Category Archives: Parent Self Care

Stress Kills

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I know it seems like you have to live with stress because you are parenting children who present with behavior that is stressful.  That has a certain logic, but I think it is an excuse for not regulating yourself so you can be less stressed.  I certainly have blamed my children for my stress level.  It was hard for me to take responsibility for myself, for my health, for my stress reduction strategies.
 
Are YOU taking responsibility for your emotional state?  
 
Here is a suggestion:
 
Take your stress temperature at regular intervals throughout your day.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where are YOU?  If you use the Zones of Regulation, which I suggest you do with yourself and your children, ask yourself what zone you are in regularly throughout your day.
 
  • If your stress level is above a 7 or in RED, YOU have flipped your lid. Stop whatever you are doing and take a break.  Let the kids coast on a benign beloved activity (yes, even TV or iPad,) so you can breathe yourself off the ledge.
  • If your stress level is between 4 and 6 or in YELLOW, YOU are about to flip your lid.  Gather up your kids and go outside to run around in the yard, a park, or the gym.  Engage all the children in a rev up and calm down activity like racing then resting, climbing then crawling, screaming then humming.  Do it all with them until you are below a 4 or in GREEN.
  • If your stress level is between 1 and 3 or in GREEN, YOU are alive and living the dream.  Enjoy it and remember you need to do something actively to stay that way.
  • If you cannot even find your number or in BLUE, YOU are too low and in need of rest, relief, exercise, friendship, hugs, food, laughter, love.  Go get it now.
Everyone raising children from difficult beginnings needs to actively regulate moment to moment.  It is not a passive thing.
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.

I read this somewhere:  Love says, ‘I’ve seen the ugly parts of you, and I’m staying.’
I love being loved that way.

RIP Frank

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When my husband surprised my then 78-year-old father-in-law with a sloppy, glistening black, lanky-legged, Lab-mix rescue puppy, Pop refused the gift on the spot–no thanks.  Reluctantly, I agreed to give the little terror a home.  The last thing I needed to add to my 4 and 5-year-old attachment challenged circus was an unruly, huge-pawed, “eventually”  100 lb. dog.  Little did I know at the time, that puppy would save my heart.  

Swinging from the chandeliers and somewhat incapable of giving or receiving love at the time, my kids were not exactly warm fuzzies waiting for hugs and kisses at the end of the day. Thank goodness I had Frank, unconditionally happy to see me and always game for a walk, a snuggle, or a nap.  I needed Frank to help keep my joy alive. 

Thirteen years later, I say goodbye to my furry friend, who let me cry countless tears into the soft folds of his neck and who cheered me up with shenanigans of his own.  When he let out his last breath today, I felt peace in his passing, a peacefulness he no longer felt in life.  

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.

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RIP Frank

Mindfulness Is A Door

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Mindfulness is a door into regulation.  YOU can help your child learn to tolerate feelings, rather than try to get away from them.  In this way, the window of emotional tolerance widens. Our complex traumatized children have very narrow windows of tolerance for any heightened emotion, including excitement.  
 
What do you do to get them to tolerate their emotions?  Find a form of meditation the family can do at any time to find the still point inside themselves.
 
There is a fun box of cards you can purchase on Amazon called Yoga Pretzels.  I love this box because it is fun for kids to do. Get them to hold their poses as long as they can.  That is the still point. 
 
Sitting Criss Cross Applesauce, placing hands palm up, and slowly letting out a low key OOOOMMMM is the still point. 
 
Lighting a candle and focusing on it is finding the still point.  
 
Western culture is not very good at promoting stillness.  We are much more about distraction, addiction, avoidance, and denial. Finding the still point is probably the single most effective way to improve the quality of our lives–sit quietly in the still point 5 minutes every day and see how your life changes–if you dare.  
 
Be playful with your kids and tell them you are learning to find the quiet spot inside your mind.  Ask them to sit with you silently and see if they can find it inside themselves.  Do this for one minute every day for a week. Build up to five minutes over five weeks. When the whole family finds the still point inside their minds each day, there is a small reward.  YOU are in charge of the reward (make it small, but fabulous so they want to do it again and again and again.)  
 
Quiet sitting can compel mindfulness when dysregulation is at hand. Stop, drop and OOOMMM.  Hold it as long as you can and start again. Make it fun. Allow for silliness. YOU are encourage a bit of quiet regulation, then you can release your child meditators back to play–the real language of children.  
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 June 10th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
We had a fun first half of the 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  over the weekend.  Looking forward to Day 2 on Saturday.  Next course–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.

