Verified by 
Key points
- Parents with childhood trauma are more likely to struggle with regulating their emotions under adult stress.
- Parents can observe their own reactions and stress responses and turn them into a new internal awareness.
- Writing-to-heal exercises can help your discern if your stress and past trauma are impacting your child.
This fall, I’ve been giving talks to groups of parents, educators, therapists, and students around the country. The number one thing I’m hearing is how overwhelmed we all are. How stressed out we are. Parents, in particular, tell me they worry about their high-octane stress levels “leaking” into how they interact with their kids. They love their kids more than anything, but life’s stressors are coming at them so fast, they say, they worry their kids aren’t feeling that love.
Kids tell me they find it hard to confide their worries and fears to their parents because they don’t want their parents to get even more stressed out. Or, they say, their parents get too reactive and don’t stop to really listen, sit with them, and radiate a sense of calm.
Recent studies show that when we have a history of childhood adversity, we’re more likely to feel reactive and have trouble settling our nervous system when we meet up with stress in adult life. Our history of childhood adversity determines our biological set point for how able we are to regulate ourselves and calm our emotions—and calm and connect with those around us. Including our kids.
But we might not be aware of how our past affects us when we’re having a difficult interaction with our teenager, or feeling overwhelmed by the rushed pace and demands of day-to-day life.
What we’re looking for here is this: to take the kinds of external observations (the kinds a therapist might have if they were observing your reactions and stress responses, the things you say and do when you’re in overwhelm—the things that make your kids feel they can’t speak freely around you) and turn them into a new internal awareness: “Oh, here I am reacting this way again because of my own story and past, and I choose to change this pattern right here, right now.”
The following writing-to-heal exercise will help you discern if your current stress levels— and your personal history of adversity—are affecting your kids’ stress levels and your parent-child connection.
Grab a pencil and give this short writing-to-heal exercise a try!
A Short Three-Part Writing-to-Heal Exercise
1. Reflect on a Challenging Moment in Your Life as a Parent
- Think back to one of the most difficult moments you’ve faced in life as a parent, in family life, or with your child.
- What was the emotional climate like in your home? Was it a climate in which your child felt safe and seen, and able to tell you everything and anything on their mind? What messages were you sending them about who they needed or how they should behave to be in order to be loved? Looking back, were you so caught up in your own reactions and feelings that you struggled to soothe your child in the way you wish you could have?
- Take a moment to write about the emotions that come up for you as you think about this experience.
2. Reflect on Difficult Moments in Your Own Childhood
- Go back further in time, to your childhood living room. Reflect on the emotional tenor of your own childhood home when your family faced stressful times.
- When you were emotionally hurting as a child or teenager, could you safely turn to, be honest and vulnerable with, be validated and soothed by your mother? Your father? What messages were you getting from your parents—their eyes, gestures, words—about who and how you needed to be in order to be loved? Did you feel safe, cherished, seen? Or did you have to be emotionally vigilant, careful about what you said or did?
- What did you long for from your mother or father that you never received?
- Take a moment to write about the emotions that come up for you as you think about this childhood experience.
3. Again, Reflect on Challenging Moments in Your Life as a Parent
- When your children are emotionally hurting, can they turn to you and be honest and vulnerable, and feel validated and soothed and cherished, no matter what? Are you able to soothe yourself first so you can soothe them? Are you the person with the lowest heart rate in the room?
- Take a moment to write about the emotions that come up for you as you ask yourself these questions. How might you be better able to soothe your child when they’re upset or struggling?
As you look at what you wrote, consider what you would like to work on so you can be more present for your kids. Write that down, too, and commit to working on that, for you and for them.
If you want help along the way, or if you want access to additional writing exercises, might I suggest picking up a copy of my latest book, The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal? My guided journal is a tool that allows you the space to process, heal, and reclaim yourself.
Yours,
Donna
