Tag Archives: Attachment Therapy for Children

If YOU Knew What I Know

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In response to Dear Desperate yesterday, I heard back from so many of YOU.  Some with Amen Sister! Some with stories of hell being endured across the country by parents just like YOU.  And some from parents who, like me, are mostly on the other side of the daily chaos.
To those of YOU in the thick of it, one day this will calm way, way down.  Try to reign in your fear of all things horrible happening, and take each day as it comes.  Some days will feel like a springtime and others like Tsunamis.  One day after the other, year by year, your children will grow, mature, and begin to take conscious steps on their own.  Our challenged kids learn to live the way a baby learns to walk.  They fall down a lot over the course of their childhoods and teen years. Stuff gets broken. Little by little, with our healing support and the support of the community, they begin to crawl, then walk.  Their gaits are not always steady by the time they reach adulthood, but they fall way less often. And for that YOU will be joyous and feel triumphant beyond your wildest imagination.
To those of YOU out of the thicket and into the sun, embossed Super Parent Under-Armor all around. Wear it proudly beneath your togs. Your lives are like Snoopy Dances to my soul.  If all parents knew what I know about the end game, they would feel more hopeful. I have tons of hope, because YOU tell me your stories and I have one of my own.  Also, I get to be a small part of the journey with many of YOU. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Yep, filled with hope is the way to go.  Hope makes the cobblestones a little less painful under your bare feet as you wind your way through dark valleys and up the steep cliffs to lighter days on the mountaintop.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
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.

Dear Desperate

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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,
The Attach Place Logo
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

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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,
The Attach Place Logo
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.
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Complex Trauma

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What the heck is Complex Trauma anyway, sometimes referred to as Complex Developmental Trauma?  That is what most of our kids are experiencing and that you are trying to parent–attachment trauma and maltreatment trauma that interrupts human development and hardwires survival styles.  The styles are varied and overlapping, but fall into a number of ways of dealing with the stressors of life.
 
Unfortunately, one of the ways our kids learn to cope is by cutting off their righteously angry powerless emotions they felt as a child and internalizing them against themselves (“all bad”) or against YOU (“all bad.”)  These split off parts are destructive to the fabric of their identity and can cause a trajectory change for the worse.  YOU may have noticed a flipping back and forth between the all bad self and the all bad other.  That is what I am talking about.  
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
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.

I Wish

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There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t have so darned much to offer in this daily email.  I wish my life were smooth as silk and I woke up each morning digging through the reference books for something salient to say that would help you, rather than simply tuning into my own life and drawing from here.  I know this way is more helpful to YOU.  I know it is and that, of course, is why I write it.  I want desperately for my attachment challenged life to have meaning beyond itself…that is the “why” I write this for me.

So many times I have listened to parents lamenting the relentless disappointment that comes with the two step forward, one (or three) step back way our children have of learning. It is so bewildering and yet so much “how it is.”

This week I had such a wonderful all-nighter talk-a-thon with my 17-year-old son that I felt my heart fill with renewed energy and soar.  I know many of your hearts soared with me.   And, I am pleased by that.

Yesterday, “three steps back” arrived in the form of my T-Mobile phone bill.  I discovered $80.00 in gaming money surreptitiously charged to my phone.  Sure wasn’t me.  To his credit, my son did not lie or deny.  He said he felt ashamed and retreated under his bed covers.  Unfortunately, his dysregulation was great, so he skipped his chores, failed to keep a promise, and broke a house rule that day.  When I got home from work last night, he was still under the covers.

An hour later he appeared in my doorway whispering, “I’m sorry.”

Wait for it…

Emotionlessly, “Saying I am sorry won’t fix all of this this time.”

Back under the covers for another day, no doubt.  What in the world would prevent me from saying, “Thank you for the apology honey; let’s talk about it”?   Answer: painful disappointment.

Life is so delicious.  The highs and the lows make it worth living though.  I am still learning to be loving in the face of my own dysregulating emotions.  Upside: I didn’t yell or scold or punish.  I did, in the end, reject him, which shamed and caused his internalized self-hatred to spike through the roof.

Did I really need to do that to him?  Didn’t he punish himself enough already? Wasn’t my own disappointment enough?  Did I really need to rub it in, push away, incur abandonment panic in both directions?

I hope there is something in this tale for YOU.  There is nothing wrong with being accepting when your child has disappointed YOU.  It is okay; it is beautiful; it is forgiving; it is big-hearted; it is the definition love.  And love matters.

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Earthy Crunchy Granola Mamma

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I feel so Earthy Crunchy Granola Mamma this morning.  I just whipped up a dozen Organic Paleo Vegan Carrot Ginger Muffins for breakfast. They are baking, as I write.  Probably will burn them because I am multi-tasking.  This is a far cry from Donna Reed–now you know how old I am because half of you just said, “Who?”
 
