Grieving as a Parent with a History of Trauma: Part 6 of 6 {EP 255}

Robyn: We have talked about grief and the grief of parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system on this podcast before we've had episodes dedicated to talking about grief, and it is one of the topics that just comes up pretty regularly and is woven throughout many of the episodes that we that we have here. I really wanted to wrap up this series talking about this very specific kind of grief, I especially want you to know that you're not alone and that you've done absolutely nothing wrong, that grieving these aspects of parenting make absolute perfect sense. If you're new to the baffling behavior show, you might want to scroll back and start with episode one of this six part series. You also can head over to my website, Robyn gobbel.com/podcast, you can use the search bar there to find an episode that you're looking for, if you're brand new here and you're like, holy smokes, there's 255, episodes. Where do I even begin? That's one of your options. Robyn gobbel.com/podcast use the search bar. You can also go to Robyn gobbel.com/start here, and you can sign up subscribe to a podcast feed that I have where I have curated 10 episodes from the baffling behavior show and put them into their own podcast feed and in an order that hopefully answers the question, where do I Start? So you're gonna have to go to Robyn gobbel.com/start here to get access to that podcast stream. That's a great place to get started if you're brand new around here. And if you like to read books, you can check out my book Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors, which is, I don't know, about two and a half years old. Now, you can get it wherever you buy books online, and it's also available in audiobooks, so you can check that out maybe somewhere like on Audible requests are from your local library. I read the audiobook, so that's pretty fun. Okay, let's get started talking about grief. We're going to talk first about the aspects of grief that I tend to see talked about most often. Now, if you have other experiences of grief that I don't touch upon in this episode, please, please, please, don't take that to mean that there's something like wrong or unique about the way that you're experiencing grief. It simply means that it i. I just didn't think of it when I put my list together. That's all that means. I can guarantee you that if you're having an experience, somebody else is too. I absolutely can guarantee that. 

Robyn: So we're going to start by talking about that some of the core experiences of grief. I didn't mean to say core some of the common experiences of grief that I see with parents who have their own history of trauma and are parenting vulnerable kids. And then we are going to do a little bit about Okay, so what do we do with this grief? If y'all aren't familiar I previously was a psychotherapist, and for 15 years had an outpatient mental health practice where I saw kids and adults with a history of trauma, and spent a lot of time being with adults who were making sense of and working to be brave, to be with their own histories of trauma, and I think largely because of the intersection of my areas of expertise, I tended to see a lot of folks who were Parenting and who were parenting trying to navigate, you know, their own Well, usually parenting a child with some pretty significant behavioral special needs. So it's very, very, very common for me to have the best opportunity the luxury of really sitting and being with these folks, and one thing I saw, probably universally, is that there is so much grief as you're parenting and as you're working really hard to parent the way that you want to

Robyn: The awareness of what you didn't receive becomes so much more tangible, so much more tangible as you step into your own role as a parent and you look at how committed you are to parenting, with CO regulation, with attunement, learning how to repair after ruptures, right? You're showing up. You're learning about parenting in a way that wasn't modeled for you, and you're realizing more and more, even if you kind of knew it somewhere you sort you knew like I didn't get what I needed, it feels so different when you really put yourself in that parent role yourself, and you have awareness of the parenting that you so much want to give to your child, and have that felt sense of how much your child deserves it, and when you have that realization that nobody did that for you. And that's not true across the board. I've certainly worked with adults whose parents tried their very, very best and went to therapy themselves and really worked hard. But a lot of the folks that I've worked with were the first folks in, you know, a generational line that had enough felt safety themselves, that had enough resources themselves, that had enough kind of coherence and organization in their own nervous system to be able to kind of step into doing that work. I actually really believe that the work is done for many, many, many generations, though not probably very intentional and not in a way we could articulate super clearly. And it's very possible that previous generations didn't know they were doing the work. But I really believe that once we get to the generation who can say, this stops with me, I'm getting some help. I don't want to continue on with these, you know, parenting legacies, by the time we get to that generation, there has been healing that's happened in previous generations. 

