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 today we're going to be talking about the roots of anxiety and how we can understand generalized anxiety disorder through childhood experiences,
Otherwise known as GAD.
So GAD is often described as a persistent and excessive worry about various aspects of life,
Including our health,
Finances,
Relationships,
And social interactions.
While anxiety is a natural response to stress,
Those with generalized anxiety disorder experience it in a way that can be debilitating.
As a life coach specializing in adult child trauma issues,
I've seen firsthand how the seeds of anxiety can be sown in childhood,
Particularly when a child experiences neglect or emotional unavailability from the caregivers.
So let's talk about the impact of neglect in childhood.
So consider the story of my client,
Megan,
A bright and sensitive child who grew up in a household where emotional expression was discouraged and dismissed as unnecessary and frivolous.
Her parents,
Busy with their careers,
Often overlooked her need for validation,
Which was quite normal.
She also needed empathy and understanding and affection.
When Megan sought comfort after a bad day at school,
Her mother usually said,
You'll just be fine.
Just focus on your studies.
Or she'd say things that sounded like this,
This too shall pass.
Everyone has a bad day.
You have it easy compared to me,
Compared to when I was your age.
This was the case for Megan over and over and over again.
When she tripped and scraped her knee,
She was told to stop crying and to just suck it up.
When her puppy was hit by a car,
Her father insisted that tears were a waste of time.
Her parents rationalized the situation by saying,
At least the dog had a good life until it was hit by a car.
Megan's natural shock,
Sadness and grief and loss were forced to be suppressed.
Sadly,
Megan also began to doubt her feelings were rational and valid.
When Megan was a teenager,
She bought herself a new used car.
One day,
Her older sibling took the keys to the car without asking and totaled the car.
When Megan heard the news,
She immediately began to yell out of pure aggravation and frustration and yeah,
Outrage.
When she was quickly scolded,
Minimized and chastised for being insensitive,
Megan's natural response to being violated was squashed promptly by her parents who had no clue how to give Megan the right to express her valid emotions.
She was outraged that her sister took her car and totaled it.
And when she expressed those feelings,
Her parents told her that she was insensitive,
That her sister could have been killed in a car accident and that she was being selfish.
So what does this do?
This further pushed Megan's feelings deep into her body cells where they would stir and manifest as anxiety throughout her life,
But she never understood what was going on.
In high school,
She complained to her mother about being bullied.
Megan had become the target of a bully who seemed to enjoy taunting Megan,
Who tended to be quiet,
Shy and timid.
When Megan finally mustered up the courage to tell her mother what was going on and through teary eyes,
Her mother said to her,
Well,
What are you doing to provoke this bully?
While seemingly benign,
These responses created a profound sense of neglect in Megan.
They also laid the foundation for her distrusting her emotions,
Lacking boundaries in relationships and ruminating and obsessing over whether or not she could trust her feelings.
She also worried incessantly about what other people thought about her.
When we met,
She said she felt like she was going crazy and shared that she felt powerless for much of her childhood.
Over time,
In her childhood,
She learned that seeking help and talking about her feelings were futile and that her feelings were invalid.
As Megan grew older,
The emotional pain of her childhood experiences began to surface as generalized anxiety disorder.
She also noticed that her relationships tended to be one-sided.
She related very much to the symptoms and traits of codependency.
The internalization of her neglected emotions and being minimized as a child led to a hypervigilant state,
An ever-present alertness to potential threats or disapproval from others.
In her mind,
The world became a place where she had to constantly scan for signs of danger,
Rejections or failure.
This hypervigilance was not just a habit,
It was a survival mechanism born from the fear of abandonment that had been ingrained in her since childhood.
So let's talk about the psychological processes at play.
The interplay between pain and pleasure,
In my opinion,
Is central to understanding how generalized anxiety disorder develops.
When a child experiences emotional neglect,
Their brain learns to associate emotional expression with pain rather than pleasure.
The absence of nurturing responses will teach a child that vulnerability is not safe.
As a result,
We will suppress our emotions as children to avoid further pain.
This becomes our pattern and our program,
Albeit subconscious.
This emotional suppression can lead to a buildup of unexperienced feelings like anger,
Sadness and fear that the child never had the opportunity to process.
In Megan's case,
Her hypervigilance directly resulted from her learned behaviors.
The pain of her childhood experiences created a nervous system that was constantly in overdrive.
She became hyper aware of her surroundings,
Always anticipating the worst case scenario.
This state of being kept her in a cycle of anxiety where the anticipation of pain overshadowed any potential for pleasure or joy.
Internally,
She would have a feeling well up and then learn to quickly doubt that the feeling was valid.
Therefore,
Emotions could never be processed,
Not cognitively,
Critically or energetically.
Negative emotions are energy in motion and learning to honor,
Observe and give them the respect they deserve is critical to the self-actualization and healing process in which the inner child has the absolute chance to mature and merge with the authentic self.
Now let's discuss abandonment trauma and hypervigilance.
So hypervigilance and abandonment trauma plays a significant role in the development of,
In my opinion,
Generalized anxiety disorder.
Children who grew up feeling abandoned,
Whether physically or emotionally,
Often develop deep seated fears of being alone,
Unlovable and unworthy of connection,
Protection and consistent warmth from a loving caretaker they cannot help but crave.
This fear can manifest as hypervigilance where the individual becomes overly sensitive to social cues and potentials for rejection.