“…Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”  
                                                                     –T.S. Elliott
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Self-Care

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The words “self-care” must have concrete meaning to YOU.  Every day, what is your self-care?  If your answer is a big question mark, then know this, YOU will eventually break down under the constant stressors of raising a traumatized, attachment challenged child.  
 
Better proactive than reactive, right?  Don’t wait until you have a stress disease, depression, massive dysregulation, cancer, etc. to think about yourself.  Put that darned oxygen mask on!  YOU matter.
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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 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.

When you care for yourself, you care for your family.
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Codependence in Parent/Child Relationships

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Relationships between parents and their traumatized children often resemble terribly destructive codependent relationships. Here are some tenets of codependence I want to share that may give you some insight into how YOU may be making your parenting situation worse.
 
Codependence:
 
  • Personalizing your child’s behavior, good or bad
  • Taking on a victim mentality by thinking your child owes you good behavior or your child’s behavior is about you
  • Using guilt or shame to get the behavior you want
  • Needing to be right
  • Only pretending or rarely listening to your child’s point of view
  • Dismissing as ridiculous or irrelevant your child’s feelings, thoughts and beliefs
  • Turning emotions into an art form through withdrawing, angry yelling, crying, or other dramatic emotional in or out bursts
  • Mocking your child by parroting back at your child an accusation or nasty tone of voice they have just slung at you
  • Crazy making communication–I am SO INCREDIBLY ANGRY you didn’t call when you got there like I told you to do! Nevermind, I don’t care.
  • Subtle and covert manipulations that can not easily be called out but are definitely felt by your child–passive aggressive statements, withholding eye contact or affection, giving the silent treatment, denial of wrong-doing, making all things seem like the child’s fault
  • Controlling, controlling, controlling is name of the daily game
 
Most of us have done some of these things once in a while because they are human behaviors.  If you are stuck in one or many, you need to take a long look at yourself. YOU may be making the situation in your home worse. Your behavior is not because of your child’s behavior.  Your behavior is your healthy or unhealthy reaction to it.
 
I think most of you know I learned all of this about 5 years into raising my attachment challenged, severely traumatized children.  I can’t believe I didn’t get my part for that long, but I just didn’t.  I can beat myself for what I didn’t know or I can applaud myself for finally seeing it.  Honestly, I vacillate.  
 
If you see yourself stuck in a codependent dance with your attachment challenged child, you will probably need some help climbing out. It’s okay. You are worth it. No shame.
 
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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 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.

Shame keeps us in the dark.  Where there is light, there is healing.

Parent Regulators

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If a child came from difficult beginnings in the first 33 months of life, then it is likely that child will have difficulty with emotion regulation.  One of the main goals of the parent/child relationship before the age of two is to imprint the child with an effective arousal relaxation system by meeting crying upset with soothing care.

If your child gets over the top when upset, YOU are going to have to help your child “learn” to do what otherwise would have been hardwired in the first two years.

How the heck do you do that?

1.  Stop talking when you see your child is getting upset.   STOP TALKING.
2.  Be a soothing influence.  Soft eyes, neutral voice, loving facial expression.
3.  Be a safe influence.  Kneel down, step to the side, breathe deeply and slowly.
4.  Be an empathic influence.  You must feel really awful right now. I am sorry you feel so bad.  Focus on your child’s needs, rather than your own.
5.  Assure your child you are here, s/he is safe, and that together everything will work out.
6.  Resist letting your child’s dysregulation gobble-up your regulation.  Without yours, there is none.
7.  Wait it out.  Safety hold if you need to.  Offer love, help, support, solutions when the storm has cleared.
8.  Calmly talk it through, listen, redo without shaming.

Then…get support for yourself afterward so you can be emotionally held.  YOU need that to stay steady and empathic.  YOU have a tough job.  Get some love for yourself.

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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 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.

