Category Archives: attachment challenged

Parents Rock

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Dear Parents,

You are made of true grit.  I know you are because I am in your presence all day long every day.  You amaze me, lift me, humble me with your tenacity to heal your wounded children.

You parents are regularly faced with keeping your children safe by choosing between restraining, closing them inside a room, or chasing them through the house, down the street, and around the corner.  How do those things even rate as choices?

I know you feel horrible about some of the things you have to do to contain the pain, the hurt, the grief, the rage.  It is as though you must inflict harm to reduce harm.  The internal turmoil alone is tormenting, yet you carry on like holding these contradictions is simply part of walking through the dark side of raising children who refuse to be parented.

Here is what I learned from raising my own wounded children: little by little, they change. They grow up, and they grow more aware. They may not be everything you imagined at the start, but there is definitely a payoff down the road.  When you get there, you will actually feel delighted that you took this harrowing road less travelled. You may have to trust me on this.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love matters,

Ce

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.

Caught Cookie Handed

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Dear Parents,

When your child looks at you like their hands are proverbially caught in the cookie jar, take a look at the way you discipline.  As a matter of fact, you might want to re-visit the origin of the word discipline–knowledge (Latin and Old English)  or punishment (Old French). I prefer the Latin root (no offense to the French). The Latin root of disciplining means to teach or create learned followers. Without realizing it, you may be scaring your children when you are correcting, rather than teaching them to be learned thinkers.

For correction or corrective parenting to work to support behavior change, you must have your relationship hat firmly affix to your own prefrontal cortex or you may be instilling fear of you into your child.  Fear of you is just that–fear of you.  Fear creates memory blocking cortisol to your child’s brain, effectively making you mute to your child’s learning center. The negative behavior you were trying to stomp out will persist in one form or another and your child will look caught or in trouble no matter what you are saying.

Be a gentle, sage teacher to your child and s/he will learn to be disciplined from the inside out.  That’s the best way to become a learned person with a solid sense of self in the face of adversities of life.

Love matters,

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Ce

Ce Eshelman, LMFT is the author of Drowning With My Hair On Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents and an Attachment Specialist at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships.

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.

UPCOMING HOLD ME TIGHT WORKSHOP

POSTED ON March 24, 2016 BY JENNIFEROLDEN
cropped-couple-two.png
​Jennifer Olden, LMFT presents a ​“Hold Me Tight​”​ Couples Workshop at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships in Sacramento, CA on May 28-29th.  If you are looking to improve your relationship​,​ this workshop will teach you how to create a stronger bond, lessen conflict, and increase trust and intimacy.  Based on Dr. Sue Johnson’s model for couples therapy:  Emotionally Focused Therapy.  Proven effective. Research based. ​Read more and register here.

Angry Wounded Girl

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Dear Parent,

My 20-year-old daughter is a study in Reactive Attachment Disorder grown up into what could be diagnosed as Borderline Personality Disorder.  I am not going there.  My husband went there years ago, but he admittedly is an appraiser.  While he would like to think he knows everything; (also admittedly) he knows he doesn’t.

Whenever I set a small boundary with my daughter (now that she is back living at home), she erupts into an emotional hurricane, swirling between hating me and hating herself. She is victim and I am perpetrator.  She is worthless, and I am omnipotent. Everything is illogical and binary.

Life around my house is a chaotic, topsy turvy storm waiting for the calm aftermath.  The good news is that I find I love her more and more every day.

She has more insight now. She can see herself be over the top, out of control, desperate for security, and hellbent on creating chaos.  She sees herself right in the midst of it.  In that moment, she comes crawling, quietly crying into my bed, “Mommy, I am sorry.  I feel crazy.  I know you are trying to help me. I know you love me.  I appreciate you.  I can’t help these emotions.”  And I know for sure in my heart that she can’t.

I understand, honey.  I love you, and you will get through this.  We will get through this.  