Robyn: There must be in order to kind of get to that generation that has some awareness and actually the resources to do something about that awareness. Previous generations just didn't have that awareness or the resources. But slowly, slowly, slowly, over generations, I do believe that nervous systems were healing ever so slightly so that we could get to that generation that kind of straddled that tipping point, regardless, though it still is so profoundly sad to. Really have a felt sense of how hard you're working and how much awareness you have and how much you want to do better and different, and to realize that nobody did that for you, the aspects, the things that that you missed out on, become so much more real, right? As you strive to really parent with attunement, really see your child, really make space for all of their feelings, the felt sense of, oh, I don't have a map for this. Nobody did this for me, can feel really big, and without question, a new layer of grief can rise up that isn't feeling bad for ourselves, right? Pity tends to come from protection mode, whereas compassion and grief that is actually capable of kind of moving through the body that comes from connection mode. That doesn't mean it feels good, but we have the capacity to be with it, and it has some purposeful movement to it, and that's very different than pity. So when you notice these aspects of sadness and regret, of the things that you missed out on, resist, if you can the desire to lay that label that as pity and see if you can be with the truth of compassion, compassion that emerges from connection mode. I have also known hundreds of parents at this point, both in the office when I was a psychotherapist and now in the club, as well as the parents that I you know, I'm so fortunate to meet when I travel around and speak and get to meet more folks. I've met so many hundreds and hundreds of parents, and I continue to meet folks who have a lot of grief when they realize it's very possible that they aren't ever going to be able to parent in the way that they want to. 

Robyn: There's this disconnect between how you know you want to parent, and then your nervous system's capacity to parent in that way, or your nervous system's capacity to regulate through the stressors of parenting. People with a history of trauma have a very sensitized stress response system, and we have unintegrated memory networks that are easily touched and awakened and kind of moved to the forefront and like take over what's happening in the here and now. And it is very true that folks can be working so hard on processing their own trauma and finding ways to widen their window of tolerance and integrate their experiences, you can be working so hard on that, and it's still not be enough to make noticeable, tangible behavioral shifts. That's true about our kids, right? We see that all the time in our kids that we are doing so much to parent them with connection and CO regulation and felt safety, and I believe that that matters, and I believe that that is shifting their nervous system. But there's this reality of, is it shifting their nervous system enough that we're going to see behavioral change? And we can't guarantee that. I certainly can't guarantee that they might not, they might not make those shifts in their own nervous system while you're still parenting them, and the same is true for you. You might not make those shifts big enough in a nervous system way that will see them change what's happening behaviorally. And you know, as I'm saying that out loud, I had this moment of I might want to back up and re-record that line. I don't want it to be harsh, I don't want it to feel shaming. I don't want it to feel hopeless. But I'm I'm not going to, I'm not going to back up and change that line because it's honest. And I think that there's space to be with the honesty of it without falling into shame or hopelessness, that when we can be with reality without becoming dysregulated, that's actually a pretty profound moment of healing. 

Robyn: And there's some reality that there may not be enough shift inside your nervous system, no matter how hard you're working, that you'll be able to always parent the way that you want to. You're still going to get overwhelmed, you're still going to flip your lid, you're still going to have old trauma memories activated. You're still going to be working this. An ongoing healing journey while you are parenting, and there is so much grief of not being the parent that you imagined you would be. There's so much grief and not being able to control the pace of your healing and to see that there might not be the shift that you are hoping to make while your child is still, you know, young enough to be being parented. And if that feels like that might be true to you, your work is to find a way to be okay with that truth without it being hopeless, without it being hopeless, because any movement still matters. And I feel confident that a child who grows up with a parent who is aware of wanting to do different and trying to do different, even if they can't do as different enough as they want to, I believe 100% in my bones that that matters. It really, really, really matters to your child. 

Robyn: And I've sometimes asked adults that I've worked with, especially when we're kind of in this stage, and there's just so much profound grief and sadness around the reality of I'm not sure I can do this fast enough for it to matter in my parenting journey, there's so much grief and sadness around that, and I will often ask that person if when you were a Child, your parents had been aware of what they needed to work on, and had worked on it, even if they hadn't been able to change. Would that have made a difference? Would that have mattered to you? And 100% of the time, the answer is Yes, always. I believe it really, really, really matters, and we can only do what we can do. We can't heal faster. We can't shift faster. The nervous system only moves at the pace that it can move and and with the safety that's available to it. So we're all going to do the best that we can, and then we're just going to keep doing that, and as we grow our capacity, we'll be able to grow our capacity for being with the grief of how we're not shifting as fast as we want it to. I've also found folks to experience some grief around what I would call kind of this simultaneous healing that sometimes we can put things in kind of like a linear order, like I'll do this work, I'll heal first, then I'll parent. And the reality is that that's not true. We are constantly doing both. This is actually also true for psychotherapists. That there, I believe, is the reality to psychotherapists being engaged in their own work and their own healing process, and they're doing that simultaneously, while they're also being helpers and healers to other people, there's not a first and then A then psychotherapist. Don't first heal themselves and then go to work that almost never, ever, ever happens. They're doing it simultaneously, and it's okay. 

