Childhood Trauma Makes It Hard To Make Friends As An Adult

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.

So today we're going to be talking about why so many adult children of alcoholics and adult children brought up by narcissistic parents or emotionally immature parents,

Parents who essentially gave us the impression that they were indifferent to what was happening inside of us.

Why is it that so many of us as adults have difficult time or have a difficult time making friends today?

If you are the adult child of an alcoholic or if you grew up in an emotionally neglectful home,

Chances are you might find it difficult to make friends today as an adult.

And there are specific reasons why,

And they are all valid.

When we grow up in homes where life is unpredictable,

It is chaotic,

And our first experiences with love and trust in relationships goes awry due to toxic family dynamics,

Such as having a mother who ignores you or having a mother who treats you with indifference or having a narcissistic father who is also an alcoholic and abandons you.

When you go through some form of childhood trauma,

And let's face it,

Not all trauma is the big T trauma.

Science has proven that just emotionally neglecting a child will cause the same effects in their brain as other forms of toxic abuse.

And so this is really important for us to think about because this idea of abuse by omission matters.

So you can be abused by the things you didn't receive,

Whether it's medical care,

Whether it's affection or predictable warmth or the attention you needed to be able to connect to someone in a sacred and divine way.

The bond to a parent is what allows children to unfold into the divine self.

And without those bonds,

It's very difficult for us to form a sense of self.

Codependency,

In fact,

Is known as the loss of selfhood.

I remember people saying,

Oh,

You have no self-esteem.

And when I dug into inner child recovery work,

I realized how could I have self-esteem if the self I thought I had was annihilated and blown out of the water by family dynamics,

By toxic family dynamics,

By denial,

By having to dissociate from my pain,

By living in a state of severe repression and suppression because I had no other choice.

In our home,

We weren't allowed to talk about our emotions.

Emotions were seen as weak.

If you had emotions,

You were seen as someone who was looking for attention,

And that made you weak.

We were taught that having a need meant that we were selfish,

And it meant that we were somehow less than and less capable.

And yet learning to be able to rely on people is actually a superpower.

Learning to trust the right people,

Which means that you also learn to trust yourself,

Is,

In fact,

A superpower.

But when you grow up and your emotions are being treated with indifference or you're being criticized and shamed for having emotions,

The ability to tap into that guidance system goes awry.

And that,

Dear one,

Is not your fault.

The ability to make friends starts with us being able to believe that we are worthy.

Because when you make a friend,

What you are doing,

In essence,

Is that you are putting yourself out there and you're asking that this person like you,

Appreciate you,

And spend time with you.

And you are actually putting yourself in a position to be rejected,

Which is the adult child of an alcoholic's worst fear,

Which is a codependent's worst fear.

Someone who grew up feeling over-responsible for what was happening in their home.

Someone who grew up feeling like what was happening inside of them was irrelevant compared to what was happening to the other people in their life,

Especially when there is an addiction present.

But there doesn't always have to be an addiction present.

Sometimes this happens when you have a narcissistic brother or a narcissistic sister,

An alcoholic aunt,

Or a narcissistic dad,

Or a narcissistic mother.

It doesn't always have to be present when there is a big addiction present.

Sometimes it's a personality disorder that is destroying the family dynamic.

When everybody has to walk around on eggshells,

When the person with the biggest mouth in the room,

Who believes that their emotions matter more than anybody else's,

Who is sort of controlled by this personality disorder and cannot take into consideration how their behavior is affecting other people,

We are traumatized and we are forced to live like We need to fall into the self and ignore the self just to avoid the next negative reaction,

And that is not our fault.

Unfortunately,

Our survival mechanisms are keeping us stuck below the veil of consciousness.

We have these visualizations that happen in our head daily.

Oh,

If I say this,

She'll say that.

If I do this,

He'll do that.

And so below the veil,

We're operating under the mirror principle,

In essence,

Really participating in the recreation of self-rejection by keeping ourselves in these patterns.

So without awakening,

And every healing starts with an awakening,

A mental and emotional cognitive shift in perception.

And from there,

You can work on building and expanding your consciousness,

Which many of us refer to as a spiritual awakening.

However,

Without the cognitive tools necessary to stay on this path,

However,

On every spiritual journey,

You need cognitive mental tools to rely on because things will get messy when you start saying no,

When you start speaking your truth,

And that's when you can really use tools to help you stay on the path.

Because otherwise,

The people that you're trying to separate yourself from,

They come at you and they come at you quick.

And without you being able to shield yourself and have boundaries and know how to process the emotions that show up,

That want to pull you back into the old pattern of people pleasing and acquiescing and subjugating,

Things can get messy.

So making friends as an adult,

When you have these issues as a child,

They carry over.

And what ends up happening is that you are very well aware that you are wounded,

Or you might not even be well aware that you're wounded,

But the wounds are there.

And you have oftentimes isolated yourself,

Cocooned yourself,

Or you play the people pleasing game where you are toning yourself down just to avoid or hedge your bets just to help reduce the possibility for you being rejected.

