What if the one thing your kids are hoping and waiting for is for you to do the work to grow with them instead of staying stuck in old behaviors and reactions that never served you and certainly don’t serve them?
If this resonates, how do you begin?
Healing Yourself Heals Your Kids, Too
First, know that healing yourself is healing your children—and their children. Feeling dysregulated, a nervous system stuck on high alert, self-blame, high reactivity, a lack of self-compassion and self-care, all of these are passed down until one person decides to do the courageous inner work to break the cycle once and for all.
This is how we begin to heal others. This is how we prevent trauma from being passed down from generation to generation.
In giving lectures around the country, I’ve spoken to thousands of parents, and the number-one thing they tell me is this: Our world today feels overwhelming, and some days family life can feel that way, too. Research backs this up.
In a new advisory, “Parents Under Pressure,” U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warns that 41 percent of parents report being so stressed most days they can’t function. Forty-eight percent say their stress levels are completely overwhelming. Murthy says parents today need more ways to support and shore up their own well-being. For their own sake, and because their stress levels impact their children in negative ways, too.
Parents tell me they feel so stressed out, overwhelmed, or dysregulated that when their kids struggle, they find it hard to be the calm, wise parents they long to be. They want to be more regulated, especially when their kids are stressed out and facing hard challenges, but instead, they get caught up in their own worried internal dialogue, or they become reactive and say or do the wrong things.
Simply put, it’s hard to soothe others when you’re struggling to soothe yourself.
I’ve spoken to thousands of young people who say they wish their parents would work on themselves so they can support them through life’s big, difficult moments. They long for their parents to show curiosity, provide emotional comfort, model healthy communication skills, give them space to express their feelings, and model connection-centered conversations—even in the midst of navigating tough challenges.
Old, Unresolved Trauma Keeps Us From Being the Parents We Want to Be
Studies show that having faced challenging, adverse experiences growing up can change our set point for well-being in ways that make it harder for us to stay calm when our kids are struggling. Why? First, early trauma wires our brain and nervous system to be more hypervigilant, making us more anxious and reactive when we’re stressed. Second, old fears, anxieties, and negative self-beliefs that imprinted themselves on us when we were young can resurface during emotionally charged moments in adult life, and nowhere is this truer than in parenting.
When our trust is broken as a child, these big feelings and reactions from our past can be hard to override.
What Does This Look Like?
You were 5 and accidentally stepped on flowers in the garden while playing with a friend, and your mom raged at you. Or you were 6 and struggling to tie your shoes when your dad snapped, “What’s wrong with you?” You were 8 and struggling to figure out a math problem, and your dad barked, “You’re a dunce!”
You were 10 and missed the goal when playing soccer, and the whole way home, your father wouldn’t speak to you. You were 11 and trying on a bathing suit when your mom pinched your waist and said, “You’re getting fat!” You were 13 and came home upset about how your two best friends were making fun of you, and your mom asked, “What did you do to them?” and your dad told you, “Toughen up!” And so on.
These experiences reverberate down the family line, even though we want nothing more than to be there for our kids in all the ways they need us to be.
It can be hard to admit things that happened to us when we were young hurt us in ways that show up now. That we, too, often feel anxious, reactive, or judge ourselves or our kids. That we get quickly swept up in a state of emotional overwhelm—like getting caught and spun in the center of a wave. That our nervous system’s set point is a state of hypervigilance.
So, How Do We Do the Work of Becoming the Parents We Want to Be?
The key is right inside you: to understand the connections between the challenging experiences and adversity you faced in your past and how you respond to stress and adversity in your life now. To understand your own story.
If you want help along the way, consider picking up a copy of my latest book, the Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal. My guided journal is a tool that allows you the space to process, heal, and reclaim yourself.
Yours,
Donna