I'm planning to give my parenting with PTSD talk and have been listening lots to the brilliant author of Childhood Disrupted, Donna Jackson Nakazawa. Here's a podcast that talked about parenting with ACEs. She was speaking with Guy MacPherson at the time.
Some of the words she spoke that resonated and remind me that self-care is central to my parenting are as follows:
"And the best thing we can do for our own kids is manage our own stuff. Good parents make safe kids."
She wrote:
"If we are caught in inter-generational trauma, we can’t see our kids. They can’t be seen or known. They can’t be secure. We can’t soothe them because we are caught in trying to soothe ourselves. “
She helps explain why this happens.
“Parents who have ACEs often have trouble regulating own behavior. If parent’s don’t understand the source of their own reactivity, tend to over or under react to small moments.”
She said:
"So parents with high ACEs struggle with what is an appropriate reaction. The world hasn’t taught them. Brain hasn’t had experience of going through stress completely."
She talked about how, for many of us, We are "constantly caught in a state of anxiety. Stressors feel much bigger… (like there is a) boom box on all the time. Life is an emergency. "
So let's remember that when we breathe or read or go to yoga, it's not selfish and we aren't harming our kids by taking care of our needs. Many of us don't know or believe or remember to do this. It's helpful to be reminded and to hear exactly how and why this benefits us and our kids.
Here's the link to the full episode. For me, especially when stressed, audio and video is easier to digest than text.
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