Robyn: It has to be okay, because that's what's happening. And parenting is a lot like that, right? We are healing along the way of parenting, and the truth is, is that parenting is often healing, and parenting is also often full of trauma and toxic stress. And if you're listening to this podcast, that's probably true for you. But there are aspects of parenting still that are healing, and I actually think that there comes a point for parents who are doing this work, really, to show up as a parent for their kids, that eventually that work allows them to kind of show up as a parent for their own inner child, and that that is profoundly impactful. So this is a very simultaneous journey. You're not going to do one and then the next. You just simply can't you have to be healing, which means you have to be quote, unquote unhealed. I don't really believe in unhealed, but you know, for lack of better language to convey this, you have to be quote, unquote unhealed while parenting. If you're going to be healing while parenting is just how it works. So it feels like another one of those aspects of this journey where our work is to just be with reality that we don't like it. We wish it was different, but it is reality, and can we be with the. Truth of it that we are doing this work while parenting we didn't get to complete it and then start our parenting journey. I also often see a lot of grief arise in parents as they recognize what I'll label here as like intergenerational vulnerability, when we start to see our own sensitivities and our own vulnerability in our children, or we start to see the ways in which we were so desperate not to kind of pass our histories or our trauma onto our kids, but we really couldn't help it, or we can see how what is happening for our children is related to our own Parenting capacity, and that doesn't mean accepting blame or fault, we can look at how things connect to one another. There is a lot of research that shows the intergenerational transmission of attachment, both secure attachment and insecure attachment. 

Robyn: Lots and lots of research to really show this, and because of attached how attachment works, and because attachment is largely an implicit experience, and it's not something that we're thinking about or doing or consciously aware of, these implicit experiences are acted out in ways we're not really aware of and passed on, and that's just how it works. Our own vulnerabilities are getting passed on. Our own vulnerabilities are impacting our kids, and it is very possible that some of you listening can see how the vulnerabilities in your child are related to the vulnerabilities in your nervous system, and that that isn't fault or blame. It's just how it works. And yeah, there's a lot of grief and sadness in that. So much grief and sadness in that. And usually what we have to do first is work through what is often the felt experience of shame, right? And we have to it's very normal, of course, to feel the shame in that. And partly why that's true is because the memory networks, the neural networks that hold our traumas contain the felt experience of shame. And so if we still have unintegrated traumas and traumas that are still impacting us now and impacting us relationally and impacting how we're parenting, the memory networks that hold the shame are also impacting us, and they seem like they're tied together, right? It can't we have the felt sense that we have shame over our parenting. In reality, what I feel like I've seen more than not, is that those two memory networks are just activated at the same time, right? Our our memory networks that are impacting our parenting and then the shame that was a part of those memory networks. And we don't actually have to hold shame about how we are parenting. 

Robyn: We can have grief and sadness about it and regret even, and wish that it could be different, but it actually doesn't have to cause shame, and it does for almost everyone. And so there's some time where we have to really, you know, be with ourselves and kind of work through and process that shame before we can move into being with the grief around that intergenerational vulnerability. Patterns are real. There's a real there's truth to the intergenerational transmission of trauma and detachment patterns. There's truth to that, but they are not set in stone. You know, we can shift and we can change. There's a lot of hope there, and then also, there's only so much shifting and changing that we can do, and we're we have to find ways to to be okay with that truth. Now, there's a few other common experiences of grief that I see arise. I'm not going to go into them with the depth that I just went into with the others, because there's just simply not enough time for that this would turn into like a nine hour long episode, and y'all, I already talked too much. So some of the other grief experiences that I see in parents who have a history of trauma. I are the reality that parenting feels so much harder for you than it does for your peers and for your kids. Peers, parents, right? And that can feel really, really unfair. There also is a lot of grief that we can be carrying around how our parenting journey looks so much different than we'd ever even imagined.

