In this week’s Four Phase Cycle Podcast episode, Megan is joined by Kylene Terhune. Kylene is the CEO and founder of the Phoenix transformation where she works as a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner supporting women who have experienced sexual betrayal trauma.
In this episode, Kylene shares about her personal experience with sexual betrayal trauma, which when she discovered her husband of eight years had been hiding his sex addiction. Kylene also explains in this podcast about trickle disclosure. Listen to this podcast as Megan and Kylene talk about the healing journey through a unique approach that involves the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of individuals.
Ready to learn more?? Let’s do this!
You can listen to the episodes on iTunes here.
You can listen to the episode on Spotify here.
You can listen to the episodes on Google Podcast here.
You can listen to the episodes on Amazon Music here.
You can listen to the episode on YouTube here.
Megan Blacksmith 00:02
Hey there, everybody. Welcome back to the Zesty Ginger podcast. This is Megan Blacksmith, and I am here today with Kylene. Welcome Kylene.
Kylene Terhune 00:11
Hi, Megan, thanks for having me.
Megan Blacksmith 00:14
I’m so happy to have you here.
Kylene Terhune 00:16
I’m so excited.
Megan Blacksmith 00:20
I’m going to just give a little intro of what we’ll be talking about today. So Kylene and I are going to dig into a very important topic. And a topic, if you’ve been listening to my series that I just came out with, about my own personal story. And the topic is sexual betrayal trauma or sex addiction, recovery, all that going into one. And Kylene and I have been really talking about the areas where we’re like this is missing from this. In our world, there are certain topics and parts of this that we just feel aren’t addressed, aren’t topic, aren’t talked about. And some of this can get controversial. And we’re open to, what we’re going to do is just share what worked for us. And those of you know, take what you like, leave what you don’t. We would also love to hear your feedback and for you to come back around because we believe this is an open discussion. If you mean immediately get closed down or you’re feeling something in your body, we have tools for that. So stick around and just say hey, what is this? What is this pulling up in me? What do I need to question? Okay, so let me just tell you a little bit of background about Kylene. So you know who we’re talking to and why we’re getting into this topic. So Kylene is the CEO and founder of the Phoenix transformation, where she works as a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner just like me, supporting women who have experienced sexual betrayal trauma, and we will get into what that is, if you don’t know, because this is actually new term to me. After working with hundreds of women as a functional health coach for the past six years, Kylene herself experienced sexual betrayal trauma, which when when she discovered her husband of eight years had been hiding his sex addiction. She dove into her own healing immediately and continued her professional education by taking new courses in trauma and the impact on the body through the trauma healing accelerated courses. So she supports her clients in their healing journey through a unique approach that involves the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of the individual. And this work which like ours, we love this combo of functional lab work, you know, nutrition, lifestyle, emotional work, nervous system support, and the emotional processing to assist women of feeling more complete, grounded, safe, independent, and confident in their health, life and in their bodies. Yeah. So in addition to that, she has experience with somatic work, nervous system support emotional work habit change. She is currently completing a 12 month abuse informed provider certification training from the Give her wings Academy. Super, super cool. And she also just finished our certification training such as now is also NLP coach, NLP life coach, Quantum Time technique, and hypnosis certified and bringing it all together. And that is what we love. That is what we love, because we love all parts of functional medicine. And when we’re combining them, this is when people get results really, really quickly. So Kylene, I am excited, super excited to dig into this with you today.
Kylene Terhune 03:29
Thank you, I’m so excited to be here and talk about this.
Megan Blacksmith 03:32
I would love to just start before we get into your story and the topic, I would just love to give everybody a little background of you know, how you ended up working here with us and that you are just at our first ever practitioner certification training. So we appreciate you for really totally trusting us, we had such an amazing group of women. And in this process, it’s a seven day in person training. And the amazing part about being in person for seven days is it allows people to go really deep really quickly. It allows you to get into the subconscious, feel safe, you’re not like oh gosh, I only have an hour and then I have to go back to my life and my family. You’re like a way, you’re changing environment. And so because of this, we had some pretty radical transformation in one week. So I would love Kylene for you to just share a little bit about how, why you came to this and how this is helping you personally.