Love matters,

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Ce

UPCOMING HOLD ME TIGHT WORKSHOP

POSTED ON March 24, 2016 BY JENNIFEROLDEN
cropped-couple-two.png
​Jennifer Olden, LMFT presents a ​“Hold Me Tight​”​ Couples Workshop at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships in Sacramento, CA on May 28-29th.  If you are looking to improve your relationship​,​ this workshop will teach you how to create a stronger bond, lessen conflict, and increase trust and intimacy.  Based on Dr. Sue Johnson’s model for couples therapy:  Emotionally Focused Therapy.  Proven effective. Research based. ​Read more and register here.

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.
picture of cover
The public is invited to celebrate Ce Eshelman, LMFT’s new book, Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents at an open house with brunch bites and bubbly on April 16th, 2016, from 11:30am to 1:30pm.  RSVP here.  Probably not the best event for children though.
To purchase a book click here or go toAmazon.com. Leave a review, when you can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look At Me, Don’t Look

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Dear Parent,

Living with so many young adults diagnosed with complex developmental trauma is, uh, interesting at best, and insane at worst.  I have four of them.  I am immersed in an ongoing study in relationship challenges.  All want my attention about everything. None want my input about anything.

I came home from work tonight with arms hugging bags of groceries, my briefcase and purse slung over one shoulder, and met four people lining up to talk to me.  I hadn’t even managed to put down my stuff.  Even the dogs were dancing around my feet for their greeting and well deserved chewies.

One wanted to talk about her hair.  One, her vegan dinner choice.  Another wanted to “show” me how the two new pairs of pants I bought him fit so well. And the next wanted to ask me something, but ended up just talking.

My hair cut suggestions caused a mini meltdown.  My question about the kind of noodles used to make the vegan dinner were met with blank stares.  The pants boy couldn’t stop following me around telling me that he was amazed that this size fit him so well that I ended up being dismissive.  And finally, the last was appreciative and apologetic for all the others badgering me, without realizing that he was also standing in line the whole time in order to talk to me about what turned out to be nothing.

Two of these kids have been like this since they arrived on my doorstep via the giant CPS stork.  I thought I could heal it all, and some did heal.  Some didn’t.  The best I can do is the best I can do. That is my self-soothing mantra. If you want to borrow it, you can.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love matters,

Ce

UPCOMING HOLD ME TIGHT WORKSHOP

POSTED ON March 24, 2016 BY JENNIFEROLDEN
cropped-couple-two.png
​Jennifer Olden, LMFT presents a ​“Hold Me Tight​”​ Couples Workshop at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships in Sacramento, CA on May 28-29th.  If you are looking to improve your relationship​,​ this workshop will teach you how to create a stronger bond, lessen conflict, and increase trust and intimacy.  Based on Dr. Sue Johnson’s model for couples therapy:  Emotionally Focused Therapy.  Proven effective. Research based. ​Read more and register here.

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.
picture of cover
The public is invited to celebrate Ce Eshelman, LMFT’s new book, Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents at an open house with brunch bites and bubbly on April 16th, 2016, from 11:30am to 1:30pm.  RSVP here.  Probably not the best event for children though.
To purchase a book click here or go toAmazon.com. Leave a review, when you can.

 

The Love Runs Through It

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Dear Parent,

Living again with my daughter who is now 20-years-old is challenging for both of us. She romanticizes me even now like a toddler looking up into the huge, hairy nostrils on the face of her mother–bigger than life, indestructible, impenetrable, slightly scary. Those are very young eyes looking at me; the imperfect me, who bumps hard into her expectations like an elephant dancing in a tiny house.  No matter where I step, my giant self-confidence smashes clumsily down on some part of her tender sense of self.  Instead of seeing me as flawed, she heaps on a truck load of self-hatred and inadequacy.  No matter what, she cannot measure up.  In those moments she swirls further into the black sludge of self reproach or explodes a volcano of anger that burns its way down an unreasonably steep slope.

