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Category Archives: Therapy for Attachment Disorder Children
Dear Desperate
Maybe I need to address this differently.
Dear Desperate,
I know that YOU are at your wits end. YOU have tried everything. Nothing, I mean, NOTHING works. Nothing! I know that sickening feeling in my bones–that exhausted, weary, battered feeling of despair and powerlessness that seeps into everything you say and do. It makes your work an escape, your marriage a war zone, your parenting a desperate nightmare you never wake up from.
This is the point where the rubber hits the road and you are challenged to stay in the game of life with your extremely emotionally disturbed and disturbing child. You have been hit, bit, spat upon, and that isn’t even the half of it. You have felt rage, the depth of which you never imagined. You have wanted to (or maybe you have) hit your precious child. You want to leave your marriage, kill yourself, run away forever, or you may even fantasize about taking the whole family over the side of the bridge together. You endlessly feel regret, focus on how it used to be, and wrestle with overwhelming tidal waves of guilt and shame, as you ruminate about life without your child.
Okay, maybe YOU haven’t experienced all of that, but plenty of it, right? I could tell you to get help, but I know you already have. YOU are doing everything you can think of and nothing is working to make your child the one you thought you were adopting. I know you thought that therapy and love and a good family was going to change that little brain that was harmed before s/he ever came home to YOU. And now you think none of that works and none of it matters.
What can I say to YOU that will make it better? Maybe nothing, except, “Me, too.” YOU are not alone, but it sure feels like it. I know this is going to seem impossible, but there are a lot of things that you have to do for YEARS before change occurs and, even then, your child is still likely going to need more parenting than one or two people can provide.
1. Get regular respite. YOU cannot do this without space from your child for your own amygdala to get out of cascading neurochemical flooding. I am talking about weekly childcare so you can go out; hire a daily in-home child-care worker to help with daily routines; find weekend respite once a month, etc.
2. Enlist family and neighbors to learn about complex developmental trauma and emotional dysregulation in children from difficult beginnings. Family members can only be helpful if they are educated and informed. When someone asks if they can help, say yes and get them up to speed on what YOU really need.
3. Face it: YOU have to be a therapeutic parent. YOU don’t get to be just a mom or just a dad. You actually must practice trust-based parenting strategies and sensory engagement consistently–consistently. Use life scripts. Use routines. Use correction strategies. Do it over and over and over and over. It matters, but it takes years sometimes for the scripts to kick in and the strategies to make new neural pathways. That is what you are doing for your child–creating new neural pathways. That is hard work that requires playful engagement and repetition to the point of tears. Do it like a meditation.
4. Get help for your marriage, if you still have one. Our children split their parents and parents turn on each other. YOU cannot be in a relationship war and simultaneously stay out of parenting hell. You need more than a “pretend” united front. Get help to get more.
5. If you are feeling even half of what I wrote about above, then you are likely suffering from Post-Adoption Traumatic Stress. It is a REAL thing. You need help, or YOU might actually hurt someone. At the very least, your child will not get better without you healing your knee-jerk reactions. Those are trauma induced reactions. YOU need to help yourself–put the oxygen mask on yourself first. Consider: yoga, meditation, neurofeedback, medication, therapy, Brainspotting, EMDR.
6. If YOU really have done it all and you cannot find a way to live with the chaos, look for residential treatment. This can help when YOU cannot give another ounce. I know it feels like abandonment, but it isn’t. YOU are always going to be the parent. You will be engaged in treatment until your child comes back home to you. It is not a magic bullet. Trust me on this. But, it can help everyone’s trauma resolve and routines to be established. There will be plenty of work left when your child returns home. Did I mention trusting me on this? Been there, too.
7. Be gentle on yourself and on your child. Children are not like this to “mess” with YOU. They are like this when they have been harmed in the early years. You are not like this because you want to “mess” with your child. You are traumatized, too.
This is hard, unfair, unreasonable, scary, and life altering, but YOU can do it. I didn’t think I could, and I did. So can YOU.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
Stuck In Numb
One form of protection the human organism has built-in to protect from the overwhelming emotions of trauma, abandonment and maltreatment is dissociation. Dissociation can be viewed on a continuum from numbing to splitting off parts into personality fragments. These are heady concepts that need real study to fully understand, though YOU may be experiencing it every day in your child(ren) without really knowing what it is.
If your child seems to have few highs and few lows and has the appearance often of sleepwalking, you are likely living with a child who is “stuck in numb,” in a dimmer switch state or breaker switch state. Dimmer switch state is like being wrapped head-to-toe in foam where all feelings are dulled and muted. Breaker switch state is like being “shocked” into feeling nothing at all. Questions like “What do you feel?” are met with confusion or persistent responses of “I don’t know.”
