When Parenting Triggers your Own Trauma Part 1 of 6 {EP 250}

Robyn: Those are just a few ideas about how to titrate your experience with the episode. If considering how your history of trauma impacts your parenting, can feel overwhelming to you if you've been listening for a while. My guess, based on what other folks have told me, is that even though you've come here to learn about your kids and their nervous system, you've learned a lot about yourself and your nervous system. Sometimes that happens really directly, right? Like I'm speaking very specifically about parenting and the parenting experience and how that impacts us, and sometimes you're learning about yourself because you're taking what I'm teaching about your kids and applying it to yourself, because we're really just talking about humans here, right? I'm going to begin a series. This is episode one of a six part series where we really pause and talk about us as parents, us as caregivers, and not just the parenting experience that we're having with our preciously wonderful but also highly dysregulated kids, not just that, but also what we brought to parenting, what our own histories, and for many of us, our own histories of trauma, our own histories of vulnerability, sensitive nervous systems, right? We brought that to parenting and then combined it with the hard of parenting, right, the trauma or toxic stress of parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system. 

Robyn: So for the next six weeks, we're going to talk about those of us who are parenting kids with a vulnerable nervous system, with histories of trauma themselves, many of them, I know, not all of you, are here because you're parenting a child with a history of trauma. But also the reality is, if you're parenting a child with an intensely vulnerable nervous system, they have almost certainly experienced trauma because it's traumatic to live on the earth today with a very vulnerable nervous system. So we're going to be looking at not only our experience in parenting that dysregulated child, parenting a child with a history of trauma, but we're going to look at it through the lens of, what if we have a history of trauma too? What about our history of trauma, toxic stress, vulnerability? How do we bring those pieces together? And how does a caregiver or a parent's own trauma impact their parenting? Now if you're new here, let me say right up front that this will, of course, be a no shame, no blame series. We're not. Here to shame folks for their own histories. What we do here is put on our x ray vision goggles, understand what's happening inside the brain in our nervous systems, and use that not to shame or excuse our experiences, but to understand them, to understand them so that we can bring in compassion curiosity, and ultimately, bring healing moments to our experience and and then, of course, offer some healing moments to our kids and their experience parenting a child with behavioral disorder, right? Quote, unquote, behavioral disorder, a disability, a nervous system, disability with behavior based symptoms, parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system, parenting a child with a history of trauma when you have your own trauma when you have your own nervous system vulnerability. 

Robyn: At times, it feels unbearable, absolutely unbearable. The intensity in the nervous system feels like more than can be tolerated, and then we combined that with what I often experience as parents who feel like, well, because I understand the science, because I understand what's happening in the nervous system. I've worked so hard to do this, you know, to parent my child, because I understand all of this. I shouldn't be impacted by it, right? I should be in control of my experience better. I shouldn't be letting my history of trauma kind of drive the bus, and we know who's driving the bus, right? The nervous system. The nervous system is in charge, and we can do so many things to help soothe and integrate and regulate the nervous system and strengthen what we call here our owl brains, so that our owl brains and our nervous systems can really partner together and drive the bus together, I guess, metaphorically, right? But the nervous system is powerful, powerful, and just like in our kids, how we can really start to see how the nervous system is, where all the behaviors are started, right, we can turn that same information back onto ourselves and notice that it's our nervous systems too, and our nervous systems deserve care as well. And if we have our own history of trauma, toxic stress, vulnerability, there are a few more barriers involved, and this isn't an excuse, and this isn't shaming, and this isn't intended to feel hopeless again. We're naming reality because then we can bring some coherence into the experience, and then we can take some steps towards soothing, towards integration, towards care. So this series is gonna take a lot of what we've talked about in these like 250 podcast episodes, as well as, of course, in my book, Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors. We're going to take all that information, and in a way, I'm going to probably re give a lot of that information again, but specifically through the lens of us as parents. Okay, we're just gonna put it through the lens of parenting. So we're gonna talk about parents owls and Watch Dogs and possums, and I'm just gonna be really explicit about all the things we've talked about here, but with regards to our own nervous system. Okay, so that's going to be next week. Today, we're just going to spend a little bit of time really being with the truth that parenting, in general, impacts.