Kylene Terhune 04:29
Yeah, so I actually have been sort of in your orbit, Zesty Ginger’s orbit since about 2016. And so you have just been such a leader, I think in you know, the physical side of things. And part of the reason that I became an SDN and then you started talking about mental emotional, and so I’ve seen so much of my journey sort of almost follow the same trajectory. And so it’s been really amazing. So when you were offering this practitioner training, when I was going through everything that I was going through in 2021, I honestly did not know 100% what I was signing up for. But it sounded like it would help me on the emotional side of things to be able to move forward. And so I was very interested, not only in, you know, my own healing in that aspect, but also in what could I learn to take forward to help other women. I was already kind of having that idea that, you know, as I move through my own healing, I would like to support others. And so this just really seemed like a good fit, even though I wasn’t 100% sure what it meant. And so when I got there, I was just absolutely thrilled because I was learning that oh, it really is impacting thought processes, and patterns. And it really, if I could describe it, to me, what it felt like is that you are eliminating all of the things that kind of come into your life and impact the filter that you’re looking at the world through. And so what we want to look at the world through is the filter of our values and our beliefs and our highest self and be in alignment with what we really want. And what we end up looking at the world through is this filter that includes all of this baggage that we’ve kind of, you know, accrued through life. And so when we’re able to go through some of these processes, and release these emotions, and these connections, and get rid of these different filters, you see things more clearly. And you’re able to make choices more clearly in alignment with what you really want, regardless of you know, maybe what other people are influencing you or trying to influence you. So that was just sort of like really an amazing experience. So for me personally, I did not even go to work on my OCD. But OCD is something that came out of trauma for me. So it was a coping mechanism that my brain created when I was around 12 ish. I don’t know exactly how old I was. And what what was happening was my brain as I aged was trying to help me and process something that had happened in my younger life. And so it was just a mechanism of control is what it was. And so I really did not come into this training with the intention of let me fix my OCD. But it primarily as I got older, no one would really know that I have it except when you travel with me, it gets really bad. Like I’m you know, it was bad. It was really bad. If anybody’s ever traveled with me, it was bad. And ironically, this training was in what month did we do this? We did this May. May, okay, it was the month prior one or two months prior that we had gone to Disney World. And that really kind of opened my eyes to how much it was impacting my life and how much I wanted to change it. And so going through this training, I didn’t even address it specifically other than one exercise. What we were addressing was all of these other filters and all of these negative emotions, and all of these things that had come with me throughout 35 years of my life. And when I was releasing those, it worked on my travel OCD. And so when I came back, it was like I was so calm, and relaxed flying home. I was like, Who is this person? Is this what normal feels like? Like I didn’t even know I was like putting my bag on the ground. I was all these little things that people would think are so silly, you know, holding the bar and the tram, you know what I mean? And I’m freaking out about it. Like, I just felt so grounded and calm that, to me, that was one of the most exciting things because that makes travel more exciting, and going out and doing things more exciting and opens up all these possibilities for me. And again, I didn’t even go into it. Like my goal this week is to work on this, it was just sort of an outcome of it. So that was a huge thing. For me.
Megan Blacksmith 08:43
It was so exciting. Kylene sent us a picture of like her bag on the ground in the airport. Like, look, guys, it’s on the ground, and I don’t care. And it’s such a that’s one thing that I love. There’s a lot of things I love about this work. But one of the really cool things in that I personally experience and a lot of the members, the people that are participating in our current training, is that you go in and you’re just clearing old stuff, you’re clearing negative emotion around these really charged events and traumas and things that have happened in the past. And what you don’t realize is how many different things those are tied to in your current life. Like, for example, someone just worked on something and then like her shoulder just stopped hurting, right. And you’re like, I didn’t work on the shoulder. I didn’t do any of the physical things. So that addition and layering of like all the different stuff that’s underneath of that, because there might have been an actual event and an emotion. And then there’s a decision you made around that. And then there’s the identity that you created to be the person who does all these things. And then there’s the habits. And then there’s the patterns. And then there’s the triggers and the anchor. So it’s the layering that I think we’ll leave these this week and have go oh, I didn’t really work on that much. And you did right. Super cool. All right, thank you for sharing. I would love to get into more about your topic of expertise today. And if you could just take us back, like I took everybody back in my episode. And if you haven’t listened to the beginning of my current solo series, please go back and do that, because it will make a lot more sense as to why we’re talking about this. And Kylene, I’d love for you to just tell us a story about how you discovered your husband’s addiction and how this changed really everything about the way you thought your life was, and what was going on.
