The Trojan Horse Of Relationships

In this episode, Life Coach Lisa A. Romano discusses the Trojan Horse of relationships. If you battle insecurities, there is always the potential for these unhealed wounds to surface in your relationships with others. Unhealed emotional wounds from the past can cause anyone to become triggered when relationships with others begin to show signs of vulnerability. Listen in and learn about how you can avoid allowing insecurities to become the Trojan Horse of your relationship.

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 why insecurities can be seen as the Trojan horse of relationships.

So today I wanted to raise the question that I think many of us in our lifetime have dealt with in partners or friends,

As well as raise the question for ourselves.

When we are trying to relate to other people,

One of the biggest mistakes that I think that we often make is that we undervalue or underestimate our insecurities.

And in interpersonal relationships,

That's when and where our insecurities will surface.

And it makes sense,

Right?

If you are struggling with some insecurity,

It's supposed to come to the surface for the sake of it being processed,

Eliminated,

And dealt with so that you can learn to be more comfortable in your own skin.

And on the personal growth journey,

Those of us who are here to develop what is better known as a success mindset,

Those of us who are looking to spiritually evolve,

Those of us who understand that we need a little bit of help regulating our emotions,

Especially when stressed and when triggered,

Eventually we understand that,

Oh,

I was supposed to love myself.

I was supposed to honor myself.

I was supposed to deal with these insecurities so that they didn't plague me for the rest of my life and my ego wasn't always in control.

So the part of our personalities that struggle with insecurities,

It's not our higher self,

It is definitely our ego self.

And the ego self can be seen as our lower self.

And we all have a lower and a higher self.

The more conscious we become,

The more able we are to connect to the higher self.

The less conscious we are,

And we can see this in ourselves and in society at large,

Those of us who are not as conscious as we could or should be generally behave very poorly.

We have a difficult time thinking rationally.

We have a hard time controlling our emotions,

Especially when triggered.

We tend to think that people should be a certain way and we get stuck like a rock between another rock and a hard place,

Thinking that there's something wrong with this idea that people don't see what we see or think what we think.

And it takes a certain level of self-awareness.

It takes the ability to think about the way that you think,

Which is better known as metacognition.

It takes some wisdom to recognize that you are a unique person and you have come with a unique purpose.

You have innate value.

And if you're moving forward in life,

In my opinion,

On the proper path,

Then you are experiencing evolution of spirit,

Evolution of mind.

Your body is becoming less diseased,

Meaning that you are flowing with the energy of love,

With the energy of expansion.

You are not stuck and you are not constricted.

When we think that people have to think the way that we think,

We are constricted because we are trying to control something we don't have the right or the ability to control.

And it is my opinion that at our core,

We are all energy and energy is meant to flow.

And if we think about the universe and if the universe is us pushed out,

The universe is expanding.

Science proves that,

That the space between or the distance between planets and stars is expanding.

And so the very nature of reality or our universe is expansive.

And so when we are stuck,

When we struggle with insecurities,

When we are codependent,

Which means that we have suffered an abandonment trauma,

We have an insecure attachment where we were never able to securely attach to our caretakers.

That is not our fault,

Dear one.

So our ideas or our energy around love is an anxious one.

It's not secure.

Those of us who were raised by alcoholics,

Those of us who were raised by narcissists,

Parents who were aloof,

Parents who were emotionally immature,

Parents who were indifferent,

Parents who were overwhelmed,

Parents who had no clue how to raise a child,

Parents who took our crying personally,

Parents who were very insecure parents.

When we have parents who we cannot securely attach to,

It is implied that our parents were insecure as well.

And so how does a tree grow into a magnificent tree if it's not rooted in solid soil?

It can't.

So it might get uplifted out of the soil time and time again,

And it might want to or try to grow roots in different parts of the forest,

But it will always be an insecure tree.

Now unlike trees,

We have human consciousness.

Unlike trees,

We can root ourselves in the self,

Which I believe is the entire purpose for being alive anyway,

It is to return back to the self.

It is to know thyself.

It is to know that I am enough.

I was born enough.

I never had to prove my worth to anyone.

However,

There is a subconscious program running,

Very much like a video game.

There is a program running that has me,

I am the main character in this video game,

That has been programmed literally by programmers,

I.

E.

Our parents and authority figures,

To feel unworthy.

In tandem,

Now my brain has been neurologically wired to believe I am unworthy,

And now my survival brain looks out into my environment for ways to feel secure.

It looks out into the environment with the fight,

Light,

Fawn or freeze brain,

Which is a stressed brain.

