Childhood Emotional Neglect: Growing Up Feeling Invisible

Did you grow up feeling seen, heard, understood, and like you belonged to a loving family, or did you grow up feeling invisible? Childhood emotional neglect can lead to people-pleasing, agreeableness, repressed anger, and enmeshed relationship dynamics such as codependency. Feeling invisible can create a need to feel seen, which may lead into augmenting the self to fit in, regardless of the consequences.
On the healing journey, where one is becoming aware and able to confront the wounds of the past, learning to speak the truth is often the first step, yet the most difficult. Most people do not know they are not truly thinking, and instead their minds are regurgitating the memories of the past and lost in expectation, as well as locked within neurological pathways created in response to trauma.
The good news is, it is possible to breakthrough the subconscious limiting beliefs of the past and learn to live above the veil of consciousness, to align with the authentic self.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling 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.

So today we're going to be talking about the damaging effects of growing up feeling invisible.

So when we grow up feeling invisible,

A couple of things are going awry.

When we are growing up feeling invisible,

The reality is that the feeling part of ourselves,

The part of ourselves that psychologically anchors us to the sense of self,

This inner person,

This authentic aspect of ourselves is going awry.

When we are born to people who cannot see us,

Who cannot hear us,

And who are unable to connect to us in the feeling way,

Right?

So if I cry and my mother ignores it,

Or if I have a need and I'm criticized for having that need,

If I'm in pain and I am being ignored,

If I'm spending hours and hours alone in my room and no one comes to check on me,

Then I get this sense that who I am,

My authentic self is irrelevant.

This is happening to us,

Though many things are going wrong because how do I know that I am valuable except someone from the outside said so?

So when I am going through life and I'm born to a family of narcissists or people who are emotionally immature,

Or I have alcoholic for parents,

And perhaps my mother is codependent and my father is narcissistic,

Or my mother is an alcoholic and my father is codependent,

And what's happening in the home is being ignored,

Then I as a human being who need to anchor to these beings on the outside,

I'm denied that anchoring.

I can't anchor.

And if I can't anchor to what's happening outside of me in a healthy way,

Then psychologically I cannot anchor to who I think I am and what I really am on the inside.

So this idea of having a self is lost.

Codependency is often referred to as the loss of selfhood.

That's why.

The only way that I know that I have a self is that someone has made me feel like the self that I am is valid.

And so if I'm raised in a home where there's chaos,

Where the love is intermittent,

It's inconsistent,

And it's unpredictable,

Then my brain wires for fear.

I can't trust this human being that I love so much.

I can't trust that when my mother says,

Come here,

Let me fix this,

That she actually will.

I can't trust that if I'm going to have a school play,

My dad will actually show up.

I can't trust that when I begin to express myself that I'm not going to be made fun of.

When I have a trauma and I go to my parents and I'm called a liar,

Or they look at me with a blank face and they just simply don't know how to acknowledge it or be my champion.

When that happens,

I can't anchor to this sense of validation.

When the self that I am,

That I present to the world is ignored,

I can't develop a healthy sense of self.

It's impossible.

I remember as a little girl where I would read the back of my report cards,

I used to go to a Catholic school and the report card continuously said,

Lisa needs to show more self-control.

And I used to feel so much shame about that.

But what the report card didn't show was that I was being bullied every day,

That I was being punched by boys and I was being pushed around by boys.

And boys were doing disgusting things to me,

To my desk,

Taking my books and throwing them out the window and ganging up on me during gym class.

That was never shown.

So here I was experiencing,

If you will,

Narcissistic abuse of peers and classic as it is in the case of narcissism is that the teacher is paying attention to the symptom of narcissistic abuse,

The symptom of bullying and bullying is narcissistic abuse.

And so here I was this little girl who was being bullied at home and also being bullied in school.

And what was happening at home and what was happening at school was everyone's paying attention to the symptomology.

Everyone's paying attention to the fact that I can't sit still.

Well,

I can't sit still because David who's sitting behind me has a pencil and he's needling it into my back.

