Honest Review of Anna Rova and my Personal Long Term Fallout
I want to share my experience with Anna Rova and her former coaching program "Claimed" because even though it's been years since I completed it, the emotional fallout of the Claimed coaching model is something I am still struggling with to this day. Before I start, I want to say this was my experience and the conclusions I draw here are my own opinions. They are not the experiences and opinions of all the women who went through Claimed. In fact many women were successful and ended up with great partners! I just wasn't one of them. My intention here is not to drag Anna through the mud because I wasn't successful, rather process my experience through sharing it.
I went into Claimed wanting to open myself up to receiving love. I actually felt worthy of it at the time, but I was too scarred from previous experiences to open to it. I also had a hard time feeling attraction/connection for men in general. What really got me to invest in Anna was her slogan, "you'll start seeing amazing men everywhere" if you join Claimed.
But after pouring thousands of dollars into Claimed, I realized Anna's key to seeing amazing men everywhere was to understand why men behave the way they do, and to accept it. In my interpretation and in layman's terms - boys will be boys!
The instance that sticks out to me the most occurred in the Facebook community. A woman posted about her discomfort surrounding a man from a dating app wanting to hold their first date at her house. As a woman, we all know what that means. I felt uncomfortable reading about her experience, as I've had many experiences like it. Many women in the comments section reacted with the same discomfort. Anna recorded a video of herself almost scolding the women for reacting the way they did. She said something along the lines of, "the women who have been in my program longer are enlightened enough to know men are driven by sex, so they don't judge men for trying to come up with ways to get it." Rova's statement completely bypassed the feminine need for connection, attraction, and most importantly, safety, before sex. Which left me questioning myself and if there was something wrong with me for feeling the discomfort of the original woman. She'd tell us on multiple occasions to have empathy for men and their experience but at times it seemed to me like she had little empathy for women's experiences.
Additionally, her module on men was steeped in dysregulating content for women nearing midlife. A large pillar of this module was about evolutionary psychology. I remember her repeatedly emphasizing how men primarily pursue youth and beauty. A large intention of Claimed was to undo our limiting beliefs, but how effective is it really when you're bringing more limiting beliefs to your clients? That a woman's ability to attract something as basic as love is based off something temporary like youth? I was in my 30's when I joined Claimed and have spent many years since trying to undo this feeling. Regular flow practices have not helped in this sense. I do not blame Anna at all for this belief, she was not the one who implanted it in my subconscious. The idea that a woman's value is in her physical appearance and baby making capability is something that's been forever shoved down our throats. But hearing it come from an authority figure like a coach, one who I trusted with an investment of thousands of dollars, was damaging. I still hear her voice anytime I even think of even using a dating app "men will pursue you if you're fertile and hot!" essentially reducing a woman to what she is and not who she is. And while I'm much more than my physical body and age, what I physically am is a 39 year old woman with the first signs of a double chin. One thing I regret not doing during my time in Claimed was talking to the older women who were there, the women in their 50's and beyond. They seemed to be doing well on the coaching calls, but I wish I knew how they felt about this particular message and what their personal experiences with it were.
Just as damaging, in the same module, she reduced people to numbers and market value. She'd say a man who is a 4 in terms of looks can probably pull a 7, but if you're a woman whose a 7 don't expect to end up with a man who is a 10. These messages are grossly surface level, damaging for both women and men, and in my opinion, something you'd expect to see in incel communities.
In terms of her actual coaching, I found her methods to be a little off putting. During group coaching calls, she'd "crack the whip" and tell clients to get to the point during tangents. Completely understandable because she wanted to get to everyone's questions. However Anna sometimes went on her own tangents about her husband and things that seemed to me to have nothing to do with the client's issue. To me, her coaching methods didn't matter anyway. Once I completed the module on men and came away feeling that I had been sold misogynist ideals packaged as women's empowerment, I lost trust in her entirely. It was at that point I stopped attending her coaching calls. I recall her saying that the way for Claimed to work was if we attended regular coaching, so she'd likely argue that this is why Claimed didn't work for me as it should have.
All in all, my opinion is that Anna grossly overvalued her product. I bought into it thinking it was worth a shot if I could open myself up to love again, and if it didn't work, well what's the worst that could happen. I wish I could go back to my old self and tell her to put the money elsewhere because it's taken me years to unravel. With that said I obviously do not think my time in Claimed was worth the thousands of dollars I paid. While I'm grateful for some of the books she introduced me to and ideas like cycle tracking, I would have been better off having these resources and learning the flow practice elsewhere. The flow practice itself is the greatest tool I took from Claimed and I still use it regularly in addition to my other embodiment practices. However, I could have learned it from Jenna Ward for much less, and without the damaging fluff. These days it appears Anna pivoted to personal styling. And to be honest I'm relieved she did. It's my opinion that Anna might make a better stylist than feminine embodiment coach.