Childhood Trauma & Abandonment Affect All Relationships

Childhood trauma that is tied to abandonment, affects all adult relationships. Codependency is a manifestation of childhood abandonment and various forms of trauma. If you seek approval, feel invisible, people-please, are hypervigilant and perfectionistic, it is time to STOP and do all you can to heal from codependency. Lisa A. Romano Codependency Expert breaks it all down.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about codependency and abandonment trauma.

So what is it to experience codependency?

What does it mean exactly?

Those of us who tend to be people pleasers,

Those of us who tend to love too much and expect too little,

Those of us who find ourselves making excuses for the people in our lives that are being irresponsible.

If you are a rescuer or you are an enabler,

For instance,

And there's someone in your life who has an addiction to alcohol or a chemical addiction or is evading criminal prosecution,

Someone that you are looking to help avoid being held responsible for their actions,

Then this would imply that you have codependency.

It means that you have a difficult time setting boundaries.

It means that you tend to be people pleasing in fear of losing other people's approval.

If you're codependent,

You seek approval.

If you're codependent,

You've experienced some type of abandonment,

Perhaps a physical abandonment,

The loss of a caregiver very early on in life or sometime in your childhood.

There is emotional abandonment,

Which is tied to emotional neglect,

Where you grew up feeling that like you didn't matter.

Your parents and caregivers may have treated you with indifference.

You may have had very controlling parents,

Very narcissistic parents,

Or you're the adult child of an alcoholic and your needs were just not met.

And very early on,

You realize that the world was not a safe place.

You are someone who was unable to attach securely to a primary caregiver.

And in lots of cases,

It's the mom,

Not always,

But in lots of cases,

It's the inability to attach securely to mom.

In some cases,

It's the dad who has severely abandoned the family and has left the children aching and feeling not good enough and worthy of their love.

There's a desire to feel good enough that is never really satisfied.

And at one point in the child's journey,

The child learns to believe that it is their fault that they have been abandoned.

It's their fault that they've experienced this trauma.

It's their fault that they have been emotionally neglected.

It's their fault that they don't feel good enough.

When you grow up and you don't feel good enough,

You develop ways to cope.

People pleasing is a way to cope.

Perfectionism is a way to cope.

When we are not given a self-identity,

When we are neglected emotionally and psychologically and spiritually and mentally and physically,

We get the message that the self that we are does not matter.

How then does a child develop a healthy sense of self if the parents and the caregivers give them the sense that who and what they are and specifically their needs are irrelevant and they're unimportant?

You can't.

You can't as a child come into this world and develop a healthy sense of self and believe that the world is safe,

Safe enough for you to express who you really are if from the moment you were born you have repeatedly experienced the world as hostile.

When you cry and you get you get abandoned.

When you cry and you're told that you have no right to cry.

When you're mocked by your caretakers.

When you're ignored.

You don't have to tell a child that they're not good enough.

Just ignore them.

What happens to a young child that comes into this world completely powerless and is born to this type of a situation?

This child never gets an opportunity to securely attach to a primary caregiver.

It's essential to attach to a primary caregiver.

It's essential for our brains to be able to wire for connection for us to experience a sense that we are worthy beings and it's okay that we come to planet earth and express what's on our heart.

We're going to be received fairly.

People are going to love us.

They're going to protect us especially when we're powerless.

When you have the opposite experience and you are taught that who you are and what you think is irrelevant and when you are taught that when you open your mouth and you dare to express yourself it's not good enough.

When you are humiliated.

When you are not allowed to attach to a primary caregiver in a healthy way then you learn to believe on an innate level on a visceral level that the world is not safe.

You struggle with abandonment issues.

You have been abandoned.

You don't feel like the world is a safe place.

In the abandonment you're unable to figure out who you are.

What makes you feel worthy?

You can't because you're in a state of survival.

You're just trying to get your needs met.

In most cases you're just trying to avoid more pain.

So it's not even that you're trying to develop yourself.

You're just trying to avoid more pain.

When you come from a home that is emotionally neglectful and you have been abandoned by your primary caregivers you don't know it.

You don't know that there's something wrong with your family.

You don't know that there's something wrong with mom.

You see mom is raging.

You see that dad can't emotionally regulate.

You don't understand alcoholism.

You don't understand narcissism.

You don't understand borderline personality disorder.

You don't understand depression.

All you feel is unsafe.

When children feel unsafe they have to find a way to feel safe.

And one of the ways children feel safe is they become hyper vigilant.

When you become hyper vigilant you are tuning yourself up to what's happening outside of you.

So you pay very close attention to what mom is doing.

You pay very close attention to what dad is doing.

You pay very close attention to what's happening outside of you.

And in doing so you are abandoning the self.

But that is not your fault.

You're only trying to survive.

So why do children become hyper vigilant?

Children become hyper vigilant in an attempt to find some sense of power,

Control,

And a sense of safety.

It's all tied to survival.

If I can figure out what's going to set my mother off then I might be able to control how she responds to me.

If I can figure out what makes my mom happy,

And in most cases it's compliance,

It's shutting up,

It's not being a burden,

It's don't have any need.