I try really hard not to be a food Nazi, guilting and shaming YOU to death about what you feed your children.  Still, it is worth a shout-out once in a while.  Kids can be picky eaters to start with, so having attachment power struggles over food is one of those “duh” realities. If you clean-up your child’s palate, s/he will be better able to accept and enjoy fresh, healthy, whole foods that will help the nervous system to relax, repair and regulate life better.  
 
Food is a very important regulator of emotion.  Think about a time when you skipped a meal and found yourself anxious, foggy, short-tempered, irritable, touchy, angry, and even hysterical.  The reason for this is simple.  Without your full awareness, hunger sent your mind/body partnership into a cascade of neurochemicals that triggered fight, flight or freeze survival behaviors.
Think of a time when you allowed stress or bus-y-ness to interfere with healthy food choices, so you ate fast food for a few days in a row.  How did you feel?  Some of us are so busy so much that this fast food way of eating is normal, so we may not even notice that we don’t feel very well and it is because of what we are eating, rather than because of “crazy kids, crazy job, crazy partner, etc.”
To top it all off, if you are eating a lot of quick, processed foods at home or out, your taste buds and your child’s taste buds have become habituated to crave high levels of salt and sugar, making the natural sweetness of fruit and the savory flavor of fresh vegetables, grains and proteins, dull and tasteless. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth about fresh food.  Fresh foods are delicious, but not to a sugar/salt saturated palate.
I know life can seem impossible.  Just surviving the hustle bustle of each day is a miracle of faith and sheer will for many of YOU.  So, take this with a tiny, ironic grain of salt. Slowing down is one of the main ways to make parenting an attachment challenged child doable. Cooking whole fresh foods is a slow process.  It can be part of changing your whole way of engaging life and your children. Invite them into a new world of conscious engagement with food, healthy family life, and delight at the simple things–the jammy sweetness of a fresh summer blackberry, the laughter around a family card game, the joy in racing to the park.  Simple is better in the end.
Mmmmm, those muffins in the oven are starting to smell delicious and done. Nom. Nom.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Hope Is Wind

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Those hot dry summer days when there isn’t a bit of relief, the air is still, oven-like, suffocating our lifeforce, hardly filling our lungs to capacity; those days are like dying only we are still alive–barely. Those days we wait impatiently for a breeze, prayerfully for a high wind, or ragefully for a little wisp of any kind to buoy us up and save us from the hot dry dog days ahead.
 
Hope is wind.  It blows in unexpectedly and disappears without footprints in the middle of the night.  
 
YOU can have faith.  It always comes again.  Until then, let your breath be your wind.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
You can sign up for this daily email distribution at http://www.attachplace.com–Daily YOU Time.

$1 July 4th Weighted Blanket Sale

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Today Only!  July 4th $1 Weighted Blanket Sale. 

Get one of these for your child.  Works to soothe, calm, slow down, regulate and focus kids with sensory issues, which are mostly all children from difficult beginnings.
Weighted Blankets

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
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!

Cell Deep

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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,
The Attach Place Logo
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!
 

 

The Gift of Smiling Eyes

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angry womanSometimes the daily shenanigans of raising traumatized, attachment challenged children shows on our faces.  I know it has and still does at times show on mine.  There were periods over the course of raising my children that I actually had to tell myself, inside my head, to smile.

I used to be extroverted and effusive, but I became weary and depressed when the magnitude of adopting traumatized children set in.  Frankly, it hit me like a boulder from the Roadrunner cartoon. When a co-worker was walking toward me down a hall, I had to prompt myself, “Smile, Ce. Look Alive!”  Then I would flash a smile and, as they passed by, my face would reflexively return to its flat, lifeless state.  It took all of my energy every day to smile at people.  At home it was different.  My inside voice was dead silent.  Since I had no internal voice prompting me to be engaging, be alive, I wasn’t and my face showed it.

Swearing boyMy children must have felt as despairing as I did during those times.  In retrospect a lot of their behavior was directly proportionate to my disengagement.  Back then, I just didn’t know what to do to turn things around.  That is why I write this email and send it to YOU every day.  I want YOU to have hope and a few ideas of how to turn things around.

brilliant heart 2


Eventually, I read enough books on attachment trauma, took anti-depressants, sought therapy, and finally got neurofeedback to find my natural ability to engage, be alive and, yes, smile.  I had to get help, grieve, and recommit to living fully before I could smile again and enjoy my life.

If YOU are under the Roadrunner boulder, take heart.  Things can change, but YOU have to start by getting help for yourself.  Your children will heal, as YOU do.

Kids Fly
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT