Tag Archives: Parent Self Love

Halloween Bah-Humbug

Leave a reply
Halloween gets my Bah-Humbug going.  
 
Where did my playful, sense of fun at any cost, dressed-up fairy-self go?  Bah-Humbug. Dysregulation is a stir, so I’ve
strapped on my Nerves of Steel spanx (big NS on the chest) for the rest of the day, and will probably wear it under my clothes throughout the weekend. 
 
From too many cupcakes at school, through too much candy door-to-door, to no candy because “Honey, you are allergic to Red dye #4, Yellow dye#2, Blue dye of any number, and sugar–sorry–here is an organic, gluten free, non GMO, cranberry edamame vegan bar. YOU loved these yesterday.”
 
Be patient. Have compassion. Expect too much sugar, too much fun, too much cortisol, and a blowout or three.  It’s Halloween! (Yay. Bah-humbug.)
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Love Matters Scholarship Fund can use your contributions.  Click here for more information.
This is controversial: I allowed my kids to eat their Halloween candy as soon as I inspected it (yep, I’m that paranoid) and throughout the next day. Whatever was left after 24 hours was dumped.  Some years they were rolling around with tummy aches, but mostly they ate a little all day at intervals.  When I dumped it, they had had their fill and didn’t really pitch much of a fit.  To me that was better than trying to spread the sugar out in single pieces FOREVER!

True Story

Leave a reply
Picture this: I’m trying to find a little peace while taking my morning constitutional (don’t look it up as it is TMI) in my old-style bathroom built for about .5 people, when my daughter starts blowing up my phone with serial texts begging me to take her trick-or-treating. She’s 19. 
 
Simultaneously, my son starts calling “Mom” from down the hall while marble-mouth-mumbling something earth-shattering about his computer. Three dogs–Chihuahua, Beagle, Black Lab–sit in a stair-step row wagging and staring me down for their morning pupperonis (which, by the way, are not stored in the bathroom) while the cat flops around otter-style in the tub. 
 
Really? It’s 6am on a Tuesday.
 
True story.  Nothing like a life full of attachment challenged creatures–dogs, cats, kids. I am starting to think something is seriously wrong with me.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Everyone deserves a rescue.

They Do Grow Up

Leave a reply
Yes, they do grow up–eventually.  While I have been gone, my daughter sent me a bittersweet text. It was 12 messages long and arrived in the middle of the night.  Just like her.
She was lamenting how hard it is to be a mother with a child from difficult beginnings.  Her little 11 month old daughter has been very ill since birth; the magnitude of which is only just now sinking in for her.  Sadly, my daughter’s poor decision making led to my granddaughter’s permanent brain damage. This is a hard reality to swallow.
The bittersweet part was her profound epiphany that raising children (like her and her brother) was probably hard for me.  Her conclusion:  I don’t know how you ever did it with me.  I honestly don’t know how you did it.  You are the strongest Mom I know…and I love you with all my heart no matter how many fights we get in or how many times I say I don’t.  I always will and will never ever be able to repay you for everything you have done for me.
 
You just did, sweetheart. You just did.
And I love you, too.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Just when you think nothing matters, love does.  
Love matters.

Tit For Tat Gets YOU Back

Leave a reply

Our children do not cause our poor parenting behavior–yelling,
demanding, demeaning, belittling, overpowering, physicality,
threatening, arguing, meanness, etc.  Those behaviors belong to us
and no amount of attachment challenge child behavior is responsible
for our “low road” reactions.

Because this is true, I have mastered the art of the sincere apology.
I often owe that to both of my children.  Whenever I suggest that
parents owe an apology to their children before expecting their
children to sincerely apologize, I get push back like there is no
tomorrow.

“Absolutely not!” retorted one parent, when I asked if she had
something to apologize for after she wrongly accused her daughter of
something she had actually done herself.  “If she didn’t lie all the
time, I wouldn’t have falsely accused her.”  Okay, but you did
wrongly accuse her, and really you owe her a sincere apology for
wronging her, right?  “No.”  Hmmmm.

