When Codependent Mothers Misread Their Children

What happens when a child’s innocent comment gets filtered through the lens of an unhealthy, codependent mom versus a healthy, emotionally attuned mom? The difference can shape not only the child’s self-worth but also the generational cycle of codependency.

In this episode, Lisa A. Romano, Breakthrough Life Coach and bestselling author, unpacks how unhealed wounds distort a mother’s perception of her child’s needs and words. An emotionally unhealthy mother, trapped in her own unresolved pain, may perceive an innocent statement like “I wish I could play with you more” as a personal attack—triggering shame, defensiveness, or withdrawal. A healthy mother, however, sees the same comment for what it is: a child’s bid for love and connection.

This powerful contrast reveals why addressing codependency is not just self-work—it’s generational work.

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. Today, We're going to be discussing this idea that when you have childhood trauma, How you perceive a situation differs from someone who does not have your level of trauma. What is trauma? Everybody has so many different ideas about what trauma is. People are saying, Oh, That traumatized me. No, Maybe it offended you. You weren't traumatized by it. You were offended by it. Or they say, Oh, That was traumatizing. That experience was traumatizing. Maybe it offended you. Maybe it bothered you. Maybe it ticked you off. Maybe it went against your moral code. But to say something traumatized you, We really want to understand what we're saying. Trauma is the after effect. It is the inability to process mentally, Emotionally, Spiritually, Cognitively without some residual effect being caused by this experience. So is it the experience? No. It is what happens as a result of the experience in my psyche. In my beingness, In the way that I perceive the world, Trauma changes the way you see the world. So let's talk about that a little bit, Because I like to go deep. If you are a student of mine, You know that we go deep. We don't do superficial stuff. I leave that to other people. We go deep. I just said trauma changes the way you see the world. So what is it? What sensory organ do you use to see the world? Your eyes. Okay. Well, Isn't it true that you have an inner eye and external or physical eyes? Isn't that true? And isn't it true that your physical eyes experience things that are outside of you, But what you experience outside of you also leaves you with an impression inside of you? Isn't it interesting that the pineal gland is bio-luminescent? It's almost like when you think about being in a movie theater, And there's this screen, There's this projector, And you are the witness to what's happening on the screen. And isn't it interesting that you, Inside your own mind, There's a little person inside of you, Or let's say aspect of your consciousness, That is observing what's been downloaded into the subconscious mind. It plays out like a movie. If I have a certain type of abuse, Think of the worst form of abuse that a child could experience, And that has laid an impression within my subconscious mind, I am violated. And then I turn around, I tell my mom that Uncle Joe did this thing to me. And mom's like, That never happened. You have an active imagination. Uncle Joe is just being nice to you. Okay? You've been discredited. You've been hit. You've been invalidated. But you have this movie playing in your mind that this happened with Uncle Joe, But no one is validating it for you. So there's the experience, Which is horrifying, But then there are the after effects, The after movie that plays. Then there is telling mom, And mom says that never happened. And what movie does that begin to play in your subconscious mind? Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I deserve for this to happen. Maybe I do have an active imagination. So now your ability, Your natural God-given ability to honor your guidance system is being deteriorated. It's being obliterated. It's been fractured, Not only by the experience and the after effect of the experience, This first initial subjective, Oh my God, This horrifying thing that doesn't feel right. My body's responding, Something's wrong. Then there's the experience of telling mom and being invalidated. Mom doesn't want to hear it. She's not emotionally intelligent enough to confront this. All of these things are happening inside of you, And it's not being validated. That is also an after effect of the original trauma. So what's happening at the psych level, At the psyche? What's happening with your level of self-concept? I'm not good enough. I can't trust my mom. I can't trust men. I can't even trust myself. That is trauma. So it's the after effect. It's the residual effects. It's the way it interrupts your ability to connect with you. It's the way that it corrupts the way that you see the world, Your eyes, How you see the world. Not only, We have to understand, We're not only seeing the world through physical eyes. Oh, That's a tree. Oh, That's a grasshopper. But we also have an inner eye in which we perceive everything, Including ourselves. If you are an adult child of an alcoholic, If you are the grandchild of an alcoholic, If you are the adult child of a narcissistic mother or a narcissistic father, If you have experienced abuse and trauma in your childhood in which no one ever helped you process these experiences, Because when you come from an adult child of an alcoholic home, ACOA is the acronym, Adult child of an alcoholic, Or you come from a home where everything is swept under the rug, Nothing is discussed. There are emotions flying around the living room. They feel like bullets, But everyone's acting like past the butter. Everything's fine. You grow up feeling like something's wrong and you internalize the something wrong must be me in the way I'm perceiving this external world because everybody's a freaking zombie and acting like everything's okay. A true tell sign of a toxic home is sometimes silence where no one is actually talking about and we're all pretending that everything's okay when it's actually not okay. You are not telling your parents about what is happening anymore. That is trauma. Your parents are acting like they're seven years old and they've just had their lollipop