Childhood Trauma Recovery And Your Spiritual Journey

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.

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 today,

I want to talk about childhood trauma and your spirituality,

Your spiritual growth,

And consciousness,

And why it's really important that if you are on the inner child healing journey,

If you are struggling to recover from childhood emotional neglect,

If you come from a house of narcissism or alcoholism,

If you come from a house of childhood abuse where you have been abused in childhood,

And I don't want you to get caught up in the type of trauma that you've experienced.

I want you more to just listen to what I'm saying as it refers to how trauma and being disconnected from love and the divine,

If you will,

Distorts the way you think.

Now,

The path to healing is to organize your mind.

And what I have learned on my path now for nearly 30 years,

That what has increased and benefited me over time is getting to a place where I'm able to connect with my true self,

Connect with the energy that I am,

And I know that sounds hokey pokey,

But just please bear with me,

And connect with who and what I truly am,

Which is I am more spiritual,

I am more energetic than I am flesh,

Which means I am more than my ego,

Which means I am more than the collection of data that is my five senses,

Which is basically the perception that I take on as a result of my five senses as a child and throughout my lifetime.

And what I don't realize is that all of this information,

All of this trauma has interrupted my connection to.

.

.

And of course,

That's what happens when you have childhood trauma,

You're not allowed to or permitted to,

Or there's more pain and suffering in trying to attach to this divine being or these divine people or supposed to be divine people that are supposed to protect you.

And when you learn that you cannot crawl up into your mother's lap when you were afraid,

And you learn that actually the person who is supposed to protect you is the person you need to be afraid of,

That distorts your mental and emotional and spiritual access to your higher self or to higher brain function.

And so think about your thinking cap and think about metacognition,

Which is a property of higher thinking,

The ability to think about the way that you think.

Think about this idea as it relates to expanding your consciousness beyond trauma.

You see,

Trauma arrests us all and it distorts the way that we think.

And that's natural.

If I grew up feeling afraid of everything and everyone that's supposed to love me,

Then it's only natural that I'm programmed to live in survival.

It's only natural that my Amy the amygdala and Harry the hippocampus,

Which stores all my memories,

Is going to be on high alert.

They are designed to say,

Lisa,

Watch out,

Danger,

Danger,

Danger ahead.

It makes sense that my neurological system then becomes patterned habitually through neurological pathways.

So that's why I always say,

It's not you,

It's your programming.

What you experienced in childhood becomes neurological pathways.

So without awareness,

You don't know that you're on a train track or a train of thought.

Does a train know it's a train?

No.

A train doesn't know it's a train.

But when you step off the train and you observe the train,

Subject,

Object,

Then you know,

Oh,

That's a train.

So it's the same thing with your level of awareness.

When you stop and you have this awakening moment,

You go into the silence and you observe the trains,

Right?

You observe the chaos.

What are the trains?

Your thoughts,

Your emotions,

Your past reactive behavior,

Or how did you react to your brother who called you and insulted you?

Just sit back and just observe your reaction.

Observe the emotions that welled up in you.

Now ask yourself,

Has that happened in the past over and over and over again?

Then step back even further and ask yourself,

What was my energy when I answered the phone?

Or what is my energy towards my brother?

What is my belief towards my brother?

How do I feel about my brother?

What is my opinion and perception about my brother?

When you're able to get that far in your consciousness,

Then you're going to start to understand why things happen or why they keep happening to you.

That's why I'm a big proponent of,

If you're on the spiritual path,

Please do not bypass the psychological realm.

Please do not bypass organizing your mind.

Please do not bypass understanding your emotions and your triggers.

Please do not bypass any of this on your spiritual path because if you do,

You're only going to boomerang.

Because at the end of the day,

The subconscious mind is 95% in control of what you think.

So think about the conscious mind being,

Or the mind being cut into halves.

So the subconscious mind is below.

The conscious mind is above.

As it is below,

So shall it be above.

What we're hearing and understanding is that whatever's been stored neurologically,

Through memories,

Through experiences,

Through ongoing conditions in my childhood,

Has become impressed in the subconscious mind.

And so what do I experience in the mental field?

In the mental field,

The tiny bit of awareness that I think I am is observing whatever has come through the subconscious mind.

Now below the veil of consciousness,

I believe what I feel.