The world seems upside down sometimes.  Today is one of those days.
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4:20 Day

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I’ve been down for the count with a cold since Thursday evening.  As I age, my bounce back time increases.  Sad Face.  The Happy Face part?  Since Thursday, I taught myself how to use Photoshop (very complicated and not intuitive at all); I listened to a series on neurobiopsychological research presentations (so interesting); watched the entire Sanjay Gupta series on Marijuana (I might have to shift my position on this, but not for adolescents); read nothing; wrote nothing; ate nothing; and did nothing else.  I am a strangely productive sick person.
I say all that to say this:  Today is 420 Day.  If you don’t know what that is, then you probably need to raise up and smell the skunk weed in the air.  If you and your children have managed to remain completely sheltered from the world at large (bless you and your tenacity), then YOU do not need to know about this until your child(ren) enters the world unsupervised for the first time.
420 Day is the biggest pot smoking day of the year.  FYI:  420 (pronounce four twenty, not four hundred twenty) is slang for marijuana.  The origin is a ridiculous creation from the 70s though most people are mired in mythology about how it came to be.  Teens usually have no idea, except that 420 is shorthand for “Do you smoke pot, have pot, or can you get pot?”  With the marijuana laws changing all over the U.S. and the world, everyone is going to have to reexamine marijuana as a medicine and recreational drug. More research will be helpful I am sure.
Still, there is universal agreement that excessive 420 use before the brain has finished its initial development (around 26 years old) can interrupt the healthy unfolding of the brain’s Reward System. Not a good thing.  You can see how sugar interrupts Reward System development in teens because they are driven to eat excessive amounts of sugar, fat, and salt and will go to great lengths to get it. That is the Reward System in full swing.
Anyway, beware: unsheltered teens, young adults, and many old adults everywhere are trying to get high today.
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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
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.

If your child smokes pot today (unless in recovery), it is a small problem, try to respond with a small and clear response.  Too much focus on what you don’t want, will get you more of the same–Attachment Challenge 101.
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How Big Is the Problem?

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A HUGE part of self-regulation for a parent is determining how big the problem you are looking at really is:
 
tiny       small      medium        LARGE
Your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room.  How big is this problem?     Hint:  tiny.
Your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room at least three times a week.  How big is the problem?   Hint:  tiny.
Your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room every day.  How big is the problem?   Hint:  small.   Yes, really!
You flip your lid every other day because your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room every day.
What is the problem?   Hint:  Your DYSREGULATION..
How big is the problem?   Hint:  Large.
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 April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
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.

Address tiny problems with regulated tiny responses.
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Gratitude For YOU

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A group of about 12 parents attended our Trust-based Parent Support Group tonight and by the end of the night I felt my heart swell with love. Honestly, big, big LOVE.  
 
I am not sure many would adopt children if they knew beforehand the actual truth: the truth about the crap shoot they were undertaking and the incredible sacrifice they would be making. Frankly, I am pretty sure I would have taken a pass had I known. (Shhhhh…my children don’t know and they never will.)  My parenting journey was…well…challenging for me, the woman who wanted to be “Mom” all of her life and tried so hard but couldn’t be one without adoption.  
 
Tonight, I was thanked by a parent for whatever difficulty I went through to get to the place where my experience could be helpful to adoptive parents.  She truly meant that.  It may not seem like it in this blog, but I am rather shy about receiving such praise. I made a joke to shake it off, but while I was doing that I felt a wave of loving gratitude wash over me. And this is what unfolded: I really love YOU parents.  I really do.  I hope YOU can feel it in these emails and in every contact you have with me.  I am humbled before YOU.
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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 April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
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.

YOU are loved and AWESOME.

 

Still Face

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Back when attachment was not considered “a thing,” there was a pocket of researchers studying the parent/infant bond.  Their work spawned the attachment revolution in parenting, brain science, relationship building, and treatment of mental health problems. I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that one of the most salient experiments conducted was called the “Still Face.”  To me, the experiment has a painfully cruel aspect to it; that said, we learned a lot about how a child is affected by the facial expression of the mother.  It holds for fathers, too, but those experiments (to my knowledge) have not been done.  I truly wonder why.
 
When YOU are stressed out, angry, tired, or loving too long from your mind (rather than the part of your mind we call heart), your face betrays you to your attachment challenged child.  Your face becomes incongruent, your eyes lose their twinkle, and your voice lacks the warmth that the glow of love gives it. YOU may be going through the motions of parenting, but a “Still Face” can be detected just below the surface.
 
Your child can feel via the conduit of your facial expressions and eyes that YOU are not emotionally present, which immediately sends a signal to that child that you are unsafe, unloving, cold–hateful even.  Attachment panic will likely spring up and emotionally dysregulated behavior will not be far behind.  
 
YOU cannot fake it for very long before your attachment challenged child takes it in as something bad about him/her and something bad about YOU.
 
If YOU are chronically faking, get help for yourself.  Find a confidante, a church member, another adoptive parent, support group or a therapist for support.  YOU are doing one of the hardest things on earth–parenting a traumatized child.  Island, rock, martyr are not synonyms for mother or father.
 
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 April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
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.

Empathy is truly the answer.
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