13 Signs Childhood Trauma Is Still Affecting You

Do you apologize too easily, struggle to say no, or feel guilty for having needs of your own? Do you tell yourself that your childhood wasn't that bad while still carrying anxiety, self-doubt, people pleasing, and patterns you can't seem to explain?
In this powerful episode of the Breakdown to Breakthroughs Podcast, trauma-informed life coach Lisa A. Romano reveals 13 signs that your childhood may have been more damaging than you ever allowed yourself to admit. Lisa explains how emotional neglect, narcissistic family dynamics, criticism, unpredictability, and walking on eggshells can create subconscious survival patterns that continue influencing your adult life.
Drawing from more than 20 years of experience helping adult children of dysfunction heal from codependency and narcissistic abuse, Lisa explores why so many people mistake their childhood survival strategies for personality traits.

Transcript

So today, We're going to talk about 13 signs that your childhood was more damaging than you ever let yourself admit, And why so many of us spend our lives calling those signs our personality. We're going to talk about the power of truth coming out of denial and honoring buried experiences, Not to blame anyone, But to simply stop operating from the subconscious shadows. If you grew up in a home that felt unsafe emotionally, Mentally, Or physically, You've probably learned to apologize for things that were never your fault. You've smiled through news that hurt. You've told everybody that you were fine, Because the worst childhoods don't leave marks. You know what they leave? They leave habits. Habits of thinking, Feeling, Reacting, And believing. Stay with me until number 13. That is the one nobody admits, Not even to themselves. I'm Lisa A. Romano, I'm the Breakthrough Life Coach, And for over 20 years, I've helped thousands of adult children of dysfunction learn to self-heal from codependency and break free from narcissistic behavior. Abuse. So let's begin with number one. You have a smile you put on for bad news. Adult children who grew up feeling invisible or unsafe learned early on to associate pain with revealing their emotions. Because their true needs threaten their connection to those they loved, Erasing the self, Swallowing their feelings, And pretending terror wasn't raging through their cells becomes a survival mechanism. One that eventually dictates how they think, How they feel, And relate to others. I grew up feeling unloved by my mother. There were no hugs, No welcoming smiles, Or tender words to make me feel safe in her presence. She was cold, Distant, And deeply critical. Most days, I felt like a specimen that was pinned under a microscope. I felt so persecuted, I wondered if she could actually read my mind. Like, Was she in my mind? And when I was 70 years old, Sitting on my father's lap while we were doodling, I finally gathered the courage as a little girl to voice my deepest I whispered, Daddy, I don't think Mommy loves me, With thick tears brimming in my eyes. I hoped that he would listen, Maybe even talk to her. And instead, He tapped me firmly on my forearm and snapped, Don't ever say that again. Look how hard your mommy works around here. I swallowed my tears, And I was silenced by the realization that I hadn't been heard. After that, I lived in utter fear that he would tell her what I said, Which would only invite more hostility. In that single moment, My father said, Taught me that safety meant hiding the truth and pretending to be fine. It is how a child learns to abandon their own gut instincts to protect the family rules. How this shows up today in adulthood, This manifests as an automatic reflex to hide your true feelings, Suppress your needs, And to pretend everything is fine when you are even unraveling inside. You habitually distrust your own intuition, Prioritizing everyone else's comfort and reactions over your own, Just to keep the peace. The first step out to begin breaking this pattern, You start building safety in your body by asking yourself one simple, Low stakes question a day. For example, How do I feel about the weather today? Or how does looking up at the sky make me feel? Practicing with neutral topics retrains your nervous system to notice your internal feelings without triggering the fight-or-flight defenses and this rebuilds your interoceptive awareness and it begins to restore trust in your inner compass. Here's sign number two. A normal piece of feedback ruins your whole week. For example, Imagine Mary the adult child of an alcoholic whose boss has simply asked her to expand on a presentation slide. This sets off an internal alarm that feels wildly disproportionate to the moment. If you grew up in a healthy home where criticism was paired with emotional withdrawal, Harsh judgment, Or explosive anger, Your childhood brain wired feedback directly to existential threat. To a child, A parent's disapproval threatens the core bond required for survival. So your nervous system learned to equate even constructive feedback with imminent rejection, Abandonment, And danger. Decades later, This primitive survival habit continues running quietly in the background, Interpreting a minor critique as proof that you are flawed, That you are unsafe, Or you are about to be cast out. To break this automated loop from above the veil of subconscious reaction, You must pause the moment the spike of shame hits and re-engage your conscious metacognitive awareness. Name the physiological response for what it is. This is an old memory, Not a present danger. And then step back to re-evaluate the feedback objectively. Just information about a slide presentation, Not a verdict on my worth or my safety. I'm not broken. My habit of reacting to feedback is being perceived as a threat. And from above the veil, I can break that habit consciously. This is you operating from the highest form of intelligence that there is, Which is metacognitive intelligence. It is also why my tagline is, It's not you, It's your programming. And programming can always be rewritten. A sudden loud noise, A slamming of a door, Or even a subtle familiar scent before you even realize what happened, Your nervous system is operating on a high-speed survival circuit. At a neurological level, Incoming sensory information bypasses your conscious thinking brain, The prefrontal cortex, And travels straight to your amygdala, The brain's threat detection center. This mechanism, Known as the low road to fear, Takes only milliseconds. The amygdala instantly signals the sympathetic nervous system to dump adrenaline and cortisol into your bloodstream, Causing your muscles to tense and your heart rate to spike before your mind can rationally assess the situation. These reactions can still be showing up in your adult life today, All outside of consciousness. And for those who grew up in unpredictable, Unsafe environments, Their response becomes hypersensitized. Smells and sudden sounds are deeply linked to memory through the limbic system, Meaning a specific scent or a sudden noise can act as an unconscious trigger, Instantly reactivating the body's automatic memory of danger. To break this reflexive loop, You have to send a manual safety signal back down to your nervous system. So first, Spend some time connecting with nature throughout your day, Even for a few minutes, To allow natural, Soothing sensory inputs to regulate your baseline autonomic state. For example, When a sudden jump response occurs, Physically place your hand over your heart. This gentle pressure stimulates the vagus and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, Which is the peaceful pathway, Signaling to your body that the threat is over. Now, In that moment, Speak directly to your nervous system and state clearly, I'm safe. I'm not three years old anymore. This bridges the gap between your implicit survival body and your conscious mind, Grounding you firmly in the safety of the present moment. Dear one, If you're recognizing yourself already and some part of you is rushing to explain it away, That pull has a name. It's codependency. Number four, You go quiet the second the front door opens. When you instantly freeze or go quiet the second the front door opens, Your system is executing an automated defense mechanism that was learned in childhood. It's just subconscious. Growing up, I remember hearing my father's van door shut at about five o'clock every night, Every single night. The moment that car door slammed, I could tell the immediate shift in the room as I absorbed the deep anxiety in my mother. As a codependent, She lived in a perpetual fear of his disapproval, And she modeled that exact fear for us, Her children. The second she heard his vehicle arrive, Her whole body would tense. Through her reaction, She taught us that pleasing him was the ultimate priority, Far more important than whatever we were feeling or needing in that moment. She modeled complete self-erasure. Teaching us to be subservient, To worry about his moods, To take care of his moods, And to be very afraid of whatever his opinions were of us. We knew that we had needed to please my father to keep the peace. Neurologically, This environment conditions your brain to treat an incoming authority figure or spouse, Not as a loved one, But as a potential environmental threat. The sound of a door opening acts as an acoustic trigger, Instantly shifting your autonomic nervous system from a social engagement into a state of fight, Flight, Or freeze. Your voice shuts down, Your chest tightens, And you go quiet because your subconscious mind learned that hiding your true self and minimizing your presence was the safest way to survive an unpredictable or hypercritical atmosphere. This is how it shows up today. This manifests in adulthood as a partner enters a room and raises their voice, For example. You immediately abandon your own comfort and presence to scan the room, To scan their mood. You immediately feel like you're walking on eggshells and you lose yourself. Now to break this loop from above the veil of automatic reaction, You must consciously bridge the past to the present moment. So the next