How to not pass down trauma to my children

[Intro] Hello friends, welcome to Empowered to Thrive. I'm Corinne Powell, your host, and I am thrilled that you've chosen to join me today. 

Corinne Powell: I am a mom to four kids. My oldest is 12, my youngest is 2, and I have two in the middle that are now 11 and 9. My son just had a birthday, just turned 11. So we're gonna talk today about parenting. It's very relevant to my life. And I know many of you listening are parents yourself and some of you are teachers and you relate to children all day long, even if you're not with your own children all day. 

It is something that is very close to my heart and I have a lot of passion in me about how I raise my children, how I parent them and my desire to break generational patterns that didn't do me well. Now, I thoroughly believe my parents did the best they knew how. I believe they had good intentions and they raised me in the way they knew with the resources and the tools that they had. However, I came out of that home environment traumatized. I came out with a lot of needs, emotional needs, some physical needs, but a lot of emotional needs that were not met. My parents didn't even realize what emotional needs weren't being met. They didn't see, they didn't know how to meet them. And for that, I have a lot of compassion. 

I think it is very appropriate to take into account what someone is responsible for and to hold them accountable for what they're responsible for. As we walk through the healing process, I do believe we come to a place where we no longer hold the anger and the intensity of emotion at the injustices done to us. We move through that because we feel it, we acknowledge it, we sit with it. We confront what needs to be confronted and then we process through it and we come to a place where everything isn't perfect. Everything doesn't feel wonderful all the time, but we have a different view on those other people who have perhaps done us wrong. 

This is not about not holding someone accountable for what they've done. This is not about even re-engaging. Sometimes you don't re-engage with someone who has been the reason that you're traumatized. What I'm trying to really say is inward, inside of yourself, you come to a place where your heart carries something different than it once did. So I had to be angry at some point with the way I was raised. Because I am living the results of it. And it's really been hard work to heal from the trauma I experienced, the emotional neglect, the sexual mistreatment that even though it wasn't from my parents, they didn't know how to stand in for me and protect me. 

A parent is there by design to be a protector for their child. That doesn't mean we never let our children take a risk. I let my children take risks all the time. I see what the end result could be and I still let them take the risk. But there are times when they need me to stand in and defend them, protect them, set a boundary for them. And that is my job. If I am so consumed with myself and my own needs, I won't even see what my children are needing. I won't know how to set the boundaries. I won't know what to do to protect them because I'll be consumed with trying to figure out how to survive myself or how to protect myself. 

And you see, that's how I grew up. I grew up with parents that didn't know how to take care of their own emotional or physical needs well enough. So of course they couldn't take care of mine. Some parents are living in survival. They are just getting through every day. Some parents are living emotionally immature. They're stuck. They never got past a developmental age. So really in many ways, they're still a child themselves living in a grown up body. These may be harsh realities, but it's so rampant. It is the reality. 

Each one of us as a parent now, as an adult person now, has the opportunity to heal ourselves so that we don't keep the patterns ongoing. So that we can actually notice the needs of our children and meet their needs alongside of us meeting our own needs. That's my goal every day, is to make sure I support myself, I meet my needs, I established boundaries to have the energy and the resources that I need so that I can then put that out to take care of my four children. I am not everything to them. I should not need to be everything to them. I'm not the answer to all their problems, but I am here to support them, to love them, to help them have a safe place to process their emotions, to talk about what's going on in their inner world, to be a grown up who helps them learn how to go through the stages of life themselves. 

I have to ensure that they shower and use deodorant, and pack a nourishing lunch and have some nourishing breakfast at the start of their day, and drink enough water throughout the day. I take pride in being a parent. I will sit here and tell you it is very hard work and I'm up for the challenge. I wasn't given these children for no reason. I will do the best with what I've been given. Knowing that though, I have to resource myself so that I have enough to give out because I'm giving out a lot as a parent, as a conscious parent, as a parent breaking the cycles of generational trauma, as a parent on the healing journey herself. 

So how do I go about raising my children in a way differently than I was raised? Because I was the parentified child. I took care of the needs of my family members when my needs were not being met. Now, let me be clear. I had a roof over my head. I had clothing. I had food. I had the means for survival. And I am grateful for that. I'm not taking that for granted. There are children who do not have clean water, do not have a roof over their head, do not have clothing on their body. And my heart grieves and feels for them because they deserve all those things. Now I had all that and I'm grateful for it. What I'm speaking to is not that. It's the emotional safety that many children don't have. 

You see when we have parents who are volatile and to explode in rage and live depressed and we don't know what their mood's gonna be at any given moment. We don't know what's gonna set them off. For some children, it'll affect every child, but for some children, they will start to live in a place of trauma. They will live out of fight, flight, freeze, fawn, they will live a trauma response as their normal response. It'll be the only way they know how to survive.

They might be the child like myself who's the fixer, the people pleaser. We see a facial expression. We think it's gonna mean this or that. So before we even find out what's going on for that person, we're trying to fix the situation. We're trying to make sure their needs are met so that they don't have the big emotional response that feels terrifying to us. In fact, this showed up in just my normal every day. Recently, Evan rounded the corner, came into the kitchen, I was cooking at the stove. I immediately surmised from his facial expression that something must be wrong. And I said, “Evan, what's the matter?” And he said “nothing”.