Robyn: So that's like best case scenario parenting. But if you're listening to this podcast, you're parenting a child with some additional needs, with big, baffling behaviors, with vulnerability in their nervous system, with behaviors that you feel like are so hard to make sense of that don't match what's happening at all, right? That baffling piece, when we're parenting kids with that level of vulnerability and those baffling behaviors, and we're bringing to the experience our own history of trauma, that's a whole new experience there. Yeah, parenting a kid with a vulnerable nervous system is hard, no matter what, but when you're. Doing it with your own history of trauma, it it creates a very unique experience that deserves to be talked about. And again, this isn't because you're doing something wrong, and I know that folks with a history of trauma. I know this so intimately, so intimately. Folks with a history of trauma often hold somewhere inside their bodies, somewhere inside their nervous system, this belief that there's something very wrong with them. It's not true, but our experiences have really left that imprint, and it can get real sneaky, right? And kind of light up and tell us untruths, right, that there's something terribly wrong with you, and we're going to hold together the reality that I know that that belief may still really reside inside your nervous system, and I don't doubt that, and I don't minimize that, and I'm not going to argue with that, but I am also going to hold the truth that there is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with you, that just like your kids, your nervous system has made a brilliant adaptation. Right? 

Robyn: That was last week's episode with my guest Sally Maslansky, your nervous system holds a brilliant adaptation, brilliant there's nothing wrong with you, and it makes a lot of sense that parenting, and particularly parenting a child with a history of trauma, really is activating your nervous system. Now, parenting always lights up our own attachment systems. We're not I'm not going to get into the depths of the science today in this particular episode, because I don't want to get too lost in that nitty gritty, but parenting is going to light up our implicit memories, our memories that feel true, but we don't necessarily have, like, a specific memory that we recall, you know, that validates that truth. They just feel true. Implicit memory just feels true, and parenting and our attachment experiences are going to touch and light up our own implicit memories with regards to attachment, if we experience trauma in our own attachment systems, if we experience trauma at the you know, inside our families, in, you know, from the folks who are supposed to be deeply caring for us. If we experienced trauma and signed our attachment relationships, then our other attachment relationships, including the one with our children, is going to touch on and activate those old memories networks. And when we're parenting, we don't really get a break from our attachment system being activated, right? It's, in many ways, kind of chronically activated because of what parenting is and because how parenting is, you know, so deeply connected to our attachment system and to our previous attachment experiences. So of course, our children and their very dysregulated nervous systems are going to reactivate some of our own implicit memory related to trauma and attachment, and this isn't because you're doing it wrong. 

Robyn: This isn't because you've not healed well enough. It's not because you're too sensitive, right? It's just about like our unique neurobiology in a way, kind of colliding with our current experiences and how nothing exists in the now without being touched by the past. It's just not possible. 80% of our experience in the best of circumstances, 80% of our experience is being driven by the past, and when that past includes a lot of trauma, it's really more than 80% because of the way that memory networks don't integrate in the way that we wish that they would. You know, when those experiences included something traumatic. So again, nobody's done anything wrong. This is a perfectly brilliant adaptation, and it's also our reality. So let's be with reality, and let's see what we can do in order to feel a little bit better. One of the things that's really unique and hard about parenting, just one, there's many, is that. So many of the coping skills that we've developed in our life to manage our own dysregulation, and particularly coping skills that were related to our earlier experiences of trauma, so many of those coping skills have been they're just so much harder to access when we're parenting, right, like we can't leave. Maybe, maybe, if we're really lucky, we could leave the room when we're triggered. But I know so many of you listening, that's not even an option. You can't leave for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it wouldn't be safe. 

Robyn: Maybe you're told to just follow you anyway, right? When you're parenting somebody who's very vulnerable themselves and really, really needs connection and co-regulation. It's almost impossible for you to be able to step away, take a break, and when we're parenting, there's so much about our life that we can't control. We can't make a choice to be with our kid that day or not based on how vulnerable we feel, right, like we might do in other circumstances in our life, right? There might be times where I decide I'm not going to go somewhere or do something or engage in a conversation because I'm not feeling up to it, right. I'm feeling too vulnerable, and I know that I just don't have the nervous system strength to go and navigate this stress, or I might be able to at least delay it, or do some things to sort of kind of shore up my nervous system before I encounter a stressful situation. We can't do that with parenting. Our parenting is there, whether we're ready for it or not. We can't avoid the triggers of parenting. We can, very rarely, like, control the environment, right and to navigate our triggers in a way that we might in other circumstances. So we lose some of our like, most heavily relied upon coping strategies. We simply just can't get a break. We can't step away, we can't avoid triggers. And kids, even the most regulated kids, are unpredictable, right? They're loud, they're needy, right? They really need you, and they really need you to stay present. Now add to that, a child who is more dysregulated than you know, one of their same age peers, or a child who has some of their own vulnerabilities, or a child who has more need for more active co-regulation, right? A child whose dysregulation leaves them

