Get Unstuck In Your Mind With This Consciousness Mind Hack

Have you ever felt stuck in life? If so, you'll really enjoy Lisa A. Romano's take on why your brain is to blame. It's not you, it's your programming as Lisa always says. In this episode, Lisa will help you understand why you get emotionally stuck in life and what you can do about it.

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 a mind hack that can get you unstuck.

So I wanted to share one of my most popular mind hacks with all of you in the hopes that it will help you free yourself from experiences in which you feel stuck.

When we understand how the brain works and how trauma relates to neurology,

From that perspective we get a better understanding of why it is we feel stuck in life.

Why no matter what we do we keep making the same mistakes.

Why many of us stay in toxic relationships.

Why even though we know we should set a boundary,

We don't know how to set a boundary.

I want you to know that this is not uncommon.

Feeling stuck in life is something that many of us struggle with and we will experience it at different phases and stages in our lives.

And I'm someone who's fascinated by how it is that we can become stuck in life and more importantly how to get unstuck so that we can live abundant lives.

I mean that's what we're here to do anyway,

Right?

We're not here to live in the shadows.

And one of these things that I think about a lot is how sunflowers and trees,

They all reach towards the sun.

They are organic,

We are organic,

But so many of us end up staying in the shadows or we feel afraid to come out into the light.

We are afraid to feel seen.

And yet if you study nature you'll see that roses want to bloom.

You'll see that sunflowers want to bloom.

You'll see that panda bears want to rump.

Deers want to rump.

Dogs want to run.

So organic beings such as animals and even the plant kingdoms,

They all want to expand.

They all want to evolve.

But human beings,

Oftentimes we feel a conflict.

There's a part of us that wants to expand,

But there's some part of us that prevents that expansion.

There's some part of the way that we think,

The way that we perceive the self,

The way that we perceive life that has us living in fear and that's what's keeping us stuck.

When we understand that the brain is built for survival,

That's the most important thing that your brain wants to do.

It wants to keep you alive.

That your entire nervous system is built to warn you about threats.

Your entire nervous system is built to allow you to flee from a saber-tooth tiger.

Your entire nervous system is built to alert you to when something is happening outside of you that is dangerous and a threat to your survival.

What we have to understand is that there's also an internal system and this internal system is tied to our memories.

Those of us who study codependency,

We study narcissism,

We study emotional neglect,

We study success mindsets.

How do we get out of this survival brain?

We recognize that trauma is tied to memory and we also understand that your brain isn't doing anything wrong when it remembers something from the past.

When it remembers something that was painful.

When the amygdala flags this external experience as a memory that's already happened and your body floods with visceral information that is tied to that event.

So we are all time traveling.

There is no such thing as separation.

What happens in the past does not stay in the past.

It is alive in your body.

The good news is that as thinking people,

As consciousness itself,

We have the ability to teach ourselves how to rise above living at a below consciousness state.

In other words,

We can either live below the veil of consciousness or above the veil of consciousness.

We can learn to observe the way that we think.

We can learn to observe the way that we feel and in a higher state of consciousness,

Let's call it level four consciousness.

Some people say it's level three consciousness,

But somewhere between level three and level four consciousness,

We have the ability to tinker with subconscious programming.

But first we have to recognize that we are not our programming.

We are not our neurology.

We are not our survival brain.

But we will oftentimes experience all the time actually,

If there is something happening outside of me that reminds me of something that happened to me in the past,

My brain is designed to remember.

So this physical sensations that I'm feeling are actually my nervous system working appropriately.

It's actually my brain telling me,

Oh Lisa,

This is very reminiscent to something that you experienced in the past.

Maybe you should get ready to run.

My brain is not doing anything wrong.

The problem is when I'm triggered in the now,

I can't go anywhere.

Sometimes we're triggered at two thirty in the morning and we think what's wrong with me?

There's really nothing wrong with you.

Your body,

Your mind just remembered something from the past,

Maybe because you were at rest and your body's responding to that memory,

Trying to get you prepared to flee or to fight or to figure out something to help push off the traumatic experience or the fearful feelings that you were feeling at the time.

So you're not doing anything wrong.

Your body's not doing anything wrong.

But this experience can make us feel stuck.

The mind hack that I want to share with you is one that's associated with understanding how the brain responds to trauma and how the brain responds to anxiety.

Basically anxiety is the brain's response to a fear.

