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.
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 we hear the word codependency and it sounds like a buzzword,
Like what is codependency?
When I was going through,
I would say,
The most profound breakthroughs in my life where I was having physical collapse.
I was having a spiritual identity collapse,
Like is there even a God?
Like life was so painful.
I was losing control over the household,
My home,
The children.
I was in the middle of a horrific divorce and family judging me and friends not understanding.
I felt so alone and I was cracking.
This codependent shell that was a psychological,
Neurological,
Nervous system,
Subconscious straitjacket had become too much and the inner being that I was,
I just could not deal with the pressure that was the result of being codependent.
So here I was in the middle of a collapse.
I was breaking down emotionally,
Mentally,
Psychologically.
Anxiety was through the roof.
Depression was through the roof.
I mean it was really,
Really bad.
I felt like I was coming undone.
And when you're in the middle of that type of a storm,
When you've gone to therapy,
That hasn't worked.
When you've gone to 12 steps and that hasn't worked.
And when I say worked,
What I mean is there's no relief.
There's no understanding inside your head that gets you from point A to point B and there's no pathway forward.
You can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
That's what I'm talking about.
Like when therapy has failed,
When talking to friends has failed,
When medication has failed and you are codependent and you don't know it,
You do not recognize that what's wrong is subconscious processes,
Belief systems,
Automatic default actions,
Behaviors.
It's a processing problem.
When you turn on your computer and it's wonky,
You immediately think,
Oh it must be a virus.
You don't think the computer is wonky.
You think something happened to the computer.
That's why it can't compute.
I felt like nothing computes.
I try to please everybody.
I don't take care of myself.
Isn't selflessness,
Isn't that the answer?
Like isn't it bad to take care of myself?
Isn't it bad to look good?
Isn't it bad to buy myself clothes?
Isn't it good that I walk around with sneakers that are dirty?
Doesn't that mean I'm a good person?
Isn't it bad that I look good and my kids look good?
You know,
Isn't the way that my kids just look good?
That they look pristine?
Isn't it good that I look like a tired wreck and I'm always complaining about how tired I am but my house is pristine?
This facade that people with codependency live with.
Isn't it good that if I'm the first person at the party and I'm helping the hostess and I'm the last one to leave,
Doesn't this over giving and over functioning,
Doesn't that mean I'm a good person?
If I'm always anticipating the needs of my husband and he doesn't even have to ask for his favorite mouthwash or his favorite shaving cream,
I'm buying him his sneakers,
Geez he doesn't even have to go to the shoe store to buy a pair of sneakers,
Doesn't that mean I'm a good wife?
Doesn't it mean that I'm good or good enough?
If dinner is set on the table every night and breakfast and lunch and I'm making him lunch and I call him throughout the day and I make sure he's okay,
I take care of whoever I can take care of in his family,
Doesn't that mean I'm a good person?
That's what's wrong.
It is this unconscious drive that codependent,
Especially codependent women,
Associate with self-sacrifice as meaning they're good enough.
So what does that really mean?
So that means we never felt good enough.
If you have enough salt in your body you don't crave pretzels,
Right?
Think about it.
If I'm craving enoughness that means I never felt enough.
That's what's wrong but even that's not deep enough and only someone in my opinion who has traveled deep enough inside the belly of codependency,
Which would inevitably bring you to your shadow,
It would bring you to that wound that Gabor Monte talks about,
The mortal wound of a child's soul when they come to planet Earth and there's nobody emotionally attuning to them,
Even if they're fed,
Even if they're bathed,
Even if they're clothed.
It's the emotional attunement that a child's nervous system is trying to sync up to.
It's sort of like you need this this wire to attune to as a little baby and it's just not there and so if you can't sync up to that satellite then you have nothing but static in your system and that's emotional static and that comes at a cost to our mental health,
Our neurological health,
Our psychological health,
Our mind,
Our brain actually can't wire to a healthy sense of self that has whole object constancy where we can see ourselves as sometimes we make good decisions and sometimes we don't but we land in the middle.
We have this sacred chalice of gold in our hearts.
It is our true self and then we know that we're enough,
That you know sometimes the ego gets the best of me which only means that I'm unconscious in that moment and I haven't made a conscious choice.
I have defaulted to some type of egotistical,
Narcissistic,
Unmet need while unconscious doesn't mean that I'm a bad person.
