Category Archives: Attachment Hope

The Mad Bad Persona

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If your child has gotten into her fair share of trouble, in or around your home, you can bet The Mad Bad persona is hiding inside. 
 
That is not to say YOU don’t get to see The Mad Bad because YOU definitely do, right?  What you may not see is the psychological mechanism hidden beneath The Mad Bad.  
 
Children who come from difficult beginnings, often come to us scared, confused, and stuck on survival.  Survival brain makes a child focused on getting what he needs and wants at all cost.  That means sneaking, stealing, lying, and denying most of what they do. It may even seem like they don’t care when they are in trouble. That feigned lack of regard is part of the survival brain.  One cannot stop and worry about being in trouble when a tiger is in the rearview mirror (so to speak.)
 
Prolonged survival (in trouble) mode causes a child, who already thinks he was rejected, discarded, abandoned, and tortured by bio family for being bad, to start to experience himself as bad at the core–I am bad.  Once this happens the life course goes on autopilot being sad, feeling mad, and acting bad.
 
If YOU think your child feels she is bad inside, then your job as a parent is to crank up the positive feedback and reduce all the negative to zero.  Giving negative feedback (e.g. parental lecturing, expressed hopelessness, exasperation, despair, shaming, anger, punishment, rejection, isolation, scorn, disappointment, and disparaging comments) to The Mad Bad persona feeds the beast. The more YOU feed it, the bigger it grows.
 
Feed theThe Wounded Heart of your child.  Let The Mad Bad persona starve to death.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is October 14th at a NEW time–5:30pm.Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required especially if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up by calling 916-403-0588 x1 or email attachplace@yahoo.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Beware: The Mad Bad beast lives here.

High Road Parenting

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High road parenting requires skills.  What are those?

  1. Ability to acknowledge your own feelings.
  2. Keeping the big picture in the foreground at all times–your child is developmentally delayed due to trauma.
  3. Facility with regulation techniques for yourself and your child.
  4. Patience to wait until your child is regulated before speaking.
  5. Patience to wait until you are regulated before speaking.
  6. Knowledge of therapeutic parenting practices.
  7. Consciously accessing respite, rest and relaxation on a regular basis.
  8. Willingness to forgive yourself when you drive off the high road into a ditch.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is Octorber 14th at a NEW time–5:30pm.Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required especially if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up by calling 916-403-0588 x1 or email attachplace@yahoo.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

When you fall off the high road into a ditch, take your foot off of the gas.

See the Light

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Got phished and spent every free moment Thursday and Friday restoring my passwords and opening new bank accounts.   Missed Friday’s letter to YOU.  
 
I don’t think Dr. Wayne Dyer ever raised attachment challenged, traumatized children, but he could have done a great job if he lived by his own words:
 
See the light in others, and treat them as if that is all you see.
Give this a shot today.  Start by seeing the light in yourself first; then, move right along to your challenging child.  See if it makes a difference in your feelings and the behavior of your child.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Everyone has a light inside.  It is our blessing to see it.

Be Careful With The Healing Heart of Your Child

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When our hurting children start to heal and they have a streak of positive behavior, beware.  YOU and your child are in very different places. 
 
Our children are not able to use “meta-mind” to step outside themselves and look back at how they are behaving. They may be seeing themselves as “doing good,” rather than “doing bad.”  They may be feeling safer, but their trauma is lurking right there below the surface.
 
Parents may be waiting for the next shoe to drop, as it were. While others may feel relief when there is a break from the shenanigans. That relief may trigger YOU to take a vacation from therapeutic parenting.
However YOU feel, be careful with your child’s healing heart. This is not the time to start traditional parenting, leaving your child to self-soothe,  using consequences, stop engaging.  Actually, this is the time to step it up.  Be even more engaging, more attentive, more available. Reward your child’s positive shift with the gift of more, not less.
Your child’s brain is better attuned to taking your therapeutic efforts in during times of peace.  If you go back to traditional parenting because you think your child doesn’t need it so much now, you will be unconsciously drawing your child into shenanigan behavior to get the therapeutic goodness back.
Make a commitment to be a therapeutic parent for a lifetime.  First of all, it is the most loving way for parents to be for any child. Secondly, traumatized children will always need you to be careful with their healing hearts–that means in good times, and during the emotional shenanigan times.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Be careful with the healing heart of your child.

Long-term Damage Is What It Is

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My parents sent me to 9-years of ballet lessons because they said to each other often in front of me, “She is c-l-u-m-s-y.” YOU already know I fall a lot. Yesterday, I broke my toe by misjudging a step outside my kitchen, and this morning I nearly broke my face misjudging the same darned step.
 