Kylene Terhune 10:35
Yeah, absolutely. I’ll try and make it as succinct as possible when it’s a really long, convoluted and complex process. But essentially, January 31, of 2021, I was living my happy, normal life. Coming up on eight years of marriage about nine and a half years together. So almost a decade of knowing who this person was. And, you know, living what I thought was a normal, happy marriage with me, I didn’t at the time see any red flags or anything like that he was just a nice person. And I loved him. And you know, everything was good. You know, I woke up that morning thinking life is great, we’re going to do some budgeting. You know, I said, Hey, let’s let’s budget, he printed out a nice sheet of paper with columns for me to look at where our expenses are going. And I was like, Yes, let’s go cancel all these recurring charges that we don’t know are recurring, right? Because we weren’t paying attention like, this is great. So I get to a recurring charge that I couldn’t cancel. And it was a fitness app. And so I said, Hey, let me look at your phone. Because sometimes, you know, you purchase it through the App Store. And I was trying to figure out how to get rid of this. So he hands me his phone, I go into the purchase apps, I scroll down and I see these previously purchased apps that did not look appropriate to me. Some of there was one or two of them that are obvious. And a bunch of them that were not they just sort of looked at, like chat apps. And so I asked him about that. And he immediately went into denial. And it was very interesting, because I had almost 10 years of knowing who this person was viewing him as someone of deep integrity and character, love, kindness, truthfulness. So I had no reason up to this point to doubt anything he would ever say to me. I mean, he had never given me anything. He doesn’t, you know, go back on his promises. It’s not like he’s not showing up to things, you know, there was really nothing to go on at this point, other than trusting this person that I lived with and married, you know. So, what was very interesting during this point was his stress response. His heart was beating so hard that the chair that I was sitting in moved and I pointed that out to him, I said, you know, this isn’t really a normal response for someone who’s innocent. Why, why is it so strong? Why are you reacting so strongly? And his response to me was, I just don’t want to be accused of something that I would never do, because I know how you feel about it. And I just don’t want you to think that I would do that. So to make it very short, we went to dinner that night, and it began, just trickled just the tiniest little bit, because my brain right, there was a red flag now. And I was going to pursue that red flag. And so I was asking all the questions. And at dinner that night, just this little tiny piece of truth came out that these apps were being advertised as dating apps is what he said at the time, which is not 100% True, but enough truth. And he was telling me that he had downloaded them, but not messaged anyone, which obviously was not true. Went much further than that. But the information that something was advertised as a dating app that he was thinking of communicating with people, I sat there, and I said, So you thought about cheating on me. That was enough for me to say I need to leave right now. And I left the building and proceeded to have my first panic attack. And then that was the start of multiple days of discovering that he was actually a cyber sex addict and that it has progressively gotten worse through our relationship over the past several years. And overtime, I kind of discovered that the initial parts of it had started even before we were together. And and there’s more and more truth came out. So at first he was very much an addict in denial mode. And eventually he got into I’ll tell you, whatever you need to know. But the good thing was for for us, he had tried to get sober on his own. He knew that it was something that he wanted to change. And he just didn’t know how by himself and I was able to see evidence that he had tried to change and get some runners on. And so once it came out to light, we immediately got the help that we needed. And he’s been sober almost, it’s coming up on a year and a half now.
Megan Blacksmith 14:49
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the very, very short version so you don’t get to the play. Place of peace that Kylene got to without going to the depths of all of it. And same thing for me. So I just want anybody listening who’s like, wait, what? Right? There was a, there was a lot in there, we’ll get into some of it today.
Kylene Terhune 15:15
I do think I get the impression sometimes, but now that we’ve shared our story that people are like, Oh, like this happened yesterday, like, No, this was a year and a half of like intense pain, facing the pain, processing the pain, growing, moving through it, it lots of decisions had to be made. Time had to be spent to see, you know, how is this gonna shake out? Is consistency going to win out? Is truth going to win out right? Or is the addiction going to announce? So there were a lot of a lot of things that happened in a year?
Megan Blacksmith 15:46
Yeah. So I remember. So as most of us do, when something like this happens in your life, I went to reading books and trying to figure out what is happening and what do I need to know? And I do remember having a very specific feeling like you are going along, you believe your life was a certain way and then all of a sudden you find out information that it wasn’t the way you thought it was. And now you are questioning everything. And Kylene, you use the word and I think I don’t remember correctly exactly. But did you say it was it trickled trauma? Is that the actual term? There’s something about the trickling out of trickle disclosures.
Kylene Terhune 16:25
Trickle disclosure.
Megan Blacksmith 16:26
Okay. Will you talk about that? Because I had never heard of that. When you said that. It was like, oh, yeah, that was what was painful. It’s like, well let you tell what it is.
Kylene Terhune 16:36
Yeah, so there’s, you know, we’ve used the term sexual betrayal trauma. It is a trauma, when you find out that the life you’re living is not what you thought it was. And about 70% of the women that experience this trauma have PTSD like symptoms. And one of the things that can make this trauma worse is what’s called a triple disclosure. So not finding out the truth, the full truth and nothing but the truth upfront, but actually getting little pieces or little lies, or little pieces of the truth trickled out over time. So if someone were to jump into the clinical therapeutic process of recovery, immediately, both partners would be in trauma therapy right away. And you would go through what’s called a therapeutic disclosure process, where the person who has betrayed you lists out clearly everything that they have done, outside of, you know, your marriage. So any behaviors that they think need to be listed, whether it was time, money, activities, acting out, whatever it was. What really happens in a lot of situations, and certainly happened in mine was little pieces of the truth. I asked. I peppered him with about 1000 questions. And in the beginning, he wasn’t willing to be fully honest with all of them. So he would somewhat answer them. I would continue asking questions. Eventually, I would find out that the answer he gave me last week was not the same answer that he gave me this week. And as he kind of became more and more honest, I just continued to find out more, I was also going through the process of actively discovering. So once this came out, in our situation, a lot of money was spent. So I had to go through all of the accounts. And I was finding, you know all of these charges day to day to day to day, which in itself is incredibly traumatizing to see this process. One thing that allowed me to see clearly was the addiction cycle, though, because typically you with addiction, you do see a binge purge cycle, when someone is filled with shame and tries to quit, and then they binge and so you would see with even even with charges, you would see it slow down or stop. And then you would see this massive influx. So that was very interesting. But I would be going through his emails, I would be you know, searching through all this, we would what we would call forensic evidence, right, the trail that he left behind that his addiction. I was finding out pieces that way. And I was finding out pieces that he would tell me and I was finding out pieces by asking a lot of questions. And so that was a long, painful process. And eventually we did go through the full therapeutic disclosure as well. So we kind of did both.
