the drama, right? You can't avoid everything. It's nothing, right?”

Ain't nothing like a drama list relationship does not exist. It does not exist. Yeah. I sure. I mean, I've met a lot of people and worked with a lot of therapists and coaches and a lot of life experience. There's not a drama list relationship and they want us to have my look like on the surface. They're like two roommates living side by side. They're not even interacting with each other. They live separate lives. They're not even engaged. So either that's

happening or they're in what I call the looped doom. But yeah, I mean, drama is part of this.

Oh, looped doom. Yeah. It's just brush over. Okay. Loop of doom. It sounds like an amazing

roller coaster, right? But looped doom. What's what's that? Yeah. So the looped doom is a second stage that relationships go through. There's three stages. You're talking about stage one. We're an easy, it's fun. Sure. But eventually, it matures and eventually, it gets real. And that's

“when fear enters the relationship because when you're more committed in a long-term relationship,”

you're a lot more vulnerable and sensitive to how the person is going to either meet your expectations or fail them. Yeah. Or betray you or hurt you in some way, whether they're meant mean to or not. My, my Italian friend says, uh, it's after the honeymoon stage where the feet start to smell. And they smell. Yeah. It starts to smell. And it's 20 Italian way. Yeah. The hand gestures. Yes. But, um, yeah. And so the looped doom is where, whether you are aware of it or not,

you're childhood crap that you haven't resolved. They'd even know about perhaps. It starts leading out your pores into the relationship. Yeah. Right. You get into disagreement. So you don't understand. You, you may be misinterpret what the other person is doing. And now you're like, you're fighting. And maybe you're fighting as if like you're fighting for your life sometimes. Like, oh, my parents are about to leave me. They're not answering their phone on one side. And

“and then what's really happening, you're feeling like a little girl all over again. Yeah.”

And then a band and your father emotionally absent all over again. You might not even be aware of it. And it's happening again. And you're reacting like that little girl. Or you might be the boy. You might be the man in the relationship acting like a little boy when your partner expresses feelings hurt feelings. And once connection, maybe they're not the best about sharing it. But they're expressing some hurt. They're expressing the need. And you take it as criticism.

You take it as if you're being shamed again like a little boy all over again, just like how your mother may be. Yeah. You're shamed you. And then you're reacting. You're being defensive. And now you're both in your wounds. You're hijacked. And you're not even seeing that all you're both hurting in your morning connection, but you don't know how to get it. Yeah. So it's like, I'm I'm trying heal from what you've been saying. And then maybe you're kind of trying to overcompensate your

your feelings to me. So here's how the cycle works. So everyone learns what's called a coping mechanism. Yeah. It's a way to self-soup because it's trying to get it's an attempt to get relief. If I feel rejected, if I'm feeling shamed, if I'm feeling some, whatever hurt feeling just stressed and hurt, whatever that is, you don't have to worry about the words. You're going to do most likely what you've learned from childhood. For me, that was distract myself with like an

attainment or just toys when I'm a kid. But now the adult may be sports or video games or whatever distract or get consumed and work or just kind of just unplug from the relationship to just try get relief. And that's just trying to, I'm not trying to hurt anybody, just trying to get some relief from that pain. But what's that going to do? You can imagine what that does for the partner. Oh, they're not going to like it probably. They're going to feel alone. Like, oh, my partner is

kind of slipping away. They're off. They're not here with me. So she's going to feel alone. Yeah, be abandoned unseen, unheard. And that's going to hurt like hell. Gotcha. She's going to deal that pain the same way. So my coping mechanisms are going to maybe, you know, have put some

feelings in you. Right. And so I'm always going to go to coping. And then it's always going to make

you feel a certain way. Right. And it's almost like you're going to cope with your feelings. Yeah, they're perfectly going to trigger me. Yeah. And it just kind of goes back and forth like this. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, uh, and, and then you're almost doing like this infinite roller coaster,

and it's stressed with the relationship, the more you make it worse. Yeah. So I guess, uh,

they're getting out of that, right? It would be to, uh, I guess tackle the issues. Yeah, the root issues, which is like maybe the woman, for example, is she's from the pain that she's felt growing up, which is alone unseen, unheard. Her feelings don't matter. Those are her pains, for example. And then that's her work to confront that as opposed to get relief from it, which then makes it worse. Yeah. For the man it might be addressing those feelings of rejection, shame, not feeling good

enough. And that equity, those are his feelings to confront. Because otherwise he's just going to try to get relief, which just makes it worse. So instead of coping, you're addressing those hurt feelings directly. Yeah. Yeah. Um, wow. That's a lot to impact, right? Um, yeah. And it seems

“complex, right? Is there, is there an easier way to kind of like, um, I guess unpack it all, right?”