I could pathologize her, but that will not change our relationship; and I desperately desire a better one with her.  I love that young woman, the girl in big lady heels.  Like always, I am hanging in here steadfast with love and hope for a better tomorrow.  One day I trust we will see each other whole against the sky (Rilke)–perfectly flawed or flawed perfectly like everyone else.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love matters,

Ce

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.
picture of cover
The public is invited to celebrate Ce Eshelman, LMFT’s new book, Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents at an open house with brunch bites and bubbly on April 16th, 2016, from 11:30am to 1:30pm.  RSVP here.  Probably not the best event for children though.
To purchase a book click here or go to Amazon.com. Leave a review, when you can.

Upping Your Happiness Quotient

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When my life can be explained in one word (chaos), I have developed a survival skill–focusing on a few things that up my happiness quotient.  The concept of “happy” has always been a little allusive for me.  I think I am always kind of happy and not happy at the same time.  It is a dialectic that coexists in my worldview.  There are real reasons for this way of seeing my life, and it has served me to understand it in light of my personal narrative.  The more I know about why I see/feel/think like I do, the more ways I have to impact my own experience of life.

I am sure there are times when the chaos of raising a hurt child with challenging behaviors has you wanting to stick your head in the sand.  One mother once told me that sticking her head in the toilet would be better than her life outside the bathroom.  It was a bad day and she felt utterly hopeless.  Don’t wait until you feel that awful to do some repair on your ability to up your own happiness.  Here are some ways to do that without leaving your own mind.

  1. I am often urging you to get self-care and I still want you to do that; however, sometimes it is easier said than actually done.  There is another way to get some appreciation for the things you really enjoy: stop having them.  Yep, a little deprivation of something you regularly do increases your enjoyment of it.  For one week stop having an everyday pleasure: eating chocolate, drinking coffee, watching TV, surfing the web, reading magazines, eating out. Give up something you like having every day.  After seven days, you will be amazed at how delicious and dreamy that bite of chocolate tastes or guilty-pleasure TV show is to watch.  Deprivation can increase your appreciation for the little things.  In so doing, you can make something ordinary a little more special in your life.
  2. Actively focus on what is right and good in your life.  Here is something you can get into the habit of doing or even do for only a week.  At the end of each day, write down three things that went well, then write a bit about how you felt about each. This can shift you out of focusing on what you are trying to fix in your child or partner or life. Yes, there are a lot of good things in your consuming life, but you have to notice them to know that.
  3. I know for a fact that I feel better when I am my best self.  If I speak lovingly to everyone, I feel lovable and I get more positive feedback from everyone (including my children). If I commit to looking in the mirror and thinking positive thoughts about the way I lo0k, I leave the house feeling beautiful.  When I feel beautiful, I experience other people and ordinary things around me that way too. Choose one area to be your best self in for a whole day or a whole week.  This practice can be a life changer.

    The Attach Place

    The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

If you don’t up your happiness, no one else will.  Hmmmm…

Love matters,

Ce

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.
The public is invited to celebrate Ce Eshelman, LMFT’s new book, Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents at an open house with brunch bites and bubbly on April 16th, 2016.  RSVP here.  Probably not the best event for children.

Letting Go

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Dear Parents,

I have been parenting my children fiercely for so long I am finding it difficult to stop the daily process of shared power and control–carrying half the responsibility for getting them up in the morning, dressing appropriately, eating well enough, clean bodies and environment, engaging in the world pro-socially, enjoying hobbies some and not too much.  This may seem like it was all my kids’ responsibility in the first place; but children from difficult beginnings need a lot of mentoring to do the little things regularly and well enough to be successful.

Committing to their launch into adulthood means resisting the urge to carry more than my share.  It means letting some of the chips fall.  I hate that.  I have been keeping my children safe for years, and now they must transition to keeping themselves safe.  I am scared for them.  They are scared, too.

Frankly, I will always be here in the background to catch them if they are about to fall too hard.  However, the little skinned knees of life are their own to bandage now.  It is hard for me to let go despite how relieving I think it will be once they get on their big kid panties. I am waiting for the relief to kick in.  Right now, anticipation is all I’ve got.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love matters,

Ce

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.