For instance,
The hyper focus on not being included by others or being afraid of being criticized heightens the nervous system and disrupts the person's ability to chill out and relax and remain present and engage in active listening.
Instead,
The person with generalized anxiety disorder feels as if their mind is 1000 steps ahead of what is happening at any given moment.
Rather than being present,
Their minds anticipate what might get said in the next moment and then try to imagine what they might say in response to the potential words that might be spoken by the person they are talking to.
And if this sounds confusing,
It will sound completely clear to the person with generalized anxiety disorder.
Those with generalized anxiety disorder create worst case scenarios in their imagination.
They can spend countless hours,
Days,
And weeks worrying about a situation that may never occur.
In Megan's case,
She worried that her future in-laws would find some fatal flaw in her,
Which made it impossible for her to relax and reveal her authentic self,
Which was beautiful by the way,
And learn about the new members of her family.
She felt as if she needed to stop her emotions around them,
Fearing that they,
Like her own family,
Would find her too much or shut her down for daring to appear authentic.
While her fiance was very understanding,
He was emotionally intelligent enough to help Megan realize that her childhood wounds were causing her to project her fears onto his family,
And that he would very much appreciate her finding a way to work through that before they walked down the aisle.
And I thought that was incredibly magnificent of him.
So Megan eventually learned to observe her patterns from a higher state of consciousness.
In time,
She understood that her anxiety stemmed from a fear of repeating the abandonment,
The rejection,
And the criticism she experienced in childhood.
For Megan,
Every social interaction became a minefield.
She would replay conversations in her head,
Worrying about what others thought about her.
This behavior was rooted in her childhood experiences,
Of course,
Where she felt invisible and unworthy of attention,
And was dismissed and invalidated when she dared to express an authentic emotion,
Especially when she expressed fear or anger.
In her adult life,
The fear of being ignored or dismissed led to a constant state of anxiety,
And she also began seeking reassurance from those like her fiance all the time,
While simultaneously fearing his rejection and the rejection of his family.
Megan's healing path was really rooted in her understanding of what was causing the generalized anxiety disorder.
Individuals like Megan need to recognize that their anxiety is not a character flaw,
And in many cases,
It is a response to unprocessed emotional experiences,
Patterns,
Programs,
And subconscious fears that are at play.
Therapy and life coaching can provide a safe space for individuals to explore their feelings,
Confront their past,
And learn healthier coping mechanisms.
By acknowledging and validating emotions and the family roots that created these deeply ingrained subconscious programs and patterns,
Individuals can begin dismantling the hypervigilant patterns and programs that have taken hold.
This process often involves gradually allowing oneself to experience their emotions that were previously suppressed,
Which can be difficult and painful,
But necessary.
This transforms pain into a pathway for growth and understanding.
Generalized anxiety disorder is something that I have learned to break through in my life.
As I embarked on my personal healing journey,
I embraced meditation and self-inquiry as my primary keys to healing and transformation.
By slowing down my mental field and then asking myself self-inquiring questions,
Doors to my subconscious mind began to appear.
In time,
I could observe the patterns clearly that were downloaded and brainwashed into me by my family of origin from a higher state of cognition and consciousness.
When this awareness took hold,
I realized that what was wrong with me was never me.
It was just my programming.
And once I could see the patterns clearly,
I needed to commit myself to the grueling and exhausting process of self-accountability.
The main goal of this process was to make deliberate new choices to rewire my subconscious mind and my brain effectively.
I knew I had to retrain my brain,
And I knew that I had to start associating pain with hypervigilance and staying stuck,
And to trying to control things that I couldn't control,
Like what other people thought about me.
I recognized that in my own life,
I focused more on what I did not want to happen than on what I did want to happen.
And then I realized that my poor body was just responding appropriately,
By the way,
To the quality of my thoughts.
In time,
I was able to overcome generalized anxiety disorder completely.
And although it took me years of deep,
Introspective healing and transformational work to get here,
Every step was worth it.
So dear one,
Please understand that if you have generalized anxiety disorder,
It can be really challenging.
But it is also an opportunity for profound personal growth when you take it upon yourself to do everything that you can to try to figure out if your anxiety is due to repressed emotions and perhaps faulty subconscious childhood wiring,
Where you are associating,
Albeit the subconscious level,
Pain with expressing yourself and pleasure with distrusting yourself.
This can be an opportunity for profound personal growth,
As it has been in my own life.
By understanding how childhood experiences of neglect and abandonment shape our emotional responses,
We can begin to heal and reclaim our lives.
As we learn to express our emotions safely and authentically,
We move from a state of hypervigilance to one of empowerment.
It's transforming to be able to understand how to process your emotions.
We can transform our relationship with anxiety into one of understanding and resilience.
So dear one for today,
Know that if you were never taught how to validate your human emotions,
Your brain and mind don't have the data to do that today.
But the good news is with the right tools,
Guidance,
Support,
And wisdom,
Your consciousness can be expanded and your mind can be retrained to validate your emotions without needing to recoil,
Deny,
Suppress,
Minimize,
Worry,
Or judge what you notice coming up into the mental field.
I know this to be true because I have done it successfully and I have helped thousands of other people do it too.
Ultimately,
It's not just about alleviating anxiety.
It's about embracing our full emotional selves and with finding peace within the complexities of our experiences in the now,
Navigating the memories and the stored somatic experiences tied to the past with grace,
Skill,
And higher consciousness.
Dear ones,
We got this.
Namaste.
Until next time,
As I bow to the love and light that is absolutely in you.
Bye for now.