taken away or they're not allowed to go roller skating in the rain and they're throwing a tantrum and you feel out of control because you know that the people that are supposed to be driving the bus are out of control. That makes you feel unsafe. That is trauma. Now, Let's say you're a 50 year old mom. You are that person who has never explored how your childhood has impacted the way you see the world, Not only see the world, The way you interpret the world. Let's just say that. I'm going to prove to you how trauma affects the way you perceive the world and why at a subconscious level do you want, That is why you stay stuck and why my method addresses everything that happens at the subconscious level. In my opinion, Everything else is superficial stuff. Just my opinion. So you're a 50 year old mom and you're, Your teenage son has just stated that for Memorial Day and you put a lot of, A lot of planning into this Memorial Day backyard party that you're going to have. And your teenage son says, Mom, My friends are going to so-and-so's house, Lake house for the weekend. We're going to do a lot of fishing and we're going to do some kayaking. It sounds like a great time. And that's what I prefer to do. Your son's like 18 years old. That's what I prefer to do this weekend. If you do not have trauma or if you had trauma and you've worked through that trauma, You've done the subconscious healing, You've done the conscious healing, Quantum healing, You've done it. You have resurrected yourself with a new mind. Remember that consciousness is your savior. The idea that you can think about yourself, You could develop self-worth. Even if you've lived a life of no self-worth, You can do this dear one. I've done it. You can do it. Consciousness is the way. If you've done the work or if you don't have trauma, Your response to your son might sound like, You know what? Good for you. You're growing up. You're 18 years old. You're not seven. I don't need to be watching you every minute of the day. Yes, I put a lot of effort into this barbecue, But you know, You're, You haven't seen your friends in a long time and this would be a great opportunity for you to like spread your wings and go have a good time. Just keep me posted on your whereabouts. Check in with me. I want to know that you're okay. I also need some emergency contacts. And if you're a healthy mom or you've worked through your stuff, You don't see this or interpret it this way. Unhealthy mom, Codependent mom would interpret it this way. Someone who is reacting to what's happening outside of her seeking validation, Even, Even men do this seeking validation and being so hypersensitive to what's happening outside of them that they interpret, See the world through their broken lens, Their trauma lens very differently than somebody who does not have that issue or has healed that trauma lens. I guess this means that you don't love me. I guess this means that wherever you're going, Those parents are a lot more fun than I am. I guess this means that it's always going to be this way. I guess it means that you're angry at me. I guess this means that I suck. I guess this means that this is the end of our relationship. That's how a stuck codependent mom will interpret that experience. Now just play it out because everything is patterns. Everything is patterns. So now let's say the codependent mom who is taking her 18 year old son's desire to spend this weekend with some friends with parents who are going to be there at this lake house. Let's say this codependent mom and this wounded mom who has all these attachment issues and she's really stuck and she's caretaking. Think about the weight of the world that's on her shoulders. Think about the internal stress that this poor person has put on themselves because she's trying so hard to be good enough for everyone else to avoid the feeling of unworthiness. This is an internal operation. As Melody Beatty has said so beautifully, There is no rescue boat coming. There isn't enough validation from your children, Your husband, Your spouse, Whoever, Your parents, Whatever. When you are wounded from childhood and you have this faulty subconscious programming that keeps running and keeps running in a loop and you have a negative self identity, There is not enough validation. You can't scrub enough of your neighbor's pots and dishes. You can't walk enough of your neighbor's dogs. You can't bake enough cupcakes for your kid's school to gain the sense of worthiness to make that feeling go away because it is an internal process. The problem is you. Not that you created the problem. The problem is that you're stuck, But you don't know that you're stuck because you're in a loop of codependency. You're in this loop. You're acting out all of these experiences from childhood that have shaped you to make you doubt your worthiness. Doubt your worthiness. And certainly, If Uncle Joe does something terrible to you, That's going to make you feel unworthy. If nobody listens to you, That's going to make you feel unworthy. If you can't trust yourself moving forward, Then you give off that vibe. You come off very timid, Weak. You tend to attract people who do take advantage of you. So now you're in it. Now you're in this subconscious paradigm, Feeling powerless, Feeling like a victim. And it doesn't matter how good your makeup is sketched. It doesn't matter how much you've patted down your foundation. It doesn't matter how good you look on the outside. On the inside, You will feel fractured. People who have unresolved trauma see the world very differently than the people that have healed their trauma and people who are awakened or don't have this type of trauma. Trauma is the after effect. And the after effect is essentially the way you see the world. Everything is about what happens to you at the subconscious level. And we don't talk enough about that, Which is why I talk about that. Because when that clicked in my mind over 20 years ago, We're going on 25 years now, And I've been doing this work for a very long time, It was like, Oh, It's not me. It's just my programming. So my parents programmed me to feel not good enough. Okay, Beyond blaming them, I had to pin the tail on the donkey and say, This actually happened. This is the cause and effect nature of reality. They are unrecovered adult children of