Victim Blaming Is Not Okay

In this episode, Lisa A. Romano addresses the topic of toxic positivity, as well as victim blaming. The spiritual and self-help communities often confuse victims of narcissistic abuse. On the one hand, they are encouraged to speak their truth, and on the other, they receive a double message. It must be okay to admit to when you have been mistreated. And you are not playing the victim when you speak your truth.

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.

Namaste,

Everybody.

You are about to hear a Facebook livestream recording from inside the Breakthrough Warrior membership site.

It's a private community.

Enjoy.

So we're scrolling through our posts,

And I think Andrea wrote an amazing post.

She wrote,

The minute you stop blaming people and experiences and take responsibility for your patterns and changing them is the moment you truly step into your power.

And I would like to say that I think that is absolutely and positively true.

The issue that we cannot forget about,

However,

Andrea and anybody who's interested is that when we're dealing with codependency,

We're dealing with a below the veil issue.

What I mean by that is when you're codependent,

You don't know it.

You're living below the veil of consciousness.

You're living in an autopilot reactive existence.

You have this operating system by default that you think is correct and it's not,

And you keep doing what you've always done.

And so if you subjugate your needs for the sake of others and you think below the veil of consciousness,

You have this subconscious pattern and program running that says,

That's the way to get affection or that's the way to get love or that's the way I am a good person,

Then you keep doing it.

But you're below the veil.

If you go back a little further,

Go macro,

If you go further and you come from abandonment,

Codependency is centered in abandonment,

And you grew up feeling abandoned,

You grew up feeling unworthy,

You grew up feeling like love was conditional,

And you develop these codependent belief systems that are all below the veil.

You operate at that level of awareness.

And when you're operating at that level of awareness or unawareness,

Depending on your perspective,

Oftentimes recreate or find yourself in similar patterns of relationships with people who are very close to or remind you of the people from your past.

This is why we can get married and divorced and married and divorced and married and divorced or get married,

Get divorced,

And then have a string of relationships as I did that are similar to your first marriage or worse,

Which is what I did,

And not understand what's what's supamin,

How did this happen?

How did I leave this one relationship and end up in a very similar relationship with someone who is worse than my wife or worse than my husband or worse than my partner?

How is that possible?

I thought I knew so much.

When we're talking about healing,

Transcending,

And transmuting,

We're talking about a feeling experience.

So it's much more than a cerebral experience.

So it's not just what I think and what I know,

Oh,

That person is highly narcissistic,

Or my mom had high narcissistic traits and I'm trauma aware now,

I understand or I'm aware of the trauma,

Even though I come from a history or a family of people who say that there was no abuse,

Which is highly abusive,

Is when you get abused and the people who are abusing you are telling you it's all in your head,

Which happens so often.

And that makes it really,

It's like you're sliding down a mud hill,

You have no grip because you think this thing is happening,

But the people that you love are telling you it's not happening.

It makes you feel like you're losing your mind.

And so abusers don't necessarily admit or agree or even believe that they're abusing you.

And if we're talking about really highly narcissistic people,

We're talking about vindictive,

Aggressive,

Distrustful people who think that how they feel about you is absolutely 100% legitimate.

So persecuting you through this filter,

Projecting their own fears or their own inadequacies onto you,

Feeling all sorts of anger and perturbed and unable to feel comfortable in their skin and feeling frustrated by life is not them,

It's you.

And if you become their target,

They vomit all over you,

Right?

Unfortunately,

That's people with high narcissistic traits,

That's what they do.

And so you're gaining insight into what happens with certain people or personalities.

And so I think it's important in a group like this or in an online form of any kind or any discussion whatsoever that has to do with narcissism and codependency,

We'd be very,

Very clear about why we're having the conversation at all.

It is not to blame,

It is not to shame,

In my opinion.

It's just my opinion.

We are not here to get stuck in the quagmire of personality disorders.

We are not here to stay stuck on the karmic wheel of our toxic family's stuff.

We're here to liberate ourselves and free ourselves.

We're not here to ruminate over our codependent dysfunctional marriages that have broken.

We're not here to convince anyone that we have a right to feel what we feel.