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's always a simplest entry, which is the thing that we didn't get

growing up. Okay. Oftentimes we didn't feel like if we were hurt or scared or mad or stressed, our parents were coming to us and give us space for our emotions and help us feel and validate as like, I see your scared. It's okay. I'm here for you, right? Oftentimes, we didn't get that or it was a consistent enough. Yeah. And so we don't, and because we didn't get it, we don't even know how to give it to ourselves when we feel emotions. Like, whatever, I feel angry and I don't know why I'm just

going to, right? Right? I'm just going to just walk away, right? There's that inability to deal with the feelings. So here's a simple way that you can do it. Next time that you get into a kind of reflect or a difficult moment with anybody, it could be your partner, it could be at work.

And you know that you got triggered, you went that you got into a mode of like feeling sour,

“is notice not just what that feeling is, but where is this, where is this that living your body?”

Hmm. Oh, when you felt, I'm going to, when you felt a moment of feeling rejected or judged, or I felt it in the chest tightening up, or the stomach kind of was dropping like, oh, an uncomfortable stomach feeling, put your attention there. That feels a little weird. I know but just follow me here, put your attention there, and let yourself feel it. It seems very backwards. Most of the time we're spending our whole life not trying to feel bad, right? Yeah, but let it be there,

and a great phrase you can do is talk to it as if it's a child. Oh, so the stomach's in the chest. Like, I don't know if this makes sense, but I allow and welcome you. Just let it happen. And just keep doing it right, the wave. I allow and welcome you. Do that for at least 60 seconds. And you might be surprised that something shifts. It comes down. It releases. Maybe there's tears that have to happen, and then it feels relieving afterwards. This has to happen.

It's what your body's been screaming for. It's what it needed when you were child. You're crying. Someone just wanted to welcome you and your feelings to not make you wrong for it. When you're crying, like, oh, big boys don't cry, right? You were rejected. Okay, let me just suck it up, right? All right, your angry and you got more beat for it. Or you felt alone and sad, and you were told that you're a crybaby and dismissed, or just your

parents ignored you. But we wanted with someone to be present with our feelings. Yeah. And so that's what your body is, when you ever get into these stressful moments, it is wanting you to be present with it, just like a scared child, a hurt child. And when you practice this, allow and welcome, you are literally doing what you didn't get growing up. And it's doing it for yourself. And then that translate to be able to do that for another partner. Because the your partner wants

to know that their feelings are welcome, even though they're messy or whatever, they don't want to feel rejected. So you do with yourself. This will give you the ability to do it with your partner as well. Yeah, this creates loving connection. So I want to take a step back, right, this modern day dating, right? To the guy that's that's swiping, right? He's been in a few relationships that haven't worked, right? I guess what advice would you give him to, you know,

what mindset would you tell him to be in for that next relationship? I would say that

“there isn't much you have to control. It's not a math problem. The figure out the right relationship.”

Yeah. As, you know, you can the checklist and the writing it out what you want to don't want, you're going to match with whoever the trash is going to be there with whoever that's going to meet you at your level of emotional maturity. So wherever you are in your maturity level, you're going to find someone that matches with that. They won't even make sense. Like you might find them on the bar from church, from swiping her, you know, random places, but when you feel

that chemistry, you know, you met someone that's at your level of maturity. Yeah. And that's where you're going to grow from potentially. You know, energy does not lie as soon as, you know, you feel that connection, you're going to be magnetized towards them and there's no avoiding,

get the right checklist, so that can find the right partner that doesn't trigger me. It's what most

“people are saying. Yeah. But I think about that. I think it's actually so I never heard it that way,”

but, uh, matching your maturity level. Yes. That's that's huge. Right. And I've never heard

it that way, but that makes so much sense, right? Yeah. But just the going to that's who you're going to vibe with. Yeah. And you're not going to vibe with someone that's beyond your maturity level, because they're going to literally be boring to you. There's one thing that people don't realize is that they want the person that's just going to sue them. They make them feel good. But the reality is that that healthy person that would not trigger you actually would bore you, you would not

have that chemistry with them. But you take two people with similar maturity levels, similar childhood backgrounds, similar stress and chaos that they went through growing up. You put them together, boom, the chemistry. Yeah. How do you does not lie? That's not a bad thing. It gets to be an opportunity to work through that stuff that you didn't get to heal through that. Yeah.