time you feel that sudden impulse to quiet down or shrink when someone enters the space, Just pause. Bring a physical anchor to your body. Again, Place your hand on your heart or tap your forearm and remind yourself that was then and this is now. Consciously take a deep full breath and speak one simple grounding thought out loud to yourself, Which is going to reassure your nervous system that you no longer need to erase yourself or your existence to be safe. That can sound like I am enough and I matter. I matter simply because I exist. Number five, Saying no costs you three days of guilt. Take Terry for example. When her sister asked her to dog sit over a holiday weekend, Terry wanted nothing more than to say no. But the moment the thought crossed her mind, Intense and she reluctantly agreed, And she said yes anyway. Terry grew up in a home plagued by narcissism, Where her boundaries were treated as betrayal, And saying no was met with explosive anger or cold rejection. And because her safety depended on keeping the peace, Her young mind linked boundary setting directly to danger. And years later, Even a simple request from her sister triggers the exact same ancient survival mechanism. From a neuropsychological point of view, Perspective, Terry's brain hasn't learned that the threat is over. And when faced with the request, Her amygdala senses potential conflict and immediately overrides her rational prefrontal cortex, Sending a surge of adrenaline cortisol through her body. Now, Because her nervous system was repeatedly conditioned to fear saying no, Declining a request activates an intense threat response, Which her body then experiences as a lingering wave of guilt. That guilt is an accurate moral judgment. It's simply her autonomic nervous system stuck in a fight-or-flight state, Desperately trying to pull her back into compliance to help her nervous system feel safe. This is how it shows up today. It manifests as automatically saying yes to requests before you even have time to think, Constantly over committing yourself out of terror of disappointing people. When you do manage to set a boundary, You spend days agonizing over it, Over explaining your reasons and Excessively checking in to make sure the other person isn't secretly angry with you. So here's the first step out. You have to re-educate your nervous system. You have to show it that saying no is safe today. Start small by practicing in low-stakes situations where the threat feels minimal. Practice saying no thank you to a retail offer or declining an extra topping at a restaurant or delaying a response to a non-urgent text with let me check my schedule and get back to you. Each time you hold a tiny boundary and survive the temporary discomfort, You begin to build a new neural pathway proving to your body that that was then and this is now. I love that one. Here's number six. The steady ones feel boring to you. I remember thinking that love was supposed to be intense. My first teenage romance was wildly emotional, Marked by dramatic highs and dramatic lows. We would fight, We'd make up, And cycle right back into the same chaos. And when that relationship finally ended, I started dating guys who seemed stable and kind, A few of them. I remember dating a guy who felt stable, Who felt kind and came from a great family. But instead of feeling safe, My brain interpreted their stability as completely boring. I couldn't feel a spark unless there was anxiety attached to it. Now, From a neuropsychological standpoint, This isn't a personality flaw. It's a habit of a dysregulated nervous system. Unpredictable or chaotic home, Your brain simply learns to associate emotional uncertainty and hypervigilance with connection. Safe, Predictable people don't trigger that familiar spike of adrenaline and cortisol, So your brain misinterprets peace as a lack of chemistry. Reality what felt like passion and unhealthy relationships was actually your body recognizing the familiar storm of childhood trauma while genuine stability feels unfamiliar and therefore boring to a nervous system that's looking and addicted to chaos. Now it shows up in adulthood as repeatedly walking away from emotionally healthy consistent partners because you misinterpret peace and predictability as a lack of chemistry. Instead you find yourself drawn right back toward emotionally unavailable or unpredictable people chasing the anxious spark that your nervous system mistakenly mistakes for real love. Now here's a way out. To break this cycle you have to retrain your brain to reframe peace as safety rather than boredom. The next time you find yourself feeling uninterested in someone who is consistent, Emotionally available and respectful, Pause and name what is actually happening. Say to yourself, This person isn't boring. My nervous system is just adjusting to the absence of drama. Give stability a chance to feel normal by staying in the quiet discomfort for a little longer, Allowing your body to learn that calm is where real love actually lives and grows. Number seven, You fall for potential, Not people. You meet someone who