Parenting Children as a Childhood Trauma Survivor
Parenting A Child While Reparenting Yourself
Parenting can be one of the most beautiful experiences you can go through.
However, for survivors of childhood trauma and neglect this can also be extremely painful and excruciating.
Some people are able to function without their trauma resurfacing until they have a child.
What is a Trigger?
Reminders or re-experiencing symptoms/sensory reminders from the past (usually painful experiences and memories)
This can happen when you are exposed to a stimuli or stimulus (a sound, scent, memory, photograph, etc.)
Common That Can Occur When Having & Parenting Kids as a Survivor
Triggers can lay dormant before having kids. You’re functional, able to handle overwhelm, and manage stress, but then your child is born and underlying feelings and thoughts arise.
You feel lonely and alone in your experience of healing from childhood trauma while raising kids. You may compare your experiences to others who had secure and healthy upbringings. You may feel like no one understands you and what you went through.
You feel loss and grieve for your own wounded and traumatic childhood. You start noticing the disconnect between how you were raised and how you raise your own kids. You may also begin to notice similarities.
You begin differentiating between an excuse and a reason. You may understand why your parent did what they do (reason), however, you realize that was no explanation (excuse) for what they did because it shouldn’t have occurred.
Examples of Triggers
Screaming or yelling
Crying
Loud noises
Spills
Messiness
Clutter
Changing school schedules
Unexpected school closures due to teacher illness or emergencies
A child not eating what you cook for them
Your child being rude
Siblings fighting
Verbally fighting/sparring with you
Physically fighting with you
Engaging in a power struggle
Your child sayings things like:
I hate you
I don’t like you
I wish you weren’t my parent
I wish you would leave me alone
You annoy me
You don’t know what you’re talking about
Specific Examples of Triggers
You were disrespected as a child and now when your child is disrespectful to you
You were taught not to show and express your emotions, so you have a difficult time allowing your child to feel their own emotions and/or soothe them when they are emotionally overwhelmed
You hold onto specific experiences or memories and rehash them over and over because your parents/caregivers constantly reminded you of specific mistakes/experiences you did as a child
You tend to think in absolute/black and white/binary ways because you were raised in a strict, structured, and/or authoritarian household where things were not quotestioned
And more
What Can Happen After Feeling Triggered
Panic
Worry
Stress
Anger
Rage
Flashbacks
Sobbing
Covering your ears
Clutching your head
Rocking back and forth
Disassociation
Shakiness
Ask Questions & Reflect on the Answers
Who do my kids remind me of?
What happens inside of me when I begin to feel overwhelmed?
What’s my automatic reaction when I feel angry?
What is one thing I can do for myself when I feel overwhelmed?
Common Thoughts & Questions
Self doubt: Can I really be a good parent?
Second guessing: Can I make good choices as a parent?
Self reflection: How could anyone ever harm a helpless and young child?
Questioning: Was I really harmed this badly growing up?
Anger: I can’t believe this happened to me growing up. This doesn’t make sense. This is unbelievable.
Indignation: What happened to me wasn’t fair. I didn’t deserve the abuse and neglect.
Fear: I’m scared of not being a good enough parent.
Perfectionism: Maybe I should’ve waited to have kids. If I spent another 5 years healing myself, maybe I would be more stable and regulated to parent my kids.
Worry: What if I become like my parents when I become a parent? What if I unleash my own rage or anger?
Protection: I don't want kids because I don't want them to suffer and go through what I went through.
Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel & Mary Hartzell
“How you make sense of your childhood experiences has a profound effect on how you parent your own children...Understanding more about yourself in a deeper way can help you build a more effective and enjoyable relationship with your children.”
“Research in the field of child development has demonstrated that a child’s security of attachment to parents is very strongly connected to the parents’ understanding of their own early-life experiences...If you had a difficult childhood but have come to make sense of those experiences, you are not bound to re-create the same negative interactions with your own children. Without such self-understanding, however, science has shown that history will likely repeat itself, as negative patterns of family interactions are passed down through the generations.”
“Making sense of life can free parents from patterns of the past that have imprisoned them in the present.”
“History often repeats itself, and parents are vulnerable to passing on to their children unhealthy patters from the past. Understanding our lives can free us from the otherwise almost predictable situation in which we recreate the damage to our children that was done to us in our own childhoods.”
“The good news is that healing is possible. Often the hardest step is acknowledging that there is some serious and frightening unresolved business. When we can take the deliberate steps to face the challenge of knowing the truth, we are ready to begin the path toward healing and growth and become more the parent we’d like to be.”
“The passing of unresolved issues from generation to generation produces and perpetuates unnecessary emotional suffering. If our own issues remain unresolved, there is a strong possibility that the disorganization within our minds can create disorganization in our children’s minds. It is important to recognize that each of us may have leftover issues that create vulnerabilities that don’t become apparent until we raise or work with children.”
“Being a parent gives us the opportunity to reparent ourselves by making sense of our own early experiences. Our children are not the only ones who will benefit from this making-sense process: we ourselves will come to live a more vital and enriched life because we have integrated our past experiences into a coherent ongoing life story.”
“Children are particularly vulnerable to becoming the targets of the projection of our nonconscious emotions and unresolved issues.”
“Awareness creates the possibility of choice.”
Read more about the book here
The Mindful Parent by Shirley Pastiroff
“So much has been taught and written from the starting point of changing our children, but in my experience – both personally and professionally – it doesn’t work so well. If you have ever tried to change anyone else, be they a partner or a friend, you’ll know how hard it is. Our main responsibility, even as a parent, is our own responses. And it’s our own response that are the key to gently shifting anything we’d like to change in our relationship with our children.”
Read more about the book here
What You Can Do Today
Name your emotions
Feel your emotions
Befriend your body and notice sensations
Practice mindfulness and paying attention without judgement
Slow down
Assert your boundaries (and expect that others may not like it)
Take a pause/break/leave the room
Calm sensory activities
Take good care of yourself
Self soothe
Self reminders
Plan ahead
Have a back up plan
Self compassion
Try not to compare yourself with others
Have a daily practice
Educate yourself on childhood & human development
Ask for help (we all need support)
Join a support group so you can feel less alone
Seek help from a licensed therapist