And I'm so terrified of the nun that is running the classroom and terrified that she's going to call my mother and terrified over what might happen when I get home,

That I am sustaining this and doing my best to pretend it's not happening in school situations and in home situations where it is completely dysfunctional,

Where there is no sense of healthy relating whatsoever anywhere in the classroom or at home.

What generally happens is we focus on the symptom.

What a narcissistic parent will do is push their child and push their child and push their child until the child begins to exhibit symptoms of being pushed around.

And then what we do,

Classic narc behavior is we focus on the fact that this child is isolating.

We focus on the fact that this child now has an eating disorder or is now drinking way too much or is smoking weed all day long and can't get out of his or her bedroom or is getting into trouble at school.

So now what a narcissistic mother and a narcissistic father will do is rather than say,

What have we done,

Which is what American Indians used to do,

And they probably still do,

Is if you took a child to the medicine woman in a tribe of American Indians,

She would look at the child,

But then she would look at the mother and father and say,

What did you do?

Because it was understood that what was happening with this child,

Children are divine.

They're absolutely divine.

And if they are loved,

In most cases,

Not in all cases,

There are very few instances where a child who has been given everything that a child needs to develop in a healthy way,

There are situations where things don't go well,

Where there's a brain anomaly or there's a biological reason for this,

Why this child is acting out and has a particular symptomology.

American Indians understood that a flower planted into the ground or a seed of corn planted in the ground would net a field of corn if you treated it right.

And so the fruits that are exhibited with a child,

Which is behavior,

American Indians would say,

Well,

What did you do to the parents?

Because they understood the spiritual nature of the symptomology,

That this just didn't happen,

That there is a non-physical cause for this physical symptomology.

And that is the way the world operates,

That's the way reality operates.

Everything that is physical was once non-physical from reality itself is multidimensional in and of itself.

For those of you who are interested in understanding the nature of reality,

Understand that reality is at least what we see seems solid,

But it is in fact not solid because everything vibrates.

And everything that appears solid,

At least in our field,

Which by the way,

Human beings only see about four to 6% of what is actually happening around them and had our eyes or if our eyes had the ability to see everything,

Including light and various bands of light,

It would not look like the ordered life that we have today,

Where we could separate one tree from the next tree.

It would be all varying bands of light and patterns of light,

Which is absolutely fascinating.

So we tend to think that we've got it all figured out as human beings,

But we really don't,

That's an illusion.

So this idea that if I'm presenting with depression,

I have to understand at least as an adult child of an alcoholic or someone who is trying to recover from codependency or someone who realizes that there was trauma in my background,

I have to understand that the way I'm showing up today is an effect,

It is not the cause.

And often what we do is we start talking about the effects.

I'm so depressed.

I hate myself.

I have this eating disorder.

I do this,

I do that.

And yet very little of the time,

Which I hope is changing,

Does someone on their own think,

But why am I actually acting this way?

Unfortunately,

Many of us wait to our life is absolutely imploding and our butts are in the fire and we can't take it anymore that we start asking a different series of questions,

Which is brilliant and so necessary.

And that's what happened to me when my life imploded as a young mom with three children when I was married.

The first time my life was spiraling out of control and I was becoming someone I did not like.

It felt like my skin was on fire.

I was in what I would say a very toxic marriage for almost 12 years.

Didn't know what was wrong,

Thought it was me,

Thought that I was the reason I couldn't get to this person.

This person reinforced all of my fears.

You're crazy.

You're not good enough.

There's something wrong with you.

You're too much.

You're too this.

You're a flake.

You're too emotional.

No one can make you happy,

Which only made me less and less happy and more and more miserable and only exasperate and only made what I was feeling so much worse,

The shame and the powerlessness to the point where I developed autoimmune issues.

My hair was falling out.

I blew out my thyroid.

I was developing gastrointestinal issues,

Migraine headaches,

Rashes that doctors couldn't explain.

I was really afraid that this was going to end up very badly for me.

Either I was going to die of a major asthma attack or I was going to tip the scales in such a way that my body wasn't going to be able to sustain me in a healthy way anymore.