has a glimpse of brilliance, Deep vulnerability, Or moments of intense sweetness, And you instantly fall in love with who they could be. Be, Rather than who they actually are. You find yourself overlooking chronic red flags, Broken promises, Or emotional unavailability, Telling yourself, If they've just healed their past, If I just love them more. If I just do enough, Then they will finally step into their full potential. You grew up in an unhealthy home. This isn't just optimism. It's deeply ingrained survival habits. As a child, You couldn't change your parents or escape your environment. So your young minds survive by focusing entirely on the potential of your caregivers, Hoping that one day they would wake up and give you the safe, Consistent love that you always deserved. Now, From a neuropsychological perspective, Falling for potential keeps your brain trapped in a state of projective identification and dopamine-driven anticipation. Your nervous system becomes addicted to the chase of fixing someone because fixing them subconsciously promises the resolution of childhood trauma. When they show a fleeting moment of progress, Your brain gets a massive hit of dopamine, Reinforcing the cycle. But biologically, This keeps your body in a chronic stress state, Waiting for the other shoe to drop while ignoring the reality in front of you. You aren't relating to the person that's standing in front of you. You are relating to a fantasy project designed to save your inner child. Now, Here's how this shows up today. In adulthood, This manifests as staying and draining one-sided relationships where you act as a therapist or their savior, Making constant excuses for a partner's toxic behavior while waiting for them to change. You end up exhausting yourself trying to fix or upgrade people, Clinging to the rare breadcrumbs of hope, Rather than accepting the reality of who they are today. Here's one of the steps that you can take to break this loop. You must anchor your perception in present moment reality using a simple metacognitive audit. Whenever you feel yourself making excuses for someone's behavior or daydreaming about their future, Ask yourself this grounding question. If this person never changes a single thing about who they are right now, Would I stay? Write down only their observable, Consistent actions, Not their words or their apologies or their underlying pain. By forcing your brain to evaluate reality instead of potential, You disarm the old childhood defense mechanism and teach your nervous system that safety comes from accepting the truth, Not by fixing others. Number 8. Strangers know more about you than your own family does. This one is a painful one. So you feel more comfortable sharing your biggest promotions, Your deepest heartbreaks, Or your creative wins with coworkers or online communities or people you barely know, While your immediate family knows almost nothing about your actual life. On the surface, This might feel confusing or bring up a sense of guilt. But is actually a massive red flag signaling a protective mechanism. Your inner self knows, Based on decades of lived experiences, That your biological family is not a safe container for your truth. When you share good news, It's met with subtle envy, Dismissiveness, Or competition. When you share a struggle, It's weaponized, Judged, Or met with toxic positivity. From a neuropsychological perspective, This distance is a healthy and adaptive defense response. It's really important that we all recognize that our brains operate on emotional threat assessments. If revealing your authentic self to your family historically led to shame, Invalidation, Or emotional withdrawal, Your nervous system learned to classify them as unsafe. Seeking validation or comfort from strangers or casual acquaintances feels lower risk because their reactions don't hold the power to trigger ancient attachment wounds. Sharing with outsiders satisfies your natural human need for connection and without putting your emotional survival on the line. Now here's how this shows up in adulthood. This manifests as emotional as feels like an emotional wall where you keep your family interactions strictly superficial. So you stick to safe topics to weathers and logistics. At the same time you find yourself freely pouring your heart out to people you hardly know. You're able to share deep personal milestones or seek genuine comfort in online support groups with casual acquaintances. Or even with total strangers. Now, Here's one of the things that you could do to break the cycle. Now the way out. To break the cycle of self-blame and honor your intuition, Practice radical acceptance using a simple internal boundary check. Before calling or texting a family member with updates about your life, Stop and ask yourself, Am I sharing this with them expecting the reaction I deserve or the reaction they usually give? Am I sharing this with them expecting the reaction I deserve or the reaction they usually give. Accept that their inability to celebrate or comfort you is a reflection of their emotional limitations, Not