Robyn: asking for support and asking for co-regulation in a very, very loud way. Oh, and also, if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, or you've read my book, you know that one of the things that highly dysregulated kids need most is a regulated caregiver. So you're also bringing that idea into all of it, and probably feeling some guilt and shame, right? Like I'm dysregulated. My child's dysregulated. I know that my dysregulated child needs me to get regulated, but I cannot. And so we're just adding more cues of danger into the big into the mix, and asking your nervous system to do something that is practically impossible. In fact, that's what we talked about in January, in the club, in on January's masterclass, we talked about the impossible task of CO regulating when you yourself are very dysregulated. And it doesn't matter where that stems from. Maybe it's stemming from something that's currently happening. Maybe it's stemming from what's happening in the because of the stressors in your day to day life, or maybe your dysregulation, or some chronic dysregulation nervous system is related to your past. It doesn't really matter the why, right? But regardless of the why, it's very, very challenging, if not impossible, to co regulate a child when you're dysregulated, and then you come to this podcast or read my book, or you learn from other folks who are also supporting you with like nervous system education and how that relates to parenting, and it can feel Like we're asking you to do this exceptionally impossible task, and we're just adding more shame, more dysregulation, onto your experience, which is, of course, never, ever, ever, ever, my intention. And part of what we have to do is learn how to be with both truths that dysregulated kids do need co-regulation and that dysregulated parents can't really give co-regulation like both of those things are true, and it doesn't make anyone doing anything wrong, and it also doesn't mean that we should just give up, because this is impossible, right? I absolutely believe that there is a place for us to in a way. A kind of be with what's impossible. 

Robyn: So if you're listening to this and you are in the club and you haven't yet heard the recording of the masterclass from January, you might want to go check that out. And if you're not in the club, just keep listening to this podcast series. We're gonna do six episodes today is really going to be about a very big general overview. And then as the series goes on, it will get a little bit more practical and a little bit more here's what you can do. And then, of course, you also could come and join us in the club. And we'd love, love, love to support you. Because even though the club isn't, I mean, I don't kind of market, quote, unquote, the club as a place for parents with their own histories of trauma, but, you know, I bet you if I did a poll, and I never have, but I bet you if I did a poll, I would not be surprised if 75% of the parents in the Club identified with or connect to the truth that they are parenting their child with their own history of trauma. I just believe very much based on what I know about my experiences in the club, but also based on my clinical experience and all of the folks that I've had the opportunity to meet and work with all over the world, and it's very, very, very common. Once folks really start to learn about trauma through the lens of parenting their child, or learn about toxic stress, or learn about sensitive stress response systems, we start to learn about that through the lens of our own kid. And then there's a moment where, like, oh, this all applies to me too. So yeah, I think I'll bet 75% at least of the club is parenting their child with their own history of trauma. So if it feels like that resonates with you, and you'd like some supporter on that, that is always an option, always an option for you, and if not just keep coming back to the podcast reading my book and you can get some, you know, good support that way. 

Robyn: At previous times in the podcast, we've talked about implicit memory, and I'll put a link to an episode from the past about implicit memory. And I also talk about implicit memory a bit in chapter 10 of Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors. So I'm not going to go into the science of implicit memory. I'm just going to direct you to some places. But implicit memory is memory that our brains are holding that don't feel like memories. They just feel true. There's no time stamp on implicit memory. Implicit memory doesn't have that like felt sense of remembering of something that happened in the past. And so when implicit memory gets touched, and it does when we are parenting, when implicit memory gets touched, we can feel somewhat surprised. I think when those old memory networks of being young, being small, being powerless, being dependent, right, being misunderstood, being unsafe, if we have a history of trauma, we are holding implicit memories of those experiences, because in traumatic experiences, we almost certainly felt powerless, felt unsafe, right? And most of us, if the trauma didn't get integrated, it's because afterwards, we felt misunderstood, right? We continued to not feel safe, we felt alone, and so now we are parenting this small, dysregulated, little, precious human who, frankly, just because they're a child can often feel powerless, dependent, not in control, right? Because those are experiences that are true in childhood. Then if we have with if we're parenting a child with their own history of trauma, and they're also when they're dysregulated, feeling, you know, they're flooded by their own histories of being unsafe, right? 

