Why Is It So Hard to Set Healthy Boundaries When You Are Codependent
Lisa A Romano Breakdown to Breakthroughs
Lisa A. Romano
4.8 • 805 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you codependent? Were you raised in a dysfunctional family? Were you raised to feel like you needed to hide your true self to avoid punishment or abandonment? In a healthy home, children are raised feeling seen and heard. In unhealthy homes, children are raised to hide their emotions, needs, and wants. Perhaps dad is an alcoholic, and mom is the classic codependent, who sweeps things under the rug. Or, perhaps your family idolized conformity vs authenticity.
The key is to understand that, regardless of your parents' intentions, and whether they were aware of the consequences of their parenting style or not, to heal from codependency, abandonment trauma, CPTSD, people pleasing, and low self worth, one must take the time to understand how their inner child perceived how their parents perceived them.
In this episode, you will feel like you've been given a warm hug. Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach, gently explains why codependents do not have the ability to set boundaries, and why that is not their fault. The first step on the codependency recovery journey, is to start learning to better understand one's automatic behaviors and the reasons for them.
Lisa has been through this journey herself, and leads other children from dysfunctional families back home to their authentic self, shedding the need for a false self along the way.
Begin Your Healing Journey:
Lisa introduces her signature 12 Week Breakthrough Method—a trauma-informed, neuroscience-based coaching program created specifically for adult children of narcissistic, neglectful, or emotionally immature caregivers.
Inside the program, you'll be guided through:
- Brain retraining techniques rooted in neuroscience
- Inner child healing and self-concept reorganization
- Neuroscience Backed Journaling prompts and assessments to increase self-awareness
- Tools to stop subconscious self-abandonment and start living from your true self
- Embrace shadow work from a higher state of consciousness to experience integration
This method has helped thousands heal from complex trauma and break toxic generational patterns, with tools to rewire limiting beliefs and build authentic self-worth.
👉 Learn more: here
#CodependencyRecovery #InnerChildHealing #NarcissisticParent #EmotionalNeglect #TraumaInformedHealing #ComplexTrauma #SelfAbandonment #NeuroscienceBasedHealing #DysfunctionalFamily #Codependent #Codependency #ToxicFamily
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough, the podcast that empowers you to transform your life |
| 0:04.8 | by awakening to your true authentic self. I'm Lisa A. Romano, your host, as an award-winning author |
| 0:10.6 | and certified life coach, I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible |
| 0:16.0 | power of an organized mind. I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self. |
| 0:23.2 | I created the Conscious Healing Academy, a three-part coaching and brain retraining program designed |
| 0:28.6 | to help individuals triumph over trauma and turn the breakdowns into powerful breakthroughs. |
| 0:34.5 | My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional |
| 0:38.6 | regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening. In this podcast, I'll share insights, |
| 0:44.5 | tools, and transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery. |
| 0:50.4 | So today we're going to be talking about why adult children from toxic homes, those of us who are raised by narcissistic parents, those of us who are identifying as codependent today, we fawn, we people please, we are perfectionistic, we are those who fear other people's negative behavior. We are hypervigilant. We |
| 1:15.5 | confuse intimacy with infatuation. We're going to be talking about why it is so many of us |
| 1:23.3 | who struggle with these issues really struggle to be able to set a boundary. And I do believe that |
| 1:30.6 | once this clicks, it's going to be easier for you to recognize like it really isn't your fault, |
| 1:37.2 | that what happened to you in childhood really is why you feel the way you feel and why it's so hard for you to set a boundary. |
| 1:46.2 | Now, in order to set a boundary, you have to have a sense of identity. |
| 1:52.2 | You have to have a sense of who you are. You have to have a sense of, I am enough. |
| 2:01.1 | And if you are the adult child of an alcoholic, the adult child of a narcissist, |
| 2:06.7 | then your needs were either never met or they were met very inconsistently. |
| 2:14.2 | And so you develop this sense that who you are and what you need is unimportant. |
| 2:21.2 | If you grow up feeling unimportant because your needs aren't getting met, |
| 2:27.7 | because dad's a narcissist and mom is a codependent and mom is being absolutely suffocated by her narcissistic husband. |
| 2:39.7 | And she lives in fear of him. |
... |
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