Category Archives: Reactive Attachment Disorder

Positive Experience Changes Brains

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Keep hope alive folks, because there definitely is plenty of reason to do so. The brain is capable of repair beyond our current scientific understanding. Play, laugh, talk together about real life things, so your child can learn about life the best way–from YOU.  
 
Our traumatized children have a hard time feeling safe with parents, so they often cannot learn from us. Playing, laughing, rolling around, and acting silly together creates safety–felt safety. Felt safety is what allows a fragile brain to grow new neuropathways, new insights, new access to the part of the brain that governs memory and executive functions such as logical sequencing, cause and effect thinking, connections, organization, theory of mind, empathy, and moral reasoning.
 
Your child may not fully heal while living at home, but positive experiences change brains and move children further down the road to a fulfilling life. That’s really all we are hoping for, right?  
 
Play more. Bark less.
 
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 RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Parent Workshop  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.

Practicing what YOU know is hard work.  
Get support from others who are “in the know.”  YOU will be glad you did.
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Fear Strikes The Core

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Like a lightening bolt, fear strikes the core of our complex traumatized children in nearly all that they do.  
lightening bolt
 
Last night, I came home from work and walked in the door to my son beginning a lie before the door had even closed behind me.  
 
“I cleaned my room, Mom, but I already messed it up again.”
 
In my world owning up to an ugly truth is difficult, but entirely freeing. For my son, fear strikes his core before he can think of the truth, so the lies shoot out in my face like spring-loaded slinkies–one right after the other in a barely detectable loop-de-loop.
 
Once quiet again and out of his fear-stricken state, for the 5000th time I asked him, What could you do instead of lie?  
 
He responds, “Not be afraid.”  
 
Well, can you actually control your fear?  
 
“No.”
 
Did it occur to you that you could not be afraid by simply cleaning your room?
 
“Oh.  Pregnant pause. “No.”
 
This is an executive function problem.  Putting two and two together in a logical order is very difficult for some of our traumatized children. I wish it were different, but it isn’t.
 
For the 5001st time, Well, you could do your chores or not do your chores. Since you don’t get in trouble for not doing your chores, there is nothing to fear and nothing to lie about either way. Cool, huh?
 
“I’m really trying Mom.”
 
I know, Honey. I know. Just go clean your room.
 
“Okay. Can I tell you about what Mr. XYZ did today?”
 
Yes, three seconds after you clean your room.
 
“You’re funny Mom.”
 
I know, Honey. I know. Go.
 
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 RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Parent Workshop  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.

Repetition creates new neuropathways.  
Brains seem made of cement around our house.
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Control Is Like Air To Birds

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YOU can fight if you must, but control is the medium through which your child survives.  Like air to birds, your attachment challenged child needs the predictability of control or a feeling spiral akin to falling out of the sky occurs that feels like sure death.  
 
The overarching therapeutic parenting goal is to create a safe and predictable enough environment for your child to trust s/he is not going to smash to the ground when s/he lets go into your care.  
 
My suggestion is to accept your child’s need for control as one of the basics–air, food, water, shelter, love.  Little by little, show just how safe YOU are because you understand, share, forgive, accept and shape the internal landscape of their brains to need just a little less of it over time.
 
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 RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Parent Workshop  is planned for May 16th and March 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.

Fighting a starving man to give up his one slice of bread makes no sense.
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Karyn Purvis in Sacramento

2 Replies
Purvis
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 RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Parent Workshop  is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day,  in a back-to-back, two-day format. 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.

Connect and learn with other parents in the same boat. 

Too Much Freedom

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If your child gets into shenanigans when outside your visual supervision, then YOU have given your child too much freedom.  This is on YOU, not your child.  How can that be, you say?
 
Calibrate freedom at the level for your child’s success–shoot low to guarantee it.  
Limbo
I know this is contrary to awe-inspiring motivation posters about Aiming High, but you can rest assured your child will fail if you do so and they miss–over and over and over.  Continuous failure insures lack of confidence, low self-esteem, lack-luster motivation, and snail-speed executive function growth over time.  
Imagine what continuous success insures over time.  Yay-ah Baby.  That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
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 RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Parent Workshop  is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day,  in a back-to-back, two-day format. 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.

Baby steps lead to success.
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Forced Knowing

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Sometimes my compassion for my son is about puddle deep.  I just want him to get things he doesn’t get. And yet, I keep trying to force the issue. When will you get that you have to rinse the food monoliths off the plates before you put them in the dishwasher?  I know you just learned how not to leave them dirty in the sink, but just add a little step.  You would think I was teaching him past participles in Hebrew.  
 
As I think about it, that sentence to him is almost acceptable, but that is because you cannot hear the tone I used when I said it and it would have been nice to truncate that humiliating, When will you get… part.
 
It is all an executive function thing.  I need to chill.  Why in the world am I getting all flummoxed about an obvious disability?  Oh, right, it isn’t that obvious, but it is a disability.  I must choose to tread lightly. I can be way too hard on this boy who comes from very difficult beginnings.  Up the compassion.  Up the empathy, Ce.  YOU can do it.  YOU want to do it. YOU have enough love in your heart to be generous.  Just do it.
 
