Childhood Trauma Hijacks Your Perception

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 break through podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about how past trauma affects how we perceive other people respond to us if you are someone who has experienced childhood trauma Childhood emotional neglect if you are someone who has been abused in the past Then it's very important that you take into consideration how?

Trauma can affect the way you perceive how other people's perceive you the best example that I can give of this is the experience that I have of my brother whom I love very much as a little boy,

My brother was Repeatedly I would say rejected and criticized and even humiliated by my father My brother was a very sensitive little boy and who loved his mother very much who From the moment he was born was kept in a crib and was not tended to They're thinking at the time my parents thinking at the time was well we spoiled the first one me we held her all the time and that's why she cried all the time and So having this new baby.

My brother was only 15 months younger than I was We will just not hold the baby and we won't spoil the baby was their thinking I think it's important to recognize that my parents were two unrecovered Extremely wounded adult children of alcoholics.

They both quit high school My mother was 19 when she had me Barely 21 when she had my brother my father was I believe 21 or 22 when he had me and just 24 perhaps when he had my brother they had not come from very healthy homes themselves They weren't educated in childhood emotional Psychology or needs they had no idea what the needs of a child were and from their perspective The world was very black and white From their perspective when I was a baby I cried because I wanted to be held They didn't understand perhaps that what was really going on was that there was a lack of connection there was a lack of authenticity and children cry for many many reasons specifically When their needs are not met the only way we communicate with the outside world is through crying but my parents got it in their head that the reason I cried so much was because I was held so much and I counted that with babies probably cry a lot less when They feel content and I can see it with my little granddaughter What a wonderful job my daughter and my son-in-law are doing and how wonderfully content Does this little baby feel and what a wonderful job they're doing?

Making her feel seen so their theory was we'll just let this baby cry So from the day my brother came home from the hospital He was set down in a crib and was left to cry from a newborn on which I think is absolutely cruel as my brother aged Obviously he had attachment issues abandonment issues Which made him feel insecure and vulnerable which fueled his desire to cling more to my mother which only frustrated her which only frustrated my father and The way that my father handled that was through criticizing him and making fun of him Which only fueled the fire of insecurity?

It was a vicious circle and yet from the outside looking in our family looked perfect as we aged I was fortunate enough to love school.

My father proceeded to compare my brother's handwriting to mine compared my schoolwork to his and when he was disappointed in my brother would proceed with calling him names and Making fun of him which only fueled Again,

More insecurity more vulnerability more.

I am not enough more shame more unworthiness it also impacted my relationship with him and even as young as seven I could see in his eyes that he was developing anger towards me and I was powerless to change it and As my brother aged came into his own as a young teenager and young adult You could see that he developed a chip on his shoulder You could see that he had a difficult time around people.

He didn't know and even as a man today in his 50s My brother can still be highly reactive the trauma that he experienced as a child Causes him to perceive even the most innocent interactions as antagonistic even from me I could say something that is very innocent and He will perceive it as something not innocent.

He will perceive it as antagonistic I've watched this dance play out between the two of us all of our life and when I was more below the veil of consciousness,

I Would react to his reaction to me and so here we were in this codependent dance Me reacting to his faulty perception of me and him reacting to something innocent that I said On my side of the fence.

I was angry that my brother couldn't see me the way I was I was angry that he projected all of his wounds onto me and accused me of persecuting him accused me of being sinister when I wasn't and that frustrated me and I could see that the more I Became frustrated the angrier I would become and the more I actually proved to my brother that He couldn't trust me.

We were in this dance that really was a reenactment of our childhood trauma We were both innocent Neither one of us should have been triangulated He shouldn't have been made fun of He shouldn't have been compared to me Someone should have stepped in and said this is wrong Early on in his childhood,

But it never happened and as a life coach.

I see this with my clients quite often We react including myself oftentimes to How we perceive other people perceive us Something happened just yesterday when my husband and I were talking about my nephew who just graduated as a New York City fireman and during one of the exercises he had to sling down the side of a building and Rescue someone from a window and I thought boy I'm glad my nephew would show up if if I was in a fire and my husband made a comment He's like well you could do that.

You're a decent-sized woman and I Could feel my old self my invisible self my ego self Saying he just called you obese He just made fun of the way that you look,

But that wasn't the case My husband was saying you're a substantial-sized Woman you're five six a hundred and fifty pounds you're strong you exercise You might be able to sling down the side of a building and rescue someone he actually meant it as a compliment But that's not the way my ego self perceived it But what's really interesting at this stage of consciousness is that I'm able to observe my knee-jerk reaction and tamper it and tame it and say that's not what he meant and to not react to the way my trauma Would have perceived that very innocent comment to mean that I wasn't good enough when I explained it to my husband He was shocked.

