Your Authentic Self is In There Somewhere: Keep Digging
Mar 23, 2025
It's a miracle I am alive: seriously, I mean that. You may feel the same. If you're anything like me, people who perceive you could never imagine what you've been through, how you have suffered mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. You've survived because your brain and psychological self, i.e., your ego, are part of a cosmic pre-set system designed to keep you alive, not happy, and you've spent most of your life governed by this system, trapped by its rules of operation and never knew it.
Codependency: The False Mask
Lipstick, mascara, and a put-together appearance serve to secure a facade you and I may have learned to use as a shield, to protect us from appearing weak or vulnerable, because at the level of the subconscious, we were programmed to feel not good enough and to also fear what other people would think about us if they knew we were not good enough, or at least, if they knew we believed that, so we use our outer appearance much like a video game character uses an invisible cape, or magic wand--to protect ourselves.
This, Dear One, only more deeply masks the pain we must process to win the game of life. Without an awakening of some higher mental faculties and intelligence, we remain asleep in the survival patterns created in childhood. Only when NEO, the neocortex, awakens and shines a light on what the frig is going on within Amy, the Amygdala, can the ego-us, the ones driving the bus of our lives, awaken and take control of the wheel.
Codependency and Healing Childhood Trauma
Healing childhood trauma is a sacred path, and it's no joke! That's why I commit myself to knowing the I AM that I AM. Every morning, I command my higher mind to wrangle in my outer self—the outer self is not me. It is the sum of childhood experiences, perceptions, and nervous and mental systems that were impacted by external experiences I could not control as a child.
After almost thirty years of dedicated recovery work, I've come to accept and surrender to the reality that my childhood experiences have profoundly affected my ability to create a joyful life easily. As a child, rather than feeling safe and free to explore my own dreams and aspirations, I spent the first half of my life trying to mold myself into who I believed my mother, father, and ex-husband needed me to be. I thought that by doing this, I could finally feel worthy and find a reason to live.
-How could you or I know that as children, our miraculous brains and even our psychological selves operated with one purpose, and that purpose was driven by the need to focus on what was painful, terrifying, unfair, and unpleasant?
-How could you or I know that our prebuilt brains and blueprint for our psychological selves, i.e., the id, ego, and superego, came installed with 'survival apps,' not 'happy apps' because to get happy, one must first learn to survive and that happiness is so unique, Creator could never install that 'app' within you...you'd have to play out your life much like a video game character, and discover your 'happy clues' beneath the feet of the sinister, and beyond the grips of the nefarious characters in your world?
-How could you or I know that the brain and ego are prebuilt systems and that the Creator designed all humans to avoid pain so they could survive and, hopefully, live long enough to awaken to their true innate power and to discover this inner power, required earnest yearning?
Thirty years ago, when I was a babe in the woods of the matrix of unhealed childhood trauma, codependency, low self-worth, self-hate, confusion, and enmeshed with narcissistic parents and who I believe was a covert narcissistic partner, I could have never understood the above statements I just wrote. I was too overwhelmed and felt tossed around like a battered rag doll inside my then state of consciousness to have had such a clear thought.
Codependency Recovery: Escaping the Matrix
Thankfully, I have escaped the inner matrix, and I no longer perceive my world, self, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, or others through the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or sense of touch of Amy, the Amygdala. Today, despite what Harry the Hippocampus has recorded within the cells of my body and subconscious mind, there are new sheriffs in town: Penny, the Prefrontal Lobe, and Neo, the Neocortex.
And even though I have spent the first half of my life struggling with dissociation, panic disorder, depression, relationship addiction (abandonment issues), and codependency, and even though that little twelve-year-old girl within me, the one who wanted to take her own life as a means to stop the pain she was experiencing, still breathes, it is her higher self that tends to her now.
Today, I am wiser, and I am grateful I never found a way to please the unconscious, toxic people in my early life. Had I received a smidge of approval, that might have been enough to keep me stuck seeking their approval. I may have found myself caught in an invisible web of emotional and mental survival strategies, a form of subconscious tyranny.
Today, I consciously take a deep breath and blow that life force into my authentic self every morning, deliberately and intentionally shattering the cognitive distortions that kept all children of trauma chained, bound, and under the spell of the fear of disapproval.
I hope you commit to healing your inner child and turning those inner wounds into your greatest inner strengths today. Yes, healing is a process; it does not happen by watching a YouTube video, listening to a podcast, or reading a book. Healing happens when you apply proven processes when you need them. When you remain committed to the higher self, your brain grows new neural pathways, like a stairway to heaven, toward Penny, the Prefrontal lobe, and Neo the Neocortex, where higher intelligence can activate. From that higher state of awareness, you find the power to arrest faulty beliefs and sabotage behaviors in their tracks!
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Lisa A. Romano is a certified Life Coach and award-winning author who specializes in codependency and narcissistic abuse recovery. She is the author of The Road Back to Me and 7 additional titles and the creator of the psychologist-approved 12-Week Breakthrough Coaching Program. Lisa is also a popular YouTube Content Creator with over 700K subscribers and one of the most listened-to meditation teachers on Insight Timer. Her mission is to teach wounded adult children from dysfunctional homes how to heal their inner child and become confident, autonomous, self-actualized beings through her proven processes that deliver predictable results and provide opportunities for awakening and transformation. You can find more about Lisa's work at https://www.lisaaromano.com
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