Robyn: Grief around how our child's struggles are lasting longer than we'd hoped or imagined, and grief around how doing this work and loving our kids in this way, it's just so hard. There's it's exhausting, and that feels that there can be a lot of grief that accompanies that. So what next? Like, what do we do with this grief? Well, acknowledging it, noticing it, being with it, working to be with quote-unquote reality. That is part of the work, right we are when we are with our grief and we're bringing compassion to it, that's grieving, that is doing part of part of the work. I know I've often felt like grief work feels so evasive, right? It's like, well, what does that mean? What does that look like? Well, grief work looks like a million different things, and one of the things it looks like is these tiny moments where we just touch in to acknowledging the grief that's there. Self-compassion, of course, is essential. You knew I was not going to get through this episode without talking about self-compassion. Self-compassion. Compassion is what I would call the neurobiology of change that the neurobiological state of mind that exists when we are having the experience of compassion that is the neurobiological experience state of mind that allows for changing, shifting and changing in our mind, in our memory networks. Compassion is the neurobiology of change, and we can be with other folks who are offering us compassion, and then we can ultimately develop the capacity to be with ourselves with self-compassion. Usually we need to receive lots and lots and lots of compassion or witness other people receiving compassion before we feel safe enough risking self-compassion. 

Robyn: So if self compassion feels impossible to you, what I would suggest is find spaces that prioritize compassion, find people who prioritize compassion, who give compassion to one another, to hold compassion, find places where, frankly, it's expected that you show up and offer compassion to other people, because I have found that giving compassion To others grows our capacity to eventually offer self compassion. So find those places, and if you don't have those places, this experience of self compassion and of being in places that prioritize compassion, where you can watch other people give compassion, give and receive compassion, where you can give compassion to other people, that is literally one of the primary reasons I started the club, because I know the power of that. I know the power of that, and I know it's so hard to find that in real life, and I knew I could create a space online where that was one of the primary purposes of the place, right? The compassion aspect. So if that feels hard for you to kind of find that place, just know that the club's always there. It's always open, no matter when you're listening to this my my intention is that if you're listening to this podcast and 2046 that the club still exists in whatever capacity is possible, given you know that, can you even imagine the technological changes that will exist in 2046 we'll all be putting on our virtual headsets and just hanging out with one another, or more even I just, I can't even wrap my brain around that. But my point is, if you're hearing this podcast, the club still exists, and therefore a space where you can go and be in a space of compassion, it exists. Come on in. We're waiting for you. It's also important to remember that we don't just grieve and then it's done. Grief is an experience we touch in and out of. Yeah, we have to titrate it. We have a moment of grief, and then we pull out of it. We have a moment of grief, and we pull out of it. And sometimes it doesn't, you don't even notice. And sometimes, honestly, for me, maybe because of the professional work that I do, I can sometimes feel frustrated that I can't hang out in the grief longer, and then I have to work to be with myself about how wisely my nervous system titrates it. I touch in and I touch out, and I touch in and I touch out and I touch in at exactly the pace and exactly the intensity that I can and I don't have to play on that. I don't have to do that deliberately. I don't have to sit down and go, Okay, this is how much grief I'm going to do today. 