How many of us who discover that we're co-dependent discover that we don't know what we think and we don't know what we feel,

We don't know what we need.

How many of us are lucky enough to get to a point where we recognize that we move through life hyper vigilant worrying about everyone else but ourself.

How many of us are lucky enough to awaken and realize that in doing so we're trying to survive,

We're trying to figure out how to prevent ourselves from feeling terrified the terror of abandonment.

This is a very true fear.

When you are co-dependent you are struggling from abandonment trauma.

You don't know it.

You just know your coping skills.

You don't even know that they're coping skills.

This is literally just the way you show up in life.

You rescue,

You enable,

You people please,

You feel like a doormat,

You feel out of control on the inside and one of the ways that makes you feel like you're in control is by acquiescing and subjugating your needs for the sake of others.

It is so natural for you to just disown this self for the sake of a relationship.

You are seeking a sense of identity.

When you are co-dependent you don't have a healthy sense of self.

Again it is not your fault.

How could you develop a healthy sense of self when you were taught that you were nothing and like I said a parent doesn't have to teach a child and stage a child you are nothing.

All a parent has to do is ignore the child,

Pretend that the child is irrelevant,

Make fun of the child,

Never tell the child that they're good,

Never tell a child that they're valuable,

Don't show up for parent teacher conference,

Don't care that it's their birthday,

Don't check their homework,

Don't ask them if they're hungry,

Don't pay attention to them when they look like they're frightened,

Just ignore a child.

Give the child the impression that who they are is irrelevant to you and that child will be unable to develop a healthy sense of self.

What happens to us when we are these children and we go out in the world?

We become women and men who love too much.

We become women and men that don't know how to meet our own needs.

We become women and men that think that love is conditional.

We become women and men that think that in order to feel like we are enough we need to meet the demands of other people.

We never even consider that we have needs.

We never even consider that we have desires or that we have goals.

We become the third leg of everyone else's stool.

What do you think?

What do you feel?

What do you need?

I want to help you figure out what you think and what you feel and what you need and when I figure out what you think,

What you feel and what you need,

Then I know how I can live,

Then I know how I can be in this relationship.

And so oftentimes we end up in these relationships with people who are self-centered,

In relationships with people who have serious addiction issues.

We end up in relationships with people who have agendas and who are completely self-absorbed and we play right into this relationship dynamic.

We end up seeking the approval of this other person.

We are completely blinded to the fact that we are loving too much and expecting too little.

We don't understand we have tremendous abandonment issues.

We are living below the veil of consciousness.

We do not know that by default because all children are born asleep in a sleep state and remain in a hypnotic brainwave state up until the age of seven.

So whatever we learned in childhood,

Whatever our coping strategies were as a seven-year-old child,

Become the framework for the way we react in adult relationships.

So we become women and men stuck in these relationships.

We feel so stuck.

We feel so powerless.

We don't know how to get out of it because we don't know what we're doing is wrong.

It's all we know how to do.

It's what we've been doing our whole life,

Trying to be perfect,

Shutting ourselves down,

Loving people who are oftentimes unlovable,

Loving and trusting people who are not trustworthy,

Rescuing people,

Figuring out ways to save people and in doing so,

Developing a sense of identity.

Certainly if I'm a martyr,

Certainly if I am selfless,

Certainly if I worry about my family and never ever ask my family to ever consider my needs or my feelings,

Certainly I'm a good person.

When you are codependent,

You don't feel like a good person and this is probably one of the saddest things that happens to those of us who struggle with codependency,

You feel like you're innately bad.

You have tremendous shame.

Somewhere along the line,

We all assume that it's our fault that we've been abandoned or that we feel this way.

We oftentimes don't even realize that we've suffered from abandonment.

Lots of times our homes look perfect.

Mom goes to work,

Dad goes to work,

The house is clean and there are three meals on the table every day and we think that because what we see looks okay,

It looks good and because we're not suffering from the big t traumas,

We don't understand the loneliness,

The fear,

The loss that we feel,

The abandonment that we feel,

The rejection that we feel.

It doesn't make sense to us because the people who are raising us aren't acting like it's a big deal to ignore the children in the home.

They act like this is normal and maybe it is their norm but that doesn't mean it's healthy.

When you are raised by people who cannot appreciate you for who you are,

Then you are programmed to believe that there's nothing valuable about you and you become an adult who goes out into the world feeling abandoned,

Feeling tremendous loss,

Feeling tremendous fear about feeling alone in this world and you run from this fear which is what CPTSD is like.

You run from this fear of feeling abandoned,

Feeling like you are on planet earth all by yourself.

You're the two-year-old in a diaper on the Brooklyn bridge,

Traffic's coming in both directions and you are like where is my mommy and mommy is nowhere to be found.

That is what it feels like to experience the terror of abandonment as a child and that is why a child's mind will go to great lengths to avoid feeling this way and that is why a child will be compliant.

That is why a child's inner reality becomes easily distorted by the denial patterns of a dysfunctional family.

That is why children fawn.

That is why children become hyper vigilant.

That is why children develop anxiety.