Robyn: They're flooded by their own implicit memories of being out of control, of being unable to rely on the safety of attachment and connection. So your child's implicit memories are lighting up and because of all sorts of things like our resonance circuitry and mirror neurons, and it's just the way memory gets activated, those implicit memory networks that we hold, that kind of mirror our children's get activated as well. What's super tricky is that for. Most of us, when that implicit memory gets activated, we don't have this pause of going, oh my gosh, my childhood memories are being activated, and I feel unsafe and unloved and powerless and out of control. We just feel those things. We don't know that they're memories. They just feel true right now. So now we're in an interaction with a dysregulated child who also has their own implicit memory lit up. Our implicit memory lights up, and now we are parenting really having neural networks that are alive from our very young parts of self, where we felt unsafe, unloved, powerless, those neural networks are driving the bus and we don't know their memories. We think that they're related to the here and now our bodies are remembering our own childhood experiences, and they're feeling true now. So of course, it becomes almost impossible to parent with co-regulation, connection and felt safety. 

Robyn: How could we if our very young, childlike parts are what's activated, the parts that feel unsafe, the parts that feel dysregulated, the parts that don't trust connection, the parts that are just waiting to be rejected or hurt. Of course, we're not parenting in the way we want to from those places, of course, of course, of course, we would never have that expectation for a young child, and in so many ways, that's what's happening when our implicit is getting activated, right? That young child is driving the bus, and we are so much more vulnerable to these implicit awakenings and parenting, not just because we're vulnerable to our attachment memory networks being activated because we are in an attachment relationship, but also because parenting is really hard, and parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system is really, really hard, and so we all have really, really, really small windows of tolerance is so we don't have near as much kind of wiggle room, for lack of better words, to

Robyn: have some of our implicit memory get touched and have us not be like swept away by it. If we have a really wide window of tolerance, one some of that implicit memory is just much less likely to be woken awakened something like that. Not only is that much less likely in the first place, but if it does get touched right, if it does get woken up, if our window of tolerance is really wide, we can usually kind of catch it or notice it or be with it before it takes charge. And when we have a really narrow window of tolerance, which we almost certainly do for parenting a child with big, baffling behaviors, right, we lose that buffer zone. So many of us are parenting kids with a constant need for co-regulation and relatively chronic dysregulation themselves, which leaves our nervous system with no break, right? We're constantly on, on, on, on, and there's nothing unique or special about our nervous systems, like our nervous system needs regulation too. Our nervous system needs the ability to rest into safety. 

Robyn: Our nervous system needs co-regulation too. And if we're parenting a child with big, baffling behaviors, we just simply aren't getting as much rest and recovery time as other parents probably are. Now this isn't a What parent has it worse competition. This is just reality, right? That for many different reasons, many of us are in an experiences where our nervous system is just not getting a rest, it's not getting a break, it's not getting the safety, it's not getting the co-regulation that it would need in order to be able to recover and then keep up with the level of co-regulation that our kids really need. It's just constantly being worked, constantly being tasked, constantly under stress. So as we kick off this series on parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system, when you yourself have a history of trauma and have your own vulnerability in your nervous system. What I wanted to anchor into here, in this first episode, is a common ground is a very explicit Of course, this is exceptionally hard for you. It. It completely makes sense. And I know if you're a longtime listener of the show, you hear me say that over and over and over again, sometimes it's about you, sometimes it's about your kids. And I know that longtime listeners have begun to internalize this belief. Of course, all behavior makes sense, mine too, but sometimes we all need a very explicit reminder, right? It's easy to say, yeah, all behavior makes sense, but sometimes we've got to get real, nitty gritty and say, not only just all behavior makes sense, but your behavior about this very specific thing makes perfect sense, and your behavior around parenting a child with their own history of trauma, with a lot of vulnerability and sensitivity, your behavior related to parenting makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense. And we always, always, always, have to start there. 