Megan Blacksmith 19:15
And I think you said on your live there that like a lot of money was spent. Yeah.
Kylene Terhune 19:20
Yeah, a minimum of $100,000 was spent over, you know, we could really only go back about two years because of the credit card statements. So that was about two years of addictions, but yeah.
Megan Blacksmith 19:35
In two years?
Kylene Terhune 19:37
Yeah, in two years.
Megan Blacksmith 19:39
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Kylene Terhune 19:40
So it had, I don’t know how much would have been because I’ve been going on for so long. But we could only go back about two years. And I’m not sure what the comparison would be because I know that those two years it has sort of exploded and gotten a lot worse. It had increased in intensity during those two years period. Because I think towards the beginning of 2020, really increase at the beginning of 2021, it really increased. And it had progressively increased during 2019, as well. So I don’t know how the ratio would have been if we had gone further than that, you know, to give you an accurate estimate. But that’s kind of what we gathered over about the course of the two years that we were able to look back home.
Megan Blacksmith 20:19
Yeah, so it’s what’s happening is, you’re then kind of questioning what is real. What is real, you actually didn’t know where your money’s going, you actually just don’t know which what things are true, because everything feels up in the air. So what I know that you had some concerns, and I know that you’ve been through this, and now we’re in a place where you are helping and you’re going to be helping lots and lots of people through this. So what was your biggest concern with sharing your story? Like, what are what were you concerned that people take away from this, or women take away from this or don’t take away from this?
Kylene Terhune 21:01
I was very concerned that it would be misinterpreted. And what I mean by that is, I never and I mean, never want to stand up as a beacon of hope for misery. I don’t want to stand up here as someone that women look to and say,”Oh, I just need to stay in this marriage and be a doormat and be miserable, even though he’s relapsing.” Or that you’re you’re not willing to set boundaries, right? Like, I don’t want to be the person that encourages someone to stay in a relationship that is currently in actively hurting them and abusive. That’s not my goal. And particularly, I have a lot of concerns around, I am a Christian. And so I don’t want women that are Christians to look at me and say, “Well, because she did it, I can do it.” if their husband is not actively doing the work that really concerned me. Because it’s hurtful for them. And I never want to leave them in that situation. And one thing that unfortunately happens in the church is that often the marriage is prioritized over the health and safety of the individuals. And so one of the things I wanted to make very clear is that I prioritize your health as an individual over the integrity or the saving of your marriage. So if that means that you have to get divorced in order to establish safety, for your health, mentally, emotionally, and physically, then that’s what you need to do. And so you know, my story includes the fact that I have been married and divorced before and there was cheating involved there as well. And it was a completely different situation. So they were totally different individuals. And their response to their behavior was completely different. And their relationship with me was completely different as well. So I that was one of my biggest concerns, honestly. I just don’t want to, I absolutely want to provide hope for those situations where both partners are willing to heal and or hope for the woman that she can heal regardless of whether she stays in the relationship. What I don’t want is ever ever to encourage a woman to stay in an abusive relationship where she is actively hurting.
Megan Blacksmith 23:05
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. That’s a powerful message. So what would you say? Would you like to change the most or get the word out in the kind of addiction model in the world, the way it the way it is?