He said I'm surprised that You would have had any negative reaction to that comment,

And I said well,

That's because you haven't Understood or you still don't understand how I was wounded as a little girl by observing and Experiencing my father's preference for the size of a woman My mother was a large woman over 200 pounds most of her life I would say towards the latter age stages of her life And my father was very verbal made it very known that he thought my mom was big and that he would have preferred if she was smaller and I watched this dance play out and I received the information from my father right a little girl's idea of what it is to be a beautiful woman comes from dad and so My husband has no idea that within me are these wounds Where are these messages that because I am not a size 2 Never was a size 2 never will be a size 2 or 4 or 6 because I wasn't somewhere in the recesses of my mind was this sense that I was unworthy and And Having coming through an eating disorder in my teenage years and young adult years and coming through that and having to work through my body issues My ability to love myself as I am and to not judge my body and instead thank my body every day for supporting me Because without my body I'm not going to exist So if there's anything that I should appreciate it is my body it is my heart my lungs my liver my mind my eyes my ability to breathe taste touch and So on and so I've worked through that.

My point is that Whatever is within us that is unhealed that Still boils over that we try to gloss over that we are not dealing with in the conscious field has the potential to Interfere with the way that we perceive other people perceive us So it is possible to have these unmet needs for instance Feeling unloved feeling unheard if you have a narcissistic mother you did not grow up feeling heard You grew up feeling Invalidated it's what I call chronic Invalidation what you think is irrelevant what you feel is irrelevant when you come from a toxic home the problems of the children go ignored and The problems of the parents Trump what it is.

The children are experiencing so children literally can be born and not raised and If you come from a dysfunctional home if your parents were alcoholics or narcissistic Narcissistic while they were going through whatever it is that what they were going through at the moment Your needs went ignored and that is not healthy That is not the way it is supposed to be children are supposed to be attuned to parents is supposed to be sober emotionally parents are supposed to be sober period and able to pick up on the nuances of their children and when parents are self-absorbed and overwrought and Unable to manage their emotions or their needs or their addictions Children are paying attention children develop hyper vigilance Children develop shame.

I'm not good enough They're left with this less than critical mind to go and try to figure out How to take care of themselves and one of the worst things that happens depending on how you look at it is children blame themselves for not being able to gain their mother's attention or their father's affection and Deeper children don't believe that they have a right to their emotions.

They don't know how to access their emotions They don't trust their emotions if you can't trust your emotions that is a very messy place to be in because as an adult you might become hyper vigilant and other focused and codependent and very sensitive to other people's perception of you and In my case what I did was I turned myself into a pretzel I lived my day-to-day experience by editing myself Trying to figure out what the people in my outer world needed Because looking within I had no tools for I had been taught that what I needed was irrelevant Even shameful I was selfish.

I was too much.

I was just looking for attention and to work that through To the point where and this is what I teach in my courses.

This is what I hope you hear in my meditations This is what I hope you hear coming through these broadcasts is that you are enough and that what is going on inside of you is important and you have a right to access your emotions and The thing that we have to understand about emotional recovery is that?

We are the brain actually isn't designed to run towards a forest fire And so if I have been brainwashed and conditioned to think that I can't trust the way that I feel Then I rely on the outer world To give me some clue as to what is appropriate because I certainly am not appropriate Now I become a feather in the wind Now I am susceptible to toxic relationships now.

I am susceptible to narcissistic relationships and the reason that Narcissists and codependents the reason we sink so well with people who are highly narcissistic is that as codependence we don't have a sense of self and our worth and identity is tied up in how well we can please others and when you are codependent you are the perfect prey for a Narcissist because they lack empathy their empathy impaired.

They are self-absorbed Self-Focus Self-Grandiose they are Above everyone at least that's what they think and they don't have to worry about other people They are wired to believe that other people should be worried about them And that's exactly how a codependent is wired until a codependent awakens Until a codependent says I want off this nonsense bus.

I want to learn how to Develop the wherewithal to worry about what I think and to worry about what I feel and to in that space Determine whether or not what is happening in the 3d experience is a vibrational match or spiritual match or an intellectual match For what it is that I want to do or where I want to go in my life And if it is not I have the right to end whatever this is and to move forward if you've ever left a narcissistic Relationship you know that it's it takes some undoing but it is possible The first step is to acknowledge that something is wrong and then to look within because you can't change others I know that sounds so hippy-dippy and so hokey-pokey and 30 years ago if someone would have said you can't change your ex-husband You can only change yourself I would have said no he's wrong and all he's got to do is stop doing that thing that he's doing and then he and I Can be happy,