your worth. Consciously choose to save your authentic truth, Both successes and struggles, For safe individuals who have proven they can hold space for you without judgment. Number nine, Someone asks you what you feel and they're static. Imagine being a child who constantly has to manage the emotions of everyone else in the room. To keep your environment safe, Your attention was forced outward, Scanning your parents' faces, Measuring their tone of voice, And absorbing their stress before it could turn into a big conflict. In a home where an adult's feelings take up all the air in the room, There is simply no space for small children. And over time, The child's mind learned a stark reality. Having your own feelings is a liability. So to protect your attachments and avoid being a burden, Your brain hit the mute button on your inner emotional experiences. Now, Neurobiologically, When someone asks you today, How do you feel, And you hit a wall of blank silence or mental static, Your system is experiencing emotional dissociation, A state known as alexithymia. When turning inward was historically paired with danger, Fear of overwhelming stress, The neural pathways connecting your body's physical sensation to your brain's language centers were deliberately downgraded. The static isn't a lack of emotion. It's an automatic circuit breaker tripping in your nervous system. Your brain is scrambling the signal to keep you from accessing a part of yourself that it still believes will cost you safety. Now here's how it shows up today. This manifests as an automatic habit of overriding your own preferences to keep others comfortable. Often defaulting to, Oh I don't care, Whatever you want, Because tuning into your true desires feels surprisingly scary. Completely out of reach. Now to clear the static, You must bypass the demand for complex emotional labels and return to simple somatic sensation. So when someone asks you how you feel and your mind goes blank, Don't force a word like sad, Angry, Or anxious. Instead, Drop down into basic physical observation. Ask yourself, Is my body warm or cool? Is my chest tight or is it open? Are my hands soft or are they clenched? By naming raw physical sensations instead of big emotional concepts, You rebuild the dormant neural bridges between your body and your mind, Teaching your nervous system step-by-step that it is safe to tune back into your own frequency. Number 10, You watch other parents with their kids a second too long. I remember walking down the boulevard as a little 10-year-old girl completely alone and staring at other little girls from my school shopping with their mothers. And it ached deeply to watch them holding hands, Witnessing a warmth and connection, Because I didn't have that with my own mom. And years later, When I visited my best friend's house, I saw the clothes her mother had lovingly brought and laid out on her bed for her. My heart sank again because her mother was generous and attentive and wanting her daughter to feel truly cherished. I can still feel a sharp pang of those moments, But today I finally understand why it hurts so much. You cannot grieve what you don't realize you missed until you see it right in front of you. Now, From a neuropsychological perspective, Watching a healthy parent child dynamic triggers what is known as relational grieving or retroactive attachment hunger. When you grow up in an emotionally cold or neglectful home, Your brain builds defense mechanisms to adapt to the absence of warmth. But when you observe genuine maternal attachment, Your mirror neurons fire, Reflecting back the precise comfort, Safety, And care your system was denied. That sudden realization pierces through your subconscious defenses, And it activates the limbic system and bringing hidden grief to the surface as physical pain. Watching a second too long isn't just nostalgia. It is your inner child recognizing the biological birthright they were forced to live without. Here's how this shows up today. Now, Underlying attachment deficit shows up as a lingering sense of emotional isolation and an unexplainable pang of grief whenever you witness unearned tenderness. Now, You might find yourself freezing or staring a second too long when you see a mother gently tucking her child's hair behind their ear. An older parent calling just to check in, Or a family sharing an unscripted warm laugh at a nearby restaurant table. In adulthood, It often manifests as a deep-seated belief that other people possess a secret blueprint for love that you were left out of, Or as an automatic tendency to pull away, Shrink, And feel vaguely embarrassed whenever someone tries to offer you gentle, Unprompted care. Now, To process this pain without spiraling into like old feelings of emptiness, You must redirect that observed love back to your inner child. So the next time you catch yourself watching a parent and a child and you feel that familiar ache in your chest, Pause and acknowledge the grief instead of pushing it away. Again, Place your hand on your stomach or your heart and say to yourself, It makes sense that