Kylene Terhune 23:18
Oh, boy, this is gonna ruffle some feathers, I think, um, but it’s something that drives me nuts. And it is the communication in sex addiction, that recovery, or sorry, that relapse will happen. And that recovery is rare. I absolutely hate that message. And just I feel like you’ll you’ll totally understand and maybe vibe with this. Because I feel like when you say you will relapse, what you’re doing is telling your subconscious don’t even try. What I think the message needs to be is recovery without relapse is possible. And if you relapse, this is what you do. Because not everyone’s process will be exactly the same. There are many, many levels of complications, many levels of different factors that go into addiction and their traumas and how long it might take them to untangle those, unprocessed them and work through them and all these kinds of things. But I think the message, the beacon of hope that needs to be shared to these individuals is, first of all, recovery is possible. Second of all, it is possible people do recover without relapsing, it is something that is achievable. And if you relapse, use it as part of your recovery process to understand what’s going on and continue the process. Don’t use that to drop all the way back down to step one. That’s not what that means. So I think that message needs to be a little clearer, a little more hopeful, because essentially what Patrick was being told when this came out was you will relapse. Expect to relapse. And I was being told that as the partner to expect that he will relapse and I was like this is now this is a stance that I take for my own individual safety and boundaries and it’s not, maybe other women are different. And that’s okay. For me, that was not acceptable. I was not willing to stay in the marriage if he continued to relapse, I felt like once he got through the 90 days of sobriety, that chemical addiction balance was taken care of, after that I viewed it as a choice, you don’t get to choose to cheat on me at this point. Because once the brain patterns and the chemicals have resolved within the 90 days, and you’re balanced, and of course, we were doing all the physical stuff as well to support his brain to get through this process, but that’s how I viewed it. And so I really want to encourage people that it is possible, you know, but what what makes that possible, what makes that possible is the steps of the healing pathway. And that does involve a an incredibly painful, vulnerable process of dealing with your traumas. And for some people who have a lot of trauma, and it’s been going on for a long time, it can be incredibly difficult and incredibly painful. But the truth still remains that the process is the process. If you can get to the root, if you can address the triggers, if you can address the traumas, then that is the pathway to healing, because what addiction ultimately is, is self medicating pain. So if you can get to the root of that pain, and you’re willing to go through that process, then recovery is possible.
Megan Blacksmith 26:26
Because I think you said, Kylene, right, they said 10% of people do recover without relapse was that the,
Kylene Terhune 26:33
um, I don’t know the exact statistics around, a lot of people like to tell me that the relapse rate is at least 90%. So we can go with that, right? So I actually did the math one day, I was like, Listen, if it’s if it’s 10%, or if it’s 90%, then that means 10% recover. And if you do like 50% of the male population, the United States is actively engaging in some type of behavior like this. And then you do what’s 10% of that? It’s still millions and millions of people in the United States that are getting into recovery. Right. So I, we’ve, Patrick and I just very much of you. Okay, let’s be part of the 10%. Right, like we kind of latch on to those types of, of numbers. But I know that that is a very difficult thing to do. And it’s it certainly was something that concerned me when I continued to hear how high the relapse rate was. That was something that was very difficult for me to kind of move through. And I’ve asked him questions, how can I know you know what I mean? Like, we’ve had a lot of those conversations, it’s certainly not something that I took lightly at all.
Megan Blacksmith 27:35
And I have had a similar thing that I was being told, because my husband is Native American, and alcohol was his, you know, addiction of choice. So I was being told, like, you know, this is just genetic, this is him, and he will be an alcoholic, and he will be one forever. And this is how it is. And I just refuse. I refuse to buy into that. I just I’m like, I don’t believe that. I 100% believe. I mean, you look at the Native American population and my husband specifically, yes, there’s genetics. Yes, there’s the way we process alcohol. Got it. And there’s a ton of trauma there. There’s ancestral trauma. And then there’s actually like, in his life, lots of trauma. So I was always in, in the decided to believe and we both decide to believe that with the support on that. And the physical. So it sounds I mean, honestly, your husband and my husband happened to be in a very welcoming environment for the fact that you and I, like I know, we went to get the brain chemistry tested right away, like we were able to do the physical things. Yeah, you know, the NAD IV, like the stuff that could actually really help shorten that the physical part of it that cycle. I was told, I don’t know if it’s different. I was told with alcohol that it can take up to two years for his brain chemistry to get back to out of that addiction cycle.
Kylene Terhune 29:02
Yeah, what I mean is that initial sort of addiction pattern of with like the dopamine hits, and things like that, that essentially reset after 90 days in terms of true recovery, though, they estimate two to five years. And a lot of that, I think has to do with just living your life, right? So as you’re going through and dealing with the traumas and establishing new patterns, how many new situations come up during sobriety the first year that are different, right? You have holidays, you have birthdays, you have family gatherings, you travel for work, you have all these different things. That is the first time you’ve done that. So we’re in how many years? And so part of the recovery process is that level of time navigating those new situations in the healthy way in the healthy patterns with the tools and processes that you have. So I don’t know if it’s a little bit different or not, but that’s sort of how how we view it.
Megan Blacksmith 29:53
Which is a long time. I remember hearing this I mean like two years, are serious like, okay, this is, you know, the long time to be to be thinking about it to be in it. And it did allow me to have some awareness that although he was not drinking, there was still the addictive cycles or there there were still the patterns and the ups and downs that would be dealt with because otherwise, it would have been very hard for my brain to wrap around like, well, what is going on now without alcohol? So, absolutely, yeah. Okay, so let’s say someone is newly discovering they are in this situation? Do you have a words of advice, any steps anywhere to go like, how does someone move forward from this? What would they what would you suggest starting with?