And this just keeps you stuck.

So here you are,

And you enter into a new friendship or potential new friendship,

And below the veil,

You don't even know that you're afraid this person might reject you.

So at the slightest hint,

Maybe they don't text you back right away.

Or maybe they say,

Oh,

I'm so sorry,

But I'm busy on that day.

Or maybe they're sick and they needed to cancel on you.

When you have this abandonment trauma issue,

What will happen is that this unhealed wound of the inner child begins to work on your psyche.

You start to hear things like,

I knew this was going to happen.

This is why I don't trust anybody.

They think there's something wrong with me.

I knew this was going to happen.

And so all of these patterns from the past begin to reverberate in your mind.

And if you don't have conscious awareness of this happening,

Then your psyche just runs with this pattern,

Runs with this program,

And it's very difficult for you to catch yourself because the emotions get triggered from the past.

It's like the amygdala opens up with all of these experiences that you've had and emotions that you've had from the past,

And you don't even know that it's happening.

And then this backward rationalization kicks in,

And you are absolutely reinforcing this idea as to why you can't trust anybody,

As to why the world sucks,

As to why you can't get along to women,

Yet get along with women,

Yet you might be able to get along with women if you're a female.

And there might be women that you do actually gravitate towards.

It's just a particular type of woman that you don't want to hang out with.

This happens too.

As adult children of alcoholics,

When we're speaking about a daughter of an alcoholic,

We might have problems making friends with other females.

Now,

What we have to pay attention to is that are we or have we in the past gravitated towards females that mirrored our mother's energy or the narcissistic female in our life,

It could be a sister that hurt us and wounded us and rejected us,

And we got caught on this karmic wheel trying to be good enough for.

And if we can see that and make that connection consciously,

Then we can start eradicating that belief that we don't get along with women.

Because remember,

As a man thinks,

So is he.

As it is below,

So shall it be above.

What I believe,

I tend to see.

And so as I begin to shift my inner perception and my inner I,

And it becomes more flexible,

More malleable,

I,

In essence,

Become this emotional alchemist where I can say,

Well,

This is what I used to think,

And this is why I used to think it,

And this is why I felt it,

And this is why I used to feel it.

And these are the patterns that showed up,

And these are the types of women that I tended to attract.

However,

From this new state of consciousness,

I recognize that there are women that I tend to gravitate towards that are healthy or healthier than these women.

And that is completely within my conscious control.

So it's multifaceted in that we have to understand what's happening below the veil of consciousness.

We have to be willing to do the inner child work that allows us to make the connections to the past.

And we have to be able to understand the defense mechanisms that are keeping us stuck.

And we have to understand that all of these defense mechanisms are valid,

Dear one.

They're not your fault.

If you are afraid of meeting people,

That's not your fault.

If you got everything that you needed,

All the maternal warmth and all the predictable love and all the protection and all of the attention and all of the consistent sense that you belong to me and I love you,

If you got that enough as a child,

Then you wouldn't be afraid of people rejecting you.

In fact,

You'd be pretty resilient,

And you'd recognize that nobody has to get along with you,

That they're free to come and free to go.

But your sense of self wouldn't be so fragile.

And that's what happens to us.

Our sense of self is so fragile.

We're so used to looking for approval.

We're so used to editing ourselves so to avoid abandonment,

That we hedge ourselves on this,

That we live our lives below the veil of consciousness.

We live our lives seeking approval,

Editing ourselves,

Holding our breath,

Just almost anticipating when the next shoe is going to drop.

And all that does,

Dear one,

Is keep us stuck.

And so there are so many things that we can do.

First of all,

I truly believe that where it is at is living above the veil of consciousness.

But to get there,

To be able to live above the veil of consciousness,

You have to understand what's happening below the veil of consciousness.

And that's the power of inner child recovery work,

The power of stopping the madness,

Stopping everything that you do,

And getting still within yourself,

And developing a routine.

All of my programs,

For instance,

Come with journaling prompts that I figure out for you.

All you have to do is answer them.

They come with homework assignments.

And they come with meditations,

As well as videos,

And recaps,

And educational materials to help you understand the inner child,

And what happened to you,

And why you feel the way you feel.

Whether it's my program or someone else's program,

I don't really believe that we can make any consistent growth without understanding what's happening to us at the level of the inner child,

Which is the feeling level.

I don't really believe there's long-lasting change without changing what's happening at the feeling level,

Without changing what's happening at the emotional level.

With what I understand about quantum mechanics,

And I truly believe that one day soon,

Science will no longer consider metaphysics anything less than actual physics.

What I understand about emotions is that they're energy and motion.

And what I understand about the quantum field,

In terms of physics,

Is that quantum entanglement is real.

If you don't believe me,

Look it up.

Study it.

The observer effect is real.

If you don't believe me,

Look it up.

The idea that the way I look at something defines its reality for me.

And it's no different than being someone who's really,

Really wounded,

And you walk across a cafeteria floor,

And you hear people laughing,

And you immediately assume they're laughing at you.

And it doesn't have to be real.

