Letting Go Of Those You Love

Adult children of alcoholics, and those raised in narcissistic, toxic, neglectful, and unpredictable homes, who decide to dive into self-growth, self-help, and emotional healing, inevitably learn that they cannot unsee what they see now that they have awakened to the truth of their toxic family dynamics.

This can be a distressing time for someone who has identified themselves as a caretaker, rescuer, people pleaser, and who has felt responsible for maintaining family relationships, at all costs, and even at the expense of their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health.

It is bittersweet to awaken to the truth of a toxic family system, and to be confronted by the fact that just because you can see the truth, it does not imply the people you love, who you have been enmeshed with and you have tried to save, fix or rescue, will want to see what you see.

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.

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.

I wanted to have a session about letting people go that we love.

Because inevitably,

Throughout life,

We are born into families.

Things don't always work out.

We have friendships that don't always work out.

We grow,

We learn,

We start to discern,

Our spirit opens up,

It sees things it never saw before,

And we are often faced with this what feels like ethical,

Moral,

Spiritual,

Emotional conundrum.

Like,

Who do we choose?

And oftentimes,

I have had to really go back to the beginning to really understand how to make such choices.

When we love family members and things go awry,

Especially if you're on the recovery path,

And you're beginning to understand codependency and toxic family dynamics,

You eventually,

Hopefully,

Come to a point where you're seeing the toxic patterns.

And sometimes,

Seeing the toxic patterns comes through physical illness or a mental health crisis,

A spiritual crisis,

An identity crisis.

Some blow up with the kids,

Blow up with a family member,

Blow up with a friend,

A loss of a job,

Maybe a divorce in an affair.

Really horrible,

Horrible,

Difficult situations that leave you gutted and feeling raw and exposed.

Like,

What happened?

And that's how humans learn.

I do believe that eventually that will change.

Humans are growing,

And they're learning,

Especially with the speed of the internet and how quickly information is being passed.

And so I do believe that we will eventually be a species that does not need pain to evolve.

But that being said,

Most of us do not change until that latent pain is activated.

And all that we have suppressed,

And all that we have denied,

And all that we have rationalized just comes barreling to the surface.

Like I said,

Sometimes through a disease,

Which is a dis-ease of spirit and mind and emotion,

In my opinion,

It's like trying to make a square fit inside of a hole.

Most of us from toxic families have been doing that since day one.

We're trying to fix what's wrong,

But yet we don't know what's wrong,

And we don't know that the rules by which we play life are what's wrong.

We can't see them.

It's not something that you can see,

Taste,

Or touch.

What's wrong is non-physical.

What's wrong is a blueprint by which has been shaped by your five senses.

And now,

Because we're all below the veil of consciousness,

Even the Bible says,

When man is born,

A great sleep falls upon him.

And this is scientifically true.

The subconscious mind is in control.

Subconscious implies you don't know what's governing your life.

You might know what ticks you off.

You might know what people tick you off,

But you won't understand the mechanics.

And your ego is blind,

And your ego is self-serving and self-preserving,

And every ego is that narcissistic part of us that really has a difficult time seeing what's really wrong.

If we are narcissistic more than codependent,

Then we will sacrifice the relationship to preserve the ego.

If we are codependent,

We will sacrifice the self to save the relationship,

But we won't know why.

The ego doesn't question why.

The ego just follows the prompt.

Whatever prompt has been prompted to your subconscious mind as a child,

That is the first intelligence that is governing your life.

Not much different than AI when it comes to feeding a system information and that system only being able to spit out what has been seeded.

We all reap what we sow.

And it's difficult to come through these veils,

But I think that we need to understand why we have to come through the veils.

And I have gone very often back to my spiritual roots.

And although I was raised a Catholic,

I have moved through many different spiritual teachings.

I've studied many different spiritual laws,

Spiritual understandings,

Everything from,

I would say Christianity to Buddhism to Taoism and everything in between,

So that I could flush through all of it and eventually come to a place where what I was thinking made sense to me.

And I've been blessed,

I believe,

And I am content at this point.

And tomorrow something could come across my path that shakes everything up and causes me to question everything.

But right now,

I feel like I have assimilated some ideas and beliefs that settle in my heart.

And from time to time,

I do find myself looking for answers in spiritual teachings like the Bible because that's the most familiar to me.

And not everybody has to agree with me.

But for those who are similar to me and who have felt forgotten and who have felt abandoned by the people that they love the most,

Who have been wrapped up in codependent thinking,

In toxic family rules and laws,

Feeling guilty about detaching and going no contact,

I wanted to share some biblical scriptures that have really helped me with emotional detachment.

