Tag Archives: Complex Developmental Trauma

Evolution of a Disorder

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Don’t forget to let your children emotionally evolve.  I wish there were a shorthand way of saying my formerly diagnosed reactive attachment disordered child (FDRAD has so many possibilities), so I can pay homage to the history without sticking my children firmly in the past.  
 
The history is important because there are residual effects of RAD long into adulthood.  Still, RAD is not the primary issue into adulthood.  The FDRAD issues usually revolve around attention, dysregulation, poor decision-making, lack of motivation, and delayed maturity.  While these are significant issues, they are not attachment issues, per se; they are executive function issues.   
 
Poor executive function is the result of regulation difficulties in early childhood due to attachment challenges and trauma on the brain. So, regulation is the ultimate goal of all treatment.  Be sure regulation is being addressed in your therapeutic model at every age.  
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is October 14th at a NEW time–5:30 pm.Join us.  Online RSVP each month required when you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up by calling 916-403-0588 x1 or email attachplace@yahoo.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Take a look at The Zone’s of Regulation curriculum if your therapist hasn’t already implemented it.  Turns out it is effective for teaching regulation to any age child or adult (including yourself.)

Reach Back

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All of us make bids for love and attention.  I think about my own ways of getting my husband’s attention and it makes me chuckle.  I put on my best 5-year-old pout face, exaggerate the frown, and say something in a whiny, yet demanding voice like, “Heyyyyyy, you didn’t kiss me this morning.”  To which my husband smiles, opens up his arms, and comes in for a hug and kiss.  He knows I am kidding, and he knows I am not really kidding, too. I need my attention and kiss; then I am shored up for the day, and he is free to be on his way.  
 
I’m 57, and I make childish bids for love and attention that way. I promise I make them as an adult, too, in case you are worried about me.  Imagine how I would feel, though, if my husband didn’t reach back for me when I made my childish bid?  What if he walked away, told me to stop being ridiculous, or to grow up? 
 
When your five foot tall child runs up to you with arms up-raised like you could actually lift her into your arms (like when she was much younger), smile and open your arms for a hug and kiss.  No questions, no hesitation, no rejection.
 
Be easy with your affection, attention, smiling eyes, and love. We humans have these gifts in abundance, and we are free to give them away.  That’s a good thing because our children need so much love to feel good enough to take it in and give it back
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is October 14th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us.  Online RSVP each month required when you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up by calling 916-403-0588 x1 or email attachplace@yahoo.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Even when the bid for love seems ridiculous, 
find a way to respond with abandon.  Love matters.

Blind to the Forest

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Some days it is hard to see the forest for the dirty bowls. A few days ago all of my cereal bowls went missing.  I thought someone put the dishes away in a new interesting way where the bowls could not be found.  Nope, that wasn’t it.  I thought someone accidentally broke all the bowls.  Nope, that wasn’t it.  I thought a bowl burglar broke in and, well, took all the bowls.  Nope, that probably wasn’t it.  
 
I asked my husband, the kids, and even had a serious talk with the dogs about the bowl mystery, but no one knew.  My son said, “I even noticed this morning that the bowls are missing, but I can’t think of what happened to them.”  He opened a bunch of cabinets to see if maybe they were in one. Nope, not in any of them.
 
When I came home from work yesterday, miraculously all the bowls had found their way into the top shelf of the dishwasher. I was suddenly crestfallen, realizing my son had gone to great lengths to escape my learning the actual whereabouts of the bowls–the ones dirty and hidden under his covers. All of the darned bowls were hidden under his bed covers!  Did I mention, all the bowls in the entire house?  Okay, I did mention that.
 
Thought we had nipped this eating in the room, hiding the dirty dishes habit.  Really thought we had made it over that hurdle. Nope, back to the drawing board.  It may take me two or three days before I can regulate, because right now my dysregulation is over the moon.
Breathing. I’m breathing.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is October 14th at a NEW time–5:30pm.Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required especially if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up by calling 916-403-0588 x1 or email attachplace@yahoo.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Two steps forward, three back.  We always recover.  We always recover.  We always recover.  Wait for it.  Wait for it.  Waiting for it. Waiting…

Impressed and Proud

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I had a quick dinner yesterday with my daughter, her boyfriend, and their baby–my granddaughter, with severe Cerebral Palsy, who is almost two-years-old now. They are all living three hours away with her biological father. With my help, she found him once she turned 18 .  I am so glad, because he has whole-heartedly welcomed her into her biological family.  Turns out, they speak the same emotional language.  I guess that makes sense.
 
