Feeling Lost Without Boundaries & Suffering From Codependency

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 the problem with codependency and our ability to set boundaries.

So let's just,

You know,

Take a deep breath.

Let's just settle in,

Just relax our mind,

And let's just think about what it is and what the consequences of codependency,

Some of them,

What some consequences can be.

When we are codependent,

We lack a healthy sense of self.

In most of the cases,

Codependency can be tied to a fear of abandonment,

And the way I look at that,

That's nothing to be ashamed of.

It's just a fact.

So if you have a fear of dogs,

Because when you were three,

You were bit by a dog,

And now you're 33,

And you have this natural innate fear of dogs,

Even if you don't want to have this visceral,

You know,

Stress response reaction to seeing a dog,

Even if you don't want to have it,

You do.

So your mind has recorded very,

In a very necessary way,

A painful event so that you never forget that you could get hurt by a dog in the future.

And now,

Below the veil of consciousness,

Your brain is being triggered by the sound of a barking dog or the sight of a dog.

It could be a tiny little dog.

It doesn't matter.

It could be your sister's little Chihuahua that is the sweetest thing ever.

It doesn't matter.

Below the veil of consciousness,

Because your brain is like a cell phone and has come with factory settings that you are not in control of,

And your brain has been designed to record on autopilot,

You will have a visceral response to a dog in the future,

Even if you don't want to.

You know,

A phone may not want to set off a security alert,

But the phone has no,

It has no control over turning that security alert off.

What we can do,

Because we have consciousness,

Is we can manage the way we respond by overriding the stress response.

We can do that.

But when we're codependent,

And this has to be taught,

This has to be learned,

These are very difficult ideas to grab a hold of,

At least I think so,

And maybe they're not for you,

But they were for me.

And I had to spend hours,

Days,

Weeks,

Months,

And years breaking it down so I could understand it and gain some control over it.

Not only so I could help myself,

But so that I can help others understand this mess that codependency is.

So when we're codependent,

We have a fear of abandonment,

Because we have been abandoned.

Even if our family says,

We never abandoned you,

You're a drama queen,

What are you talking about?

You know,

Like,

This is all made up in your head.

We're talking about emotional abandonment,

We're talking about some factory default settings of the brain that our brain had to bond that were frustrated,

And that is not our fault.

And so if you have a fear of abandonment,

If you have codependency symptoms,

If you don't have a strong sense of self,

That is not your fault.

That's something to be understood.

So imagine picking up a cell phone,

And it has some limitations.

You have to work it a certain way,

Unlike a cell phone that had no issues.

So you have to understand that childhood programming is like being downloaded.

So if you come from an alcoholic home,

Imagine that you have the adult child of an alcoholic home app in your brain.

It's your experience.

If you have physical abuse,

That's the app,

So whatever comes along with physical abuse is now part of your experience,

Not your fault.

Let's say it's sexual abuse.

You have this app,

It's not your fault.

Your brain is going to respond to a stressor in a particular way.

The stressor is not your fault,

The experience is not your fault,

And the way your brain responds to these stressors is not your fault,

Right?

It's not the phone's fault that it has this faulty downloaded app,

Right?

And it's not your fault.

The question is,

What do we do about it?

Our personalities and who we become are very much shaped by our external experiences.

So how well my phone works depends on who's working the phone,

The external experience.

What are they downloading?

So it's not my fault if I'm the phone and I don't perform well or I perform slow compared to other phones or I have difficult time processing information or responding.

That's not my fault if I have all these faulty apps,

These corrupt apps,

And I'm the phone,

Right?

So if we can use that analogy to understand ourselves,

Then we realize there's nothing to be ashamed of.

It's not our fault.

And so codependency,

If I don't have a healthy sense of self,

Then I don't know who I am.

Even if you don't know where your house is or you can't identify your house,

How do you lock the door in a house that you don't own?

How do you protect a house that you don't own?

And so think of yourself as a house.

If you don't own yourself,

How do you protect yourself?

You can't.

And so boundaries don't work.

And anybody out there who's suffering from codependency,

Like you,

Have nothing to be ashamed of.

I know it's frustrating because I've been there.

I know that we do some dysfunctional stuff.

We beg for approval.

We are intense human beings.

We need to be loved.

We want to be loved.

We frustrate people.

People frustrate us,

Right?

We don't know what's wrong because we don't know how to look under the hood.