Robyn: My nervous system takes care of it for me, right? It wants to feel better. So when it has the safety to touch into the grief, it does, and it will only touch in to it for as long as it can. And it can be really helpful to just be with yourself in that again, being with reality. This really hurts. I hate this. I hate how this feels. Of course, this hurts. I can be with this feeling just a little bit at a time, and then I can move out of the feeling, give language to it, honesty, authenticity. Grief isn't hopelessness. In fact, if you feel the tug towards grief, and you feel the tug towards falling down, really the possum pathway where hopelessness lies, then that is grief that's being surrounded by protection mode. And it is possible. It might not be possible for you yet, but it is possible in the future, for grief to hang out in connection mode, for your nervous system to feel safe being with your grief. So if grief is feeling hopeless, know that you're probably not being with your grief in connection mode. You're falling into protection mode. Don't have to shame yourself for that you're not doing something wrong. But I think it's helpful to just notice that truth and then trust yourself that you will one day be able to experience grief while in connection mode. I write, I think in early and big, raising kids with big, baffling behaviors. I think it's chapter one I write that you're not broken and your child isn't broken, and when we discuss that over in the club, it can bring up some really big feelings. It is so hard for folks who are feeling so incredibly bad and who are parenting kids who are also feeling so incredibly bad, it is so hard for those folks not to equate that with being broken. You know, there's even a sense of how could this not be broken? And I think that there can even be a sense of hopefulness in the idea of, if I'm broken now, then there's some hope that I could be fixed. And so I get the stage of feeling completely and utterly broken, and I'm in no rush to move you out of that stage any sooner than you need to, and I believe that we're not broken. I believe that we're in pain. Maybe right? You might be in tremendous amount of pain, so much pain that it feels like you're broken. And I believe that it's exactly right. It's exactly the nervous system response that your nervous system needs in that moment. And as we cultivate more safety as we cultivate more connection and more regulation, it will the sense of being broken actually does shift. And I know this is true because I've witnessed it with my own eyeballs. I've witnessed it with myself, but I've also witnessed it with hundreds and hundreds of people that I've just had the great privilege of being with on their own journeys.

Robyn: So if it feels helpful to hold that I believe you're not broken. Hold that. If it doesn't feel helpful, don't you get to choose. You absolutely get to choose, and making that choice for yourself is actually a brilliant moment of self attunement and a brilliant moment of nervous system healing. So yes, do what your own system needs. I mentioned the club, and I'll just say one last time, this is the work that we're doing over in the club. I mean, we talk a ton about practical things, how to navigate when our kids are doing you know, kind of bonkers things, or when they're kicked out of school, or when the teacher calls and says XYZ. I mean, it's a never ending list, and frankly, nothing's surprising. And so we do all that, and we help with that, and we give tips and ideas, and. Are ways to strategize and ways to talk to the school and how to advocate and and we do all that very, very, very practical stuff, but what we're really doing is all that very practical stuff that sits on top of tremendous compassion, tremendous compassion, belief that we're all always doing the very best that we can. And then sometimes we're not talking about tools and techniques and strategies at all. Sometimes we're talking about this. 

Robyn: Sometimes we're talking about the grief, and we're being with one another in the grief. Sometimes we're we bring to the club how absolutely terrible we feel, and then club members respond with, yeah, I get that, or sometimes we bring to the club, how, what a huge success we have, and then club members respond with celebration. It's the resonance. It's the being with. It's the felt sense, right? That really matters. It's what creates growth and change in the nervous system, and when I realized one day that I was probably not going to go back to the therapy room, I thought to myself, what are the things that happen in the therapy room that make a really big difference, but aren't unique to therapy, and how can I create a space to bring those things to as many people as possible, without any limits or boundaries, and that's where the club came from. So if you are listening to this podcast episode on the day it's released, then I believe it's being released on the day that the club is open for new members. If you're listening to this podcast on a different day, just talk the information about the club back away in your mind, make sure you're on my news, my when you get my emails, and when the club opens again, you'll get an email, and you can come on in, and we can be with you, and we can be with you in the grief, and we can be with you with compassion, and we can also offer you lots of great tools and strategies, because we know You need that too well. I have enjoyed putting together this six part series so much. I do think I'm going to go into the club and create, like a well over in the club, we just created these like mini road maps. So when members come in, they get to kind of choose what it is that they feel like they need the most help with, and then we've created a curated list of resources that are available in the club in the order that I think would be best, that you went through them, you know, to kind of tackle that specific thing. 

Robyn: And so I'm going to do that for parents with histories of trauma as well. I'm going to create, like, this little mini course or roadmap that is resources that already exist in the club. I really don't need to create anything new. All of these things exist, self compassion, caring for our own watchdog and possum parts, growing our own window of tolerance, grief, all of these things already exist in the club, but y'all, I'm going to go and put them into kind of one of those little road mapping things like we just did with those other topics, so that you don't have to look around for them. You can just go through them one by one. So if you're listening to this and you're in the club, know that if it doesn't exist yet, when you hear this episode we're working on that we're going to put it together so that you can have that experience and walk through those pieces of the club without having to do a whole lot of like work for it. All right, y'all I've really enjoyed doing the series. I hope that it has felt helpful to your heart, into your mind, into your nervous system, and I will be back with you again next week here on the baffling behavior show you.