this hurts. I didn't get that back then, But I'm here to give myself that tenderness now. By consciously offering yourself the gentle validation you as a child, You transform an unbearable trigger into a moment of deep self-reparenting. She felt helpless, She felt overwhelmed, And she was unable to regulate her emotions. She was the adult daughter. Of an alcoholic, Volatile father. At work, Her adult prefrontal cortex was in total control, But at home, Her husband's subtle shifts in tone and mood acted as a temporal trap door, Instantly pulling her back into the emotional posture of the frightened child at her family's kitchen table so many years ago. From a neuropsychological perspective, This happens because trauma gets stored as implicit somatic memory rather than chronologically ordered past events. So when you grew up with a volatile or unpredictable caregiver, Your nervous system maps intimate relationships and home environments as high-risk zones. While you can build high-functioning adult competence and neutral spaces like your career, An intimate setting triggers your brain's age regression mechanism. The moment a partner or family member exhibits familiar posture, A frown or tone, Your amygdala hijacks your system, Offering your 50-year-old brain and leaving an eight-year-old's fight-or-flight freeze response to handle the interaction. This shows up in adulthood and manifests as a jarring duality where you feel confident and articulate and highly respected in professionalism or in your career or a public setting, Yet feel completely powerless and emotionally reactive or small when dealing with your family, A partner, Or an authority figure. So you find yourself reverting to childhood defense mechanisms, Stomping off, Shutting down or frantically pleasing and wondering why afterward how someone so capable at work could lose control so easily at home. Now to break this age regression loop you need a conscious time and space reality check to bring your adult brain back online. You have to catch this, So the moment you feel that wave of helplessness or childish panic during domestic interaction, You have to physically pause, Feel both feet flat on the floor, Look down at your hands and your wedding ring, And consciously state to yourself, I'm 50 years old, Sitting in my own home, And I am in total control of my safety today. By physically anchoring yourself in your current body and your surroundings, You pull your nervous system out of the memory and reinstate your adult agency. Number 12. You can't answer a simple question about where you want to eat. Now imagine Tommy. He's a son of a narcissistic father. Growing up, Nothing Tommy did was ever good enough. His father constantly told him he was a waste of life, Who would never amount to anything, While his mother stood passively by without ever defending him. Now to survive in an environment where any preference or action could provoke an explosive criticism, Tommy learned that having a personal choice was dangerous. His young brain adapted by becoming hypervigilant by shutting down his own desires and scanning the room to see what everyone else wanted instead. From a neuropsychological perspective, When you grew up where expressing preferences invites ridicule or conflict, Your brain links decision-making directly to emotional threats. Deciding where to eat or choosing a movie might seem low-stakes on the surface, But to a hypervigilant nervous system, Expressing a preference feels like stepping into a trap. By forcing yourself to have no opinion, Your brain executes an automatic self-erasure strategy to stay safe, Keeping you in a passive state where you can't be blamed or criticized for making the wrong choice. In adulthood, This manifests as extreme decision-making fatigue and chronic conflict avoidance over the simplest everyday choices like where to eat, What movie to watch, Or what to order. You automatically default to saying, I don't care, Whatever you want, I'm fine with anything. Because turning inward to check your actual desires triggers a quiet wave of anxiety or a blank, Indecisive freeze. To break this subconscious habit, You must practice making low stakes micro choices without asking for an external consensus. So the next time someone asks you where you want to eat or what you prefer, You have to pause and force yourself to name a choice even a tiny low-pressure one within five seconds. I'd love Mexican food today or I prefer sitting outside. You want to remind your nervous system in that moment having a preference is safe and I'm allowed to have one. By making small firm choices and surviving the moment without catastrophe you're reprogramming and you're re-educating your subconscious mind and teaching it that your desires are no longer a threat to your safety. Here's number 13. You still say it wasn't that bad. Now consider Tyson, A client of mine who grew up in a home shaped by an alcoholic father and a narcissistic mother. Despite the constant walking on eggshells, The emotional neglect and the explosive volatility, His parents repeatedly insisted and expected