Treatment is necessary for dissociated children. Without it, your child will likely grow somatic or psychological conditions that plague for a lifetime
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Huge shout out to those of YOU who have given so generously to our Love Matters Scholarship Fund. YOU know who YOU are: Mary, Patti, Sharon, Mike, Ann, Greg, Sarah, Tom.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training. Sign up here.
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
- Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014. Email for more information: ce@attachplace.com.
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.
I recommend YOU Read This If YOU Haven’t
I recommend YOU read this if YOU haven’t.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Huge shout out to those of YOU who have given so generously to our Love Matters Scholarship Fund. YOU know who YOU are: Mary, Patti, Sharon, Mike, Ann, Greg, Sarah, Tom.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training. Sign up here.
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
- Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014. Email for more information: ce@attachplace.com.
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.
Cell Deep
I was fumbling for words the other day to explain to a parent why a child who is adopted right at birth can still have attachment challenges. The words “cell deep” kept coming into my explanation. Memory is cell deep. Birth children whose mothers had extreme ambivalence during pregnancy or some other condition that caused them to be emotionally unavailable for some of the nine months can end up with attachment challenges later in life. This is because, even in utero, there is cell deep memory.
Okay, there are two types of memory: explicit and implicit.
Explicit memory is what we are usually thinking of when we think of memory. I remember my trip to Brazil.That is in my conscious memory. (Lying, I have never been to Brazil, but…YOU know…I am entertaining YOU.)
Implicit memory is stored outside our conscious awareness. While it constantly influences our daily function, we do not recognize it as a memory. I experience this kind of memory more like “who I am.” Implicit memory holds things like recognition of shapes and forms; bodily memory of movement, habits, routines; emotional and relational connections.
Attachment challenges are rooted in the failure of the original infant/caregiver attachment attunement experience which gets stored in implicit memory, outside awareness, but profoundly influencing daily life. Our kids are driven by various ghosts of a mis-attuned, maltreating, abusing, or absent original parent or multiple care-givers.
One of the fundamental reasons “talk therapies” are not helpful for healing attachment trauma is the simple fact that implicit memory is unconscious and nonverbal. Therapies that help a child/adult find their “felt sense” of fear and safety are more helpful in bringing the unconscious material into the present so it can be understood, soothed, and integrated.
Alrighty then, I’m headed back to my Brazilian vacation memory–completely made up, but richly embedded in my imagination.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th. Sign up here.
- 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible. Yay!
Parents Talk Too Much
Ever notice that your child tunes you out? YOU talk too much. Most parents do. We over process, over think, over talk, over lecture, over teach, over kill with words.
When we hold a Love Matters Bootcamp with a family here at The Attach Place, we start the week with a list of simple guidelines and we use those same words every day in one way or another to teach a whole bunch of things.
There are about 10 words in all. When the family goes home, we send the wall size guidelines home with them to use EVERY DAY. Every family is different, but the guidelines are usually the same.
Here they are:
Be Gentle and Kind
Stick Together
Use Your Words
Ask Permission
No Hurts
Have Fun!
These are not original; they are condensed from Trust-based Parenting Intervention by Karen Purvis and David Cross. Turns out we use 15 words in all. Compare that number to the number of words in one single lecture about hitting, or disrespecting, or sneaking, or tantruming, or sulking, or whining.
Kids don’t have time to tune out three or four words. Consider that when you next start in on correcting your child. Too many words may really be about punishing, shaming, scolding, fear, anger, frustration.
Be a parent who is all about fewer words and No Hurts.
Being a kid shouldn’t hurt, right? Being a parent should be fun, right?
We are all works in progress.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th. Sign up 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.
- 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible. Yay!
No Fear
Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend where I found myself insisting that I have no fear. She was doubting me and perhaps I protested too much. Our silly banter made me ponder that concept a little more because I really don’t experience fear. But why don’t I? Then I was reminded how my children never seemed to express fear in the years following coming home with me. They took big physical and relational risks, broke all rules, and seemed to be unmoved by my ire. I came to know this as traumatic dissociation, because the longer I lived with them the more I saw how much fear and anxiety operated in them. They were actually afraid of almost everything.
My children and I have something in common. We have all three been scared “to death” in our lives and survived to see another day. That kind of trauma can have varying impacts on people. Some become more fearful and others repress fear completely, thus NO FEAR (or any other feeling for that matter.)
Eventually, the feelings of fear must be uncovered, so life can be engaged with appropriate amounts of risk taking and caution. I think my children have work to do in this arena. When my daughter calls in tears about how scared she is to be on her own, I hear the grief and work to soothe her. My son still glazes over to avoid his fears. There is more processing to be done for them to emerge feeling safe inside themselves and in the world.
So, what is my story. Of course I feel fear, when I am in danger. Since I am rarely in danger, I rarely feel fear. I was scared to death early in my life and I think I did repress my feelings for a number of years. In my twenties I faced my scary loss with copious crying that seemed to last forever. Talk about keeping my therapist flush with vacations for a few years. When the grief came to a natural close–my loss processed fully, made sense of, and incorporated into my narrative about myself–I returned to a life fully alive and filled with love. That was my goal then and continues to be my goal now. I think living in love, without fear, AKA anxiety, is the outcome of doing my personal work. I am grateful for that and for the ability to embrace life and accept it on its own terms. For me, there is no other option.