Kylene Terhune 30:51
Well, the first step that I think is the most important is establishing safety for yourself. So for every individual, that’s very different, but safety and boundaries for your own mental, physical and emotional health is is crucial, it’s absolutely crucial. So that depends on the individuals, the couple the exact situation that you are experiencing. But you can set boundaries around, you know, we’re not sleeping in the same room right now, because I don’t feel safe. You can set boundaries around how they talk to you and engage with you during this process, right? You absolutely do not have to tolerate gaslighting manipulation, them blaming you for their addiction, all these different things, right? So you need to protect yourself and get to a place of safety and establishing these boundaries. And that can look different, like I said, for everybody. But it’s really, really important because I actually just did a video about this the other day, safety is so important, because the lack of safety is what’s triggering your nervous system. And so you’re going to be living in this fight or flight constantly with triggers, and hyper vigilance as you go through this process. And so getting to a place where you can feel a little bit more grounded a little bit more safe is really important. And so setting those boundaries, and obviously in a situation where he is engaging in the healing process is going to be much easier for you, because he will respect those boundaries and participate in that in that building of safety with you. But the second thing I would do, and I would do this immediately is get into some trauma therapy. And for this particular situation, we recommend CSAT, C-S-A-T therapist or APSAT, A-P-S-A-T, and CSAT is certified sex addiction therapy. And so it’s very interesting because they’re trained to work with the sex addiction side of it, but they work really well with the betrayed partners, because they know the ins and outs of the addiction itself, and the reality of the betrayal. So you really want to find somebody that is very aware of what betrayal trauma is, because it was not recognized as a trauma. And I don’t know in the alcohol addiction world if this was the same, but the sort of old school way of thinking was codependency and enabling, which are incredibly offensive terms. Because how can you be a co-addict or codependent or an enabler when you have no idea what’s going on? You’re living in The Truman Show, like everything looks good to you. They are highly functioning in this world, they’re showing up for appointments, they’re engaged in your relationship, like, you have no knowledge. So you are in no way enabling this behavior. And yet the old models used to have you look inward, right? For what were you doing as a spouse to enable this? And you’re like, literally nothing? Like, how did I know this was going on? You better believe I would have taken some action on that. Are you kidding me? So the new model really does acknowledge it as a significant trauma and they treat it that way. So you want to get into trauma therapy right away. And personally, I recommend not only having those certifications, but also using trauma therapy modalities, like EMDR, or brain spotting or things like that. And then I would also recommend getting into some group support. So you can research if there are some local groups near you. There are several online groups that are available as well. But having that group of women experiencing what you’re experiencing, is incredibly validating. It can occasionally also be triggering, because there is a massive spectrum in this world of what these behaviors are and hearing how terrible they are and how hurtful and how vulgar they are, can be triggering. So you do have to be careful. Some groups have very strict boundaries around how you talk about things. So if you don’t want to hear those, you might want to find a group that has those boundaries. But but being in a group of women that can validate how you’re feeling and validate and with a therapist that validates this is trauma for you. And everything that you’re feeling is valid and that it hurts this deeply because it is a massive betrayal. That is an incredible part of the foundation of healing I think.
Megan Blacksmith 35:08
Yeah, I as soon as you were talking about the group, you answered my question before I even got to it, that idea of sometimes it can be really helpful. And then you do have to just also watch is this like, the is this specific group like taking me down Am I like going into everybody’s story and everybody’s pain. And there’s, I believe this is not based on anything, but my personal belief, but there’s like, a time and place in the process. So like, I went to Al Anon for a year. And I got so much out of it. And even like, even though it was definitely like enabling and codependency, those, it was new to me. And there was enough of that in the rest of my life that I was like, okay, I can see, I could see where this is playing out and things in that. And I also got to a point where I was like, there were lots of people there. And I’m not judging the people, because if it works well, for you, it works well for you. And some people out there, they’re like, this is like the year 30 or 40 of going consistently, and maybe this is the best like group they have found to really connect. And I’m like, I do not want to be sitting here 30 or 40 years, right? Like what needs to happen physically in my body, what needs to happen boundary wise in my life, that I am at least doing my side of it. So I kind of went into it like this as a learning and a temporary thing. And that to me, helped me shift my identity. Because my belief is and that was I already shared this in the podcast earlier. But my, my, my struggle with things like AA is when you show up everywhere, weak, and you’re saying, “Hi, I’m an alcoholic. I’m an addict.” I don’t think that’s really great for the subconscious to you know, even if you’re saying recovered, like one of my friends, mentors had said, she’s like, well, we don’t say like, you know, if we used to be 10 years old, we don’t say I’m a recovering 10 year old, right? Like, we’re just we’re not anymore, like when can we move our identity on? And when can we shift? So I love a little bit passionate about that one?
Kylene Terhune 37:10
No, I love that. And I think you’re sort of hitting on this too. It’s really important for when you’re talking about, you know, how how long are the groups supportive and therapeutically certain things, I find that it’s very important for the individuals to heal heal separately. And then if they want if they need to, maybe do some couples stuff they can but I think that individual healing process where he is recovering, and you are recovering, and you’re both doing that workthat’s I mean, it’s really important. I love what you’re saying about, you know, the the identity shift, it’s really, really important.