And we have this experience of other,

And we are trying to attach to this other,

Which really in most cases,

If you've been wounded,

This other person represents your mother,

Represents your father,

Or the mother you can say represents your maternal family.

And so where you have been frustrated by mother,

And again,

Use the idea of mother to represent your maternal family.

So when you've been frustrated by mother,

You are frustrated by others.

And as a codependent,

You will frustrate others as well.

It's this negative feedback loop.

And it's not our fault.

It's not your fault.

And so when we have experienced abandonment,

We don't have a healthy sense of self.

Because in order to have a healthy sense of self,

Then the self that I am would have had to have been positively mirrored back to me,

So I can say me,

Lisa,

The little girl that I am,

I matter.

Now as children,

The I,

We associate with our feelings.

So when Lisa is sad,

If mommy says,

Oh,

Lisa,

You're sad.

What's wrong?

And mommy shows interest in me,

The message is,

You can see me.

You can feel me.

You can hear me.

You care about me.

And the end result is me,

The I that I am,

I can now perceive as valid and worthy,

Because the other outside of me has deemed me valid and worthy by showing an interest,

By picking me up,

By consistently showing up for me.

Now that's another thing.

We have to understand as adults who are interested in personal development,

Emotional healing,

And the like,

That when our experience of others is intermittent,

When it is interrupted,

Or when it is inconsistent,

That we understand as unpredictable nurturing.

And so our attachments will be insecure.

And so we need to attach in order to feel secure.

So what do we do?

We are fueled to attach.

And that's what codependency is.

When I get involved with someone,

I need to attach.

I don't want them to leave me.

I want them to see me.

I am psychologically and emotionally driven to get this person to validate me.

It's what we do.

We don't know that it's being fueled by abandonment.

But as we awaken to this reality,

This is our opportunity to heal.

And so if you are struggling with codependency symptoms,

What I'd like you to consider is why?

Don't just try to manage your symptoms.

It's sort of like going to the doctor and being told that you have atherosclerosis and they give you medication.

Well,

That's not going to solve the problem if you wake up and you have steak and eggs and cheese and ham for breakfast.

It's just a band-aid.

Sure,

I could try to manage my codependency symptoms.

But when I understand why I'm codependent,

When I heal the abandonment trauma within me,

Then I am able to move forward and set boundaries because the me that I am is becoming into focus.

It's coming into focus.

I can see that,

Oh,

Okay,

I was always worthy.

I was always divine.

I was always good enough.

But my programming didn't know that.

I was downloaded with this dysfunctional app,

Childhood programming.

I was not nurtured or the nurturing that I received was inconsistent or intermittent.

This is not my fault.

No wonder I can't set boundaries.

I don't know who I am.

So if you are codependent,

Then that means that you most likely suffer from abandonment.

Again,

Not your fault.

So you fear abandonment.

And so what we fear,

We also crave.

And so your desire to be in a relationship is sort of like pain versus pleasure.

So I associate pain with being abandoned,

Which means I'm going to associate pleasure with never being abandoned,

Which means under that umbrella or through that lens,

Then I'm going to tolerate things that I probably shouldn't.

I'm going to attach to people.

I'm going to fear abandonment.

If I attract someone who is on the narcissistic spectrum and they blame me for everything and they get angry and they say it's my fault that they're angry or if they hit me and they say,

Well,

If my potatoes were warmer,

You know I like hot mashed potatoes,

And the potatoes were lukewarm,

I might think,

Well,

It's my fault that he hit me or she threw the astray at me because I know that they like warm potatoes.

So we tolerate nonsense and we tolerate abuse because we don't have a defined sense of self.

We don't know where we end and others begin.

As we begin to heal from codependency and we investigate childhood programming and we understand where our symptoms originate and why we are codependent,

Then in the future becomes much,

Much easier to set boundaries with other people and even with ourselves.

Once you understand what went wrong,

Then you can return to,

Wait a minute.

This is not my fault.

I love myself.

And then you can start working on setting boundaries.

And that can look like,

No,

I'm not going to walk your dog or I'm sorry that you're upset that I am not going to babysit your children for the third weekend in a row.

No,

I really don't want to go see that movie.

Thank you.

Anyway,

As you start to really understand who you are and you start to value who you are and have empathy for who you are,

Then it's much easier to manage symptoms of codependency.

So I hope that this little podcast has been enlightening.

I hope you are far more self-loving now that you know that these symptoms are not your fault.

Namaste,

Everybody.

Until next time.

Bye.

You you