Tag Archives: Reactive Attachment Disorder

Codependence in Parent/Child Relationships

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Relationships between parents and their traumatized children often resemble terribly destructive codependent relationships. Here are some tenets of codependence I want to share that may give you some insight into how YOU may be making your parenting situation worse.
 
Codependence:
 
  • Personalizing your child’s behavior, good or bad
  • Taking on a victim mentality by thinking your child owes you good behavior or your child’s behavior is about you
  • Using guilt or shame to get the behavior you want
  • Needing to be right
  • Only pretending or rarely listening to your child’s point of view
  • Dismissing as ridiculous or irrelevant your child’s feelings, thoughts and beliefs
  • Turning emotions into an art form through withdrawing, angry yelling, crying, or other dramatic emotional in or out bursts
  • Mocking your child by parroting back at your child an accusation or nasty tone of voice they have just slung at you
  • Crazy making communication–I am SO INCREDIBLY ANGRY you didn’t call when you got there like I told you to do! Nevermind, I don’t care.
  • Subtle and covert manipulations that can not easily be called out but are definitely felt by your child–passive aggressive statements, withholding eye contact or affection, giving the silent treatment, denial of wrong-doing, making all things seem like the child’s fault
  • Controlling, controlling, controlling is name of the daily game
 
Most of us have done some of these things once in a while because they are human behaviors.  If you are stuck in one or many, you need to take a long look at yourself. YOU may be making the situation in your home worse. Your behavior is not because of your child’s behavior.  Your behavior is your healthy or unhealthy reaction to it.
 
I think most of you know I learned all of this about 5 years into raising my attachment challenged, severely traumatized children.  I can’t believe I didn’t get my part for that long, but I just didn’t.  I can beat myself for what I didn’t know or I can applaud myself for finally seeing it.  Honestly, I vacillate.  
 
If you see yourself stuck in a codependent dance with your attachment challenged child, you will probably need some help climbing out. It’s okay. You are worth it. No shame.
 
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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
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 keeps us in the dark.  Where there is light, there is healing.

Teenagers From The GitGo

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I feel like I have been raising teenagers for 19 years.   Because traumatized children are on survival mode, they seem to have teenager-like behaviors from the gitgo.  Yep, I said “Gitgo.”  I looked it up.  It is still a word to Webster.  
 
Today, I woke my son for school and thought the same thing I have thought every day for all these years: He needs to clean this disgusting room.  That is an hysterical repetitive thought process. How can I possibly care about his room for 16+ years?  HE obviously doesn’t NEED a clean room.  The good news is I didn’t say anything. If I said something every time I thought it my children would hate me.
 
Parents don’t have to parent everything.  If we did, our children would be either passively resistant or aggressively resistant 24/7. By the actual teen years, we would be totally tuned out and without influence in our children’s lives.
 
Relationship is everything.  Clean rooms, not so much.
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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
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.

Cheers to maintaining your influence for your child’s lifetime.
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Parent P.I.

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I always wanted to be a private eye, not because I particularly wanted to sit around watching people through binoculars all day but more because I am keenly interested in human nature and on TV P.I.’s always had cool cars. I settled and became a therapist instead.  Same job really, but my car isn’t as flashy.  
 
Turns out being a parent of children who are difficult to raise requires a similar skill set.  Before you can intervene in a problem behavior you have to understand the meaning of it.  That requires investigation.
 
The best way to start is to ask the question:  Why does s/he do that?  
 
Once you know the motivation, it will be easier to design a successful intervention. When answering the question, take into consideration some of the following ideas. 
 
1. The opposite of whatever the child answers because our children do not like their motives to be discovered.  
2. To control. 
3. For attention. 
4. Throw in some outlandish reason only a kid would think makes sense. 
5. Make a couple of studied guesses.  
 
Choose the two motivations that you think are the most likely to be right and address your intervention to that motivation.  If the problem behavior doesn’t change once you address what you think is the correct motivation, move down your list.  You may have it wrong.  Keep going.  Eventually you will begin to understand your child the way a detective understands the subject.  
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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
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.

Attention is not the only reason for behavior.
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Bam Bam Bam

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Bam, Bam, Bam…  That is the sound of me banging my head against the wall. No, not really. Sometimes I feel like I am though.  The amount of times I say the same things over and over are head bangers.  
 
Come on neuropathways.  Grow!  Grow!!  Grow!!!
 
I know YOU know what I mean.  Bless you for all that you do, over and over and over again.  
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 May 13th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
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.

Someone needs to invent an ice pack for the parenting mind.
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How Big Is the Problem?

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A HUGE part of self-regulation for a parent is determining how big the problem you are looking at really is:
 
tiny       small      medium        LARGE
Your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room.  How big is this problem?     Hint:  tiny.
Your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room at least three times a week.  How big is the problem?   Hint:  tiny.
Your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room every day.  How big is the problem?   Hint:  small.   Yes, really!
You flip your lid every other day because your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the living room every day.
What is the problem?   Hint:  Your DYSREGULATION..
How big is the problem?   Hint:  Large.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Address tiny problems with regulated tiny responses.
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Gratitude For YOU

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A group of about 12 parents attended our Trust-based Parent Support Group tonight and by the end of the night I felt my heart swell with love. Honestly, big, big LOVE.  
 