It just means in that moment I was unconscious and I let my ego get the best of me.
We see we we know what's up and we use this language all the time we just don't pull it together and so when we're thinking about codependency we want to understand it's that deep and so yes I'm going to be brought to the belly of my shadow and I'm going to learn about why I have this deep deep wound this lack of emotional attunement but even that's not enough because you actually to heal it and to process it which is always not criticizing Abraham Hicks or any of the gurus out there or the the most well-known law of attraction teachers out there or people that are teaching this idea of like change your thoughts you change your life it's true but here's the thing you can use your thoughts to change your life but if there's energy everything comes from energy first the Manhattan skyline I live in Manhattan the Manhattan skyline was once not there it's only there because enough people had the thought which is energy and then acted on that energy and then made that happen followed it to fruition so they had them they had a vision desire thought emotion action visualization and accumulation of momentum allowed this Manhattan skyline to come into fruition and so while there are a lot of law of attraction teachers out there and I got caught in that feeling so guilty I must be doing something wrong I'm just not forgiving enough I'm just not loving enough no it was I didn't go deep enough deep where like some people think well I okay I get it my mother was an alcoholic or my father was a narcissist I get it my mom was codependent and she was addicted to pleasing my alcoholic father and she never left him and he was he was a really ornery guy and we lived in fear my whole family was shut down by fear and mom didn't leave it's not about judging mom it's like what was the consequence of you growing up in a situation where you were afraid all the time your nervous system wired to that fear and there is energy there the energy of fear you're arrested so you can't just think your way out of that like oh I'll just think happy thoughts and your nervous system will never adjust to that there has to be an uptick which means that there has to be an emotional shift which means there has to be an energetic shift and this is where I think a lot of people get lost they go into 12 steps they go into therapy and like oh I understand my childhood trauma mm-hmm not enough you need a system and a framework that allows you to access that energy from a higher state of consciousness and not only that you need a system and a framework that helps you interrupt those patterns in real time not only that you need a system and a process that holds you gently accountable so just so you know like this is the goal so I was there I felt the anxiety come on I felt myself wanting to people please or enable or say I'm sorry or over function or over apologize or take care of that thing and I just said no to myself inside and then no no to the people on the outside and I was editing myself in real time and I could actually be accountable and feel the energetic shift that's what creates lasting change and that's what's missing in a lot of our current modalities and that's why I teach the way that I teach why because I've been there I had a false awakening once I was diagnosed with codependency I was like oh I know what's wrong we're codependent like you don't want to change then adios let's get a divorce I didn't realize I was codependent and I didn't realize how deep codependency was it was in my bones it was a sense it was a way of being it just doesn't disappear when you divorce the husband with the mustache no that doesn't happen it's with you and what we want to understand is that just consciously and cognitively understand I'm understanding on the adult child of a narcissistic mother or on the adult child of an alcoholic mother I've taken you know this type of resource I've read these books on codependency recovery I worked with this life coach I did this if everything that you're doing is not creating the energetic shift and not helping you to hold yourself accountable because real shift happens when there's a shift in consciousness a shift in energy and then there's up now I'm gonna hold myself accountable and I'm gonna do different next time it's not about shame so when you're dealing with codependency recovery if you resonate with this work you want to make sure that you are really thinking deeply about the consequences of being codependent because I had no idea how deep codependency was I had no idea for example I was arrested I had this tremendous fear of the unknown I was I was preventing myself from being able to find the confidence to walk in the fog in other words like when you're codependent you're trying to control a potential outcome which means you're not in the field of the unknown which means you're living from fear you're white knuckling it and yet our destinies and our fate are also determined by being able to let go of the unknown for example when I was in the middle of that firestorm of a divorce I was letting go of everything I had nothing else I had the people-pleasing failed enabling failed stuffing myself failed you know eating disorder failed like overthinking failed working myself to the bone failed being a codependent friend fail everything failed like shutting my mouth mouth at the dinner table even though I know my family was obnoxious and wrong failed like everything failed and it was then that I walked into a complete unknown it I always say it felt like I my kids and I like stepped off a cliff and I fell into the unknown and it was super scary because I had no coping skills to grab on to like I was looking for a stick to help me stop falling but I just kept falling and at the time I thought this is the worst thing in the world like I am terrified like the pits of depression and brought me right to my shadow all of my fears but here it is all these years later 25 years later and I knew that I was not meant to be with my