3 Tips To Begin Healing From Trauma While Parenting
One of the questions I received from a podcast listener- How do you change yourself? In other words, how do you heal from your past and parent well at the same time?
I get it. I have reparented myself. It is possible to heal from your past while parenting. Healing from your past trauma includes reparenting yourself. My eldest was chatting with a friend who has a trauma history and she encouraged her – you can reparent yourself – my mom did.
Reparenting yourself means meeting the needs of your inner child and taking the sacred responsibility to be the parent you needed. This time, you will listen to your own needs, validate your reality, and cultivate self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-respect.
-healingspringswell.com
Examine your past. Did you have trauma in your past? Ask yourself – Is my past dictating my present reaction? We have a set of beliefs that govern our actions. Our past trauma can trigger us and we react in ways we don’t want to. Often this results in feeling “right” and “wrong” simultaneously. We say to ourselves – this is the way my mom, aunt, and grandma, did it – so it must be right.
I understand. We can fall into the trap or belief that our trauma was normal. It’s just how it is. I ran into a great grandma in Sherwin Williams who poured out her story to me – her children were addicted to drugs, overdosed, and died. She raised her grandkiddos, then they did the same- died or were in prison. Now she was raising her great-grandkiddos. She smiled as she told her story, and shrugged her stooped shoulders as if that’s the way life worked. I went to my car and cried. While we may not be in such overtly traumatic circumstances, we are all in danger of normalizing our trauma. Then we normalize our askew beliefs. Our beliefs are one of the 5 Bs affected by trauma. Dr. Caroline Leaf explains- the subconscious mind prompts from the nonconscious mind –
These are those tip-of-the-tongue, can’t-quite-put-your finger-on-it-cues that evoke and trigger and feeling that something needs to be addressed- something is trying to get our attention.
Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess
When our beliefs don’t line up with truth, we will feel it physically in our bodies. It may look like anxiety, depression, headaches, anger, frustration, and physical symptoms. Whatever we believe will affect our bodies and brain. Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps The Score says when we are stuck in survival mode “we are focused on fighting off unseen enemies, which leaves no room for nurture, care, and love.”
There are different types of trauma.
Acute trauma: This results from a single stressful or dangerous event. Chronic trauma: This results from repeated and prolonged exposure to highly stressful events. Examples include cases of child abuse, bullying, or domestic violence.
-www.medicalnewstoday.com
Not sure where to start? Take the ACES quiz here (plus read what it means and doesn’t mean- PS- my score is 8).
Set aside time to process. You can make sense of and make peace with your past. This can be done through journaling prompts, working with a therapist, joining a support group – or all of the above.
The point is – we must actively work on processing. The more we stuff the past, the more we will experience triggers and physical symptoms. We may begin to identify with our patterns birthed out of trauma as our identity. We say “This is how I am.” Our patterns are not us. The way we respond today is not necessarily us but our past trauma!
your past is not who you are
I’ve shared my travel trauma on the podcast more than once. When I was young my parents divorced. Every summer I had to travel to see my dad – who always seemed to have moved to a new state. I was stuffed in the back of the car and whisked off to roads I had no experience with – sometimes driving for days! It was a small trauma but added to all my other trauma – it affected me and reached into my adulthood.
For several years, I told people I couldn’t ride in the back of a car or fly on a plane. Once I was traveling to a curriculum fair with a few friends. I wanted to drive so I could feel in control. My friend Tracey didn’t like to drive because it was a trigger for her. So we each did the opposite of what our past was dictating. We did it. And we had a blast. Do I ever get triggered when traveling? Yes. I do. But I don’t let it dictate whether I will travel or not. I’ve done countless journaling, counseling, and lots of introspection about my traveling trauma. I have built-in coping mechanisms including prayers, thoughts, and physical things to do while traveling.
Give yourself the grace and mercy you wish you’d had in your childhood. First of all, understand this article doesn’t assume you can heal and reparent yourself in one day, one week, or even one year. But every moment that you work on healing is moving forward. But keep in mind, it’s a process and you are human. Give yourself the grace and mercy you need in the moment.
we are going to mess up
I shared my travel trauma and how it interfered with my life. But I had other traumas – being raised by an alcoholic, I still struggle with being around anger, raised voices, and disagreements.
If their parent is frightened or remembering trauma, children will respond with the mixed strategies of freezing, avoidance, and disorientation and anger when they are around the parent. They will not want to connect with their parent’s state of mind. It is too overwhelming to feel the parent’s feelings.”
–Nurturing Adoptions
When I was triggered, I reacted in fear or shut down. Sometimes I actually fled – the room or the house (running outside). While I was working through my past trauma, it didn’t take a break or leave me alone. I was still triggered. I needed to give myself grace when that happened. Also, I learned to apologize and say, “I was wrong, please forgive me.”
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Another practice I instituted because it hadn’t been done for me – I began to share in detail what was happening next including where we were going and how long it would take to get there. I invested in a whiteboard and wrote the day’s schedule on it. This not only helped my children, but it helped me feel more in control as if the day weren’t directing me but I was organizing it. Of course, writing it down didn’t mean it worked perfectly, but that’s where grace comes in (and flexibility). Plus having a schedule provides felt-safety for the kiddos.
conclusion
It is possible to reparent yourself and heal all while parenting at the same time. Just know, it’s not going to happen overnight or magically. You actually have to put the time and work into – journaling your triggers, reframing your beliefs, and instituting practices that provide felt-safety for yourself. Set aside time to process. You can make sense of and make peace with your past. Examine your past beliefs and ask yourself – is this true? Is it true right now? The way we respond today is not necessarily us but our past trauma! Give yourself the grace and mercy you wish you’d had in your childhood.
other helpful resources:
3 Things You Need To Know About Felt-Safety Parent Edition
5 Helpful Practices for Dealing With Compassion Fatigue
5 Tips for Parenting Traumatized Children Despite Your Own Childhood Trauma