I come from difficult beginnings of maltreatment and insecure attachment, and the scourge of c-l-u-m-s-y has been with me all my life.  I also have to cut every tag out of my collars and buy shoes a half-size bigger than necessary (which might explain the tripping problem on a different level–ha) because tight shoes significantly lower my IQ.
 
While I embark on the task of launching my son into adulthood, I am pointedly reminded of the long-term damage from difficult beginnings.  I lose sight of the effects on me because, after all, clumsy and itchy are all I have ever known.  On my sweet boy, the damage is what it is–long-term and pervasive.
 
Sunday, I started on the process of chaperoning my son on weekly grocery shopping trips for himself.  He was like a deer in headlights, and the truck hit him.  The cortisol flooded him so completely that he couldn’t remember what he ate last week. Beyond what I cook, he eats the same 6 things every week of his life–milk, bread, chili, ravioli, fruit, cereal.  He couldn’t remember even one of those things for 15 minutes. 
 
Eventually, he recovered his memory, searched the aisles four or five times, and got it all in the cart.  It took nearly an hour.  When I asked him to sign his name on the electronic pad at checkout, I thought my computer geek son was going to hyperventilate.  I can’t Mom.  I haven’t ever done it before. I don’t know how.  I can’t write that small.  I can’t handwrite. I can’t.  With soothing, persistence, and prompts to breathe, he did it just fine.
 
After putting the grocery bags into the car, I caught a glimpse of his smiling face.  “That was easy,” he said proudly. That was easy just like walking and chewing gum at the same time is easy for me.
This is just a reminder about your children from difficult beginnings.  They have long-term impairment that YOU and they need to understand in order to overcome with self-esteem intact.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Day one of Trust-based Relational Parent Training.  Super great group of parents.  Wish YOU were here.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, sign up here.
  • Big HUG and APPRECIATION for the generous scholarship contributions–YOU know who YOU are.  The Attach Place is embarking on our second round of scholarships for families with adopted children who need services but have no funding to get them. We used up the last of our scholarship money last summer and are ready to start fundraising again. This time we have a pie-in-the-sky, big, hairy, audacious goal of $25,000. If you have a dollar you can afford to contribute, that is how we will pave the way–one dollar at a time. Go to: Love Matters Scholarship Fund.
 
Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up.  All you need is an email address and first name.

The Four Sack Baby

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Yesterday, my son’s Family Life Class began The Flour Sack Baby Experiment.  The kids drew on faces and hair, dressed-up their flour sacks, and were told to care for it like a baby all day.  Amy Mimi Eshelman is my Flour Sack granddaughter.  Apparently, they will do this all week.  Oh boy!
 
My son was completely off the hook when I came home from work.  I am not kidding. The events of the day had him so dysregulated that he began talking about it to me from the moment my car rolled into the garage and didn’t stop until bedtime.  He actually walked downstairs to greet me. That is truly something.  He looked stoned and wild-eyed.  At bedtime, he told me he felt drunk, though he never has had even a sip of alcohol.  He seemed drunk to me, too.
 
He told me how he had to care for his daughter all day and he trusted his girlfriend to hold her, but not his best friend.  He also confessed that he felt very attached to his baby by the end of the day.  
 
I don’t think I like this experiment. It is supposed to teach kids how much effort it takes to care for a child, kind of for the purpose of postponement to, well, MUCH later. That is completely lost on my kid. He thinks the entire thing is a blast and can’t wait to have one.  He learned that he really trusts his girlfriend.  He also learned that he can attach to a flour sack, which makes him know that he will be able to love and take care of his baby–HIS BABY! That does not really fill me with warm fuzzies.
I don’t think I ever considered myself to be one opposed to family life or sex education in schools.  I am rethinking that.  No, not really.  I don’t think.
 
What I know is that my son yells “Ick” and scrunches up his face any time I mention birth control, safe sex practices, or anything related to touching beyond hugs and the one kiss he planted on his girlfriend a couple months ago.  I am pretty sure a flour sack baby is not going to send him into baby making mode.  Right? I think I am right.  But I suddenly have a 7.5 fear spike on my emotional Richter Scale.
 
Can’t wait to see how baby high he is today when I get home.  He will probably have twins.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

And baby makes three, and me panic. 