I believe what I believe.

I don't question it.

And so if I grew up feeling not good enough,

I believe it.

If I grew up believing that I'm never going to get ahead,

I'm never going to escape this war-torn country,

Or I'm never going to graduate from college because of X,

Y,

And Z,

Or no one likes me because of the color of my skin,

Or no one likes me because of my gender,

Whatever it is,

Whatever that belief is,

I have to be really,

Really careful and pragmatic about it.

And this is where I think black and white thinking is actually helpful.

Because it's like you say to yourself,

Well,

If thoughts become things,

Or if I believe this thing,

How could I experiencing anything other than this thing?

So if I believe the world is out to get me,

How can I experience anything other than the world is out to get me?

I can't.

So it's a very pragmatic,

Very black and white way of looking at it,

But it's also very helpful in this situation.

And I know it's been incredibly helpful on my journey.

Lisa,

Does that make sense?

If you believe that,

If you believe that you're not good enough,

What else can you possibly experience besides men who treat you like you're not good enough?

It's like I'm writing my own script.

And that pragmatic,

That black and white thinking really helped me clear cognitive dissonance.

That made sense to me.

So now,

As I began to do self-inquiry work,

As I began to do the self-inquiry and I began to challenge these thoughts,

Then I was able to understand what was blocking my ability to get more in touch with my sacred self.

As I cleared the psychological realm,

As I understood ego from a higher state of consciousness,

As I did the work to challenge my thoughts,

What I like to do is ask myself,

Could you experience anything other?

If I keep putting black out in the world,

Oh,

I don't know where I'm going to get the money for that car.

I don't know where I'm going to get the money for that repair.

I don't know where I'm going to get the money to pay for my kids to go to college.

I don't know where I'm going to get the money to do this,

To do that.

I don't know where I'm going to get the money.

It is a pattern in a program.

Can I really experience having the money come to me or having money flow to me?

Or can I really expect,

If that is my equation,

If that's what I believe,

If that's my block,

My psychological block,

Can I,

In the 3D world,

In real time,

Can I experience anything other than what I am offering?

Because the answer,

I think,

Is no.

Because if I think from that place,

If I understand the intention of it,

I don't have enough,

I don't have enough,

There's worry and there's fear.

And I put that out there,

It's sort of like that's the racetrack that I'm choosing without really knowing that I'm choosing it.

And so while Susie Sunshine over there doesn't even worry about how she's going to pay for this,

She's living in the moment.

She's found the path to non-resistance.

She's found the path to ease.

She's found the ability to manage her mind,

Even though that is not easy to do.

Because you have to step out of the evil mind and you have to create this ability to be the observer,

As Eckhart Tolle talks about,

To be the silent observer,

And to witness the mind.

Right?

So mind,

Body,

Spirit.

We have this trinity going on.

So we have to become the divinity within ourselves to observe what's happening in the body and what's happening in the mind.

And as you develop this sacred awareness,

Which is very different than the conscious mind and the subconscious mind,

And through awareness you're observing what's happening in the conscious field,

Then you begin to understand,

Oh,

That must be also happening in the subconscious mind.

That's why Carl Jung talks about,

Unless you make that which is unconscious conscious,

It will dictate your life and you,

Dear one,

Will call it fate.

We see this in the lives of people all around us.

We see people who say they believe in peace,

But they show up at protests full of hate and anger and rage.

It's not going to work,

Dear ones.

You cannot create peace through hate.

It's all about the intention.

Now that doesn't mean that our emotions aren't valid.

It just means that if we operate from a higher state of consciousness,

We can approach a peaceful protest or a peaceful rally with peace in our heart,

With peaceful negotiation.

We can actually seek to understand the other person.

It doesn't mean I always have to agree with them.

But understanding their perception,

Even get to a point where understanding that the perception that I disagree with is the result of what they've experienced,

Which I don't have to judge.

I have no right to judge that.

When I step into that level of judgment,

I invite that level of judgment from you.

So learning to think this way takes time.

It's what I call self-mastery,

You're mastering your consciousness.

And that's why I'm a big proponent of,

Listen,

Dear one,

It's not you,

It's your programming.

And if you're on the healing path,

If you have struggled in childhood,

If you don't take a giant step back and recognize that your consciousness is arrested,

Right?