If we expect our children to sincerely feel remorse and apologize for
their wrongs, then we have to model it first.  Otherwise, we are
blaming them for our behavior.

Isn’t that what they often infuriatingly do to YOU?

Because Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is
September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here –
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheAttachPlaceCenter/9ba51af5e7/TEST/c0f94646cd .

Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their
own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here –
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheAttachPlaceCenter/9ba51af5e7/TEST/b816f9fd03 .

Tit for tat, gets YOU back.

Swimming In Shame

Leave a reply
If you are swimming in shame, YOU need some help finding your vulnerability and compassion for yourself.  Reclaim your childhood. Shame has a tendency to well up around parenting attachment challenged children. They have difficulty accepting parenting and we have difficulty accepting that it isn’t our fault. The shame doesn’t come directly from parenting. Likely it has been there all along, from childhood.  It just gets big and overwhelming when children are added to the mix.
 
If this sounds like YOU, check out a little reading.  Brene Brown is my favorite. She has a blog (doesn’t everyone have a blog?) YOU can watch her on TED (not everyone has a TED Talk.)  Read her book.  Go to a local workshop based on her work. Join a support group based on Daring Greatly (her book.)  She is all the rage.  YOU could be part of a movement.
 
Get a little inspiration here:
 
Brene Brown on empanty
 
YOU can go to therapy, buy a workbook, find a 12-step.  What YOU probably ought to avoid?  Avoidance.
 
Because Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 
Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

YOU Still Matter.

Did YOU Come From Difficult Beginnings?

Leave a reply
There is a bit of an ironic truth in the therapist community that many therapists came from “difficult beginnings” and end up becoming therapists on the way to fixing themselves.  
 
Similarly, I think, many adoptive parents came from “difficult beginnings,” too. Along the way of self repair, providing a better life to an adopted child from “difficult beginnings” makes sense. Nothing wrong with that.  Actually, it is quite lovely.
 
The problem with both of these realities is that unhealed therapists and parents from difficult beginnings can find themselves in emotional disrepair as they try to be healing forces in the lives of those they care for–client or child.
 
Heal thyself.  
 
I wish I had been given, heal thyself, advice prior to adopting children so I could have done my own deep recovery before I mixed my difficult beginning with that of my children.  The result was a compounded mess of entangled traumatic material bouncing off the walls.  In my house, especially in the beginning, it was hard to say who was the most emotionally dysregulated–me or them.
 
Individuals with early trauma experience symptoms on a continuum  If you answer many of the following questions with a YES, YOU might need support for your own healing.  Plain and simple.  Heal thyself.
 
Y or N  Do you prefer to recharge your batteries by being alone rather than with other people?
Y or N  Did you need glasses at an early age?
Y or N  Do you suffer from environmental sensitivities or multiple allergies?
Y or N  Do you have migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, or fibromyalgia?
Y or N  Did you experience prenatal trauma such as intrauterine surgeries, prematurity with incubation, or traumatic events during gestation?
Y or N  Were there complications at your birth?
Y or N  Were you adopted?
Y or N  Have you had problems maintaining relationships?
Y or N  Do you have difficulty knowing what you are feeling?
Y or N  Would others describe you as more intellectual than emotional?
Y or N  Do you have disdain for people who are emotional?
Y or N  Are you particularly sensitive to cold?
Y or N  Do you often have the feeling that life is overwhelming and you don’t have the energy to deal with it?
Y or N  Do you prefer working in situations that require theoretical skills rather than people skills?
Y or N  Are you troubled by the persistent feeling that you don’t belong?
Y or N  Are you always looking for the “why” of things?
Y or N  Are you uncomfortable in groups or social situations?
Y or N  Does the world seem like a dangerous place to you?
          (Recognizing the Symptoms of Early Trauma by Laurence Heller, Ph.D.)
 
Heal thyself.  No shame.  Only love.
Because Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 
Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

YOU Matter.

Name the Shame

Leave a reply

When I was growing up, I am pretty sure my parents read some kind of
parenting book entitled, Shame Your Way to Perfect Children.  Or
maybe topping The New York Times best seller list for non-fiction
during those years was a blockbuster book called, Best Kept Secret
For Good Behavior: Shame Works.  Sorry Mom and Dad.  The secret is
out.