“And so how's your own kind of love journey been, right? Are you in a loving, healthy relationship?”

Have you been through those three stages of the honeymoon stage and pass the doom loop, right?

And then there's a third stage that you were talking about, which is like almost not the bliss

in Nirvana, right? But it's more mature than that. Yeah. It's more mature than that. Yes, we've been, I mean, first of all, I, I'm here speaking because I went through a lot of hell in my relationship. Yeah. Very toxic, very immature, where my partner was just as immature. I was as, I had really learned that I was just as wounded insecure and immature as my partner. Okay. And I had a lot of the, the facade, the fake smiles, the fake condaminer, the being the nice guy exterior.

And the doom loop brings that face smiles, right? Sure does. It's like you're walking past each other. You're like, hmm, you know? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's like you just want to address what's really there. Yeah. I didn't want to address what was really inside. I wasn't even aware of it. And so I had to go through my own doom loop with my wife. Yeah. Lots of fighting. Lots of moments where we thought we're going to get divorced. I want to get divorced. And she says she wants to get

it divorced and like, you know, you're the wrong person. And we're just fighting each other's wounds. We were fighting in the fact that they're getting me in touch with shit. I don't want to feel from childhood. I don't want to feel my shame. I don't want to feel, reject. I don't want to feel this stuff that I didn't know how to heal or process as a child. But through that, when I

finally got it, which is the message I'm trying to really help people understand that those wounds

do not go away through a different face or different person. Yeah. You're going to find yourself, I'm telling you, energy, you're going to just match with even friends and bosses and lovers that just get you in touch with all these similar feelings again and again until you stop blaming them and be like, okay. Oh, okay. Let me just feel that shame in my stuff. Let me just stop fighting at a lot and welcome it as one simple way to get into it. Right. And then when you stop fighting

those feelings, you stop fighting your partner. I want people to kind of let that land. We just stop fighting your feelings. You stop fighting your partner. Okay. And then you can actually connect. Yeah. They can kind of think and truly feel and sense them as opposed to defending your protecting your pain and stress. And when you can get to this and practice it, then yes, then you move to spiritual partners. But it takes a lot of work to understand even what you're fighting.

Because you may not even understand that. Yeah. Absolutely. I didn't understand. I didn't know what I was fighting. Yeah. Absolutely right. I'm talking even in my own journey. Right. I'm also in a long term loving relationship over 17 years or something like that. Yeah. But yeah. I mean, it goes through different phases. And yes, there was a point where I also had to, she already knew. Yeah. But I also had to find out what it was in my own journey, in my own

self to understand, right? Yeah. And once I broke free from that and understood it, you know, I got to a whole new level of understanding and also a whole new level of our relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's way better. Right. And it wasn't because of she had to fix something. That's right. Because I had to understand something. 1,000%. Yeah. That's the freedom. A lot of relationships get stuck and like they need to understand. They need to get it right. They need to understand me. They

need to suit me. They need to do something so I can feel better. Mm. Well, that puts you in a trap. That is no different than, you know, we're talking about insights, success and business success.

“Like, would you expect someone to wait for someone to give you permission to succeed in business?”

Hell no. Right. You just do. Is the same thing in relationships? Like, if you know that, okay, those issues coming up, you might have stuff just do. Yeah. Think of the initiative. Same thing. Real quick. So something that we didn't touch on your episode. Like, in the chatter today, people talk a lot about love languages. You know? Yeah. I don't important, is that for you.