Robyn: We have to start there with our kids, right? We have to start with that place of all behavior makes sense. We have to start with there with our kids, and so we have to start here with you too. Your behavior makes sense. Parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system is traumatic. Parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system when you have your own history of trauma is exceptionally hard in a very real and very unique way. What's happening to you makes perfect sense. And also, there is hope, okay, there is hope. I've witnessed over and over and over again, parents ultimately going on this kind of concurrent journey with their kids, almost always, not always, but almost always. Parents come to me really desperate to help their kid. Every now and again, a parent comes to me with the, you know, with the sense of, I need me the parent. I need help with me. But almost always, parents come to me and say, I need help with my kid. And almost always, eventually along the way, there is this moment of, oh, this all applies to me too, and that's where we're going to spend the next many weeks together, because you deserve that, because, yes, it all does apply to you too. You're not doing anything wrong. You have your own brilliant adaptations. Your behavior also makes perfect sense. And just like with your kids, there's hope. There absolutely is hope. 

Robyn: I have heard from folks all over the world that feel like they have very little support or co-regulation in their life, that just listening to this podcast Weekly has brought safety and regulation to their nervous system, that reading the book has brought safety and regulation to their nervous system. Just last week in the club, we had this beautiful experience of folks sharing long term club members. Long Term club members, in fact, folks had been there since the beginning, really sharing how the they've internalized, not just me, but they've internalized, essentially, like the club, the connection the co-regulation, the compassion, and the impact that that has made on their nervous system, which was so powerful, so profound for me to hear, because it was literally the reason I started it. I believed that that could be true, and to see it be true, and to see it impact folks who otherwise don't have access to co-regulation, to connection, to felt safety in their own relationships. Right to see it become true for those folks is so so powerful. There is so much hope. And yes, folks write in to me from all over the world that just listening to this podcast has brought them more regulation. So if you're stumbling upon the podcast for the first time, there's hope, just keep pressing play. Just keep pressing play. And if this podcast doesn't resonate with you, go find one that does. Go find one that does find something to bring into your life, to bring into your nervous system, that you can access on your own time, at your own control, something like a podcast. It's such a brilliant medium, and it really can matter. 

Robyn: So maybe you're listening for the first time and you're like this lady's information makes sense, but I don't know that I really like her Fair enough. Fair enough. There's others. Just go find someone else. Okay, so here's my plan for this series. I have it all mapped out, but that doesn't mean it's not going to change a little bit along the way. So next week, we're going to look real, specifically at the science we look at always on this podcast. But we're going to talk about it through the lens of us. Okay, we're not going to I'm not going to rely on you decoding that science that I offer you, you know, in relation to your kids. I'm not going to ask you to do the heavy lifting of in your own mind, applying it to yourself. We're just simply going to apply it to yourself. We're going to do that next week, then we'll look at ways to widen our window of tolerance, and there'll be practical, implementable things you can actually do, okay, not ridiculous ideas with services you can't access. Then we're going to talk about taking care of our own watchdog and possum parts. Talk a lot about caring for our kids, watchdogs and possums. So much, so much we talk about caring and CO regulating and bringing safety to our kids, watchdogs and possums, we're going to talk about that specific to ourselves. Okay, then Episode Five, we're gonna talk about how to identify our own unique triggers and bring some soothing to them. And then in Episode Six, we'll talk about grief, grief regarding our own trauma, grief regarding our own past experiences, grief regarding how that impacts our parenting in ways that we wish it didn't, but it does, and beginning to find a way to be with that truth. Now, y'all, if you've been listening to this podcast since the very beginning, none of the episodes I just suggested are mind blowing like we've talked about this information before on the podcast, but it felt really important to me to bring it together in a very clear way, very specifically for those of You who have experienced trauma prior to parenting. So again, none of this super like news flash brand new, widening our window of tolerance, identifying triggers grief. We talk about those things a lot. We're going to talk about them very specifically, with regards to your own history of trauma. So plan to tune in again next week, and between now and then again. If you're new to me, you've got 248

Robyn: I think this is episode 249 maybe it's 250 I don't y'all. I don't keep track. You've got a lot of other episodes you could go check out, listen to you can go to my website, where there are oodles of free resources. You can join the free resource hub, which is 100% free. It's got about 25 resources in it that you could start gathering and collecting and downloading. Robyngobbel.com/freeresourcehub, you can grab a copy of Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors. You can grab the audio book of Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors. If you're in the club, you can come and listen to the master class that we did in January about CO regulating when life is dysregulating. And if you're not in the club, but you really want in, before we open the club Next, we often have a kind of secret door to the club available through the free resource hub. So if you're in the free resource hub, go look, because there's a way into the club through the free resource hub. And if you're not in the free resource hub, come join the free resource hub. And yes, you can kind of find like the secret door into the club. All right, y'all, we'll be back together again next week.