Megan Blacksmith 37:43
Well, I love that you brought that up too, because I always feel kind of I mean, Lucky is a weird way of putting it in a way. But so I found out my husband is having an affair. And then like 10 minutes later, I found out he’s an alcoholic. And I don’t necessarily know that I would have been able to get through the affair part of it. If there hadn’t also then been the addiction part of it. Because then he went away. He went to rehab for 30 days, and I went into a model. I mean, I’m sure there are models for people like, you know, husband had an infidelity or affair? I don’t know, are there support groups for just that? Is that? I don’t even know.
Kylene Terhune 38:24
Yeah, well, any level of infidelity would be sexual betrayal, trauma.
Megan Blacksmith 38:29
Okay, cool. So I don’t need to, this is the thing like the wording I personally, at that point in my life wouldn’t have known what to look for. I wouldn’t have realized there was a group for this. I would have I knew there was a group for alcoholics, right. So because I didn’t know that then maybe I would have gotten to it. I think I would have just been like this shitty thing happened. People either like stay or they leave, they get over it or they don’t they forget, right? And that those I believe that what I would have thought those were my choices. So because when alcohol came on top of it. For me that allowed there to be an actual, like, a thought process of like, oh, this is recovery. Oh, this is addiction. And we had separate time for 30 days, where I, well one I would watch a lot of Game of Thrones.
Kylene Terhune 39:17
You have to because you can’t let this new world consume you. Your brain is saying I’ve got to zone out some way somehow because this cannot be my reality 24/7. So I get it. I totally get it.
Megan Blacksmith 39:29
Which is really funny. For people who know me well. Like I don’t watch TV much at all, and I definitely don’t watch scary TV. So I chose that one
Kylene Terhune 39:39
Coping mechanism. It’s okay.
Megan Blacksmith 39:40
Yeah. And I was in like, I watched it sometimes like hours of the day when the kids were at school. So I did that. And then I went to groups and like this was just like my pattern. And I did support my body like crazy because I will like I will not let this take down my physical body. I remember I was going to float tanks and acupuncture and IVs because I was like I know what happens.
Kylene Terhune 40:01
We know a little too much, I think, yes. It’s like the knowing also stresses us out.
Megan Blacksmith 40:07
Yes, I was like, I will not let this take me down. Like, I feel you so much on that. Anyway, I just want to I just feel like for me, like the getting out for 30 days, so for you, like, what were you able, how were you able to do the separate thing to do just for like, I’m gonna go to my person, you go to your person, and we’re gonna have a little separate time like, Well, how did that work for you, since you didn’t have that kind of?
Kylene Terhune 40:31
Yeah, we had separate therapists, and we had separate support groups, but we were both committed to doing them every week. So that’s, that’s sort of how that went. And then I mean, separate and together is sort of how we did. So we were getting the healing processes separately, reading, podcasts, therapy groups, all these different things. But we were also in I mean, maybe a fairly extreme level of communication around this. What his healing process was looking like, what mine was looking like, questions that I needed, answered, you know, boundaries that we were setting, and that we’re adjusting as the healing process continued, you know, all these different things. So I mean, massive, massive, massive levels of communication was, I’m sure part of the healing process for us.
Megan Blacksmith 41:17
And when I find so cool Kylene, about your story and about your sharing is that sharing a story like this is not easy. And there’s lots of opinions on the interwebs. But you found out. And so going into this, Kylene did so much work on really just making sure that she could share her story. I’m speaking for you, I just you’ve told me about sharing her story from a place of being on the other side and feeling really grounded in that and knowing like any comment that comes in, it’s not about her, and also from a place of empowerment versus like, I’m gonna bitter write about this thing that happened. So that came that is coming across like it came across as you’re sharing, and it’s super, super powerful for people to hear. So I just wanted to thank you for, you know, doing that, that work in that way that I think allows people to hear it differently, and that there’s hope and also process and boundaries.
Kylene Terhune 42:18
Absolutely. Well, and I’m so I told Patrick this many times, I’m so thankful for you and Dr. Alex, because I really feel like it was I don’t know if it’s the last piece of my puzzle. But it was a huge piece of the puzzle of really kind of aligning everything for me and helping me take that final step. And I just don’t think I would have been able to handle it as well. Had I not done all that emotional processing. Yeah.
Megan Blacksmith 42:41
So now and that is our goal in general is that we’re taking helping people, practitioners, whatever, they have a message that has something they’re sharing, that we’re helping give them the tools like the subconscious reprogramming, the emotional processing the tools, that then you can get a little bit bigger with it share a little bit more, because when you have dealt with your stuff, then you are able to hold that container for other people. And so, I mean, now it’s to the point that you actually started a nonprofit, right?