We're not here to do that.

In this group,

I'm hoping that what you're taking away from this group and what you take specifically away from the type of information that I offer people all day in various forms,

Whether it's on Insight Timer or YouTube,

On Instagram,

TikTok,

My books,

My courses,

Whatever,

I'm hoping that what you're hearing me say is we study these things and we become aware of personality traits in ourselves and other people for our own spiritual evolution.

We don't stay on this path and learn something to be abusive ourselves,

To be,

Well,

I know more than the next person and I have the right now to humiliate that person and judge that person and chastise that person.

That's not going to work.

We're really here to transmute and to transcend,

Which is what Andrea is saying in her post.

The minute you stop blaming people and experiences and take responsibility for your patterns and changing them is the moment you truly step into power.

However,

There's a caveat to that.

I for one could not get to the point where I was able to distinguish childhood programming from my higher self or even my more conscious self until I first took time to acknowledge trauma,

To become aware of what abuse really is and the many shades it has,

How innocuous verbal abuse can be or how innocuous emotional neglect can be.

For instance,

Those people who enter into my program and take my online course,

The 12-week class,

I was going to say ask the moderators,

But the moderators can back me up on this.

We always hear from people who think,

But I really don't know if what I went through is as bad as what she went through or as bad as what he went through.

My heart breaks for people like this who feel abandoned,

Who feel discarded,

Who feel neglected,

Who feel disposed of,

And yet what has happened to them is so insidious like carbon monoxide that they can't really label it,

But yet they have all of these emotions.

And then we take a step further and we know now,

At least research is suggesting,

That trauma is inherited.

In other words,

What happened to your grandmother could have been downloaded into your mother and then downloaded into you.

So we have this ancestral trauma.

And then we have Kalle Yule who talks about this universal unconsciousness of humanity where all of us are born into a consciousness and this consciousness holds the trauma of many generations of the past.

So when we keep panning out,

We stop having this egocentric personal experience of self and we keep panning out and we say,

Wow,

I had my own personal experience.

Then there was my mother's experience,

Then my grandmother's experience,

My great grandmother's experience and keep going generations and generations and generations of various levels of trauma as it pertains to humanity,

Which is darkness,

Which is humans hurting one another unnecessarily throughout the ages.

There's that unconsciousness that we're all born into as well.

And so I think that this is a very powerful statement and I thank you,

Andrea,

For contributing to the group.

But I think it's also important to recognize that there is a moment where we have to acknowledge that we have been a victim and this saying,

Wow,

This hurt me helps me to develop the I am,

Helps me develop a perception of self.

Because if you come from a home where you have been continually denied and neglected and ignored,

You don't have a perception of self.

You feel like a shell.

I remember going finally to my fifth,

I think he was like my fifth therapist.

He saw right through me.

He knew and I realized sitting in his chair that I was a shell and it scared the hell out of me.

I was terrified and I had been running my life completely reacted to what was happening outside of me,

Unaware that I felt like a shell,

Unaware.

Who am I?

Oh,

Well,

I'm the head of security at the kid's school and I'm a PTA mom and I own a business and I have three kids.

No,

No,

No,

Dear one,

Those are the things that you do.

That's not who you are.

Right?

And I didn't even know what that meant.

I was not my role.

You're not your role.

You're not your gender.

You're not your hair.

You're not your face.

You are so much more than that.

And the who you think you are is limited.

However,

Your understanding of self can expand over time if you stay on the path.

And so I think it's important,

Especially in online forums,

Whether it's YouTube or whether it's insight time or Instagram or Facebook,

Whatever,

I think it's important that we address this idea that how could I develop a self if I'm in a situation where I am being taken advantage of and I don't even realize I'm being taken advantage of and this becomes my norm.

And as a result,

I'm downloaded to acquiesce.

I'm downloaded to subjugate myself for the sake of others.

How do I then develop a self if the self that I think I am is programmed to seek approval?

I can't develop a sense of self until I say,

Wait a minute,

I am experiencing some type of abuse in this situation.

Now identifying oneself as a victim is a very important part of the journey.

