4 Odd Trauma Responses Your Body Holds Onto

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.

I created the Conscious Healing Academy,

A three-part coaching and brain retraining program designed to help individuals triumph over trauma and turn their breakdowns into powerful breakthroughs.

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.

Namaste,

Everybody.

So in this session,

We're going to be talking about four odd trauma responses that you're going to feel in your body,

But your conscious mind might not be aware of.

It's so cool.

The trauma matrix is a term that I now use to help people understand that if you were taken advantage of as a child,

If you were abandoned,

Neglected,

Or worse,

Then there's going to be a certain level of consciousness that you operate from,

Albeit unconsciously.

Carl Jung is famous for saying,

Until you make that which is unconscious conscious,

Whatever's in the subconscious mind is going to dictate your life.

And you,

Dear one,

Will think,

Oh,

It's my fate.

I'm not meant to be lucky.

I wasn't meant to be rich.

I wasn't meant to manifest the love of my life.

Life is so hard.

My parents never made it.

Why should I?

Oh,

My grandmother had breast cancer.

My mother had breast cancer.

Oh,

Well,

I guess I'm going to have breast cancer.

So whatever is in the subconscious mind,

You believe that it's your fate.

And it's not.

Through neuroplasticity,

We know that this is just not true.

Through groundbreaking research and neuroscience,

We know that we can reprogram the subconscious mind.

But you can't do it from the trauma matrix.

So I talk about these four levels of consciousness.

Level one,

You're in the matrix,

You don't know it.

Level two,

You're above this cornfield,

And you know,

Oh,

I'm in a cornfield.

What can I do about it?

Level three,

You're actually changing the patterns,

Changing the programming.

And not feel so offended by everything and everybody.

You see,

As long as you are offended by everything and everyone,

You have some work to do.

And that's just because you might still be at level one.

Or maybe you know what your pattern is,

But you don't have the skills to break it.

It's better to know that you are this way than to not know and to think that everybody else is wrong and to think that you can't escape it,

Which is vulnerable narcissism.

So I just want to encourage you to know that there is a better way and keep at it.

So for those of you who are really into recovery work,

Who know that you have to commit yourself 100% to reprogramming the subconscious mind,

I wanted to make you aware of four odd signs that are really trauma responses that show up in your body that your conscious mind will not recognize right away.

But I want to help you break through.

I want you to go,

Oh,

Okay,

That's a trauma response.

I didn't know that.

So number one is that you'll feel a tightness in your belly.

When I was below the veil of consciousness,

I never realized how tense my body was,

How constricted my abs were.

As a matter of fact,

My abs looked a lot better back then because I was always so tight,

Right?

Tightly wound,

Wound up,

Retentive,

Like holding on to my energy.

That's a trauma response.

When we're little and our households are chaotic,

We tense up,

We freeze up.

We're preparing for impact.

It's no different than what happens when you see that your car is going to go a little bit out of control or the stewardess says,

Prepare for impact.

What do you do?

Generally,

You tense up.

So if you're a little girl or you're a little boy and your house was always chaotic,

It was unpredictable,

Don't be surprised if as an adult,

Your body is very tense,

Your back hurts.

Like I said,

Ask yourself this question,

Do a quick check.

How tense is my lower belly?

Do you have IBS issues?

Do you have fertility issues?

And then what you want to do then is see if you can tense your body on purpose and then relax it.

Tense your body on purpose and then relax it.

Then you'll begin to understand,

Oh my gosh,

My body's in this arrested state or an arrested trauma response.

So it's good to know that.

Number two is that you'll notice that you'll freak out when your brain has nothing to freak out about.

Have you ever noticed,

If you come from trauma,

That just as you get the job,

Just as you find the guy,

Or just as you find the girl,

Or just as you get the apartment that you wanted,

Just when your boyfriend invites you to meet his family,

You start to freak out because things are going so well for you.

Dear one,

You're used to bracing for impact.

This does not compute in your subconscious mind,

Everything's going well,

I have nothing to worry about.

The brain does not like anything that is unfamiliar.

It prefers the familiar.

And so that's why many of us will sabotage ourselves just as we're beginning to get what we want.

I know that as a life coach,

I've been on this journey a long time.

There were so many times I really had to question myself,

Like,

Lisa,

Make sure you move through this.

Don't screw this up.

You are worthy of this.

It's because something was happening that was amazing and I didn't have the programming for how to let that in.

So that's a trauma response.

The third thing is that you can stay stuck in your head and not in your heart.

So you think that thinking is feeling,

And actually that's a trauma response,

Right?

Feeling and thinking are not the same thing.

Thinking happens with the mind,

Feeling happens with the heart,

Right?

You feel energy moving in your heart space.

But oftentimes when you're in a trauma response,

Your throat chakra is blocked,

Your heart chakra is blocked,

And you stay in the upper,

You stay in the,

What's really,

You're not really in the upper chakras,

So to speak,

Where you're actually thinking with spiritual intelligence and consciousness,

But you're stuck,

You're blocked,

Like the energy can't get past your heart,

It can't get past your throat chakra,

It can't come out of your mouth.

So you stay in the mental field.

You feel safer there because you're always trying to figure things out.

So that's a trauma response.

And the fourth thing,

Pursed lips,

Meaning like how often do you ask yourself,

Hmm,

Is my face tense?

Are my lips pursed?

Even though I've been on this healing path for so long,

Decades now,

Right?

We're going on three decades.

I noticed still in meditation,

One of the quick checks that I do for myself to make sure that I'm in a state of flow versus constriction is I check my lips.

I've never smoked,

I don't drink,

And yet I have fine lines around my lips.

It could be that I have small teeth,

That's what a dentist told me,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

But I really think that a lot of the lines I'm bringing you now,

I'm bringing all your awareness to the lines around my lips.

I really don't care.

I'm a human person just like you.

We all go through this stuff.

Who cares?

I don't really care.

But I do think that part of why I have such deep ingrained lip lines because I don't smoke and I don't drink,

I eat really well,

I exercise,

I drink a ton of water,

Is because it's a trauma response where my lips were always tight.

There was a lot of tension in my face,

A lot of tension in my jaw,

And I didn't even realize it.

And so do a quick check.

As soon as this session is over,

Ask yourself,

Close your eyes and ask yourself,

Can I tense my face and then release it?

Are my lips,

The muscles around my face,

Around my lips,

Are they tense or are they flowing?

Are they open?

Are they relaxed?

And then just do quick checks with yourself here and there throughout the day.

And you'll notice that you're going to find tension in your body even though you don't even know that you're tense because it's your state.

You could be in an arrested survival state and not even know it.

So the more aware you become about these odd signs that your body could still be manifesting these trauma responses in your body,

Albeit unconsciously,

The better you're able to break through them.

Bye for now.