Remaining Regulated
I often talk about the concept of how powerful our presence is to our child, especially in their most difficult moments of dysregulation. Today, I want to talk about how we can work on ourselves, rather than focusing on our child, during dysregulated moments to provide the safe, calm presence they need in order to regulate and ultimately heal from their trauma. That’s our goal, right? To provide a safe and loving environment and relationship that invites their nervous system and their brain to heal from their past experiences.
What is important to understand is that we all have our own stress responses based on our past experiences and perhaps our own traumas. These stress responses tend to show up when our child is exhibiting big, out of control, feelings. Our relationship with our child can’t withstand stress responses from both of us at the same time. Damage to our relationship is bound to occur in those moments. Mainly because our stress responses can cause us to move away from our child (emotionally and/or physically) instead of toward them, which is what they need in those dysregulated moments.
Our calm, steady, safe presents is what our kids need in those times that they physiologically can’t calm down on their own. We need to be aware that if our stress response is showing up, our presence doesn’t feel calm, steady or safe to our child.
The first thing we can do to control these stress responses is to become self aware about how we handle and express frustration during times of stress?
Some of us keep it inside- we stew, we simmer. We think our child doesn’t notice but like I mentioned last week, a hypervigilant child notices every little adjustment to our mood and our energy. They feel that negative energy but they see you holding it together on the outside and the mixed messaging makes it hard for them to read you and therefore trust you.
Some of us vent our stress out loud. Words like “I can’t believe you’re acting like this” “I can’t handle this anymore” may come out of our mouths and invade our child’s psychological and physical space. We communicate to them that they are too much and that we aren’t capable of handling all their big feelings which makes us not feel safe to them either.
Just like I encourage you to become a detective of your child, you need to become a detective of your own stress responses.
Pay attention to your body when you are experiencing a stress response to your child’s big feelings. Ask yourself when was another time you felt like this and what was happening? You may realize that your reactions to your child have less to do with them and more to do with unresolved stuff from your own past.
Ask yourself why does this behavior bother me so much? Am I embarrassed? Annoyed? Overstimulated? Feeling disrespected? Feeling like a failure? What is the root of my stress response? Understanding why you’re reacting the way you are can help you detach some emotion from the situation and remain objective.
Do I need to step away or tag team in the other parent if possible? As you begin to work on managing your stress responses, you may not be the safest person to be in the room when your child is dysregulated and that’s ok. As long as your child is physically safe, it’s okay to take a break if needed rather than react in a way that could damage your rapport with them.
Take some time to journal or pray or reflect however you prefer. Where is this coming from? What is preventing me from feeling safe to my child in these high stress moments? What can I do to help myself.
Learn grounding techniques that help you stay present and secure no matter what is going on around you.
Decide to approach these big feeling moments differently. View yourself as a big container for our child’s feelings, kind of like a force field- have you seen the movie, The Incredibles? I think of the character of Violet and how she had the ability to create force fields to keep her family safe. Picture creating a similar presence around your child during their moments of struggle.
Develop the mantra “it’s not personal”. They may be screaming they hate you and wish they had never come to your home but, as hard as that is to not take personally, it’s still not personal. As a matter of fact, they wouldn’t be screaming that at you if you didn’t already feel safe to them on some level. I know it doesn’t make sense but it’s true. The dysregulated brain doesn’t have access to logic so our attempts at understanding the “why” of certain words or actions is pretty futile.
Turn from solving/stopping and managing your child’s meltdowns to just focusing on being a safe presence while your child works through their big feelings. Their dysregulation is not your fault and you aren’t responsible for it. You’re simply responsible for providing a safe environment for them to navigate the feelings and ultimately co-regulate off your safe and steady presence.
I hope all of that makes sense and is helpful in understanding your role as a parent in these hard, scary moments of dysregulation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.
Also, if you aren’t part of my private (and FREE) community for foster/adoptive moms, I recently did a deep dive on this topic over there in a series called Remaining Regulated. You can find more by clicking on the Mending Hearts Community tab above.