They don't feel good enough and they don't know why they don't feel good enough and in an attempt to feel good enough they acquiesce to the needs of other people in a hope that they'll be able to attach to someone in the future but unfortunately it doesn't work.

I don't care who you are if you are codependent and you are seeking approval and validation and a sense of self from outside of you although under the circumstances it makes complete sense why anyone would do that at the end of the day there isn't one person outside of you that's going to be able to fill up that hole inside of you.

Not one person and until enough people who struggle with codependency awaken they keep looking outside themselves for this perfect relationship.

I've heard people say oh I'm just a romantic and whenever I hear someone say that I think no you're probably codependent or you're not you're probably codependent or you're a love addict.

You're thinking that in the fantasy of a romantic relationship you're going to feel enough.

It's intoxicating.

It's absolutely intoxicating to believe that there's one person outside of you that is going to love you enough and to make up for all of your mommy issues and all of your daddy issues but it's just not true.

It's nothing but a fantasy.

If your parents had done a good enough job then you would feel secure in yourself.

So dear one that is the goal.

The goal is today feel secure in yourself to stop seeking approval on the outside to recognize that you were abandoned even if your mom and dad say that's ridiculous.

If you feel emotionally neglected and if you believe that you have experienced abandonment trauma regardless of how perfect your family looked this is a reality for you.

It doesn't mean that you go on social media and you blast your parents or you do what you can to embarrass them or even argue with them because they're stuck in their own reality and that's okay.

The goal is to detach.

You don't have to fight and prove yourself,

Improve your reality to other people.

That's part of the problem.

I would say that's an aspect of codependency looking to be approved and validated looking for permission to feel what I feel.

My life changed when I accepted how I felt.

When I in spite of my parents thinking they did a wonderful job at putting me down and thinking in their head that if they put me down that I would be humble.

They were unaware that what they were really trying to do was control me and to control my needs because they didn't know how to satisfy the needs of a child.

They couldn't even meet their own needs and so if you cripple a child's self-esteem then this child ends up stifling their needs.

They end up being very compliant.

They become soldiers and they follow along.

They never raise any problems in a family system which is what their goal was.

So the consequence was to destroy my sense of self without any insight into what that would do to me in the future and what happened.

What happened to me happens to a lot of people.

I know this because of all the coaching programs that I've launched and the Facebook groups that I run.

We end up with eating disorders.

We end up self-harming.

We end up internalizing this shame and believing that we're not good enough and the pain and the anxiety becomes so much that we need an escape and as odd as it sounds anybody that's had an eating disorder you know what I'm talking about.

Having an eating disorder whether it's a binge eating disorder,

Whether it's bulimia,

Whether it's overeating,

Whether it's starvation,

It's something that helps us distract from our internal chaos.

It's something that helps us take our mind off of the pain.

It's something that we think we can control but ultimately ends up controlling us.

But again when you're struggling with abandonment trauma,

When you're struggling from emotional childhood trauma,

You don't know this is what's happening.

That's why one of the things that I keep saying is we live below the veil of consciousness until we recognize that there's a veil and awareness is key.

Cognitive awakening is the first step in healing from codependency and addressing our abandonment issues from childhood.

Namaste everybody until next time.

I do hope this has been helpful.

Bye for now.

Reviews

Wow. That is what happened. Thank you. A perfect explanation of how I got here. Then the recording abruptly stops. I’m glad for the good information and I’d like to know what next to heal.

This was very eye opening for me! Thank you 🙏

Thank you, for explaining, and putting words to what I could not express, not understand to this level. 🙏💞

Wow, you nailed it Lisa! I thought I had resolved my codependency long ago, however the complete understanding of how I came to be and the extent it has had played into other areas of my life is still there and a work in progress.
Much appreciation for this insight, there’s so much to unpack.🙏

Dayum. It really sunk deep.

Very interesting

Thanks I resonated with a few things from this podcast

I recognize my codependency from abandonment... but I am clueless about how to help myself.

Lisa always puts into words, what and how I am feeling. I’m so grateful for the tools Lisa gives me so I can know my feelings. I’ve never been allowed to have my own feelings or thoughts, so I don’t know how they “feel”. I’m learning! THANK YOU

Nailed it. That was my life, which I thought was normal. Explains a lot. Thank you🙏💕

Felt this in my sole

Very helpful! Thank you!

Thank you so much Lisa 🙏

I get so much inspiration and understanding from your talks- keep them coming 👍💖

Great description. I desire an episode for remedies. Thank you.

Wow! Incredibly enlightening. Thank you!!!

Thank you Lisa, you really nailed it 👌 I have had abandonment issues all my life and first recently become aware of this, I'm still trying to accept and understand why 🙏

I would love to hear more about how to overcome the issue, if you have any insight I would love to hear more ☺️

Childhood emotional trauma & abandonment trauma clearly explained here. I'd highly recommend, if you suffer from a poor sense of self or struggle with feeling good enough. This is very informative and empathic.

You just described my life as a codependent 😢. A life that got me sick and tired of living it. Feel grateful for awareness that got me here and now. 💖✨