Because when we're in toxic relationships,

There is no detachment.

We're confused.

We don't even realize that we're,

In many ways,

Idolizing a pattern,

A program.

We idolize staying in the graces of a sick family system.

For years,

I idolized my mother,

And it was her love that I sought,

And I could never get it.

And I didn't understand that she was wounded.

And I couldn't see when she was trying to be kind to me.

I didn't trust it.

And it made for a very difficult childhood.

And very early on,

I felt like,

This woman just doesn't love me,

And it must be my fault.

I mean,

So many things,

So many things.

When I was going through my divorce,

I did not have my parents or my siblings on my side.

It felt very adversarial.

And many of us grow up in toxic family systems affected by things like alcoholism,

Which was my family's case,

Where my mother idolized my father,

Where she craved his validation.

She craved the connection.

She was so afraid of being abandoned by him and gave him no reason to abandon her.

And certainly,

That goes back to her abandonment wounds,

Having both an alcoholic father and mother and a father who died of a massive heart attack when she was 19.

So yeah,

My mom had lots of abandonment issues,

And she idolized my dad.

And I,

In turn,

Idolized her and idolized my family,

Seeking their approval.

And what I learned by reading scripture with open eyes and a broken heart,

Which really comes down to humility,

You know,

Asking for help outside the self,

Admitting that I can't do this from within the system.

I need a different system.

And for me,

That new system has always been,

Although I didn't know it at the time,

Rooted in love.

But understanding what love really is can be a challenge because when we're children,

We associate fear with love.

I love the mother who criticizes me.

I love the mother who gaslights me.

I love the mother who can't love me.

I love the mother who,

When I look into her eyes,

All I see is disdain and disgust.

I love the father who is cruel to my mother.

I love the father who makes excuses for why he can't provide for the family.

It goes on and on and on.

So most humans have an association,

Albeit subconscious,

With fear and love.

So they're kind of mixed into one test tube.

And my journey had to involve and consider separating fear from love.

And that was so scary in and of itself.

I mean,

It made sense to me that the Lord or God,

Whoever,

The spirit,

The creator of this book or the world or whatever,

The universal laws that govern all time and space,

It made sense to me that I would find in scripture,

For instance,

In Isaiah,

I am the Lord.

That is my name.

I will not give my glory to anyone else nor share my praise with carved idols.

Now,

That made sense to me.

And also the scripture,

John,

From John 1,

5,

21,

Dear children,

Keep away from anything that might take God's place in your hearts.

And that really struck me,

These two ideas that we can't idolize anything else.

We can't have people in our hearts that we're chasing.

We can't associate or continue to associate fear with love because that's not love.

And fear mixed with love is disease.

Disease of spirit,

Disease of mind,

Disease of body.

That's where dis-ease comes from when we mix fear with love.

When you are a codependent woman,

For example,

Or a codependent man,

You associate love with fear.

You feel like you have to earn love.

That is the opposite of love.

Love just is.

It's freely given.

And if you think about scripture,

God is love.

There's nothing that you had to do to earn this body.

There's nothing that you had to do to earn this brain or this mind or this spirit,

Nothing.

And when you meditate on these concepts,

Your spirit moves,

Energy moves,

Your mind releases its old pattern.

And you have to meditate on these ideas long enough so that ego has to give way because ego is a construct.

And you operate from a fear-based system,

Which is a survival system,

Which implies the amygdala and the limbic brain essentially are governing your entire perceptual faculties.

So everywhere you see,

Everywhere you look,

Everything that you feel is tainted by fear.

But you don't know it.

You don't know it.

And so that's why I choose to only work with people who meditate and people who journal.

Because people who meditate,

People who journal,

People who take their thinking seriously,

They have considerable breakthroughs because they understand that what's wrong is a construct.

What's wrong are belief systems that have shaped the ego identity.

And they're under the spell of their personality.

And they need time to sit,

Ponder,

And contemplate.

We should all start our day with deep contemplation.

We shouldn't run to answer our emails.

We should commune with the self,

The spiritual self.

We should activate metacognition,

Which is improving your ability to think about the way that you think.

Without stillness,

You can't observe the way that you think.

Without stillness,

You don't know that you might be idolizing a narcissist or prioritizing their approval.

You might not know that you're idolizing the number on a scale and thinking that,

Oh,

If I was just this thin or I weighed that amount,

Then I would be good enough.

Then people would love me.

Then people would accept me.

If you don't go into the stillness,

You don't know whether or not you're idolizing social media.