The Effects of Emotional Abuses on Children

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The aftereffects of emotional abuse and neglect on top of attachment challenge can be amazingly detrimental to our children.  The worst of which is not the behavior we see in the immediate years after our beautiful children come home to us, but rather what we see manifest years down the road when the development of our child’s self is so painfully distorted, disturbed and delayed.
Believe it or not, research shows that emotional abuse and emotional neglect are more harmful long term than sexual or physical abuse on children.  How in the world can that be? Well, it is much easier to pinpoint the cause of a child’s disturbance if we know what caused it (e.g. Your birth mom hit you…Your best friend’s father raped you…), so the treatment, while difficult, is specifically focused.
Emotional abuses of neglect, dark attunement, negativity, anger, rejection, control, absence, and hatefulness are like the water in the proverbial boiling pot that cooks the frog to death.  The frog just sees the water as pervasive in the same way we experience air; it is not experienced as a perpetrator of its demise, but rather the medium in which all life exists. Our children have the same vantage point.  Emotional abuse is the air in which they grow up.
Years down the road when our children begin to show up as significantly disturbed and relationally impaired, the environment of pervasive emotional abuse and neglect will be nearly impossible to pinpoint without guidance, and it must be identified and processed in order for your child to heal.
Yep, that’s it for today.  I am on vacation.  I have time to think.  It is a dangerously heady place for me to be.  YOU are on the receiving end of my pondering.  Apologies.
I am actually on my way to the beach.  Life is good.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place is offering a weekend workshop for couples on July 18th and 19th, 9am to 5pm each day, to help you create the loving relationship you want and deserve.   Jennifer Olden, MFT and Certified Emotionally Focused Therapy Supervisor, will conduct a two-day Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop.  For more information, call Jennifer at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships 916-403-0588, Ext 3.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Life’s a beach.  Today anyway.

When RAD Heals

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Last night as I was about 15 minutes from heading out the door to catch a redeye to the East Coast, my son says, “Mom, I don’t think I have that reactive attachment stuff anymore.”
 
Hmmmm…?
 
“Yaya, I’m going to miss you while you are gone and I really love you now.  I think it’s over.”
 
I was thinking it’s been over for awhile now. 
 
“No, no it hasn’t, but it is now.”
Well, thanks for telling me.  I love you, too.
“I know YOU love ME, MOM.”
(Good talk then.)  See you in ten days, I say with a bit too much glee and a snappy little Snoopy Dance all the way to the car.  He didn’t see it. I promise.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Life wounds. RAD heals.

Harassment For The Greater Good

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It has been a long time since I wagged my index finger in your face.  Today is the day.  Take time for yourself. Have YOU made every effort to find respite for yourself that includes an overnight?
To quote a famous tennis shoe, Just do it.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place is offering a weekend workshop for couples on July 18th and 19th, 9am to 5pm each day, to help you create the loving relationship you want and deserve.   Jennifer Olden, MFT and Certified Emotionally Focused Therapy Supervisor, will conduct a two-day Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop.  For more information, call Jennifer at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships 916-403-0588, Ext 3.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Respite is the key to long-term regulation.  Get some.

Hope, Expectation, and Disappointment

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When parents have children, from day one there are implicit or maybe even explicit hopes for them.  Parents say, We want our child to grow up and be happy, and in our minds we often have a template, a blueprint for what “happy” means.  It is different for each parent, but the hopes generally exist.  Here are a few unconscious or conscious expectations:

  • Do well in school (Get As and Bs preferably, but Ds are failing)
  • Be a good person (Character, faith, conscience, family centric, stand up straight and puts a napkin across the lap)
  • Go to college (Because that is how one becomes successful)
  • Get a good job (White collar job preferably because, YOU know)
  • Find someone to love (Normal, educated, employed, responsible, possibly specific gender, possibly specific race, possibly specific class, possibly specific religion)
  • Be loved by someone (Normal, educated, employed, responsible, possibly specific gender, possibly specific race, possibly specific class, possibly specific religion)
  • Create a family (2.5 children with mortgaged white picket fence–home attached)
  • Be healthy (Have nothing go wrong with body or mind)
  • Be happy (Look and sound happy because all the points above were achieved)

Children put a kink in those expectations and from the beginning parents start to fear, fear for their own hopes for their children. Here is a word to the wise: support the child you see in front of you, rather than the one you have in your mind.  Attachment challenged or not, children have their own trajectories for their lives, which may be significantly different from the one you hold in your mind.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is July 8th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place is offering a weekend workshop for couples on July 18th and 19th, 9am to 5pm each day, to help you create the loving relationship you want and deserve.   Jennifer Olden, MFT and Certified Emotionally Focused Therapy Supervisor, will conduct a two-day Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop.  For more information, call Jennifer at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships 916-403-0588, Ext 3.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins July 25th and August 1st, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Intimate, loving attachment 
is about understanding and accepting your child as s/he is.