Breaking the Cycles of Childhood Trauma Through Intentional Parenting by JuliaMarie DiGiorgio Woolbright
I recently started going to therapy again. I had been going for years until insurance issues, and motherhood got in the way. I thought that with a healthy support system and a little help from an ongoing Zoloft prescription, I could handle everything life could throw my way. Marriage and motherhood had been my greatest desire for so long, so I assumed that things would fall into place. My husband and children would take up space in my head that depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) had previously occupied. I had viewed my past visits to that red couch as a preemptive strike, a way to deal with my issues once and for all, and that once I did it, I wouldn't have to go back unless I had an epic mental health crisis.
It will come as no surprise that this is not how mental health works. Rather than distracting me from the trauma I suffered throughout my childhood full of physical and emotional abuse, parenthood had brought out memories that I had buried so deep that I forgot they existed. Caring for my children drew everything to the surface and left me feeling raw, vulnerable, and incompetent. Flashbacks triggered by the more challenging moments of parenting would leave me ready to either scream or sob faster than you could say "content warning." These moments often left me wallowing in mom-guilt, feeling disconnected from my babies, and wondering why I ever thought I could be a good mother.
Before realizing that I needed to start going back to therapy, I tried to ignore the all-too-familiar symptoms of PTSD. Instead, I blamed my crippling anxiety and angry outbursts on stress and exhaustion. I work full time with my husband and in-laws, and my kids come to work with me. How could I not be stressed? I have an extremely energetic, choleric three-year-old who has needed almost constant attention since we brought his baby brother home a year ago. Said baby has decided that being left to play by himself is the single greatest torment ever to befall a human child, and he takes it upon himself to punish us accordingly for our crimes. I'm in the trenches of young motherhood, and that's just a fancy way to say that someone needs to check on me because I'm struggling 99% of the time.
Most days, I can keep myself together. I try to breathe through the anger and remind myself to get curious about my child's behavior rather than assume they're just out to be tiny terrorists. Other times, it takes every ounce of willpower I have to keep myself from mimicking the tactics used to keep me in check as a child. For example, I'll be locked in a battle of wills with my son, each of us refusing to descend from whatever hill we had each decided to die on, and I start threatening to throw toys away. I threaten and yell because, damn it, I am tired, and I just need him to listen. Then I hear my father saying those exact words in a flashback so vivid that it makes my stomach drop to the floor.
My husband and I share the role of disciplinarian in our family, which works out well most days. My husband's preferred method of discipline is to make our oldest sit down until he calms himself enough to listen. It has been a solid technique, except that it often causes my child to scream like he's being tortured. He sobs and apologizes, asking to try again despite having been warned half a dozen times to stop whatever it was that got him in trouble in the first place. Listening to his desperate pleas for mercy is a massive trigger for me. In those moments, I'm not a grown woman setting boundaries for my child. Instead, I'm a little girl, begging my dad to stop screaming at or hurting us. Feelings of desperation well up in my chest as I recall apologizing over and over, hoping that shouldering the blame for my abuse would be enough to make the violence stop. The two scenarios could not be more different; objectively, I know my husband is calm and that my son only fusses because he hates having to sit still, but it does not make it any easier once the trauma responses take hold.
Mental health had never been a topic of discussion in my family. If you needed medication, you were just plain crazy. If you saw a therapist, you were a psycho who couldn't handle reality. If you questioned the way things were or suggested that there had to be more productive ways to deal with your feelings, you were a brat who just couldn't handle taking responsibility for the anger you caused in another person. The list of dysfunctional beliefs goes on and on. By challenging every one of the ideas about mental health that I had been raised to believe, I am already breaking the cycle of childhood trauma.
I regularly take medication to manage my depression. I see a therapist to deal with my PTSD symptoms. I actively try to identify the harmful patterns of abuse in my parenting style and correct the behaviors. Are my attempts to stay calm and emotionally grounded consistently successful? Hell no. But I am least attempting to be more intentional about how I interact with my babies. I have declared war on the trauma that has threatened to steal the joy I desperately want to pursue in my motherhood. And that makes that little girl hiding her tears in a closet pretty damn proud.
I know that childhood trauma can inflict pain well into adulthood if left unchecked. The battle to heal my heart and mind has been a long one. Since becoming a mother, my motivation has shifted not just to recover for my own sake but the sake of my children's mental health. I have been called to the vocation of marriage and motherhood, and part of that vocation is nurturing the tiny souls that have been entrusted to my care. Breaking the cycles of childhood trauma requires me to be intentional in every way. It is a battle I plan to fight to my dying day. My children's lives depend on it. And if that isn't a reason to keep fighting, I don't know what is.