My parents weren’t bad people.  They were just doing what their
parents did. It did work pretty well. I didn’t do a whole lot of bad
stuff when I was a kid. I waited until I was away at college.  Ha.

So, shame can work with normally attached children.  However, there
is a side-effect even for attached children–lingering into adulthood
a negative core belief about self worth that often takes a lifetime
to repair. That’s me.

Shame doesn’t work at all to manage the behavior of  attachment
challenged children who have a primal wound from adoption, abuse and
neglect in the early years, or birth trauma in the early years that
gets confused with a poorly formed identity.

You know that blank look, those frozen wide-open doll eyes YOU get
from your children when you confront them on their negative
behavior–that look that implies no feeling, no care, no conscience?
You know that incredible head of steam, that incensed, indignant,
“How dare YOU” bluster they can muster to deny they had any part in
misdeeds. Those two responses are a sure fire indicator that shame is
at work just under the surface and your child is calling upon every
imaginable survival skill to push away the overwhelming experience of
shame, even if that means nonsensical lying, nonsensical denying, or
nonsensical self-silencing.

Here is the real secret.  Remove the blame, address the shame, and
attend to what lies beneath–your child’s fear of being bad, wrong,
unwanted and unlovable.  Shame of being.  How sad it that? Our
children very often feel shame about who they are–and they don’t
even know it.  Every day poor decision-making adds evidence to their
internal unconscious argument that they are rotten at the core.

As parents we can work to heal this “bad” feeling in our children.
We just have to be sure that shame is not used in a misguided attempt
to make our children feel something about their negative
behavior–remorse, sorry, sad, bad, anything except nothing.

They already feel bad enough about who they are; extra is not
required.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is
September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here –
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheAttachPlaceCenter/993b85483b/TEST/8d3e730b6f .

Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their
own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here –
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheAttachPlaceCenter/993b85483b/TEST/c7ac59da35 .

Commit to withholding shame and in the face of negative behavior
affirm your child’s goodness at the core.

Attachment and Trauma Series

Leave a reply
I am pretty excited about this upcoming free series on Attachment and Trauma in the Classroom.  I can’t listen to the the whole series myself, but you might be able to or you might be able to convince your child’s school to purchase the recorded series for teachers, classroom aides, counselors, school psychologists and school staff.  I am not attesting to how great the material will be because I haven’t heard it yet; however, I know the point of view of this organization and it is right on the dime about how to heal attachment and traumatized children.
 
Very often parents invite me to Student Study Team meetings, IEPs, and school brainstorming sessions to help inform well-meaning school personnel about ways of educating our children.  I have written more letters to help support my child clients in the classroom than I care to count.  I hate to admit it. This material may be even better than a school visit from moi.
 
Here you go.  If YOU have school aged children from difficult beginnings, I hope you can make it.  It’s FREEEEEEE.  How great is that?

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 
Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Our children are learning challenged.  
Let’s help teachers give them a chance.

No Lemon”aid” Today

Leave a reply

From Friday Snoopy Happy Dance to Monday lemons over here on my side of the grass is not greener cliche fence.  For the life of me, I cannot seem to make my usual lemonade from the sour fruits of my morning.  It is already 3:30pm and I haven’t written to YOU.  Come on, Ce.  Perk up.

Everywhere I turned today for comfort, dished out messages that I could only hear as, “It’s your fault.”  Your children are being this way because of YOU.  Well, no kidding Sherlock!  No freaking kidding!

All I wanted was for someone who loves me to say, “Wow, it IS so hard, and it has been a long 15 years, and you are doing your best, and I can see that, and hang on, and it will all be okay, because YOU are okay.”  I did get two hugs in the end.  That mattered, because love matters.

Yep, I’m feeling a little pathetic, and that’s it.  Lemon without the “aid.”

Better cue-up the Snoopy Dance music, cuz I need a reason to celebrate.  I know YOU have these days.  I hope it feels comforting to know that YOU are not the only one.  Big love to YOU, because…
 
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

Leave a reply
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.