husband probably many years before then but afraid and afraid it'll change it'll change I just have to love him enough I just have to shut up I just have to do this and it'll change it never changed it just got worse but all these years later when I look back and I say to myself that was that was your destiny it was your destiny to step into the unknown because codependency was a straitjacket and I would have never ever ever blossomed and become who I am today manifested my husband manifested his children manifest this business I have a mission-based business how fortunate I am but none of that would have happened in the straitjacket of codependency so I really if you are resonating with my work and you are interested in understanding more about childhood trauma child and emotional neglect being raised by a narcissistic mother or narcissistic father being raised by codependent parents being raised by emotionally immature parents more than likely you're gonna have a lot of crossover with adult children of alcoholics for example who we can't have fun we are rigid thinkers we tend to be very controlling we fear authority we're always on guard always on guard always on guard and we're great in crisis we're great in crisis but if this work is resonating with you I really hope that you've been inspired to really think about the consequence to creating your destiny and stepping into your true destiny your true role as the true self now looking back all these years that that trauma was supposed to be the path that was the path and when I say trauma I mean the falling off the cliff or jumping into the abyss all of that was very concerning and it was overwhelming I felt so alone I always felt alone but it was just like more right here yeah you really are alone like you can't love this man enough to get him to love you back you can't sacrifice enough to have people said good girl your validation is never gonna come from the outside ever and and it's it's the wrong dopamine hit it's like addiction it's like heroin oh I I was a good girl today my mother-in-law said good job Lisa it's a dopamine hit right now I'm addicted to it when else can I get that dopamine hit what else can I do for people for that dopamine hit it's an addiction man and when you let go of codependency you go into complete withdrawal you realize oh my god like this was hurting me it was making things worse and it's making people disrespect you it makes people look down on you and you teach them yes you can take advantage of me yes I'm here forever yes I'm a doormat oh my god and your life just gets worse and worse and worse is less and less energy for you and so if you're in that place where it feels like the walls are closing in I promise you that in a few more years if you stick with this if you stick with true true codependency recovery where you understand that you have to edit your mind and your fears in real time and then you have to have a framework that helps you hold on so that as you're editing in real time you're not people-pleasing you're saying no your nervous system kicks up you have a goal like this is not only a pattern interrupt this is self-correction and this is editing this codependent program in real time which is essentially my work is all about metacognition I teach metacognitive skills I teach behavioral skills I teach consciousness skills I help you slow down your mind so that you can actually catch the faulty behavior in real time then learn how to fix it and hold yourself responsible and keep going as you're doing this the one thing that I want to encourage you is to understand it's very normal to feel powerless it's very normal to feel like the walls are closing in and I can tell you in my own life all of that fear was part of my process it was me shedding who I never was and becoming who I truly was it felt like my skin was being ripped off it's a rough analogy but that's really how it felt but I really want to encourage people because sometimes people think well I'm in the throes of fear there must be something wrong no there's nothing wrong you're at a precipice like if you can learn to trust that fear it's telling you something it's just a mirror to something that you've experienced that you're probably running from but when you gently learn to look at that fear from a higher state of consciousness and you embrace that fear is and it's just a part of you because you had fearful experiences and no one attuned themselves to you imagine being three years old and thinking there's a boogeyman in the closet and your family's laughing at you you really think there's a boogeyman in the closet and that fear and gets stuck inside of you at a somatic level and no amount of positive thinking is going to help you rid yourself of that fear of humiliation of being left alone of being terrorized and there's no one there to help you which is essentially what abandonment trauma feels like and so if you're in the throes of codependency recovery if you're new to codependency recovery if you're new to inner child work or shadow work or being the adult child of an alcoholic or narcissistic parent you're probably going to come to a point where you feel like everything's closing in on you don't give up don't isolate the answer is to not isolate the answer is to seek the right support and understand that your brain and your nervous system your psychological self probably isn't going to let go of what is until it has something else to hold on to that was that was my case like my mind my subconscious mind was not going to let go until it saw a light at the end of the tunnel for me that was metacognition to me that was a framework that helped me get through my day as I was processing codependent beliefs from a higher state of consciousness if it if you're there don't give up if you feel like the walls are closing in don't give up reach out there is a way out and you're just shedding what you never were your destiny is what's inside of you your destiny is what codependency has been preventing you from experiencing it's time to break