We can anticipate fear and have fear associated to what might happen in the future,

Or we can have anxiety tied to something that already happened in the past.

Either way,

We're stuck.

What I learned to do on my healing journey as I was recovering from being a codependent mom,

Codependent wife,

Codependent daughter,

Just a codependent person,

Unaware that I was unaware,

Unaware that in all my people pleasing,

In all of my acquiescing,

In all of the subjugation that I offered people,

Putting people's needs above my own,

Not knowing what I felt,

Not knowing how to express what I felt,

Feeling responsible for things that were not my fault,

Feeling embarrassed for people I didn't even know,

Wanting to fix people's lives and prevent them from feeling alone,

To prevent them from feeling some of the pain that I felt as a child,

And specifically I wanted to prevent people from ever feeling rejected,

Because that was my wound.

And so on my timeline,

I felt rejected.

I felt abandoned.

And in the now,

I could pick it up in the quantum universe.

I knew when people felt rejected.

I knew when people felt abandoned.

And I was trying to,

As a codependent,

I was trying to fix that in other people.

And I oftentimes attracted people that were very problematic,

Who were not responsible,

Who refused to take care of themselves.

And I got stuck in this dynamic,

Trying to fix people,

Trying to heal people,

Trying to protect people that were really making a mess out of their own lives.

So I wasn't really helping anyone.

And I certainly wasn't helping myself.

So what I learned to do was I learned to recognize that when I was stuck,

I was stuck because there was a fear there.

I was afraid of something.

And I needed to identify what that thing was that I was afraid of.

In my case,

Most often,

I was afraid of people being hurt.

I was afraid of people hurting me.

And specifically,

I was afraid of being abandoned.

I was afraid of being rejected.

And that goes back to feeling rejected as a child by my mother and her,

Through her parenting style,

Very codependent,

Very passive aggressive parenting style.

What she taught me to do was to believe that what was in me and who I was,

Was bad.

And so paying attention to your needs and focusing on your needs and trying to be a good little girl,

Then I was never going to have to deal with you abandoning me.

And I would never have to get in touch with that deep wounded part of me.

I could not let you see this bad part of me.

So I had to acquiesce and I had to pretend that I didn't have needs to make you happy.

And all it did really was fuel this imposter syndrome.

It fueled perfectionism.

It fueled all of this body dysmorphia that I went through,

Especially as a teenager in my late teens.

It took me a while to figure that out and come back to the self.

But when I got to the root of why I felt stuck,

Oftentimes it was because I was afraid of people not liking me,

People seeing the bad in me that my mom saw in me and me not having the life skills or the cognitive abilities yet to recognize that I wasn't bad,

Although I felt bad and I was made to feel bad about myself,

Didn't make it true.

And on a spiritual level to recognize that just for being born,

I'm valuable.

I have value.

Even if I never improve anyone else's life,

The fact that I breathe,

I have value,

Just like a tree in the forest.

We all have value.

And so getting in touch with this idea that I have innate value was also very powerful.

But when I realized that my brain was built to secure survival,

And so if I was in a dysfunctional relationship,

The idea of setting a boundary threatened that survival.

And so by default,

My subconscious mind said,

Don't say that,

Don't think that,

Don't set that boundary.

By default,

My subconscious mind was trying to keep me safe.

My subconscious mind had been conditioned to believe that the worst thing that I could do is lose someone else's approval.

That the worst thing that I can do is speak up for myself.

Speaking up for myself was akin to death.

If I speak up for myself and I set a boundary and I reveal myself,

You're going to see the bad that my mother saw in me,

Which is shameful.

And on top of it,

You're going to abandon me the same way that she did.

And so when I began to figure out this mind hack,

I began to understand that no matter what it was,

Whether I was in a career that I really didn't like,

Whether I had friendships that I felt were exploitative,

Whether or not I spent time with people that I felt enjoyed putting me down,

That enjoyed me catering to them,

Exploited my need for approval,

Exploited my need to feel like I belonged.

When I began to understand that all of these stuck experiences in my life were tied to the fear of abandonment and that on a deep level,

My brain was only trying to protect me based on the data that it received throughout my childhood.

That wasn't my fault and it wasn't my brain's fault.

My brain wasn't doing anything wrong by keeping me stuck.

It just needed new information.

I realized also on a quantum level that these strong emotions of abandonment arrested me emotionally.

I'm of the belief that you're stuck because of pain.

