When Life Feels Out of Control: How I Discovered I Was the Adult Child of an Alcoholic
Lisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
Release Date: 09/08/2025
Lisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
Everything is fine until it isn't. The moment when you start noticing the twinge in your stomach, and you can't ignore it anymore, marks the threshold of an awakening to what may be the reality of toxic relationships in your life. Codependents are those who sacrifice the self for a toxic one way relationship, whereas a narcissist sacrifices the relationship for the sake of their ego. When a codependent, highly empathic individual begins to awaken, they cannot unsee what they now see: the passive aggressiveness, the stonewalling, disrespect, and minimization. Many adult children of toxic...
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Do you leave certain conversations feeling drained, anxious, or foggy? Do you notice that some people you speak to have a way of causing you to feel dread? If so, you may have just encountered an energy vampire, someone who literally survives through controlling your consciousness through language, tone, body movements, innuendos, and comments that cause you to wonder what their true intentions are. In this deep and practical episode, Lisa A. Romano, trauma-informed life coach and codependency recovery expert, reveals how to recognize, neutralize, and heal from energetic drain in...
info_outlineLisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
When you are an adult child of emotional neglect, or were raised in an alcoholic, narcissistic, or unpredictable home, you are not aware of how your brain wires the nervous system to be locked in survival mode. Daughters and sons of toxic parents learned to survive through hypervigilance, scanning the faces, moods, and body movements of those around them. This type of scanning, codes the brain for survival and fear anticipation. The problem is, adult children from abusive, neglectful or toxic homes do not know this has occurred. From within the ego system, the little self assumes that...
info_outlineLisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
If you were raised in a dysfunctional, toxic home, and you struggle today with codependency, self-worth, and relationships, it is easy to lose a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Childhood trauma arrests the mind in a state of hypervigilance, worry, and fear. And although that is not your fault, if this is your experience, until we stop, look within, and take the time to integrate the past with the now, our future becomes a copy of the past, like it or not. There is great hope for the one willing to go within. Lisa A. Romano gently unpacks why so many of us feel stuck chasing...
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Why do we get stuck on the path of healing—even when we know what to do? In this profound and spiritually charged episode, Lisa A. Romano explores what it truly means to break through the veil—the illusion of the false self that trauma and programming have built around our consciousness. Lisa reveals how trauma rewires the brain to associate authenticity with danger, causing us to abandon our true selves and live from the ego’s illusion of safety. Through the lens of neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality, she helps listeners understand why healing requires more than insight—it...
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Why do so many high-functioning adults secretly feel “something’s wrong”—even when life looks fine on paper? In this empowering episode, Lisa A. Romano uncovers the ACOA blind spot: the predictable patterns that form when alcoholism (or “dry” alcoholism) and emotional neglect shape a family system. You’ll learn the five core patterns that keep adult children and grandchildren of alcoholics stuck—and the practical roadmap for getting your power, clarity, and self-respect back. The 5 patterns you’ll recognize: Reality Denied — Gaslighting and minimization train you to...
info_outlineLisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
Codependents, people-pleasers, those who fawn, seek approval, and external validation, do not consciously understand why they are so frustrated and unhappy. Codependency and fawning are trauma responses that all lead to anger, and resentment. Oftentimes, those who are struggling with emotional and mental health issues, who seek help, are misunderstood when they are codependent. Their symptoms are vague, yet incredibly disruptive and tormenting. When a codependent seeks help, they complain about others, because they have been programmed to believe that someone or something outside of them is...
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Have you ever been accused of being a problem simply because you brought up a problem? In healthy relationships, it is essential that couples feel safe and are on the same page. It is normal to want your relationship to grow, and to wonder where the line is when it comes to bringing things to your partner's attention that you would like to change. However, there are red flags you need to be aware of particularly if you struggle with fawning, people pleasing, insecure attachment and tend to be the codependent partner in relationships. In this episode, Lisa A. Romano Codependency Expert...
info_outlineLisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
Adult children of alcoholics, and those raised in narcissistic, toxic, neglectful and unpredictable homes, who decide to dive into self growth, self help and emotional healing, inevitably learn that they cannot unsee what they see now that they have awakened to the truth of their toxic family dynamics. This can be a distressing time for someone who has identified themselves as a caretaker, rescuer, people pleaser and who has felt responsible for maintaining family relationships, at all costs, and even at the expense of their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. It is...
info_outlineLisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
Codependency is an umbrella term used to describe a broad spectrum of emotional, mental and behavioral, subconscious, and automatic trauma responses developed in early childhood as an adaptation to chronic, inescapable stress. While over-functioning as a small child, to avoid rejection, the child's nervous system learns to scan their environment for potential threats. This scanning is called hypervigilance, and it also exiles the inner child into an abyss. Children of toxic, dysfunctional parents, families, and circumstances are denied the compassionate adult, whose role is to mentor, teach,...
info_outlineDoes your life feel out of control? Do you find yourself feeling stuck, angry, and resentful, and no matter how hard you try to be nice, or kind, or considerate, you only end up feeling worse? Dear One, that is no accident, as you will learn in this incredible breakthrough episode podcast.
Before Lisa A. Romano was diagnosed with codependency, she lived her life prioritizing others' needs, unaware that her lack of self-awareness, her inability to put herself first, or even to have her needs recognized, was rooted in trauma and missing information. Once Lisa was diagnosed with codependency and learned from an intuitive therapist that she was the adult child of unrecovered adult children of alcoholics, and possibly even dry alcoholics, the wheels in her mind started to turn.
From there, Lisa hit the books and the ground running, consuming every book and mentor she could to help her unwind her mind from self-loathing, hypervigilance, negative self-talk, insecurity, and deep feelings of shame and inadequacy. By adding new data into her data bank of self-understanding, through a ferocious and tenacious will, slowly Lisa's entire inner self-perception began to shift, and like a Rubik's cube, her life started reorganizing itself.
Lisa A. Romano is the first to tell you that healing is ugly, terrifying, and lonesome, and she will also ask that you accept the quest despite this, because it is the only way to break through the thick matrix caused by generational trauma. If you are the adult child of an alcoholic, or if you were raised by toxic, narcissistic, wounded, immature, or codependent parents, or if you grew up in what seemed like a normal family but felt emotionally neglected, this podcast episode will resonate with you.
This episode is a must-listen if you:
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Grew up with a parent who struggle with alcoholic parents.
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You are the grandchild of an alcoholic.
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You feel stuck, angry and like your life is out of control.
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Ache to understand yourself, and how your subconsicous mind controls your emotions, reactions, thinking, and your expectation all outside of conscious awareness.
✨ Pro tip: Understanding how your childhood has impacted how you 'think' today, how you 'react', and what you expect to occur in your life is you activating metacognition. Childhood trauma resides at the subconscious. Lisa's methods help you breakthrough!
Begin Your Healing Journey:
Lisa introduces her signature 12 Week Breakthrough Method—a trauma-informed, psychologist approaved, neuroscience-based coaching program designed for adult children of narcissistic, neglectful, or emotionally immature parents.
Inside the program, you'll discover:
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Brain retraining techniques rooted in neuroscience.
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Inner child healing and self-concept reorganization.
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Journaling prompts and assessments to increase self-awareness.
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Tools to stop subconscious self-abandonment and live authentically.
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How to integrate shadow work and break toxic generational patterns.
Thousands have transformed their lives with this method—learning to step out of survival mode and into authentic, empowered living.
👉 Learn more: https://www.lisaaromano.com/12-wbcp
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