The metaphor or depending on the symbolism for this that resonates with me is,

And this might resonate with many of you,

And again,

I'm not a Bible freak and I don't have a religion.

But for me,

The metaphor,

At least that's the way I look at it,

The story of Christ,

When he's hanging on the cross,

He says,

Father,

Why have you forsaken me or how could you have forsaken me?

There's even a moment in this person's life that many of us call Jesus where he says,

How could you have forsaken me?

This is Jesus saying,

I'm being wounded and I'm being forsaken by you.

There's that moment where a separation,

I'm being wounded by this exterior thing that I can't control or I'm being wounded by the world.

And then salvation comes where then we are for forgiveness.

So there's a moment where I acknowledge that I am being wounded.

And that's a very,

Very powerful,

Powerful moment where you take a woman who's been in an abusive relationship for 25 years and this woman has been chasing after her husband's approval like my mom did.

Unaware,

She's unaware,

Just conditioned,

Pavlovian conditioning to fear a negative outcome.

Like if you don't cater to me,

Woman,

I'm going to bang my fist on the table and I'm going to yell and I'm going to ignore you.

And I'm going to suggest that you're spending too much money.

My mother didn't have pennies to rub together at the end of the week.

So you condition someone who like the adult child of an alcoholic like my mom who had no sense of self,

She had no healthy childhood whatsoever.

She just skipped over that and became a mom at 19.

And she's married to my dad who has very high narcissistic traits.

And you take this woman who is unaware that her childhood has affected her and that her adult life with this man is a repeat of just looking for approval and looking for approval.

How does that woman develop a healthy sense of self or sense of self if not for the moment that she says,

Wait a minute,

This isn't right.

I'm a victim of this person's character flaws or this person that I'm dealing with is highly narcissistic and this is affecting me.

That's a beautiful,

Beautiful moment and it's necessary.

Some of us get stuck in that space.

I don't think that that's the goal but it's certainly part of the path.

So we acknowledge that we have been wounded by other and in that moment is where we can break through and identify I have a self.

In that moment also is the opportunity to protect the self.

How do you protect the self if you don't know you have a self?

How do you set a boundary with other if you're enmeshed and you don't identify other as having high narcissistic traits?

How do you heal from codependency and abandonment trauma and feeling unworthy and feeling not good enough?

How do you reinvent yourself?

How do you go from having no healthy sense of self and feeling all sorts of invisible to seeing the self except for being able to identify oneself as having particular character traits?

Sometimes that journey begins by first identifying what's happening outside the window.

Oh,

There's a lot of noise outside my window.

Oh,

That's a tractor trailer.

Oh,

That person's doing work on their house across the street.

No wonder I have a headache.

So now I'm able to identify what's happening outside of me that's caused this dis-ease inside of me.

And for many of us,

That is the way.

And so I think it's important that we always know what the goal is.

Goal is to free ourselves,

In my humble opinion.

The goal is to live a nonresistant life.

The goal is not to stay stuck in the quagmire.

The goal is not to focus on what the narcissist is doing and what the narcissist is saying,

Who the narcissist is sleeping with this week,

And what the narcissist is doing on Facebook.

But on the contrary,

We should not be including the narcissists in our focus on a daily basis.

We should be letting that go,

Easing off of that and using this first part of our life as information and contrast to help us design the second part of our lives.

Because as long as I keep focusing on something negative,

I keep that negative alive in my life today.

I have to navigate it some way.

But as I pull my focus away from this negative,

I have a much greater chance of expanding my light,

So to speak,

Shining my light,

And attracting something different.

So I think it's beautiful to say we become empowered when we recognize our patterns and programs and we take responsibility for them.

Bravo.

I love it.

But I also think that we need to acknowledge,

And sometimes the journey begins,

The breakthrough moment is when I acknowledge that there absolutely has,

In fact,

Been some exploitation of me at some level.

And so as I acknowledge myself as being a victim of other,

In that moment,

I'm able to more clearly identify self,

Protect a self,

And that's where in that moment I can begin building a new life.

The goal is not just to remain a victim of a person or of the past.

We must not allow the past to keep victimizing us today,

Feeling like a victim,

Thinking like a victim.