Books and Children Need Launching

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Dear Parent,

As you probably know, I am launching a book.  It has taken me years to get the darned thing to press, and April 16th is the big launch party (actually it is pretty small, which is perfect).  At the same time, I have been preparing to launch my three adult children. The frightening similarity in the two processes escaped me until yesterday morning, when I was hit with a huge wave of anxiety and I couldn’t tell the source.  For days my mind has been obsessively alternating two thoughts:  Should I get the office carpet cleaned for the big day? and Are my kids capable of pulling this off?  Is it the book launch?  Is it the kid launch?  Is it the fear of failure on all fronts?  Or is it the thrill of success?  Ding, ding, ding…I am dysregulated.  And if you see “I” am, you ought to see my kids.  Whew, pure fear sweat around this house.

Writing a book is a painstaking process requiring daily discipline and commitment to staying on track–even when some days are dark with apathy, light on inspiration, and gray from blight of imagination.  Often I have wanted to give up because my inner gremlin, Mack The Hack, tells me no one cares what I have to say; so why try? Then out of nowhere, ideas poured out onto the page like sublime wine from a muse’s challis. That’s hyperbole; my writing is never like that.  It is more akin to the heavy hands of a chimp pounding on the keyboard.

Launching my children resembles a gorilla pounding on the keys of every day life. Occasionally there is divine intervention of joy and delight, but the process is largely a commitment of love.  It is work; work, like in my therapy office, work.

This launch comparison is apt for so many reasons, but I will stop writing in order not to bore you to tears with the details. I will, however, make this one last observation. I am okay with my book being a flop, and so not okay with my kids flopping out in the world.   I will put a safety net around them by way of continuous support.  Book, you are on your own. Good luck to ya.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love matters,

Ce

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.
Look for Ce’s Upcoming Book…
 
Drowning with My Hair On Fire is a compilation of over 175 daily support letters to parents of adoptive children and other children from difficult beginnings.  With a forward by Dave Ziegler, Ph.D. and a brief personal memoir, this publication is a response to blog-reader requests for a book of letters that can be easily returned to day after day, when inspiration is hard to find.
Praise for Drowning with My Hair On Fire…
This woman saved our family. This book will save your sanity! After years (and many therapists) of getting it wrong, Ce Eshelman got our traumatized family on the right path to attachment, sanity, and big biglove. Ce’s unique therapy is grounded in the latest brain research, her own struggles raising traumatized children, and work with hundreds of families like ours. Her stories, contained in this book, are our stories: full of pain, confusion, hope, faith, love and practical magic that really works.
Elaine Smith, Adoptive MotherDrowning with My Hair on Fire Book Cover
Ce’s daily blog has been a lifesaver, particularly when days are most dreary and hopeless.  Not only have her words of empathy proven to be priceless to our family, but I have often forwarded them on to others.  Such a comfort to feel understood, with no judgment.
Patty O’Hair, Adoptive Mother
In a real sense “Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents” is a daily mediation of struggle, success, failure and getting up and trying again.  If that sounds like too much to subject yourself to then don’t adopt a challenging child.  And one more thing, shouldn’t we require prospective adoptive parents to read “Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents” rather than another ‘All they need is love’ manual?
Dave Ziegler, Ph.D., founder of Jasper Mountain Center and author of many books on raising children from difficult beginnings.

 

 

Be A Secure Base

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Dear Parents,

The first year of a baby’s life is completely focused on establishing a secure attachment between the baby and primary caregiver.  This is usually referred to as a secure base.  With a well developed secure base, children literally have a brain blueprint for loving, reciprocal relationships for the rest of their lives.  They are more likely then to be resilient when life’s difficulties arise.  Securely attached children are better able to actualize their full mental capacity, moral development, cognitive functions of organization and positive decision making, and empathy for others at home and in the world.  As you can see, secure attachment is the greatest gift a parent offers a child; that beautiful, miraculous gift of love lasts throughout that child’s lifetime.  A child’s life is truly the legacy of every parent.