Because of severe attachment challenge, my daughter is unable to do most of what I suggest, though she always asks for my advice. She wants my best thinking, and she needs to do life her own way to feel safe.  At twenty she has lived through more difficult situations than I have in my entire adult life.  Often she laments the black cloud over her head, and I am hard put to refute that. Bad things regularly do happen in her life.
 
My therapist self knows that the bad things are of her own doing. She impulsively and emotionally makes life decisions, and she hasn’t taken me up on living like me since she was 10-years-old. Talk about the hard road: that girl takes some serious hits and still pulls herself up off the mat to make a life for herself and her family. Her survival skills amaze me.  A fighter and a survivor, she makes something out of nothing every day. She also destroys a fair amount along the way. That is the double-edged sword of being a young adult with untreated Complex Developmental Trauma.
 
That said, I am incredibly impressed and proud of her.  I am also sad that she loves me so much, but cannot benefit from the easy life she could have had if our attachment challenged relationship had been healed in early childhood.  Even though I loved her so much, too, I didn’t know how to be a healing force in her life back then.  
 
I am writing this blog for YOU, so you can get a helping hand in healing the wounded child in your 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 October 14th at a NEW time–5:30pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required especially if you need child care. 
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up by calling 916-403-0588 x1 or email attachplace@yahoo.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Do everything you can when your children are young to 
strengthen your relationships.  

The Mad Bad Persona

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

Beware: The Mad Bad beast lives here.

High Road Parenting

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High road parenting requires skills.  What are those?

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

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

See the Light

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

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

On Being Mean

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Parents are human, and sometimes humans are mean.  In the same way we would look underneath the behavior of our children for the cause, the root, or the trigger that fueled the negative reaction, parents need to do the same thing for themselves.
 
Instead of feeling guilt, shame or like a bad parent, find the root of your upset.  Only then, will you be able to make a change.
 
Example: 
The kids are begging you for a trip to the park.  You are busy with other things, but you decide to squeeze it in for them.  On the way to the park, they hit each other, run ahead, lag behind and make the walk to the park unfun and frustrating.  Halfway to the park, you get exasperated, pull up short, and say very calmly or maybe very loudly, “That’s it, no park!”  You turn on a dime and walk home with the children refusing, resisting, and shouting mean things at you about being a mean mommy.  You tell them and yourself that it is the consequence for their unruly behavior on the way to the park.
 
On the face of this it makes sense.  Not getting that thing they want is a natural consequence of poor behavior.  It just doesn’t work for what you are trying to get from them–better behavior.  Their stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) likely shot to the top of their brains blocking the meaning of the consequence. The way the consequence got dished out was mean because of the voice tone, the frustration, the punitive way the park was taken away.
 
I am not telling you to reward poor behavior.  I am trying to get you to see the delivery process of the consequence can be relationship damaging or relationship growing.  What was going to be a fun, nice mommy gift to your children, is now a punitive, mean mommy relationship sting to the relationship.  Your unmet needs and feelings can lead to behavior on your part that you regret and that your children fear.
 
Alternatives:
Squeezing in a child activity is not a great idea.  You will feel pressured, stressed, and less tolerant of the usual child behaviors. That often causes dysregulated, mean behavior.
Instead of getting frustrated on the way to the park because of unruly behavior, tell yourself the truth: your children are excited and unable to maintain the rules on the walk because of their dysregulation.  
 
Create structure before you set out.  
  • We are going to the park for a short playtime.  This is what needs to happen for us to get the most time playing when we get there.
  • On the way, everyone is going to walk together on the sidewalk. No running ahead.
  • Body space and listening ears on the way. Got it?
  • What did I say?
 