Kylene Terhune 43:13
Yes. And I’m so excited about this, I just can’t even tie it. Listen, in a million years of you. It’s like Kylene, will you be starting a nonprofit, I would have said what No. And I will also tell any of you out there that want to start one, there’s not a step in that process that I think is easy. But it’s worth it. So we started a nonprofit called Tara hope Alliance. And what it does is it provides some free resources, we’re gonna have a resource page that just lists out some very carefully curated resources. And I say that because like anything out there, there are resources that are more helpful. And I really believe that even though they’re intended to be helpful, there are resources out there that give you the wrong message and kind of keep keep you stuck. And so we don’t want to recommend those to you. So we’re very careful on what resources we choose to recommend. And the primary goal of Tara hope alliance is offering financial coverage for women who are in need, who have found themselves in this spot of sexual betrayal trauma, are aware that they need trauma therapy and just cannot afford it. So right now, it is in Ohio. And I’m hoping as we launch this nationally, that we will connect with appropriate CSAT therapists throughout the country and get this sort of beat to become a national nonprofit. But right now it is in Ohio and what we do is you apply for a scholarship and then we will pair you with a therapist that she can get about six months of trauma therapy to support you through the healing process.
Megan Blacksmith 44:49
Wow, that is so amazing. So can people support this online?
Kylene Terhune 44:54
Yes. So it is Tarahopealliance.org and it is not currently up we’re going to have it should be soon we are working on the donation page. As we speak, we’re kind of wrapping up everything to make this public. So if you write that down and maybe check it in about a month, but you should be able to go, you can donate online, you can technically donate now, just not on the website. But you can donate online and you can apply for a scholarship online. And you can also find the free resources online. And then one thing that I’m really excited about is that for those that are not in financial need, and who are ready to get unstuck, and kind of do some of that emotional processing work that we’ve talked about, when they work with me, one on one, 10% of that is going to go into Tara Hope. So if you have the financial ability to support yourself, you’re also going to be supporting other women.
Megan Blacksmith 45:42
Very cool. Well tell us more about that. So what is the format of how are you working with people right now, for this process.
Kylene Terhune 45:49
This, I’m so excited about too. So I just, I couldn’t really pinpoint exactly what it was going to be until we worked together again. So thank you for that, because I knew what the outcome was, I knew exactly where I wanted to get these ladies, but I wasn’t 100% sure all of the modalities. So working as an FDN, for the past six years or so, I had all the physical modalities, and I just wasn’t quite sure how to add that emotional layer in. So now with the Phoenix transformation project, we are literally combining everything that has been the most helpful in my healing process to move it along as quickly as possible for these women. So it’s going to be for women that are kind of past the shock phase. So if you just found out yesterday, this might not be the right level of work for you. But if you’ve kind of gone through the shock process, maybe you’ve had some trauma therapy, and you’re really in that phase of wanting to align more with, you know, making your own decisions based on your values, your belief systems, what’s the next step for me, and you have been experiencing some physical side effects, you know, like anxiety, depression, digestive issues, etc from this trauma, which is incredibly common. What we’re going to do is we’re going to pair all of that together, we’re going to do the physical work. So we’re going to work on the nutrition and the environment and lifestyle, and the lab work just like I do with my previous FDN clients. So we can run the neurotransmitter panel to help you with your anxiety and to support your brain chemicals. And to kind of get you feeling a little bit more balanced in that area. While we support your nutrition and environment to kind of give your body the resources that it needs. While we work on the emotional support that we release the negative emotions, we start working on your limiting beliefs, and kind of get you to that place where you feel confident in yourself and grounded in your body and your nervous system is supported and aligned to help you make the decisions that are really truly coherent with what you really want out of life. And sometimes I think when we’re in these situations, we have so much coming at us from other people from our past and from our life experiences that it makes it difficult to kind of move forward. And I just sort of view this work is like pulling all those pieces away so that we can just see more clearly to move forward in the direction that’s going to serve us the best. So I can’t wait. I’m excited to kind of put it all together for these women. I’ve already started doing a lot of this emotional work support a lot of the women that have previously come to me for their physical health and it’s just taking it to to the next level.
Megan Blacksmith 48:30
Oh, I so wish this had existed five years ago.
Kylene Terhune 48:36
I know it’s just it’s amazing.
Megan Blacksmith 48:37
Sign me up. I’m so excited to see how you’ve combined you know the different techniques because this can be used really in any area so everybody can take their specialty for the coaches and practitioners and people who are interested. We will do our next training in October in Dallas. So another seven lovely days. So thank you, Kylene, for sharing today has been super helpful. We’ll put it in the show notes. But can you just tell us again, best like Instagram place to find you all the details?
Kylene Terhune 49:11
Yeah, Instagram is probably Instagram and Tiktok are probably where you see like the most because with Instagram, you get to know me a little bit in stories and on Tik Tok a lot of people ask questions, and so there’s more videos on Tiktok. So between those two, but both of them is @kyleneterhune.
Megan Blacksmith 49:28
Perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here today and for being so willing to share.
Kylene Terhune 49:34
Thanks, Megan. I really appreciate it.