123 Process: Emotional Regulation Tool

Have you ever felt emotionally stuck when overwhelmed? Have you ever wished you knew how to unfreeze, stop people-pleasing, or respond differently when someone insults you or crosses a boundary?
If feeling your feelings is difficult, chances are you were conditioned to suppress, deny, ignore, or react to your emotions rather than process them in a healthy way. And that, Dear One, is not your fault.

In this episode, I introduce the 1-2-3 Process, the number one metacognitive emotional regulation tool I teach my clients to help them move through emotional experiences without freezing, fleeing, fighting, or fawning. Mastering this practice helps you process emotions in real time, interrupt patterns of self-abandonment, strengthen boundaries, and build deeper self-trust. This is the work of moving Above the Veil, observing your emotions without becoming them, and returning home to yourself, one conscious moment at a time.

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach

Transcript

Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough, The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true authentic self. I'm Lisa A. Romano, Your host. As an award winning author and certified life coach, I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind. I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self. I created the Conscious Healing Academy, A three part coaching and brain retraining program designed to help individuals triumph over trauma and turn the breakdowns into powerful breakthroughs. My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening. In this podcast, I'll share insights, Tools, And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery. So today I want to introduce you to what I refer to as the one, Two, Three process. So this is an emotional regulation tool that allows people who generally get stuck into one of the four Fs of trauma, The freezing, The fawning, The fighting, And the fleeing responses. This is an emotional recovery tool that I created when I was going through my inner child healing, The deep dark nights of the soul. And essentially recovering from what I didn't know at the time was codependency. And this is an important tool for anybody who is struggling with getting through an action step. So before I get into what the 1, 2, 3 process is, Let me explain a little bit about how it came to be and how I created it. So like I said, I was going through codependency recovery. I was going through a very difficult time in my life. My life had imploded. I had been married for 12 years. And did not realize that what was wrong had a name. So there were symptoms, But I never really realized them as symptoms. So I felt powerless. I was exasperated. I complained a lot to my husband about the things that I didn't like and the things that I wished that he would do differently. I had a lot of anxiety. I was people pleasing, Although I just thought I was being a good person. I was looking for validation, Although I didn't know that's what I was doing. I just thought that if I cleaned the house really well, Certainly my husband would notice and pat me on the back. I would get very frustrated with people who would ask me questions and then I would encourage them to do A, B, And C and they just didn't listen to me and then somehow I would feel abandoned or wounded that they didn't take my advice. And so. After 12 years of being in a relationship with someone who was just as emotionally immature as I was, Someone who is more avoidant, Somebody who was passive aggressive, Somebody who got through life by invalidating other people's emotions, It was a really, Really toxic mix. A codependent like myself who is people-pleasing and who is fawning after approval, Married to someone who is designed to withhold approval. And to offer very little in terms of validation. So here I was chasing approval, Chasing approval. And before I was diagnosed with codependency, I had no idea that I had codependency or that I had depression, Which is a hallmark of codependency as well, Or that the obsessive way that I was thinking about other people always trying to figure out how to fix things, Worrying about what people thought about me. I thought it was normal to have a conversation and then worry about how it landed for three days afterwards. I thought it was normal to worry about other people's emotions to the point where I couldn't sleep. I thought it was normal to feel everyone else's feelings. I thought everybody else felt the same way. And so it was quite the awakening to realize like, No, That's a codependent thing to do. And it's maladaptive. It is an adaptive response to tremendous stress that you experience as a child due to experiences that you could not control. Like how much attention your mother gives you, Or how much love you experience, Or how safe you feel, Or how unsafe you feel. So codependency is an adaptation, But I didn't know it. Why? Because all human beings are asleep, Meaning that most of us are 95% unconscious 95% of the time. And the thoughts that we do hear that filter through the conscious mind are coming from the subconscious part of us, Although we don't know it. And so if you come from a really healthy home, That's not bad news. Chances are that what went into the subconscious mind The idea that you have about love, The idea that you have about your emotions, They're good ideas. You get to express yourself. You feel like you can trust other people. You have a good level of discernment. But if you come from an unhealthy home, It's really not the best news. But it's not the end of the world because once you identify it, Then you can start to change it. What lurks below the veil of consciousness and you start to see the patterns in your adult behavior. And you can connect it to childhood, That's when you can change it. So I'm coming through this codependency recovery and I'm making connections to my past and I'm