I am not sure many would adopt children if they knew beforehand the actual truth: the truth about the crap shoot they were undertaking and the incredible sacrifice they would be making. Frankly, I am pretty sure I would have taken a pass had I known. (Shhhhh…my children don’t know and they never will.)  My parenting journey was…well…challenging for me, the woman who wanted to be “Mom” all of her life and tried so hard but couldn’t be one without adoption.  
 
Tonight, I was thanked by a parent for whatever difficulty I went through to get to the place where my experience could be helpful to adoptive parents.  She truly meant that.  It may not seem like it in this blog, but I am rather shy about receiving such praise. I made a joke to shake it off, but while I was doing that I felt a wave of loving gratitude wash over me. And this is what unfolded: I really love YOU parents.  I really do.  I hope YOU can feel it in these emails and in every contact you have with me.  I am humbled before YOU.
heart
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

YOU are loved and AWESOME.

 

Still Face

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Back when attachment was not considered “a thing,” there was a pocket of researchers studying the parent/infant bond.  Their work spawned the attachment revolution in parenting, brain science, relationship building, and treatment of mental health problems. I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that one of the most salient experiments conducted was called the “Still Face.”  To me, the experiment has a painfully cruel aspect to it; that said, we learned a lot about how a child is affected by the facial expression of the mother.  It holds for fathers, too, but those experiments (to my knowledge) have not been done.  I truly wonder why.
 
When YOU are stressed out, angry, tired, or loving too long from your mind (rather than the part of your mind we call heart), your face betrays you to your attachment challenged child.  Your face becomes incongruent, your eyes lose their twinkle, and your voice lacks the warmth that the glow of love gives it. YOU may be going through the motions of parenting, but a “Still Face” can be detected just below the surface.
 
Your child can feel via the conduit of your facial expressions and eyes that YOU are not emotionally present, which immediately sends a signal to that child that you are unsafe, unloving, cold–hateful even.  Attachment panic will likely spring up and emotionally dysregulated behavior will not be far behind.  
 
YOU cannot fake it for very long before your attachment challenged child takes it in as something bad about him/her and something bad about YOU.
 
If YOU are chronically faking, get help for yourself.  Find a confidante, a church member, another adoptive parent, support group or a therapist for support.  YOU are doing one of the hardest things on earth–parenting a traumatized child.  Island, rock, martyr are not synonyms for mother or father.
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVPeach month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Empathy is truly the answer.
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Love Matters Bootcamp Day 5–Empathy and Blaming

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Love Matters Bootcamp Day 5–Empathy. I have sent this out to YOU before, but do yourself a favor and take 2 minutes and 53 seconds to watch it again. 
 
Brene Brown on Empathy 2
And now, the very thing that blocks Empathy–Blaming. Come on, just 3 minutes and 14 seconds more.
 
Brene Brown on Blaming
 
These are my two favorite things to watch.  I do it over and over. They are short and on-point. I wonder what the world would be like if everyone ate-up these two videos every morning for breakfast.
A girl can dream, can’t she?
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Empathy supports connection. Play more. Blame less.
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Love Matters Bootcamp Day 3–Diving Deep

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Love Matters Bootcamp Day 3–Diving Deep.  Yesterday YOU looked at what is bugging you.  Today, dive a little deeper. Sometimes things happen to make us feel really upset, super dooper worried, or scared out of our wits. These things strike us at the core and we go into survival mode.  What puts you into survival mode?
 
Truth zone
Triggers send you straight to fight, flight, flee or freeze.  Zero to 60 and you are gone baby.  Write ’em down.  This is your work. When you see a challenge up ahead, regulate before you get your survival on.  That’s how you treat a trigger with lots of good fresh air–deep, deep breaths, space, and TLC for the tremor at the core of YOU.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Know thyself.
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Love Matters Bootcamp Day 2–Owning Your Own Sh#*t

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Love Matters Bootcamp–Day 2 starts with “owning your own crap.” I have suddenly become very PC.  What is bugging me is my problem. 
Bug
My son enjoys talking to me a lot of the time.  He is doing nothing wrong, but it bugs me; therefore, it is my crap, not his.  When I get crazy irritated, it is my irritation.  He isn’t making me feel anything. I am responsible for taking care of myself, and, as a mother, helping my son see how his desire to talk can be annoying to others who are not in the listening mood.  His talking is not the problem, per se. My not taking care of myself is.
 
The solution might be managed entirely by me, entirely by him, or by collaboration.  If I were to handle it in a vacuum, I could walk away every time I am not in a listening mood or I could announce that I am not in a listening mood the second I realize it.  On my own, there is no way to make him stop talking or to have better social skills.
 
If he managed it entirely, he might stumble upon a social cue that could help him read the listener better, so he knows when enough is enough. He could decide he doesn’t like talking to me and never speak to me again. Then again, he could have some kind of sudden spring into maturity realizing that everyone is not interested in his every thought–we know that is not likely to happen.
 
If we collaborate, I could ask for what I need from him–some non-talk together time.  I could suggest we divine a signal to help him see that I am not in a listening mood.  I could help him see the social cue every time I am giving it.  If he has trouble observing the cue, I can go back to resolving the problem on my own–leave the room.
 
Making talking the problem is the problem.  Ownership is the answer.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is April 8th. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

If I’m bugged, it’s my bug.
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