Some of us fawn,

We seek approval,

And we,

On a subconscious level,

Our thoughts.

We are unaware that our neurology,

Which is physical,

Is actually mirroring what is subconscious.

So the subconscious thought is,

I'm not enough,

But if I can prove to this person that I am enough,

I can securely attach to them,

And I can run away from this feeling of not being good enough.

So we fawn,

We people please,

We acquiesce,

We subjugate,

We pretend that we don't have needs.

I think it's even deeper than that in lots of the cases.

We don't even know we have needs.

We have been so wired to pay attention to what's happening outside of us that we forget that we have a self.

And that is why I always tell my personal clients and the students that participate in my online courses,

Healing from codependency,

It sounds like a very novel concept,

But it is a sacred journey.

It will liberate your soul from an internal tyranny that you don't even know that you're experiencing.

If you're codependent,

You are stuck.

You're living below the veil of consciousness.

You are very much like a video game character stuck in a program.

It literally is like the Matrix and awareness,

Knowing thyself,

Putting yourself first,

Dealing with what it means to set boundaries,

Confronting the fire-breathing dragons within.

And make no mistake,

When you have a fear,

It feels like a fire-breathing dragon.

And although the phrase fear,

There's nothing to fear,

But fear itself seems very cliche,

There's a lot of truth in it.

And you can only say that after you've actually stood there and faced the fear of having people walk away from you because you're no longer willing to engage in a codependent relationship.

When it comes to insecurities,

The reason it is a Trojan horse is because oftentimes codependents as well as narcissists,

As well as people right there in the middle who are pretty healthy in daily life,

However,

They're struggling with these insecurities,

They enter into the relationships fawning,

People pleasing,

Sometimes very complimentary to their partners,

Love bombing for instance.

And we're talking about a narcissist,

They're mirroring everything that is wonderful in their partner,

Although deep below,

Below the veil,

Below the mask,

They're masking insecurities.

And they enter into relationships acting as if they have the ability to put people's needs in place.

In other words,

They act like they have the ability to have empathy,

But they don't.

If we're codependent and we enter into a relationship feeling unworthy,

Our Trojan horse is people pleasing,

We will fawn after someone,

We will become what we think this person needs us to be,

All from a fear of not being good enough.

And although we present differently and our wounds are,

They present differently in relationships,

Insecurities whether you're codependent or a narcissist is a Trojan horse because once that partner is able to secure themselves to you or you secure yourself to the partner,

A codependent wants to secure to the person that they're with and a narcissist wants their partner to secure to them,

But the narcissist does not secure to the other person.

But whether we're talking about someone who has mild codependency or severe codependency or someone who is a garden snake variety narcissist or someone who is a psychopath,

What we're talking about is this idea that you can enter into a relationship with someone who is masking a lot of insecurities and they enter into our life with this Trojan horse.

When we're talking about a codependent,

A Trojan horse for codependent is the people pleasing.

So I'm going to figure out what you need and I'm going to become what you need and once I know that I've been able to securely attach to you and once I know that we're in a committed relationship that's where my insecurities will start to come up.

That's when I might start talking about how I was wounded in the past and how I have a difficult time trusting people and I might find ways to guilt you into feeling like you're responsible for taking care of that insecurity.

The trade-off is I will make you feel super secure.

So if I sense that you feel insecure,

I will go out of my way to make sure that you feel secure.

I might clean your house,

I might pay your bills,

I might act like I enjoy intimacy far more than I actually do but I will find a way to make you feel good about yourself and that is because I need you to make me feel good about myself.

And so it's a trade-off so that if we're talking about codependent,

The trade-off is I'm going to swoop in,

I'm going to be what you need and I'm going to take care of you but below the veil,

I'm going to find ways for you to make sure that you are tending to my needs of abandonment,

My insecure attachment and I might behave very poorly over the slightest thing.

I might be very sensitive to you not calling when you say you were going to call.

It might be very difficult for me to like just let that go because I need to attach to your word and my thought process,

Although very immature,

Is I never do that to you.

I call you when I say I'm going to call you.

So the trade-off is well if the Trojan horse is,

If I do that for you,

You should know that you need to do that for me.

And this is very insidious,

It's sneaky and we don't even know it and the people that we're in relationships with,

They end up feeling guilty because it's true.

When you're involved with the codependent,

They are taking care of you and so a codependent is like I'm taking care of you,

You should naturally fulfill my needs but an unaware codependent really doesn't recognize how controlling and manipulative this can be.