But you could leave that cafeteria and have this whole conversation in your head about how these people are horrible,

And how they are so untrustworthy,

And how you tried to trust them,

But you couldn't,

And have this whole conversation when,

In reality,

It had nothing to do with you.

But you will take that perception that is the result of childhood trauma with you.

And you will call your sister,

And you'll call your therapist,

Or you'll call someone else.

But yet,

In reality,

Those people might have been laughing about something that they saw on a YouTube video,

Or something that they saw online,

And it would have nothing to do with you.

I know that I've been guilty of that.

I've actually looked at a text message and seen something that actually wasn't there.

And when I went back,

When I was calm and not triggered,

I was shocked that what I read did not match the first time what I thought I read.

And that's super frightening to me.

This idea that had I not gone back and checked the text message,

Or not gone back and read the email,

It said something completely different than what I thought it said.

And so when we are triggered,

When we are not living in the conscious field,

When we are not conscious,

Then we are subconscious.

And what has been programmed is dictating what we see and how we see that.

Nothing matters more than how you see yourself and how you see the world.

Einstein said that that is basically what will determine the quality of our life,

Whether we see the world as safe or unsafe.

And so if you are the adult child of a narcissistic parent,

If you are the adult child of an alcoholic,

If you have unhealed wounds from childhood,

If you have been through a narcissistic relationship and you have lost yourself,

Dear one,

That is not your fault.

So yes,

You're going to have trouble trusting people.

You're going to have trouble being your authentic self.

Of course you would.

There would be no other way,

But it is not your fault.

And as we do this work and we look within,

We understand this idea of consciousness,

That I can operate from the level of my feelings and my inner child,

And all of those defense mechanisms that were meant to keep me safe,

Shutting down,

Recoiling,

Denial,

Subjugation,

Trying to figure out how to get people to like me,

Seeking for approval,

Not speaking up,

Shunting my feelings,

Getting really,

Really hurtful,

Taking the bull and running away.

All of these strategies that are designed to protect me are really keeping me stuck.

So I hope that this has been helpful.

I hope that this has encouraged you to think about why it is you might be having a difficult time making friends.

And in some cases,

You're just barking up the wrong tree,

Dear one.

In some cases,

It's you not understanding that this group of people is not good for you.

It is you and your pattern and program continuing to put up with people who violate your boundaries,

Continuing to hang out with people who might have an addiction issue,

Or continuing to hang out with people who are vulnerable narcissists and they drain you,

Or continually hanging out with people who are controlling.

And so sometimes it's us barking up the wrong friendship tree.

So once we take a giant step back and we start to look within,

And we take a very analytical approach to this,

Where we're trying to understand the self,

Which is what all great philosophers have ever tried to get us to do in the first place,

Understand thyself.

If you can understand yourself,

Then you can heal yourself.

If you can heal yourself,

You can understand other people.

And you can avoid falling into a narcissistic trap.

You can avoid falling into the protection mode,

Which prevents you from being able to withstand rejection,

Because that's really the goal.

The goal is the ability to put yourself out there and be so emotionally resilient that even if this person rejects you,

You're good because you know,

Dear one,

That you are enough.

And we don't stop there.

We just keep going and we refuse to give up.

We take a picture in our mind of an ideal relationship,

An ideal friendship,

And we keep that in the forefront of our head.

And when this one doesn't work out,

We pass the butter and we keep moving towards that ideal relationship,

And we never give up.

That means we might have to put ourselves outside different comfort zones,

And that's okay.

The more you do it,

The more you practice,

The better you get at it.

And I'm telling you,

The sense of liberation that you feel from no longer worrying about who's going to abandon you or who's going to criticize you,

I mean,

I've been a life coach and a YouTuber and a content creator and an author for long enough and a podcast producer.

I recognize that people criticize you,

People that will never do what you've done,

People that never put them out there,

Put themselves in a situation where they can be criticized,

Criticize.

And once you realize the mentality of that type of a person and the cowardness in that type of a person,

And you just keep moving forward anyway,

That's when you get to the other side of this trauma.

And I'm telling you,

Dear one,

The view is amazing.

I'm not going to tell you that it's easy because it's not,

Because it means that you have to face all of these shadows that mommy and daddy have created or grandma and grandpa or your sociopathic brother or your narcissistic wife or husband,

Whoever.

It means that you're going to have to face those shadows.

But I can tell you that there are ways to do that,

And I can encourage you to stay on this path because the sun does come out tomorrow.

You do get in touch with the ideal self.

Your life does improve.

You get to the point where you just,

You can't believe that this used to bother you because you developed so much self-resiliency,

So much self-love,

And so much self-compassion.

And I do encourage you to begin the inner child healing recovery journey sooner than later if you are struggling with any of these issues.

Namaste,

Everybody.

As I bow to the love and light that is absolutely in you.

And even if you don't feel it,

There is a light that is within you.

And guess what?

The light that is within you is the same light that is within me,

And it's the same light that is of the divine from which we all come.

Namaste again,

Everybody.

Enjoy your day.

Bye for now.