And I also know that if we counter that feeling of pain and shame with the feeling of love and self-compassion and joy and hope,

We can unlock your brain.

We may even,

I've not been able to prove this,

But this is my theory that if strong emotion created strong neurological connection at the base level of our brain,

And now we have these neurological pathways that we call CPTSD that keep us stuck in these patterns when we're triggered,

We don't want to forget that the brain isn't doing anything wrong when it recalls a painful memory and when our nervous system kicks in and we start to feel these panicking feelings,

When we start to feel physical sensation,

When our physiology gets activated,

Nothing's wrong.

The body and the brain are acting appropriately based on what's been downloaded in the subconscious mind.

But we have an opportunity as speaking,

Thinking,

Breathing,

Conscious human beings,

We have the ability to rewire our brain.

And when we are able to recognize that what happened outside of me has affected me on the inside,

And if a negative experience created negative emotion within me,

And as a result,

I now have neurological pathways or neurons that have been wired together,

Especially if I'm marinating in this trauma throughout my life.

And I don't ever have the antidote of love.

I never have an older sister or an aunt or a grandmother or a teacher.

I never have a coach.

I never have anyone that says,

Hey,

Wait a minute,

Dear one,

This isn't your fault.

Like everything that you feel is valid.

The reason you feel this way is because of X,

Y,

And Z.

None of that is your fault.

Even if you have that experience,

It might be very liberating in the moment,

But you would have to teach your brain to believe that to be true until the paradigm within you is changed.

And I'm of the belief that strong feelings of self-compassion,

Strong feelings of self-love,

Strong feelings associated with self-understanding can help us undo the blocks that we have on a subconscious level and may even be able to help us undo the neurological pathways that keep us stuck.

So dear one,

I hope what you're hearing me say is that if you're stuck,

It's not your fault.

It's a neurological journey.

And with emotions that are strong in terms of love and compassion and joy and empathy,

Self-understanding,

We can undo so much of the brain locks that we experience today.

We can live an abundant life.

We can live an empowered life.

We can learn to speak our truth,

Even though our knees are shaking.

We can teach our brains to understand that yes,

Of course you're afraid of,

Of course if you set a boundary.

That is akin to survival.

But dear brain of mine,

I'm here to tell you that I can handle what comes next.

I don't want to stay arrested in this state.

I'm afraid of what might happen if I don't change.

And when you develop enough fear around staying the same,

Then your brain will help you change for the better.

That's when you'll be able to develop the courage to move forward.

When I left my ex-husband,

I didn't know where I was going.

I just knew I couldn't stay.

It was so clear to me.

So clear,

As clear as the nose on my face,

That I was programming my children to acquiesce.

I was programming my children to seek approval.

I was programming my children to live below the veil of consciousness,

To not go out boldly and to figure out who they are,

To suppress their feelings,

To be afraid of what people thought about them.

And when I saw that my mother had done that to me,

My grandmother did that to her,

And now I by default,

Because the universe maintains order through patterns,

It's no one's fault,

This is a quantumly entangled world.

The sins of the father fall on the son.

So everything's about patterns and programs.

It's not like there's this big conspiracy out there.

But the joy is that as we evolve as consciousness,

We have the opportunity to break these patterns,

To break these neurological bonds that arrest families from one generation to the next.

And that is the opportunity that I hope that you hear me saying today.

Namaste everybody,

Until next time.

Bye for now.

You are enough.

Reviews

Thank you for the talk - much of it resonated with me.

Wow tears are running down my face as I listening to you. I believe this is such important information. Thank you
Is there a way to send you a private message, I would like to ask you something that considering my experience. 🥰🤗🙏🦋☃️❤

Very revealing. Awareness of how trauma comes back and our codependency traits is helpful. Self compassion and self love to be empowered has been the focus. Thank you as always ✨💙🙏🏽

Absolutely superb podcast Lisa. I think I need to save this one and come back to it again a few times to absorb it. Everything you said has set alarm bells ringing.

Love it!

Lisa always educates the wounded and gets us through another day. Thank you for this necessary life message.

Past week was tough- this lesson helped me sooooo much

Amazingly good news. Thank you!

Fantastic talk and great advice. Thank you so much 🙏❤️

An important theme thanks

Very insightful

thank you Lisa

Wowza, great information, thank you so so much! I loved this talk! Will listen again and again 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🌹🌹🌹