On the way, when one child gets away from the expected behavior, you STOP and say, “What needs to happen for us to get to play at the park? “When you do that, it is not keeping body space. Let’s try again”. 
You may stop 6 times on the way to the park for one child or the other.  That’s okay and that is why you cannot squeeze anything in. Time for training is required. Soon enough the children will get that play in the park is shorter when the walk is longer due to stops for training. YOU don’t need to tell them that.  They will experience it on their own. Let them.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Squeezing your kids into a too tight schedule will pinch your own mean behavior right out of you.

Mea Culpa

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My blogs have been irregular for the past few weeks.  Mea culpa, I am sick with a common cold and in a work/bed/work/bed cycle. How a cold can take me down when my kids cannot is a mystery to me.  It is what it is.  Still, I am sorry to be hit and miss with YOU. Hope the rest of this makes sense.  My head is a big red balloon.
 
Recently I read a quote by Bryan Stevenson that struck a chord. “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” When I was a child it felt like my torso was really an ever expanding bucket filling up with shame.  Only recently, one of my colleagues helped me expel through EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a trauma reduction therapy) the last drop of childhood shame from the bottom of that bucket.  Free at last.
 
My parents used shame freely.  They never realized their message was distorted inside of me.  I learned that I was shameful; the functions of my body were shameful; my human desires were shameful; and, my childhood lack of self-restraint was shameful. That didn’t leave much to feel good about except being smart and pleasing my parents, which I found I had a hard time wanting to do. I was an attachment challenged child raised with traditional parenting strategies–plenty of shame, smarting smacks across the face and butt, angry punishments, and a lot of disapproval.
 
As you blog readers know, I wielded my own traditional parenting at my children when I first adopted them.  I still grieve my ignorance.  
 
In my bones I have  known my troubled children were more than the worst things they had done (something my husband had trouble grasping.)  In my opinion this is one of the most loving things you can do as a parent: forgive your children every day for the worst things that they did yesterday. Your children are more than the worst things they have done, and your forgiveness will allow YOU to parent them with the end in mind, rather than from the troubled place you find them at any given moment. 
A question for YOU to ponder:  if my parents had known I was going to grow up into the person I am, do you think they would have spared the shame and bathed their child instead in love and acceptance?  I know for a fact carrying that shame bucket did not make me the person I am today.  I am who I am despite the heavy weight of it.
What kind of parenting does your hurting child deserve?
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins in October.  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 and love are mutually exclusive.

Dysregulation Is An Human Condition

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When I was in school, I learned that a becomes an when put in front of an h.  Is that a thing still?   Dysregulation Is An Human Condition (today’s title) just doesn’t sound right, but a or an aside, dysregulation in traumatized humans is still a thing.
 
I was working with an almost 18-year-old attachment challenged, formerly maltreated, boy yesterday and I realized that his very, very, nice demeanor was really a dysregulated state.  Shabam! Nearly got by me. 
 
He was here for one chronic misbehavior; otherwise, he wouldn’t be back here, as he graduated from my care nearly 6 years ago.  I did two sessions of cognitive behavioral conversation with him and assessed for deeper attachment challenged reasons for his misbehavior, when suddenly a revelation.  He sweetly (not oppositionally) says, “I don’t know” to nearly everything I ask, as though he knows nothing about himself.  After some serious digging, he was able to say that he is nice and smart, maybe.  
 
Turns out he has a dysregulation “tell.”  When he gets a rise in cortisol (stress hormone from dysregulation) his face does not change one tiny perceptible degree and his body stays relaxed looking and still; although, he does become even nicer and seemingly more empty saying, “I don’t know” to unpredictable questions.
 
Now that I know his “tell,” I can help him begin to notice how he is on the inside.  Before, it just seemed like there was no there there, which is never true. Once he begins to notice his own dysregulation, the odds quadruple for changing that one chronic misbehavior of his from the inside out.
 
Do you have a chronically nice child from difficult beginnings? Investigate her tell.  Explore her inner landscape for hidden dysregulation that is keeping your child’s personality from blossoming or holding a few negative behaviors frustratingly static. 
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course 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.

Our kids need help knowing what is happening to them emotionally on the inside, so they have a better chance of making thoughtful decisions and good choices on the outside.