So it's really important that we recognize that a codependent can come into a relationship much like a Trojan horse with insecurities and be all that this person wants but the trade-off is in response you're going to be what I need you to be and then if you disappoint me then I get to blame you,

I get to guilt you,

I get to feel sorry for myself and that keeps me stuck and that's why I'm a firm believer that healing from codependency is an absolute sacred journey and it will liberate you from the chains of the past because codependency is tyranny.

We've been conditioned to think we're not good enough,

We don't know how to get our needs met in a healthy way and we find immature ways to pseudo meet our needs but the kicker is our needs never get met because until we are able to get rid of this false lens,

We always see disappointment in other people.

People are never able to make us feel good enough because the hole that needs to be filled has to be filled with self-love and self-appreciation so that is the journey.

When it comes to a narcissist,

A narcissist I think it's a little obvious much more obvious narcissist uses love bombing,

A narcissist will use gifts but their agenda is to get you to secure to them they have no interest in securing to you.

A codependent wants to secure to you and what a narcissist wants is domination.

They're really not interested in meeting your needs whatsoever and although they act like they are.

A codependent wants to meet your needs,

A narcissist doesn't want to.

A codependent comes into relationship wanting to meet the needs of their partner in exchange for the partner meeting their needs.

Very immature and very destructive especially when both people are unaware they're unaware.

However when it comes to someone who's narcissistic they enter into the relationship wanting you to secure to them with no intention of securing to you.

Their intention in the relationship is dominance.

They really don't care how you feel whereas a codependent does care how you feel.

So I think it's important that on this journey through this self-evolution process through us developing ourselves more fully becoming self-actualized if we have insecurities we have to deal with them and if we're not moving towards self-love if we're not moving towards I am enough if we're not moving towards our financial independence because anytime that you have a need you are going to feel insecure and your ego will justify your need to secure to someone which will always make you feel insecure.

You got to be careful about that because that's very seductive how the ego rationalizes why you might be financially dependent on someone or why you can't take care of yourself.

The ego is designed to keep you stuck and so it's important that you see that in yourself.

If you hear yourself making excuses for why you can't move forward be very careful about that because that's the language of the ego and if you are not moving towards complete and ultimate emotional financial liberation then there's always going to be some level of insecurity.

If you are looking for someone else to satisfy your needs that's an issue.

If you have been wounded in the past and you're not dealing with that then you're going to bring those wounds into this relationship that becomes an issue and so this is very seductive and I think it's worth investigating.

I think it's worth asking ourselves how wounded are we,

What do I put in other people's hands to heal,

How do I make people responsible for how I feel,

Am I a Trojan horse,

Do I do things for people subconsciously expecting them to take care of a trauma or an abandonment issue from the past,

Am I projecting my wounds onto other people and am I exchanging my goodness and my empathy for their attention and for an attachment to them so that I can feel better about the past and that's just not a fair way to live.

I know that when my marriage started dissolving when I saw this in myself I was first shrouded in shame,

I was embarrassed and it took me a little bit of while before I was able to say like okay it could not have been any other way based on my childhood.

I didn't know this stuff,

I had no idea that I had a self,

I had no idea about consciousness and so it took me a while before I was able to let the shame go to the point where I was able to do actual codependency recovery work.

It is the most fabulous work that I've ever done in my life,

I am passionate about it and I believe that codependency is epidemic.

I think many of us are going into the doctor's offices with migraine headaches,

Stomach upset,

Rashes,

Asthma,

Even sometimes heart issues,

Different types of cancers,

Autoimmune issues,

Depression and anxiety and I believe much of it is related to I'm not enough and I'm living this way thinking that the answer to peace and serenity is outside of me but it keeps escaping me.

One last point is if you're codependent you're probably in a very dependent relationship and enabling relationship with someone so perhaps today spend some time and look around your neighborhood,

Look around your life,

Look at your environment and ask yourself do I exchange my energy?

Do I do things for other people in exchange thinking that in doing so someone else's behavior is going to change and in that person's behavioral change I will find my resurrection,

I will find my safety,

I will find my enoughness and if that's something that you're dealing with then at least now that you can see the hole in the wall you can try to fix it.

I hope that this has been enlightening,

I hope that it has challenged you to think differently and I hope that you are more willing to look at yourself objectively and really hone in on and appreciate the sacredness of metacognition which is the ability to think about the way that you think.

If you notice something in your personality showing up in a relationship you're the only person that can fix it and the good news is dear one you can because at your core you have been enough,

You have always been enough,

You will always be enough and you were born enough.

Namaste until next time.

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