him to agree that he had a wonderful, Privileged childhood. To preserve his attachments to his parents and protect himself from the overwhelming reality of his environment, Tyson's young brain adopted their narrative. He learned to minimize his own suffering, Convincing himself that because he had food and he had shelter or wasn't physically battered every day, That he simply had no right to complain. Now, From a neuropsychological perspective, Calling your past not that bad is a subconscious coping mechanism known as cognitive minimization and emotional blunting. Adult children of alcoholics do this all the time. Minimizing is often the absolute last piece of childhood adaptation. After you've learned to freeze and appease and erase your needs, Downplaying the severity of your reality becomes the final psychological shield that allows you to maintain the illusion of a safe home. When an environment is too painful to accept, The brain disconnects from the emotional weight of the experience to keep you functional. But denying the truth carries a heavy, Long-term cost. It forces you into a state of chronic, Low-grade numbness, Severing your connection to your intuition, Invalidating your genuine emotions, And leaving you vulnerable to repeating the exact same toxic dynamics in adulthood because your system refuses to recognize them as harmful. Now in adulthood, This manifests as an automatic reflex to dismiss your own trauma, Your own pain and valid emotional boundaries. Whenever you share a painful childhood memory or face a current relationship crisis, You immediately follow it with qualifiers like, But others had it worse. They did the best they could, Or it really wasn't that bad. You find yourself struggling to grant yourself permission to grieve downplaying present day treatment and feeling an irrational sense of guilt, Whenever you try to acknowledge the actual cost of your childhood. To break this habit of minimization, You must practice radical reality. Naming without adding a defensive buffer. The next time you recall a painful memory or recognize an emotional pattern from your past, Catch yourself if you start to add, But it wasn't that bad. Stop, Take a deep breath and state the objective truth plain and simple. Simply, What happened to me was painful and severely impacted my nervous system. Removing the softening language allows your brain to finally align with your body's lived experience, Honoring your inner child's truth, And allowing your true healing to begin. Nobody would look at my childhood home and call it abusive. There were no visible bruises, No overt violence. And on paper, We look like a normal family. But the real damage happened in the quiet, Casual destruction of my inner world. Whenever I was visibly upset, No one ever asked me why. When my mother's alcoholic brothers poked fun at me just to get a reaction, She said nothing. When I cried, I was labeled a drama queen. And when I reached for the last potato at supper, I was called selfish. When I was about 12 years old, My mother and my brother found my private journal, Read it, And laughed out loud while I stood there feeling completely undone, Violated, And utterly alone. And when I reached for support, My father knew how cold and critical my mother was, Yet he did nothing to protect me. And society wouldn't label that as abuse, But my nervous system recorded it as absolute erasure. As a result, I battled an eating disorder, Obsessive thinking, And an anxiety disorder. I developed mysterious rashes, Chronic migraines, And eventually quit nursing school because I simply could not handle the pressure or the stress. Secretly terrified to surpass my mother's success, Fearing that becoming a nurse would only give her more fuel to criticize me. I self erased. I developed deep codependency and lived in a constant subconscious terror of other people's disapproval. I married and nearly lost myself entirely with three children in tow. But I'm here now and I'm healing, Living above the veil. And I have learned to master my mentality, My emotions and my expectations and my inner thoughts. It was not an easy climb, But it was worth every step. And today I am the master of my reality because I learned to master those inner habituated survival programs and I learned how to rewrite them from above the veil. You cannot play with the tools that were never put in your shed. Nobody handed them to you. You did not even know tools existed and that was never your failure, But you're not a child anymore and you can go get them. And you just were never meant to go and get them alone.

Reviews

That was very good, Lisa, although it hit a bit too close to home in some spots. It's amazing how I could have written the same things you say. It's very sad, actually. Thank you for sharing this with us all. Namaste. 🙌🏻 🫶🏻

Lisa, this talk was brilliant - I love the format. Several of these resonated & several I've worked through - it's exactly how you describe. The content of this track is very rich. Thank you!! 🙏🏻

What an incredible and deeply beneficial and important talk. Thank you.

Wow!