That is why I ultimately decided to end my marriage,

But primarily I decided to end my marriage because I knew that I had modeled unhealthy behaviors for my children.

And so when we come from homes like this and we go to schools and we are focusing on the behavior of the child rather than the why,

This is a situation that we find ourselves in as those children born into those situations and dealing with those situations.

It is the sense of invisibility that has landed us here.

And I can tell you as someone who has been through this and every day seeks to undo the damage of the past through many different things,

Ultimately a commitment to the self,

Ultimately a commitment to the divine self,

My authentic self,

Ultimately a commitment to the truth,

Ultimately a commitment to healing and recovery,

Ultimately to my own children and even to humanity to break these patterns that have caused me to feel so less than and as a result have placed my sense of happiness at your feet.

I was so upset as a young child.

I was so wounded as a young girl.

I was so wounded as a young mom and a young wife where I really thought that the person that I was married to should see me and love me as much as I loved him.

And then the fantasy was that then everything would be right in the world.

And that is very childlike.

It's very immature.

And as I learned about codependency and I learned about what it meant to be the adult child of an alcoholic and what I learned about mother wounds and what it was like to have a mom who was highly narcissistic,

Dad who was narcissistic.

When I began to flush all this out,

Then I began to understand why I was the way I was.

And suddenly the shame began to lift.

And I was able to look at myself more objectively and look at my patterns more objectively.

And then the desire kicked in for me to be a better person,

For me to get you off the hook,

For me to get my children and my new husband and my friends off the hook.

When I recognized that nobody has been put on this green earth to make my life easier.

And although my life is difficult and that's not my fault,

I have a responsibility to myself as an adult to fix it and to do whatever I can to come into alignment with the love that I am so that I can exist on planet earth and feel visible to myself and thus at a place in my life where I can feel value and develop my own self-esteem,

My own self-efficacy,

My own self-confidence and bring that to my relationships and bring that to my world.

And dear ones,

That has made all the difference.

And so if you have grown up feeling invisible,

It's a real thing.

If you grew up feeling invisible,

Then it's impossible for you to develop a healthy sense of self,

But that's not the end of the story.

I encourage you to do inner child recovery work.

If you are the adult child of an alcoholic,

I encourage you to enter into ACA and to understand the laundry list,

The characteristics of the adult child of an alcoholic,

Which are often very similar to the characteristics of the adult child of a narcissistic parent or the adult child of an emotionally immature parent,

Or even a codependent parent who through their way of thinking,

Through feeling so unseen,

We will actually glom onto our children very often and connect with them in unhealthy ways and make them responsible for us not feeling alone,

Really clipping their wings,

Which we have to take accountability for,

Which is also a sign of narcissism,

Where narcissistic parents will do this to their children with a sense of entitlement,

Where codependent parents do this from a sense of I'm not good enough and I'm afraid that if you leave me,

I have no purpose.

They act very similarly in this regard,

But their intention is different and the feeling behind it is different.

Nonetheless,

It has to be changed.

We owe it to our children to live above the veil of consciousness.

We owe it to our children to break these patterns and we owe it to ourselves.

I hope that this has been helpful and I hope that you stay on the path to recovery until you feel as if you are living above the veil and you feel far more emotionally free,

Far more self-confident,

And you have the tools in your tool shed that you can rely on to help you live an autonomous and loving fulfilled life.

Reviews

I like your talks but would really appreciate trigger warnings at the beginning

So helpful. You put words to my story so far, and help me see a different way x

Perfectly said

Always great information. I wish you would give more examples of the solution. Like you recommend ACA, which is great. But I would love for you to discuss more about the solution to these problems.

🙏🏼☀️🎯

I definitely related to this. Thank you.

💜

Thank you Lisa,
I have been listening to your advice and experiences for a year now. At 67 years old, I am able to drill into my own disfunctional childhood with understanding, to the point where I can forgive my father. At 93, my father is still alive and still the same narcissistic person he always was. I am very fortunate to come to a point where I am at peace with myself and my relationship with him. This is possible through your program my friend…. I am eternally grateful to you!🙏🌟💖