Think about an algorithm.

Just look at your YouTube algorithm.

Just look at what's showing up in your feed.

Just look at what's showing up on your Facebook feed.

Just look at what's showing up on your Instagram or your TikTok feed.

What you'll notice is that the universe is responding to you in real time to what you're vibrating with,

What you're vibing with.

Now you could vibe with something that you don't want.

You could be vibing or sending out the vibe for something really horrendous and see it show up in your feed and feel in the conscious mind or believe in the conscious mind,

You don't want that.

But that's not the way this world works.

What you're vibrating with,

What level of consciousness you're at is what's going to continue to show up in the field.

So the matrix is actually an algorithm,

Right?

It's a code and that code is being run by our states of consciousness.

And so that's why we call it generational trauma.

But I really do think there's this huge shift happening.

We're seeing more and more men take on consciousness.

We're seeing more and more men take on spirituality these days.

When I was first starting in the personal development field and healing field,

There weren't a whole lot of men talking about higher self.

There weren't a whole lot of men talking about love.

There weren't a whole lot of men talking about how to arrest the ego.

The whole lot of men out there,

Got to love me some Tony Robbins.

But back in the day when I was studying him,

It was about conquer,

Conquer,

Setting a goal.

It was all about money.

It was all about success and I'm not knocking him.

I'm just saying,

I grew up watching the Tony Robbins.

I grew up listening to or reading the books of Dale Carnegie.

And a lot of the personal development books back in the day were run and governed by men.

And lost in the shuffle were these incredible women like Pia Mellody and Lucinda Bassett,

Louise Hay.

Thank God she made it out there,

Right?

But a lot of women who were talking about adult child of alcoholics issues,

Alice Miller.

So many females never got the notoriety that they deserved and they were talking about exactly what I'm talking about and exactly what so many other influencers and content creators are talking about today.

To know thyself,

To honor thyself,

To override the ego,

To live a more spiritually balanced life.

So it's all coming full circle and I'm just so happy about that.

And so we're moving into an age where we're becoming smarter,

Where the next generation is understanding that the past is going to be repeated in the future.

When I was growing up in the sixties,

The seventies and the eighties,

There was no talk about this.

It was all,

If you're unhappy,

It's probably because you're making yourself unhappy,

Which on a quantum level,

Maybe that's true,

But we had no recognition of why,

What went wrong?

Why was I sidetracked from my spirit?

We weren't talking about childhood issues.

I went to four or five therapists before a therapist asked me about my relationship with my mom and my dad,

What happened in your childhood?

That freaked me out because once that door was open,

I began to see the patterns.

I began to understand that it wasn't me,

It was just my programming.

I began to take this inventory and at first I was angry because I thought,

How could this have happened to me?

Why would my mom treat me this way?

Why would my dad let her?

What is going on here?

This is bonkers.

Why didn't my family support me?

Actually,

They did ask me,

Why did you want to get divorced?

I said,

Dad,

I'm not happy.

He told me I had no right to be happy.

I remember the look on my mother's face.

She was completely devastated as a self-abandoning codependent who had just poured her life into this man,

This more narcissistic person to try to make him happy,

Seeking his approval Am I good enough?

Am I good enough?

Did I do a good job?

Did I put you first enough?

I mean,

That was what my mom oozed and here she was listening to him tell me,

No one's happy.

You think your mother and I are happy,

Lisa?

It was shocking.

It was a huge revelation for me and that's part of when I knew,

It was a big wake up moment for me.

I knew,

Uh-oh,

You better stop listening to them and seeking their approval because they're much older than you,

But they're stuck and they have no idea what they're doing wrong.

And your dad just told you that you have no right to be happy yet sunflowers reach for the sun.

Something's really wrong here and your mother's face is devastated.

And so I had to turn away from my own family of origin.

I didn't want to,

But to save myself and to save my children,

I had to turn away.

Now,

The beautiful thing about that was that when I turned away from the people that I was emotionally reliant on and psychologically dependent upon because I was so programmed to fear their abandonment and I wasn't even aware that I was already abandoned and I was continually,

Continually being abandoned day in and day out.

So I was in this complete fallacy that one day it's going to get better.

One day it's going to get better,

Which is so typical for adult children of alcoholics and those who grew up in codependent narcissistic homes.