Okay, I will. I declare my home and my mouth Compassion Zones.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place announces the beginning of our monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Paren Workshop  is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day,  in a back-to-back, two-day format. 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.
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 could helpfully have said, Let’s work on creating a habit of rinsing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. 
Our dishwasher will be happier if we do.
How hard is that to say?  Sheesh.
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Dear YOU No Hashtag

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Turns out it is easier to write a new Daily YOU Time late than it is to send old ones on time.  I am letting go of getting it done uniformly every day in favor of just getting on with life the way I enjoy it–one email at a time, when I find the time.  I know YOU can relate to this.  Doing it all is tough sometimes.  Just got to go with the flow, even when the flow is more like Niagara Falls after the thaw.
 
I don’t know about YOU, but I sometime feel like I am caught in some weird reverse osmosis echo chamber (Scientists, I beg you to resist telling me my science is faulty.) My echo chamber goes something (exactly really) like this on a regular basis.
 
My son: “Mom, I see you moved my computer from the garage. I was wondering when you were going to do that.”
 
Me, knowingly lighthearted:  “Because it was tempting you to break the rules?”
 
My son, emphatically: “No, I just keep seeing it when I go down there and I have to resist doing something I know I will get in trouble for.”
 
Me: “Huh,” with a V-8 smash to the forehead (mine, not his.)
 
If this unscientific reverse osmosis echo chamber happens at your house, trust this:  You child is being literal, not disrespectful.  If the words do not exactly match the thoughts, then “No” with a near identical sentiment is going to follow. It isn’t as oppositionally defiant as it feels.  It is truly more about rigidity of thought in the executive function part of the brain.  Try not to feel corrected by your Munchkin, as that is likely not your child’s intention.  
 
Our children are usually simply trying to be “exactingly” right.  Being right is important, because the alternative is being WRONG, which invokes an intolerable shame spiral.  Show compassion in the face of this kind of opposition.  YOU can take the high road.  Your child often cannot.
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place announces the beginning of our monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Paren Workshop  is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day,  in a back-to-back, two-day format. 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.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Compassion. Empathy. Acceptance. Playful. Love.
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Self-Hatred

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With all the pompous declarations, the prideful exclamations, the self-centered attempts to win, be smarter, stronger, faster, better, it might be difficult to see the self-hatred that lies beneath.  It is there for nearly all complex traumatized and attachment challenged children.
 
The self-hatred can be seen in the raunchy notes written to peers about wanting to do the unspeakable; naked Snapchats to strangers; the words they carve into their skin in anger; the slamming of their hands and heads into walls; their collapses into withdrawal blobs; their destruction of favorite things; and their sabotaging of soon-to-be-reaped rewards and upcoming fun events.
 
When a child is harmed and then discarded, the result is almost always self-hatred at the core.  Then, the tiniest negative happenings in the present can tip that child into a self-hating shame spiral of self-loathing and self-destruction. They feel bad to the core. After all, why would they have been harmed or let go by the one or two people who should always have hung on? It must be because they are not worthy somehow. They are bad and undeserving. It’s a feeling, not a fact.
 
The “I am bad” conclusion leads to lots of bad behavior. When one thinks one is bad, one does bad things. Our children think, “I try like crazy to be good, but underneath I want to do bad (e.g. base human) things, so why not do them–they feel good while I am doing them.” And the cycle goes on.
 
Here is what you can do:
Empathize long and hard with the feelings of self-hatred and self-loathing out-loud to your child: I can see you feel horrible and sick with self-hatred. It must be awful for you sweetheart. Really, unbearably awful.  
 
Then provide the solution:
I am here to love you, no matter what. I know you don’t trust that now because of your past experiences, but in time I think you will see that I mean it. I see your inner beauty and how hard you try to do the right things. I see your true loving heart. I see it in you every day. One day, I believe you will see it in yourself. Until then, you can have mine, all of my love.
YOU will need to say this over and over and over. Did I mention years?
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place announces the beginning of our monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Parent Course is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day,  in a back-to-back, two-day format. Save the dates.
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.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Repetition will drive you crazy and your child sane.  That is the sacrifice of parenting children from difficult beginnings.
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Because YOU Matter

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All you can do is your best.  And, on any given day your best may wax or wane. Perfect parenting is not necessary, or even possible.  YOU are the best thing in the life of your child.  Forgive yourself the wane.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place announces the beginning of our monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next Trust-based Parent Course is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day,  in a new back-to-back, two-day format. Save the dates.
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.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Don’t forget parents need play days, too.
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Free Trust Based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento CA

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Presenting a new monthly Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento. This is absolutely free with childcare provided.  Come join us.
 
support group 1
support group 2
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo Next Trust-based Parent Course is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day,  in a new back-to-back, two-day format. Save the dates.
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.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to sign-up for Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Come out in support of yourself.
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