It's not so much about what you get in terms of your love language. Mm. It's who you

“be, it's what you have to become and what you have to heal inside you to become the kind of person”

that can give the love language of your partner. I give you a very clear example of this. My wife, her love language is quality time. That's the main thing. All right. There's other things. But like, that's the number one. It's like really time. That means quality, attention, and presence. Yeah. Okay. Understandable. Okay. Well, what? Guess what? I struggle with being present and giving that quality time. My mind likes to distract and be on work and just

bouncing all over the place. Yeah. I have like an AD brain. And so that doesn't mean that in comparison, it means like, oh, this gives you an opportunity for me to develop myself to become a

better person, to become a person that is more present that can like, eliminate the distractions and

really be present emotionally and physically like, really tune into where she's at. And I have to face my own pain that keeps me distracted from that. Yeah. My shame, my anxiety, my fears, all that crap from childhood keeps me from doing that. So I get to face that to become the person to do that. And so that's really the real gift of when it comes to love languages is like, who do you get to become a better version of yourself so that you can give that love language that your partner

craves. And it will make you a better person. And it will benefit you not just for your partner. But me being a more present grounded person is going to benefit all my life. Yeah. It's going to benefit my own daughter that I have with her. And so it's not about giving something to Suether, it's just like, I got to be a better person for that. She gets to do the same thing for me. She gets to become a better, she has to heal her own blocks that block her from giving me my love language

“from his like physical affection. That's why she's got sexual trauma that blocks that. Right. So”

she has to face that to give me that. You see how that works. So that's a beautiful thing about love languages. Oftentimes I've seen the very love languages that your partner needs from you. It's going to force you to confront your own fears in your own trauma and wounds. Yeah. That's a good thing. And so you got millions of followers on social media, right? How long did that growth take? You know, like that's that's pretty crazy, right? Because you

talk about relationships, marriages, right? And you got you got millions of followers, right? Yeah. So how was that journey? And what do you think you'll think of yourself? Yeah, I was supposed to get there. Was it marketing or was it just a message or was it that, you know, the stability of doing it every day? Yeah. So I mean, the biggest thing is I had a journey that I went through and I had body changes. So I'm speaking from a place of embodiment. All the things in lessons and

stories and, you know, even hot takes that shares the stuff that I had to learn the hard way myself. And so I think people can feel it when you embody something and it also allows you to stay consistent with it, too. Yeah. Being able to succeed in any area life, let's say social media

“sure in that area, it requires consistency. So I kind of, as you point, you have to be consistent with it.”

But in order to be consistent with it, you have to kind of like embody, otherwise you're going to burn yourself out and it's just not going to resonate. You're going to fall off, you're going to give up, you're not going to be interested. So you have to embody what you're trying to share. We're sending these to giving you the ability to be consistent because when I started, I had zero dreams or desire to be, to be back on social media. You had to just try to share

the message you were happy and give it a year. Maybe something happens. Zero attachment. Okay, zero attachment. And then it started to kick in catch. But I'll also say a thing that I had the ability to do, which I've had in previous businesses and I just had the mind to do it. I think probably just how I grew up and developed is I'm able to reverse engineer and see I have very strong pattern recognition. So I can see a pattern of like what gets people interested in

something, which I learn from childhood to see the patterns and my my parents behaviors to try to

resolve the conflict that they're always fighting. So I'm quick to see patterns.

We're also making a good coach because I'm able to see people's patterns very quickly and guide them to confronting the thing that's blocking them. But also obviously transit to social media because I can see what works, what doesn't work very quickly, consistently reiterate and just be very consistent trying over and over. So I ask everyone on the show, what do you most excited about? What you got cooking and what's on the horizon? One thing that I'm very excited for

is more in-person events. So right up until now, all my stuff has been on social media, even this TV production. I guess it's kind of in-person filming, which is great. It kind of moving in that direction. But events, seminars, to get people together in-person, doing work together, doing the stuff that I've talked about together live is what's coming up next and that

next big leap for me. Love it. Love it. Yeah, you got to, you know, you got that stage

“presence, man. So for sure. And then how do people find you? You found me on socials?”

Just look up Awakening with Brian or my website, AwakeningwithBrient.com. And that's

spelled Brian with a BR-I-A-N. Yeah. All right, awesome. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show.

“And honestly, thank you guys for joining us here for another episode. If you want to learn more”

about his journey, right, how he got to the land of love on the other side of the blockers, right?

Yes, then you have to tune into his episode of Benadiers. But thank you, it's been a pleasure. And thank you guys for joining us. And we'll see you next time. Cheers, everyone.