One day it's going to get better.

One day it doesn't get better because you're on a path.

You're sending out a frequency that you're not good enough.

And so until that frequency changes and you're never going to have a change in frequency until you have a change in thought.

That's why when we hear people say,

Oh,

Thoughts become things,

Even the Buddha teaches it.

Christ teaches us that this,

Right?

So many Lao Tzu teaches it,

But what does that mean?

So it's up to us,

The children of trauma,

That those of us who want to break the cycle,

Those of us who were born and can feel this calling inside of us,

Like leave it all behind.

Like time is short,

Life is short.

Time runs out for us all.

How long are we going to have to break these cycles?

How long are we going to have and how many opportunities are we going to have?

Well,

Actually we have an opportunity every single moment to elevate our consciousness.

What is it going to take for us to stop and realize that we need help?

That we need to be mentally trained to do this work and that it's not us,

It's just our programming.

They shed so much shame and they learn about how to validate their emotions with the one,

Two,

Three process.

They understand shutti-shutti and pass the butter.

Like all of these like silly acronyms and phrases that I come up with to really help conceptualize what has to be done in the moment when someone is triggered.

So they know that it's not them.

They know that it's not their programming.

So much shame has been left behind.

They know how to set healthy boundaries.

They know how to check themselves with gentle accountability,

But it's not enough.

They have to know how to take that consciousness,

That new level of consciousness and master it and help them shape-shift their emotions and help them learn how to focus on a want versus a not want.

That's why I created the eight-week masterclass,

But then I realized that wasn't enough because even mastery,

Self-mastery in and of itself from ego is still not enough.

You're still not connected to your higher self.

When you're connected to your higher self,

It's almost like wants cease to exist because you are enough.

You can reach a certain level of consciousness and recognize that you're an extension of source and that everything that you look at is also an extension of source.

And that means even the people that you dislike that are an extension of source.

So therefore they're an extension of you.

When you talk about emotional freedom,

When you get to that place where you're just that easy in your mind and you're non-reactive and you're understanding the big picture and you're operating through what I call love consciousness,

You have arrived in my opinion.

It's like you get to choose now.

And in this state of ease,

You feel abundant.

You feel blessed all the time.

You're not identified with your body anymore.

And when you're not identified with your pain body,

As Eckhart Tolle says,

When you're not identifying with your pain body,

It means you're not identifying with your trauma.

So even though the trauma is real,

And this is where you got to be careful here because if you're not ready to hear it,

It feels like I'm saying that your trauma was invalid.

No,

Your trauma is valid.

What happened to you was valid and you were a victim and that has to be honored.

And we have to pin the tail on the donkey so that your mind can peel away and understand that what happened to you created an impression in the subconscious mind through feelings and that keeps manifesting.

And if you want to be liberated from that,

Then we have to pin the tail on the donkey.

We have to spend some time there where your brain is separating from the wound,

Right?

A wound doesn't know it's a wound.

It needs someone to observe the wound.

Oh,

That's a wound.

Okay,

Let's separate so that you can see that's not you.

Now in this sacred space,

You're free to go left.

You're free to go right.

That's the fork in the road of consciousness.

But I don't think before we come to that fork in the road that we have as much free will as we think we do because patterns and programs are going to govern your life.

And what happened in the past is doomed to happen in the future.

And that is why I committed myself so fiercely to divorcing my ex-husband who refused to change.

He had no interest in changing.

If he had wanted to change,

I would have stuck it out with him for as long as I could have because I believe in the power of an organized mind.

If he would have organized his mind right alongside me,

If he would have been accountable,

Things might have turned out differently.

But because he refused to change and because he chose the path of trying to destroy me for seven years,

Which he actually admitted to,

I was like,

You said that out loud.

Like,

Oh,

I thought if I destroyed you and crippled you,

You'd come back to me.

The spooky thing to me is that that makes sense to him,

Or I hope it doesn't make sense to him now.

It was hard,

Right?

He alienated me from my son.

He tried to alienate me from my two daughters.

It was just one smear campaign after the other.

He told half truths for seven years.

And in all that time,

His ego was telling him,

Yeah,

She'll be back.

Yeah,

She'll be back.

All I have to do is destroy her.

So the fact that that makes sense to somebody is terrifying.

And I really hope that it doesn't make sense to him anymore.