If you don't go into the stillness and commune with your spirit,

You don't know if you're giving your glory to something outside of you.

When instead,

Everything that you need,

Love,

Is inside of you.

So when I read the scripture,

Dear children,

Keep away from anything that might take God's place in your hearts.

John 1,

5,

521.

That calls me back and allows me to accept the ripping off of my skin that happens when I begin to awaken and realize that I have emotionally enmeshed with a family member,

When I have emotionally enmeshed with one of our children.

Let's face it,

When you are codependent,

You have fixer,

People pleaser,

Personality traits.

That's like trying to change the color of your hair.

You have to change this trait.

The only way you can change the trait is to replace it with a new belief system.

That takes time.

And when we are emotionally detaching and letting go of people,

I believe that going back to the basics for some of us,

Many of us,

And relying on the oldest book on planet earth.

Now,

We can argue that scripture has been interpreted,

And I agree with that.

We can argue that the Bible in and of itself has been rewritten many times.

I would agree with that.

We can say that the lost gospel of Thomas,

The lost gospel of Mary Magdalene were not included.

We could wonder why,

And all of those questions would be legitimate.

I'm not saying that the Bible is not something that someone with a good dose of,

I would say,

Skepticism could not argue and say,

You know,

Lisa,

This book has been rewritten so many times.

You're such a logical person.

Why do you refer to something that has been rewritten so often?

And I would say that a good dose of skepticism is necessary.

And I believe that that is scriptural,

That we are supposed to question,

We're supposed to ponder.

When you are considering something,

You're supposed to consider all aspects of it and emerge from that pondering,

From what feels right within your soul.

You're not supposed to take my word for it.

You're supposed to,

From any leader or any coach or pastor or whoever,

You know,

Someone that you look to for guidance and you find their ideas similar to your own or intriguing,

You're not supposed to just take it and say,

Oh yes,

This is because so-and-so said it.

We're supposed to take these hints and study them and ponder them and see if scripture comes alive in our hearts.

When I listen to people,

I wait to see if what they're saying comes alive inside my soul.

It could be something so innocuous to someone else,

But it means something to me.

It's a message,

As Carl Jung would say,

A symbol that has been meant for me.

And that's all I want to do for anyone who follows my work.

I try to be as transparent as possible with my journey because if it works for me,

It might work for you.

And if you're listening,

I'm assuming that you've been led here and that's not a coincidence.

If you've been following my work,

I mean,

I've been at this for a very long time.

You might benefit from what I'm sharing with you today.

This idea that it's okay to go to find your inspiration in a rock.

If you find it in a rock,

I found inspiration in a rock when I was going through my divorce and I stared at a rock and I realized that that's what I was dealing with in my marriage.

My ex-husband did not want to change and I thought,

I want to change.

I can see my flaws now.

I can see how as a codependent that I came off very controlling because I was trying to preserve the relationship and I was afraid of abandonment and I was so fear-based and I wanted to let that go.

I didn't want that bondage in my marriage,

But my ex said,

I don't want anything to change.

And so when I looked at the rock and I just meditated on the rock,

I thought,

I'm kicking this huge boulder and I want it to turn into a pillow and that's not going to happen.

And I collapsed into the grief of that and into the loss of that.

And when we are called to grow spiritually,

Mentally and emotionally,

We have to let go of the bad,

But also the good so that when we move forward,

We don't fall back.

You see a lot of people when they're ending relationships,

They focus on the bad.

They make a list of all the bad and that's wonderful,

But that's short-sighted.

What I ask people to do is to make a list of the bad as well as the good because when you let that go and you're looking at it realistically,

When the wind comes,

When a holiday comes and you get a text or when a birthday comes and you get a text or you bump into someone who knew you and your partner before and they start questioning you about the relationship,

You can stand there steadfast in love,

In love of self,

In love of your God self,

The God within you.

You can know that two cannot walk together unless they are agreed.

That's from Amos 3.

3.

And this scripture speaks to the fact that alignment matters.

If someone is not walking with you in truth and connection and effort or integrity,

The relationship just simply cannot function.

Relationships function because on a day-to-day basis,

There is an agreement.

There is love there.

That's the basis.

So,

If there's a blip on the radar screen on a Wednesday,

You recover pretty quickly by Friday,

But two cannot walk together unless they are agreed because walking together implies a partnership,

It implies love.

And when you're in a toxic relationship,

Toxic relationships are built on fear and control.

And that's not love.

And the only thing that will stand the test of time is love.