realizing that when it comes to my emotions, I kind of, Like, Get stuck. So a big part of emotional recovery is recognizing what you're actually feeling in any given moment. Because dissociating and fawning and freezing and fleeing and even running away and fighting, All of these work to get me to not feel my feelings. So there is a plug, If you will, That is operating below the veil of consciousness that has somehow conditioned me to not feel. I learned in my life that not feeling was a survival strategy. Because when I felt my feelings and I connected to them, And I expressed them, I was chastised by my mom. I was ridiculed. I was banished from the kingdom. You want to cry? Come over here, I'll give you something to cry about. You want to cry? Go upstairs and cry. Get out of my face. So I learned, Uh-oh, I can't. Feel my feelings. I can't express my feelings. So I learned to associate pleasure and safety with not feeling, With repressing. But we all understand, At least on some level, That which we resist persists. We all understand that that which we don't allow to be processed festers within our somatic body, And it blocks us, And it interferes with our ability to be our authentic self. So we operate from ego defense mechanisms, From backwards rationalizations, From cognitive dissonance, And the worst part is we don't even know that we're doing it. The ego is in control. The ego is built for survival. It's not built for enlightenment. Let's face it. Not the end of the world, Like I said earlier, We can overcome this if we can organize our mind. Understanding that I was codependent was huge because it led me to be able to be more objective about my symptoms, My patterns, And also what had caused this adaptation response. It allowed me to feel less shame because I realized it wasn't me, It was just my programming, And that allowed there to be some space between me and my shame because observing my behaviors as a consequence of an unhealthy home, A home that was not enough. I was never not enough. My home was not enough. The love that I received was never not, It was not enough. I was always enough. So recognizing codependency as an adaptation, Recognizing that this happened below the veil of consciousness, It was on autopilot, The idea that the default mode network is actually real. Our brains are designed for autopilot living. This idea that awakening, That's real. There are people who are highly conscious and people who are not. It just is what it is. It doesn't mean anybody's more worthy. It's just a fact. And so me becoming more aware of what was happening inside of me was huge. And so I associated so much pain with feeling my feelings. And so the people-pleasing was me and the fawning was me not feeling my feelings. It was me finding a way to avoid my feelings. Especially the ones that lurked in the subconscious mind, The feelings associated with the fear of being alone. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of being found out. The fear of abandonment. The fear of rejection. The fear of, If they love me and they stick around, They're gonna find terrible flaws in me. My mother saw all these flaws in me. They're just gonna leave anyway. Those types of fears that fuel codependency. As I'm learning about these ideas, I realized, Thank heaven, That I was stuck. And I needed a tool because I'm the type of coach that if I identify a problem, My mind works immediately towards identifying the solution and breaking down in very simple steps a way to get unstuck. I mean, What's the point of looking under the roof of your house, Like opening up your roof, If you're not gonna fix the roof? What's the point of opening up the hood of your car if you're not going to fix the carburetor or the fan belt? It makes no sense to me. So if I'm going to look, And I'm going to diagnose myself, Or someone else is going to diagnose me, Or I'm gonna find a real issue with me, It doesn't make any sense to not focus on the solution. Hence, The 1-2-3 process was created. So the 1-2-3 process is a simple step that anyone can rely on if they commit to it. To help them out of a pinch, A moment where, Uh-oh, I could really retract right now, I could really recoil, And I could really go back. Into a codependent behavior, Into a reactive behavior. I could really go into the fawning response right now, Or I could run away, Or I could push back and I could start fighting. I could dissociate and escape. Like I'm getting activated because I'm sensing something, But I don't want to stay there. I want to break this pattern. I want to interrupt this pattern. I want to learn how to organize my mind in a way that brings me harmony. I believe firmly that there are certain laws that are just absolute. For example, The earth spins in one direction. The planets spin in one direction. And I always think like that's the way it's supposed to be for all of us, Meaning that I have an experience and that experience is supposed to spiral up through me. Emotions are supposed to follow a particular pattern. They're not supposed to get shunted. They're not supposed to get blocked. They're not supposed to be suppressed. They're energy. And energy is meant to be expressed. Now. That doesn't mean that everybody who has this rageful emotion should act on that emotion. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about acknowledging the emotion. From a higher state of consciousness and giving it honor, Allowing the energy to get processed all the way up through the mind. So that it no longer needs to be shunted and it will not fester, It will not become malignant because you've allowed it expression. So expression doesn't always mean manifesting in the material world. Expression could just mean honoring it, Stepping back consciously and observing your emotions from a higher state of consciousness, Having tea with these emotions, Telling these emotions that your energy, And it's not your fault that you're here. And it's OK. I can tolerate these energies. When you were a little child, You could not tolerate these energies. And that's why you had to adapt to suppressing them. You needed a witness. No witness was there. You needed someone to validate your emotional experiences. No one was there. So what were you forced to do? You were forced to shunt them, To dissociate. To forget about them, To imagine them away. But that doesn't work when we're adults and we're trying to show up authentically in relationships. If I don't address this survival adaptation of shunting my feelings, Then I can't show up as my true self in a relationship and I will never be fulfilled. I will never be satisfied. I will chase careers because that's what my mother wanted me to do, Or that's what I think society will do. Likes on Instagram because I think that's what I'm supposed to be doing in this day and age. I will seek relationships that are unfulfilling for the sake of being in a relationship. I will not be my true self. I will never be able to find the song that's been placed upon my heart if I keep operating with survival adaptations. The 1-2-3 process has been created to solve that conundrum. What is the 1-2-3 process? So the 1-2-3 process is a way for us as coaches, As healers, As therapists, As moms, Dads, Grandmas, Grandpas, You name it, It's a way for us, Number one, To get back in touch with our true self and our true experience, To learn how to process what has been shunted and denied. For the sake of individuation, For the sake of integration. And for the sake of being authentic. The self-actualization. You can never actualize a self that you repress. It's just not going to happen. And so it's us coming home. Gently with this tool back to the self. When we're able to show up for the self, Then and only then can we show up for others. And here is the process. Number one. You accept what you feel. And I mean, Totally. I mean jealousy rage confusion if you feel powerless whatever it is that you're feeling you accept oh my god I'm coming into conscious contact with this feeling. You do not judge it. You just notice it. Wow. I notice this and i can accept that this is my emotional experience right now it's an emotional experience which means it's a transient experience it's not an absolute Everything is always changing. Your thoughts are always changing. Your emotions are always changing. Your beliefs are always changing. So it's important that when you're accepting how you feel, You're acknowledging that this is a transitory state. Oftentimes when we're in very negative emotions, It feels like they'll never end. But when we look at it from above the veil, When we're objective, We realize like, Wow, When I hurt my knee when I was six, I stopped crying. And when that guy didn't show up for that date when I was in the eighth grade, Well, I got over that too. And when I was 21 and in college and I was embarrassed by that girl or that guy, I stopped crying over that too. Doesn't mean it didn't leave a mark. But my point is we accept the transitory state of this emotion while we honor it. So I honor this emotion. Why? Because it's what's true for you right there and right now. You are honoring what's showing up. You're not dissociating. You're not running from it. Not judging it. You're saying, This is what I feel right now. Very important. This is you witnessing and validating yourself in a way that you were never witnessed or validated before. Number two. Feel it. What I mean by feel it is you ask yourself, How do I know that I feel this emotion? Where is it showing up in my body? When I feel my emotions, Oftentimes my body, My chest gets tight. If it's a really traumatic experience or not a traumatic experience as much as a trigger from a cause of a traumatic experience in the past, I'll go deaf. I'll go momentarily deaf. That's a CPTSD response. I'll feel like my throat is closing. I'm being silenced. I can't get the emotions out of me. The reason step two is important is because it's bringing you home back to your body. Most people are not in their body. They're in their mental body. They're thinking. They're analyzing. They're being strategic. They're trying to figure things out. They're not in their body. We want to come home to the body. The body is your greatest instrument. We have to come back home to the body. But you have to train yourself to listen to your body. You're listening to everybody else. You're listening to the thoughts in your head, Your subconscious thoughts. You're listening to those things. But we want to teach you to respect and tune into your greatest instrument, Which is your body. So you know, I know that I feel this thing. I know that I feel this emotion because my body is blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah. This is how my body is speaking to me. Step three is decide. This is the money step. What I mean by that is that lots of people can get to the point where I accept how I feel. I can feel my feelings. But still pushing them over the finish line, What am I going to do about how I feel, Sometimes gets people stuck. And so that's why it's so important to really understand this third step. Now, You're going to make a decision now about how you feel. This is the completion step. So you've acknowledged it. You feel it in your body. Now we're trying to process it and bringing it up to a state of completion. So it's no longer getting shunted in your body. You're going to consciously recognize that you move this emotion or you move this energy. The decision is what completes that cycle for you. Now, Before you make the decision, You have to run your analysis or your thoughts through three ideas, Three questions. Number one, What about this situation that has gotten me upset? Can't I control? For example, Your sister has bought another dog. You don't have a dog, But your sister loves dogs, But she has a full life. She's got a boyfriend, She likes to travel, And she's got a couple of other dogs at home