But you see that still would have given him power over me because that would have been me saying he's got to stop doing what he's doing for me to be happy and What I needed to do was to accept that I was unhappy That we were a mismatch as I grew as I became more open to my wounds as I Worried less about depending on others to give me a sense of self and I began to nourish myself I embarked on the codependency recovery journey the inner transformation was mine He and I were no longer a match and so it became more and more evident that we could not stay together and once I stepped into that truth that is when Everything began to fall apart,

But in order to experience abundance you have to be willing to let go of what is and So while we were a perfect match for many years The reality is that I was a very wounded person when I met him And so if you're a wounded person your picker is off You don't pick the best partner,

But you do pick the partner that mirrors what's going on inside of you on some level Maybe your narcissistic partner mirrors the energy of one or both of your parents Maybe regardless of what you've achieved you really don't feel good enough Maybe you have some idealized version of love that has to do with believing that your partner has to agree with you and See you and anticipate all of your needs and when that doesn't happen You believe that it's your job to make it happen,

So you're constantly changing yourself once I was no longer willing to edit myself and Once I was willing to truly heal and uncover the subconscious limiting beliefs the Conditions that I placed on myself that I projected into the world Everywhere I looked I was not good enough Everywhere I looked I was trying to be good enough and on days where I felt fulfilled Those were days where I had worked myself to the bone to prove that I was good enough I taught people how to take advantage of me And I wasn't even aware that I was doing it never saying no is not a good thing Knowing who you are and setting boundaries and loving yourself despite how other people treat you Not depending on them for a sense of self Really coming back home to Center.

Who am I?

What has happened to me?

Why am I this way?

Connecting the dots to childhood Something that I wish my own brother would do so that he could understand that his wounds affect the way he believes people perceive him and and even when People are trying to be loving towards him.

It's often difficult for him to believe it now.

That's not his fault But there is a better way and so if you are someone who's experienced childhood trauma if you are someone who?

Feels beaten down if you feel Overwhelmed if you feel like nothing that you ever do is ever enough Whether you were in a relationship with someone who's highly narcissistic or not if you just feel burnt out It's time for you to look within it's time for you to wonder.

How do I perceive other people?

Perceive me and am I in a constant biofeedback loop where I respond?

Negatively to the people who respond to me especially when people respond to me negatively I Learned that and it took a while,

But I learned that I don't have to react to Anyone who responds to me in a negative way?

Because I have to be careful and mindful of number one my wounds am I Projecting my wounds onto this person am I expecting this person to fail me is that happening number one?

And number two Which is what I hope we all strive for is how can I become non-reactive?

To this person who is responding to me in a negative way because That person is also responding to me through their trauma lens So even though I've shown up trying to be a good friend if that person is wounded no matter what I do is their friend might never be good enough and that has nothing to do with me and If we can strive for that type of personal growth,

Then we will live above the veil of consciousness We will break the chains to generational Karma We will no longer have to rely on other people to be what we think they need to be In order for us to be happy we will learn what it means to pay attention to the energy that we're emitting and We can gain conscious control over the thoughts that we think and choose them What a wonderful way to live your life getting up every morning and choosing the thoughts You're going to think rather than allowing your subconscious mind to regurgitate information and data from the past and stream it into the conscious mind and have the very little conscious you React to what is being streamed from the subconscious mind What a wonderful way to live your life to get up and say I'm so grateful for this bed.

I'm so grateful I woke up today is another opportunity.

I don't have to react negatively to people who react negatively to me They're looking at me through their trauma lens.

I don't have to react.

I don't have to judge them I don't have to stand in criticism.

I can ask myself.

What would please me today?

I don't have to be codependent I can accept those who Don't want to be in a relationship with me if they don't want to be in a relationship with me then that means that I should not want to be in a relationship with them because I only want to be in a relationship with People who respond to me in a positive way who look for the positive things in me That's what I want.

And so being able to develop that type of mind control That type of mental clarity is just the only way to live It's the spiritual way to live living below the veil of consciousness is regurgitation not creation and I can tell you that the only times that I really get into trouble is when I forget that I have control of the way that I think and In using my consciousness,

Which is outside mind and outside the subconscious mind and outside body It's almost like understanding yourself that understanding yourself as an observer you can observe what's happening in the conscious field and You can heal deeply enough where you understand what's been programmed into the subconscious field and you can resolve the limiting beliefs that Hinder your ability to see things clearly that make it impossible for you not to react to everything and everyone You can develop that type of mental clarity and I so hope that That is the path that you're on and I encourage you to stay on the conscious path Because as you become more able to observe the way that you think you gain more control over the ego self you gain more control over the inner child you step into the divine parent within and You're able to soothe the inner child and help them understand that They were always enough and it is no longer necessary to rely on other people to make them feel good enough So here's to self-awareness and here's to self accountability because that's where it's at Namaste everybody until next time bye for now