The idea that if I destroy you,

Dominance and control,

If I destroy you,

Then you will need me.

And now you are my slave.

And now I get to treat you any way that I want to.

And it's sort of how abuse works in general.

When you're trying to groom an abuse victim,

You show them all these pretty things and you tell them all these wonderful things.

You don't know that you're being lured into this layer of dependency and trauma bonding where you feel like you can't escape.

And you don't know that what's coming down the pike is continuing brainwashing about how negative you are,

How nothing you are,

And how much you need them and how much better they are.

You don't know that's going to happen.

Psychological brainwashing is a real thing.

It was the space recognizing that my marriage was sick,

Recognizing that I was sick,

My mind was sick,

Recognizing that I had to detach from my programming,

I had to detach from him,

I had to detach from my family.

All of this scary,

Scary detachment,

Which is really amazing that the way to heal abandonment trauma is to abandon what you are afraid of being abandoned by.

That is amazing to me.

The way to heal abandonment trauma is to abandon what you think you are afraid of being abandoned by.

When I abandoned the house and I abandoned the financial support and I abandoned my family and I abandoned my husband,

My ex-husband.

When I abandoned living in the area that we live,

Which I never liked,

I didn't like the vibe.

When I abandoned all of it,

I felt like I was falling apart,

But I was really falling into myself.

And it is scary,

But I can tell you that releasing these skins,

These egoic skins,

They were never me.

They were never me.

That dependency was never me.

I was always enough.

But I didn't know that until I let go of what was making me sick.

And as I let go of what was making me sick,

It was in that space.

It was like,

Okay,

I get an opportunity to rewire my subconscious mind.

I get an opportunity to decide who I am,

What I think,

What I want,

Where my worth is,

What career I want to do.

I could have never,

Ever,

Ever achieved what I've achieved.

And now I'm so grateful I manifested my husband.

I love my career.

I love my clients.

I love what I do.

We have six children.

Our family continues to heal and continues to blend.

Now each of our children have spouses.

And so now we have like 12 kids in our Brady Bunch barn,

If you want to call it.

And it can be crazy sometimes.

Everybody's at a different state of emotional development.

Everybody has different types of trauma.

So it can be challenging.

But with the right mindset,

You connected with your true self as the leader of your family or the matriarch of your family.

You have to become the matriarch of yourself first.

And once you become the matriarch of yourself first,

The true leader of the self first,

By connecting to the spirit that you are and allowing love to guide the way,

When in doubt,

Choose love.

When in doubt,

Choose non-resistance.

When in doubt,

In my opinion,

It's time to let go.

So it's important that we recognize that if there's childhood trauma in our background,

That's a certain state of consciousness.

That's an arrested state of consciousness.

You're recoiled.

And if you really want to expand,

You have to understand there is this unraveling,

Even of your DNA.

When you're tight,

You coil.

Literally at the cellular level,

You're tight.

That's where IBS comes from.

That's where autoimmune issues come from.

You're tight.

Your body believes it's under stress.

It's under attack.

And when your body feels like it's under attack,

It can't thrive.

We want to get you to a point where you're realizing,

Oh,

Wow,

Like,

Am I arrested?

Has trauma arrested my level of consciousness?

And if so,

Acknowledge that you don't want to be there for the rest of your life because it's not going to be good,

Dear one.

It's only going to get worse.

You know,

You really want to think about this objectively and understand that the goal is really to organize the mind so that you can connect more lovingly and more easily with your higher self.

So your higher self exists outside of what happened in the past.

Your higher self can lead you towards a much more loving life experience,

A much more abundant life experience.

You can win at the game of life if you know how to play by the rules of life or a good life.

And I just hope that this session has opened your mind and opened your heart to this idea that if we keep perpetuating and keep perpetuating this level of consciousness,

Then we can't get to the next level of consciousness.

Yes,

We've been abused by narcissistic people.

Yes,

We've been abused by neglectful parents,

But we also better understand that that abuse is now inside of us.

And as long as it's inside of us and we don't confront it and try to change it,

It's going to dictate our life.

And I don't think that's fair.

And in this day and age,

It's not necessary.

I really hope,

J-Juan,

That this has been helpful.

Namaste.

Until next time,

It's a bow to the love and light that is absolutely in you.