And I could feel the terror in my body. And so he wrapped me in his arms. And as I was in his arms, I realized that it was that little girl I used to be, that five-year-old little girl, that three-year-old little girl who remembers the face of her parent and knew, oh no, that means this or that is happening next. That means there's going to be an angry outburst. That means I'm going to get punished. I'm going to hear yelling. That means the plans that I had hopes of happening are going to be dashed and all the plans are going to be changed. 

Whatever the case might be, that little girl I used to be remembered and was living it out again in this present moment and just cried and I felt with that little girl and I let my body know that it wasn't the case anymore. I just, just felt all that. I didn't say it out loud. I just felt it all as Evan was holding me, as I was allowing myself to be in that embrace. And it was a healing moment for that little girl who had to be hyper vigilant, on edge, always aware, reading the situation, even if she was misreading it, just trying her best to figure it out so she could fix it before it got out of hand. And here everything was fine in Evan's world, or at least that's what he reported to me.

But I was triggered, and this happens for so many of us. We're triggered by facial expressions. We're triggered by tones. We're triggered by responses or lack of responses. And sometimes it doesn't have anything to do with the person in front of us. Sometimes it has everything to do with our childhood experiences. If that's the case for you. I see that little child you used to be. I honor that little child and I hope they can feel safe in this moment, that they can experience for one moment a knowing that they don't have to look around, they don't have to feel the terror in their body, they're allowed to settle back and rest. They're allowed to receive in this moment instead of being on guard. 

So going back to what I was saying before, if you have been a parentified child - how do you not raise children in the same way? Anything you're trying to work out of - if you're actively changing patterns, the benefit is you're gonna model something different for your children. And as we know, more is caught than taught. Actions speak louder than words. It's true. So your children are watching, they're listening, they're observing you. Now I give my children responsibilities, but I don't depend on them for my well-being. I give them responsibilities in many ways so that they learn life skills that are going to be beneficial to them into adulthood.

Some of the things I ask them to do also benefit me. For example, if they unload the dishwasher, I don't have to unload the dishwasher or Evan doesn't have to unload the dishwasher. But many times it takes a lot of effort to ask them to make sure they're follow through. I put out a lot of energy to get a chore done. So I really put out that energy because I know it's to their benefit to learn these life skills, to know how to help out, to know how to be a team player, to actually understand how to do domestic tasks. I have a high value for that. 

And they help out with their younger sister, but they don't help out to a degree where they have to take my place and my role as the parent. Whereas I did, I might have been responsible for correcting my younger siblings or making sure their physical needs were met. Whereas with my children, I'm guiding them as they help with her. But there is a difference. And they have responsibilities, but they have a lot of space for relaxation, for play, for nothingness, because I think there's a value in doing nothing at times. 

And hey, I only have a 12 year old and 11 year old, 9 year old and a 2 year old. I don't know how they're going to be as adults, but I know I'm doing the best I can. Sometimes I feel that I'm doing it a second time over because I helped to raise my siblings. But I know in many ways the way that the person I was at that time, the environment I lived in, I wasn't raising them at all the way I raised my children because I'm a different person. The way I see life is different. My values have changed. It's going to impact very much the way I raise children. 

Reflect for yourself. Are you doing your own inner work? Are you looking within considering the patterns, considering and reflecting on your earliest childhood experiences, how your parental figures were, who they are today, and how they have impacted you, how the home environment you grew up impacted you. And then do the next step of witnessing, stand back and witness your present home environment, the environment you're raising your children in.

Or perhaps you are the childcare worker, the teacher, and you don't have children of your own. Witness how you interact with those children. Become aware of yourself, of your responses, of your triggers, of your patterns. So then you can do something to create change within those. And by default, it will impact the children in your life. 

Now, as I told you at the beginning, I love talking about this type of topic. If you want to meet for a session or you want to join the RISE program and work intensively with me for six months around anything we just talked about today, I'm here for that. If you're ready to do the inner work, you're willing to look at yourself and you're not in a place where you're blaming everyone else for where you're at in life, then I can support you. It's okay if you're at a place where you're blaming everyone else in life for where you're at. It's just not time yet to work with me.

[Outro] So as we wrap up, what is the one thing that especially stood out to you? One thing that's coming to your mind that I said, that you heard even as I spoke, even maybe I didn't say it. Do something with that one thing. Don't try to change five areas. I don't want you to sit back and feel overwhelmed or shamed by what I've been talking about and perhaps the way you're parenting or the way you interact with children in your life. The point of this isn't for you to feel ashamed. The point of this isn't for you to feel like, you know what, I should just go lay down and go to sleep. I can't believe where I'm at in life. How could I ever change? That's why I say, what's the one thing? Because change is always possible and we have to start small and go gradually for that to be sustainable. For us to truly create radical change, we have to start small and go gradually. I believe in you. Do you believe in yourself? I know you're capable of changing.

I know you have what it takes. Do you believe that? Much love, my friends. I hope to see you back here next week.