So I'd like to end this session by going back to John 5.

21.

Dear children,

Keep away from anything that might take God's place in your hearts.

And even if you're not a scriptural person,

Just think about this.

I'll rephrase it for you.

Dear children,

Keep away anything that might take love's place in your heart.

Dear children,

Keep away from anything that might take peace,

The place of peace in your heart.

Keep away from anything that takes joy,

Joy's place in your heart.

Take away anything that removes contentment from your heart.

Think about how you want to feel on a daily basis.

Think about how you would feel if you had trust that you were enough,

If you really knew that you were enough,

That you were love.

If you really knew that you were love,

Then you would have faith in the idea that you deserve love.

And you would anchor yourself to the idea that I am enough.

I am enough.

I come from love.

The spirit of love is what has created this magnificent,

Miraculous body.

My mind,

However,

Defaults to fear,

And that's not my fault.

But what if I could make way for love and only love?

What if I could let people go,

Knowing that we're not equally yoked?

And I did so knowing that letting go brought more peace into my heart,

Brought more contentment into my heart.

What if I knew that and I could believe that?

And I also recognized that in doing so,

I was raising my vibrational frequency for love.

I was attuning to love.

Your life would change.

It would have to,

Because that's quantum law.

And there is no.

.

.

Where I am,

Spirituality is quantum law.

And if you study quantum law deep enough,

The observer effect,

For instance,

And I don't want to get into that in this session,

But if you haven't studied quantum mechanics,

If you haven't studied wave-particle duality,

If you haven't studied the law of vibration,

Then it's easy to poo-poo it.

So we want to be aware,

And we don't want to be ignorant,

And we don't want to push something away,

Which is what the ego does when it doesn't understand it.

And so I would just be open to these ideas that as we start paying attention to what we idol,

Do we idol fear?

Do we idolize fear?

Do we make fear the priority?

Meaning,

Do I make attaching to people,

Mortal people who bring me pain,

Do I make their approval my idol?

Well,

That's idolizing fear over love.

It's an illusion to think that we can be good enough for other people and eventually feel love.

That's an illusion.

You can't get there from there.

You can't get to love from fear.

Fear begets more fear.

And many people die in fear.

My mother,

In my opinion,

A codependent woman seeking my father's approval died in fear.

I know my father died in fear,

And it doesn't have to be that way.

And so I hope that these scriptures have helped you today and make it easier for you to let go of the people that you have loved.

And I hope that it helps you make room for more love and more peace.

I hope it helps you understand that you were built for love and you were built for peace and that the perfect love casts out all fear.

And we have to start trusting the love that we are.

We have to start putting faith in that.

It is not easy.

I've been through this journey.

It was so hard.

It's still hard because there are still people in my life that I love very much that I've had to push out of my life,

And that has been a very difficult thing to do.

But I am able to love them without fear with them outside of my inner boundary now.

And that love feels more like spiritual love than the love of fear,

The love of trying to rescue,

The love of trying to help them,

The love of caretaking,

The love of rescuing,

The love of hoping that I could save them in a way that I wished someone would have saved us as children.

I've been able to let that go and allow true love to move in.

So I'll say it one more time to your children.

Keep away from anything that might take God's place in your hearts.

Rescuing is taking God's place in your heart.

Caretaking,

Rumination,

Worrying about things that you can't control,

That's taking place of God or love in your heart.

And so I hope that you're inspired to ponder these ideas,

To meditate,

To go into the silence of solitude,

And to really start taking a more metacognitive,

More conscious look at what's in your heart and what's taking the place of love in your heart today.

Namaste,

Until next time.

Reviews

You touched down so many great things in this stock. have you noticed more more people talking about what Jesus was saying and not turning it into a religion lately? especially in Cynthia Bourgealt’s book, the wisdom Jesus. the other thing you said is, I’ve had to walk away from my three siblings. There was so much gaslighting, and judgment. It’s sad, but they’re not gonna change. So I love them in my heart. Namaste 🩵💙🩷💜🩵💙🩷💜

So very wise
Thank you

At the end of my notes for this session I wrote the question, “What do I idolize?” The answer, “acceptance,” came quickly as did the next Q/A: “What do I fear?” “Rejection.”

I’m wondering if you have a topic or other “bone to throw” at me to meditate on to effectively get to the root. I have some daily affirmations I listen to and I do other meditations that I’m sure play into it as well as working on being an observer. Do I just need to persist or is there some advice you might offer? 🙏🙏🙏

Great talk! Very validating! Thank you for sharing your story & your wisdom. 🙏🏻💜

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