So we acknowledge we were a victim,

And we work through that process.

And there are many ways to do it.

You know,

I just offer insights that I've learned along the way in courses and books and workbooks and mentorship,

Whatever,

To help people facilitate that self-observability and the ability to unlearn and reprogram.

But there are many other ways to do it.

It's to work with a trauma-informed therapist or work with a trauma-informed psychologist who understands your specific issues.

There are resource centers.

There are healing centers.

There's CODA.

There's Al-Anon.

There's AA.

There are many programs that we can find ourselves in to help us move past and beyond the victim phase of our journey.

But I don't want anyone to think that because they're feeling like a victim,

Right,

Of someone else,

That that's necessarily a wrong thing to be doing.

Because without acknowledging myself as a victim of other,

It's very difficult to protect myself.

If I don't recognize that there is an intruder or there's someone who may hurt or harm my children,

If I don't recognize that threat,

I can't protect my children or myself,

Right,

From that threat.

And so acknowledging oneself as being a victim is,

I feel,

Is a necessary part of the healing journey.

So we learn about narcissism and we learn about codependency,

Educational purposes.

Why?

So that we can identify the types of personalities that are in our life.

Why?

So that we can make educated decisions,

Rational,

Logical decisions,

Just beyond emotion because emotions don't always run in rational channels.

We must learn to look at our emotions and observe our emotions from a logical plane,

From a detached plane,

So that we are not pulled into rabbit holes by people who are highly emotional and illogical and absolutely,

In many cases,

Have cognitive distortions.

And when we're talking about someone with high narcissistic traits,

We're talking about someone who distorts logic,

Right?

It's not logical.

What they're saying is not logical.

Like their rationalizations from a more rational point of view don't make sense.

But if you are that person who's angry and judging you and persecuting you,

To them it makes sense.

They've twisted it in their head to make sense.

And if you are highly emotional,

You might end up defending yourself or being really,

Really triggered by what someone else is saying.

And so it's a great benefit to remain calm.

It's a great benefit to arm yourself with information and knowledge.

But again,

We don't gain this knowledge to feel superior to someone else.

That's no bueno.

Never.

Never.

We don't gain this information to embarrass someone.

No,

Never.

We don't gain this information to accuse this person of being narcissistic.

No,

We don't do that.

We learn for our own benefit so that we can go out into the world and we have more tools than we had when we were children or we had more tools than when we first got married.

It's all about tools and arming ourselves and learning to navigate relationships away from relationships that are one way with courage,

With wisdom,

With inner greatness,

Knowing that I'm on the right path.

And if you can get to a level of namaste and walk away where you don't need to rip this person apart,

You don't need to have arguments,

You're just navigating.

You're saying,

No,

Thank you.

No thank you.

No thank you.

I prefer that.

And you move in that direction,

Then you're going to manifest the type of life experience that you are entitled to as an extension of source,

Again,

In my own humble opinion,

That is just waiting for you to open up to.

So if I keep looking to the left and I'm looking at dirt and I'm just looking at dirt and wow,

That dirt sucks.

I can't believe I got dirt all over my feet and look at my house.

My house is full of dirt and the kids are full of dirt.

There could be a whole row of roses and daisies and lilies off to my right,

But I won't see them because my focus is here.

So you want to make sure that your focus is playing in the direction that you want it to play in.

So as a member of this community,

Thank you so much for being here.

And again,

I always thank my moderators because without them,

This group would not be possible.

We come here to learn.

We come here to share.

But the goal is to move forward.

The goal is to arm ourselves with information that help us evolve our own sense of self,

For us to become more balanced and rational in our own thinking,

For us to do what we feel is necessary in our own life to unlearn what we learned and relearn something new and healthy,

And to learn to not take the past with us into the future.

Because your power really is in the now.

Thank you Eckhart Tolle.

But to manage the now takes quite some work.

It's mental Olympics.

I was harassed pretty strongly today in an email by someone.

And I'm so grateful that I am able to navigate that with,

I would say,

Ease.

Able to navigate that where 10 years ago I would have been a traitor.

So this has been a journey of self exploration,

Self understanding,

Self forgiveness,

Self compassion,

And self education.