alcoholics. They have programmed me for hypervigilance. They have not made me feel good enough. They have made me feel not good enough. I was always questioned. It was like this constant inquiry, Persecution, Making me feel like I was the worst person in the world. And I was a good kid. But when you are being raised by people who are distrustful, They infuse you with the sense that they don't trust you. And that makes you think, Am I wrong? Am I bad? Did I do something wrong? You start to question your own sanity, Which is the basis of narcissistic abuse. You question your own sense of self. Now, What I want you to understand is all of this in a nutshell, I'm going to condense almost 30 years of work into a very short explanation, Very short explanation. Your self-identity is everything. And that's nothing that you can change easily. You have to change who you think you are at the subconscious level. And that can happen, But you have to work at it because passive listeners, It's not going to do much. You're going to listen to this. You're going to watch this. You're going to consider it, And then it's going to be like a fart in the wind. It's gone. Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom. So being passive when it comes to healing does not work. You could die listening to podcasts, Die listening to YouTube videos, Die listening even to meditations unless you take action in the physical world to change your self-identity. What does that look like? The subconscious mind is not going to shift and change unless there's a change in feeling. When a thought and a feeling become one, That's when you have a manifestation. And so the manifestation that we're all looking for as trauma survivors is a shift in the way that we see the self. That is a shift in the identity of self. That happens over time. When I went from believing that I was these subconscious thoughts, That I was this perception, That I was this codependency, And I mean, I had no idea that I was even codependent, But when I began to awaken to, Oh wow, I'm codependent, Oh wow, This is why, And oh wow, I was never not good enough, Once all those micro shifts began to happen, I had a true identity shift, And that's when the magic start to happen. That's when I began becoming rooted in a future potential reality, And now we're getting into the quantum stuff of this. It's all a process. You're in the subconscious mind. Then you're in the lair, And you have to slowly, Slowly, Slowly walk yourself out of the subconscious mind. If you're not into philosophy, I highly recommend it because it, Like spirituality, Metaphysics, And even quantum mechanics, And even psychology, Behavioral psychology, Neuropsychology, It's all saying the same thing, Dear one. When they separated science from the body and science from the mind, Science or spirituality, That's when humanity started running amok, But the shaman knew what they were talking about, And the medicine men knew what they were talking about. You cannot separate the mind from body, And you cannot separate the mind from spirit. You cannot. When you really flush through all these modalities and these disciplines, Very simple rules begin to become very, Very apparent. It was never you. You were programmed. You were born asleep. Your external world brainwashed you at the theta level to believe that you're not enough, But that's not even true. You are enough. You're a facet of the divine, And how can we get you to micro shift out of these old paradigms into stronger paradigms? Why? Because the way you see yourself is everything. If you believe that you're a grasshopper, You're going to hop. If you believe that you're a giant, You're going to walk like a giant. If you believe that you are enough, You're going to act like you're enough. You're not going to tolerate gaslighting. You're not going to tolerate even gaslighting yourself. You're going to start to imagine different potentials for you. You're going to walk differently. You're going to breathe differently. You're going to behave differently. You're going to want different things. You're going to give yourself permission to want different things. You're going to hold yourself accountable. You're going to create journaling prompts. You're going to create goal lists. You're going to follow through with actions. You're going to see a new dream for yourself, And you're going to walk towards that dream just like I did, Just like the thousands of people that I train and I coach every, Every year. You're going to do this, But if you can't conceive it, You're never going to receive it. That's why when I talk about conception, It is your subconscious mind has conceived faulty ideas about you, And that's why what's showing up keeps showing up. If you want to receive a new manifestation, You have to first conceive it in your mind, But here's the kicker, And we don't talk about this enough. When it comes to trauma, The real trauma is that your self-concept has been reduced to a grasshopper. That's what's happened, And you're not a grasshopper. That's even biblical. When we saw ourselves as grasshoppers, We saw ourselves as grasshoppers, And so did everybody else. It's up to you. It's up to you. Your self-concept has to shift. That is the real problem with trauma, And we don't talk enough about that. We talk about the after effects of trauma and how it created this, But we don't talk enough about, Okay, But your identity has to shift because you were always enough. I really hope that this has hit home for you today. I really appreciate you supporting my work. Please share this work. You tell all the algorithms out there in the universe that Lisa A. Romano's work is valued and is worth sharing. I really appreciate you spreading the love. It's an honor to be here with you, Dear ones. Until next time, Namaste, As I bow to the love and light that is absolutely in you. You are enough. Who knew? Who knew? Change that self-concept, And your world will shift. I promise it.

Reviews

Thank you so much for this resonated so strongly for me. Trauma explained in a way that I finally understand.. I appreciate you so much 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

Lisa Romano’s Work is been such a helpful, enthusiastic way of learning to overcome many aspects of co-dependency . I am a long time fan and her work is exceptional .