Navigating the bittersweet symphony of parenting imperfectly and breaking intergenerational trauma.
Permission to feel: bittersweetness
In her book, Atlas of the Heart Brené Brown talks about common shared experiences which evoke bittersweet feelings, like moving or retiring or watching children grow up; there is a sense of loss which is laced with an acknowledgement of a preciousness that has passed.
This feeling is a rainbow feeling - like rain and sunshine makes rainbows, bitterness and sweetness makes bittersweetness.
When I think of bittersweet feelings, it’s normally around something to do with my children; how I am giving differently as a parent to what I received as a child or simply that time is passing all to quickly. That old adage of ‘the days are long, but the years are short’ has definitely felt true to me. My eldest is now 18. Gulp.
For those of you who are parents, isn’t it hard?! I’m not even talking about the sleeplessness and the financial concerns and the lack of privacy. I’m talking about the doubt. The goddamn doubt!
It was bad enough when the doubt was ‘should I wean him on to baby rice or sweet potato?’, but now…
I was talking to a friend this morning about my kids. She was commenting on how well I get on with them. Where did my head go? Into one of gratitude for everything I have learned as a therapist sometimes paying off, engendering open relationships with my sons?
Not on your nelly!
‘I know, they should be separating off from me, they need to individuate, maybe I’m an enmeshing mother and I just don’t realise it.’
Oh FFS.
I loved this conversation with Dr. Brad Reedy. I have mentioned this before, but Brad is a parenting expert working with adolescents and their families at Evoke Therapy in Utah. I recorded this for Mindfest, which finally took place last week, but it’s too good not to share here.
If you enjoyed this conversation, then you can hear more in this podcast when I spoke to Brad about parenting, using the poem below as a launch pad for our discussion.
Even with all of the experience, we all make mistakes as a parent, because we are human. What feels like parental sensitivity to one child will feel infantilising to another. It’s not about getting it ‘right’, it’s about the willingness to stay in the relationship to love each other, know each other better, understand each other and embrace this one unique human being who has entered our lives.
Some days that is peaches and cream easy, some days their behaviour brutally cuts through our own wounds like a chainsaw so that we feel enraged, triggered, and out of control.
Shall we figure it out with a poem?
Why not?!
I’m screaming like a banshee at the hill top on our walk.
I brought my sons along - you know, to bond and share and talk.
One asked a simple question and stated what he’d like.
My ‘not good enough’ bruise impaled by this guiltless probing spike.
I vented my frustration at my ‘demanding child’,
For all my inner calm fucked off - I was left scared, raw and wild.
My observer stood out to the side ‘Get a grip girl, take a breath’.
I saw my son’s hurting sorrow and kind of felt like death.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask my mind. I haven’t go a clue!
In vivo parenting myself (with kids) is hard to do.
“I just want to please you mum" he says through broken tears.
‘You’re failing him if that’s his goal’ my inner critic interferes.
Sometimes I’m messy, and imperfect as a mum,
Acting out my fearful child on my bewildered loving son.
“I don’t have any answers now - just know my tantrum here
Is not to do with you, my love, but an age old triggered fear.”
Sometimes (many times) what someone says, or how they behave can lead us to say or behave in a crazy way. Maybe we rage, or cry uncontrollably, or our voice shakes and we don’t know why. There’s a saying in recovery circles which is, ‘If it’s hysterical, it’s historical.’
What does this mean?
Daniel Coleman describes this as the ‘amygdala hijack’ in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ’.
In simple terms, when we have an ‘hysterical’ reaction our fight/flight button has been pushed. This is a different part of the brain to our ‘thinking brain’ - the neocortex. As it is a matter of survival, the emotional part of the brain works much faster than the thinking part. It is, in its very nature, reactive rather than responsive.
This happens because that which is in front of us poses a threat in some way, at least, it’s a perceived threat. When my child asked the question that I mention in the poem (it was to do with a new bike) it triggered my fears around not having enough money. I was tired, we were in the middle of negotiating a house move and my resources were low. So my thinking brain was already pretty exhausted, it didn’t take much of a trigger for anything to seem like a perceived threat.
What you can see in the poem is that in order to ward off the feelings of inadequacy that his innocent question brought up in me I went into a ‘fight’ mode.
What this resulted in was ‘projective identification’. I transferred my sense of inadequacy and shunted it on my child making him wrong (‘my demanding child’) .
We use projective identification to defend ourselves against the qualities in ourself that are unacceptable to ourselves and shove them onto another person.
Luckily, because I’m aware that if I fly off the handle then it is something to do with me and how I have been triggered, I could pull myself round quickly. You’ll also see in this poem that my shame was knocking at the door in the form of my critical inner voice.
This is not pleasant for anyone involved and some damage had obviously been done. If I didn’t make any reparations then this incident would have left my son with a shame wounding of being ‘demanding’. I was able to quickly get myself back online and own my part.
It’s not ideal to be honest; this child now does have a problem with asking for what he needs materially and, although we can both acknowledge WHY he has that problem, he still has that sense, nonetheless.
So somewhere in my past I had a wound of feeling inadequate.
Yep, definitely a card carrier of this one!
It may well be a lifetime of undoing to get that sense of worthiness into my DNA. The sense of inadequacy was a bruise to my sense of self and the more I heal that through reclaiming my worthiness the less likely situations will trigger it and send me into an emotional spin.
Can you see though, how it gets passed down?
My amygdala hijack lead to a ‘fight’ response which landed my child with a sense of ‘I am asking for too much’ which he will now have to work on in his own recovery journey (should he decide to… guess I’ll be paying 🤷🏻♀️).
Such is a bittersweet experience - the realisation that it is progress, not perfection in my relationship with my sons; that whilst I still have my moments I can loop back and apologise and take ownership and be grateful to role model something to my children which was not role modelled to me, thus breaking the cycles of trauma that can so easily get passed down the family.
Any questions? Had lots of conversations around the topic of healthy parenting this week. It always brings up lots of discussion! Would love for you to share your thoughts - what was useful?
That’s it for now!
‘Til next time.
Jacky x