Self healing in essence.

And focusing my attention on where I want to go and acknowledging this,

But focusing my attention on what I want.

So please share and ask questions.

Be open to input.

But never forget what the goal is.

The goal is to move beyond what has been.

And while posts about stepping into your first power and changing your programs,

They're absolutely 100% correct.

But I think I'll say this last time I'll say it because I'm saying it over and over and over again.

But it's such an important point.

We have to,

As codependents who didn't realize that we were in abusive relationships or less than perfect relationships.

It is absolutely part of the healing journey to say,

Wait a minute,

I've been victimized here.

Sometimes it's because I've been victimized by parental relationships or sibling relationships or spousal relationships.

But the moment that I recognize that I'm in an abusive relationship and I have been a victim of,

For instance,

Verbal abuse or emotional abuse or neglect or narcissistic abuse,

Whatever it is,

The moment I realized,

Wow,

This has affected me like the construction crew outside my window that's giving me a headache,

I'm able to see myself separate from the situation.

And in that space,

I'm able to detach and say,

Okay,

Now you're in a position of power because now there I am,

There you are,

There I am.

And in this space,

I can now begin to self-protect and I can now begin to set boundaries.

I can now begin to unlearn and learn.

I can figure out how did I get here?

How do I avoid getting here in the future because you are a powerful,

Powerful being.

And narcissists don't want you to believe that.

Narcissists want to bully you.

They want to stick their finger in your eye.

They want to intimidate you.

They want to make you feel bad about yourself.

They don't want you to be powerful.

They want you running scared.

And eventually you get to a point where you understand the dynamics.

You free yourself more and more and more and more and more.

And a lot of it happens mentally and then it happens emotionally and then it happens physically or sometimes it happens physically first and then you work emotionally and spiritually and so on.

But this is a process.

So I just wanted to make that point today because I think it's an important point to make.

The goal is to be victorious over whatever has happened to you because you can be,

Because you're not what happened to you in the past.

You're not the labels other people have given you.

You are enough.

You were born enough and you don't have to do anything to be enough.

You are enough.

What you do with that information in the now is entirely up to you.

How you flow your focus,

Where you flow your focus,

Who you decide to talk to,

What you decide to talk about,

What you watch on television,

What news stories you give your attention to,

What kind of people you talk to,

Do you gossip,

What are you keeping alive in your reality,

Are you still seeking approval,

Are you still wanting to punish people,

Are you still stalking people online,

Are you trying to figure out what they're doing,

Who they're dating.

This is self-inquiry and we have to be really,

Really honest with ourselves about how we're spending our time because how I spend my time is what I'm creating and how I spend my time is what I'm keeping alive.

So if I don't want to keep something alive,

Then I do what I can to pull my focus from it.

I may have to spend an hour or two or three hours journaling about it until there's some release and some non-resistance associated with it,

But to me I think that's worth it.

Whatever I have to do to become non-resistant to what is so that I can be in the moment of the now and decide who I'm going to talk to,

What kind of conversations I'm going to have.

You can't create if you're regurgitating the past.

You just can't.

You have to make a choice.

Am I going to ruminate?

Am I going to regurgitate or am I in the now going to try to slow my thoughts and think about something else?

Reviews

Thank you, Lisa. 🙏

Wow this was mindblowing! I can see my codependency in my prior relationship, and as an empath I absorbed her energy. I didn’t know she was projecting because I just saw good in her. I wanted a healthy relationship but to your point was unaware of the red flags and our projection. Being an empath, my boundaries were not strong enough and I fell/lost myself. As a result of my hurt I wound up hurting. I became unconscious myself. I’m taking full accountability for it. This was enlightening and empowering. I’m making conscious choice for compassion, forgiveness, and healing from my past. I’m focusing on the positive and finding myself worthy for a healthy relationship. I am enough. Thank you as always ✨💙🙏🏽

Awesome. Thank you Lisa! Namaste.

This all makes so much sense. Don’t regurgitate the past. I liked the burglar comparison. Arm myself. Don’t be reactive. Thankyou Lisa. ✨🙏🏼✨💖✨