too. So she calls you consistently to walk her dog when she's late at work. Or to walk the dog when she wants to hang out with her boyfriend. So you are aggravated that this is happening. So you have this experience and you feel frustration. You accept the frustration. How do you know that your body, Step two, Where do you feel the frustration? My shoulders just came up and my chest feels tight and I'm gritting my teeth. Great. That's your body telling you you're ticked off. Step three. I have to make a decision now about how I feel. Okay, What can't I control? I cannot control that my sister has bought another dog. I cannot control how my sister perceives me as a single person living alone without a dog. I can't control that she perceives me as her perpetual dog walker, And I'm not, But I can't control that that's how she sees me. I cannot control that she asked me. Okay. Once you run through a list of what you can't control, And also how you feel in that moment is not something you want to control. So I can't control that her texting me in the middle of the afternoon has caused me to feel frustration. Honor it. I can't control that. That's my state right now. Remember, It's a transient state. But we have to move into a state of harmony and surrender about what is. No more resistance. The second question is, What can I control? Again, We're going deep now. So I can control whether or not I text her back some long, Horrible text telling her what a terrible sister she is. I can control whether or not I ghost her. I can control whether or not I say yes and fawn after her because I'm afraid that if I say no, She'll get angry. I can control whether or not I say yes or say no. Wonderful. The third question, How do you want to feel most of the time? Like, What state of being are you moving toward? And if you're honest, Maybe you want more peace in your life. Maybe you want to feel more respected in your life. Maybe you want the freedom to say no. It's going to be unique to you. What state of being would you like to move towards more often? What's your ideal state? For me, It's peace. I always want to be in peace. Happy all the time because if I'm happy then I'm in a happy state and I attach to happiness which means that I have some resistance to unhappiness. But if I go for peace, Then I can be peaceful even in unhappiness. I can be peaceful in happiness and I can be peaceful in unhappiness as long as I don't protest what's happening that I can't control. And so I want peace. So if I was writing out the 1-2-3 process and I got to this point of the exercise, My answer would be, I want peace. I have to make the decision around these pieces of criteria. So then the question is, What decision am I going to make based on what I can control, What I can control, And how I want to feel. And I might, At that point, Based on that criteria, Send my sister a text and say, I'm so sorry, But I am unavailable to walk your dog today. Now, Why would I decide to make that decision? Because I am going to understand that I'm also training people to understand what my boundary is. So if I say no, And that's my authentic self saying no, I'm honoring the frustration. Because if I say yes when I mean no, I'm abandoning myself and I just stay in this frustration loop. I'm complaining about feeling powerless. Complaining about being disrespected. I'm complaining about feeling out of control. I'm complaining about people walking all over me. I'm complaining about all of it. But the minute I make a decision that honors how I feel, What I can and can't control, And ultimately how I want to feel day to day, The minute I walk through that door and make a decision that is in honor of that criteria, Then I'm honoring myself. So the frustration has been honored. Everything that I feel has been honored. I'm not fawning. I'm not fleeing. I'm not fighting. I'm not rescuing. I'm not enabling. I'm not stuffing. I'm not disowning myself. And it all begins with honoring whatever emotion shows up. The last thing I'll say before we end this session is that just because we feel a feeling doesn't mean we immediately should react to that feeling. We all have to gain the metacognitive awareness, And metacognition is the highest form of intelligence. Most people feel a feeling, And they react. Most people have a thought, And they open their mouth. We've got to learn to notice what's happening inside our minds and to be observers of the content of our mind before we react. So i might feel angry at the lady at target that just bumped me really hard with her cart because she's on her cell phone yapping you know, With it on speaker mode and the whole store can hear her. And because she's so distracted, She just banged into me and my granddaughter. I can feel the initial rage of that and that inconsideration. But I can also mitigate it. With higher consciousness. If you practice the 1, 2, 3 process often enough, That ability comes online very quickly. Out of Target peacefully. And I need to calm my granddaughter down peacefully. I don't need to pour gasoline on this fire. So the woman became just a fly on the wall. Like she was irrelevant to me at that point. What was important to me was me honoring my peace. If you practice this over and over and over and over and over, That will become your norm. So what we're really trying to do is teach people, Give people a tool actually that teaches them the pause. You're feeling your feelings or you're experiencing an emotion and you don't know what to do with it. You're feeling sensations in your body, But you don't know what to do with it. This is what you can do with it, The 1-2-3 process. My name is Lisa A. Romano. I am the Breakthrough Life Coach. I'm the author of The Road Back to Me and seven other titles. And it has been an honor to share this 1-2-3 process with you today.

Reviews

Clear explanation and theory is great. Let’s practice now!😀
Thank you

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