Felt safety needs to be our parenting goal for our children, so they can face forward without fear and with love in their own lives.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th. Sign up 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.
- 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible. Yay!
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 Grief Within
I was watching the 9/11 Memorial Museum dedication today and had a wave of deep sadness overtake me from that tragedy. Then, without realizing it, I was consumed in old unrelated grief and simply cried it out until the tears stopped and I felt done.
How this unfolded this morning in me made me think of YOU and your children. Grief often plays a big part in the background of our lives. Our children have lost their sense of felt safety along with original attachments and sometimes many subsequent ones. We parents have our personal grief from wounds past and re-worked dreams for the family life we hoped we were creating when we brought our children home. The grief is deeply stored as trauma in our brains, one painful event on top of another, that lends to inexplicable, triggered emotional experiences throughout our daily lives. How this unfolded this morning in me made me think of YOU and your children. Grief often plays a big part in the background of our lives. Our children have lost their sense of felt safety along with original attachments and sometimes many subsequent ones. We parents have our personal grief from wounds past and re-worked dreams for the family life we hoped we were creating when we brought our children home. The grief is deeply stored as trauma in our brains, one painful event on top of another, that lends to inexplicable, triggered emotional experiences throughout our daily lives.
Grief is sneaky. It is like the background of a Jackson Pollack canvas. We often cannot see it anymore due to the wild strokes of everyday life, but it is there, lying in wait for a scratch on the surface to reveal what hides beneath.
Our kids have a complex reality and they rarely understand themselves, their emotions, or why the grief in the form of outbursts, negativity, and aggression overtake them at random intervals when they feel deprivation of any kind.
If YOU understood the grief beneath the outbursts, perhaps you would be more compassionate toward your child tragically tantruming over not getting a second cookie.
Love Matters,
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.
Favorite Sentence
One of my favorite parenting sentences (I think I stole from PCIT, but who can remember such details at my age?) to get the kids moving. I don’t know why this works so frequently, but it does. It’s sharing power, so it makes sense that it works, now that I think about it.
Okay, time to go to bed.
Noooooooo!!! I’m not done!
How much more time do you think you need? [That was the favorite sentence, though I see now that it is really a question, my favorite parenting question.]
10 minutes.
Let’s compromise–5 more minutes.
Awwwa, okay.
Two minutes later, he is done and down the hall to the bedroom.
I know you don’t believe me, so start small and build up to bedtime.
My son has been home “sick” in bed for two days.
I asked him, How much more time do you think you need?
Uhh, I’m pretty sick. My stomach really has been hurting. Uh, a week?
Let’s compromise–you’re getting your butt to school to-mor-row.
It was worth a try, Mom.
We giggled. He’s going to school tomorrow.
Wow, crazy as it seems, I have raised a seriously reasonable kid. I worried that would never happen. I often had so little faith in the face of so much fear.
Good thing I kept putting one foot in front of the other. Just like YOU.
Keep the faith. Keep walking forward.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Count down to the next Trust-based Relational Parent Training—May 10th and 17th. Very excited. Really enjoy being with parents for these extended time periods. Love it.
- 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.
- 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.
Falling On My Nose
I fall a lot. Just this week I fell right on my nose. Didn’t break it, so all is well. I fall so often that when I texted my husband about an accident outside the house between a bicyclist and a SUV, he texted back, What hospital are you going to? Huh, wah? It took three texts to clarify to him I wasn’t talking about myself, but rather about a stranger in the front yard (bicyclist hurt her foot, not too serious, for those of you with inquiring minds.)Both of my kids had and still have proprioceptive and vestibular deficits. They fall a lot, have trouble riding skate boards and bikes, slam into closed doors to seemingly stop, spill stuff, drop stuff, put things away with lids ajar, hug like jellyfish, and clean up like blind-folded raccoons. Physical life is hard for them and my empathy was not always as high as it is now.
Frankly, I didn’t understand the constant physical mayhem running around me, but I wish I had. If so, I would have participated more fiercely in Occupational Therapy with them. As it was, I sent them, but didn’t realize I could have contributed to making their lives easier by providing–Wilbarger Brushing Technique (as prescribed), Full Body Deep Pressure Touch, Joint Compression Activities, Interactive Brain Gym Play, Crash and Bump Play Space, Massage, Sensory Engagement, and Rough and Tumble Play.
What are YOU doing every day to help your child integrate and organize the sensory input of living? It matters more than soccer practice.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
The link code was wonky, if you had trouble clicking into the Love Matters Scholarship page this week. I think it is fixed now.
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.
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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.
Wisdom For Adoptive Parents 