Adopting a child of any age means committing, as a parent, to the noble, sometimes gut wrenching task of systematically developing secure attachment; and, further, repairing the wounds in that child from the attachment breach, abandonment, and possible abuse in utero and beyond by the biological parent.

When your adopted children behave erratically out of an insecure base; when their world view’s are poorly developed for reciprocal relationships and self-regulation, your primary parenting imperative is to be the secure base your children did not get in the first year. Even if you adopted your child right from the hospital, your child’s secure base was disrupted by not going home to the arms, smell, heartbeat, and voice of the biological mother who the child knew intimately from the inside out.

Dear parents, meet your children with the eyes of empathy, compassion, and safety. When they are acting out their attachment wounds, creating chaos in your world, meet them with tender voice, soft eyes, understanding, and love; if you do, you will become the miracle of a secure base they missed out on in the early years.  What a gift you are to your child, your legacy.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love matters,

Ce

The next 8 hr. Trust Based Parent Training is scheduled for April 23rd and 30th from 12noon to 4pm.  $200 per couple.  Childcare available for $30 each day, second child $10 additional. To sign up email Jen@attachplace.com and she will register you.

Monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group is every second Wednesday of the month from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.  Group and childcare are free.
Look for Ce’s Upcoming Bookpicture of cover
 
Drowning with My Hair On Fire is a compilation of over 175 daily support letters to parents of adoptive children and other children from difficult beginnings.  With a forward by Dave Ziegler, Ph.D. and a brief personal memoir, this publication is a response to blog-reader requests for a book of letters that can be easily returned to day after day, when inspiration is hard to find.
Praise for Drowning with My Hair On Fire…
This woman saved our family. This book will save your sanity! After years (and many therapists) of getting it wrong, Ce Eshelman got our traumatized family on the right path to attachment, sanity, and big biglove. Ce’s unique therapy is grounded in the latest brain research, her own struggles raising traumatized children, and work with hundreds of families like ours. Her stories, contained in this book, are our stories: full of pain, confusion, hope, faith, love and practical magic that really works.
Elaine Smith, Adoptive MotherDrowning with My Hair on Fire Book Cover
Ce’s daily blog has been a lifesaver, particularly when days are most dreary and hopeless.  Not only have her words of empathy proven to be priceless to our family, but I have often forwarded them on to others.  Such a comfort to feel understood, with no judgment.
Patty O’Hair, Adoptive Mother
In a real sense “Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents” is a daily mediation of struggle, success, failure and getting up and trying again.  If that sounds like too much to subject yourself to then don’t adopt a challenging child.  And one more thing, shouldn’t we require prospective adoptive parents to read “Drowning with My Hair on Fire: Insanity Relief for Adoptive Parents” rather than another ‘All they need is love’ manual?
Dave Ziegler, Ph.D., founder of Jasper Mountain Center and author of many books on raising children from difficult beginnings.

Filling The Hole With Relationships

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Dear Parents,

If you are raising an attachment challenged teenager, then you probably have quite a bit of experience already with how desperate our kids can be to fill the holes in their hearts with relationships.  Sometimes the boyfriend/girlfriend revolving door is difficult to watch, so it is good to get some perspective.  I also think it is a good idea for your teen to get perspective, too.

Developing a good working narrative about one’s life can help with the slings and arrows of outrageous teen romance.  Young people do not always know they are pursuing a chemical hit of dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin to fill up what might ordinarily be a painful, achy void at their centers.   Cognitively linking the void feeling to the experience of grief and loss in a difficult childhood can be the beginning of healing the wounds.  The teen years is a super good time to work on their personal narratives again, even if you think you already did it when they were younger.  This time it will be from a new more cognitively aware viewpoint.

I encourage you to get outside therapeutic support to do this coherent narrative work.  You may have noticed that teenagers do not really enjoy listening to their parents.  Throw some attachment challenge on that and it can get pretty fiery.  Do yourself a favor and enlist help.

Love matters,

Ce