Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive 129: The physical reasons you yell at your kids
Why do we yell at our children - even when we know we shouldn't?
Why isn't just knowing what to do enough to actually interact with our children in a way that aligns with our values?
For many of us, the reason we struggle to actually implement the ideas we know we want to use is because we've experienced trauma in our lives. This may be the overt kind that we can objectively say was traumatic (divorce, abuse, death among close family members...), or it may simply be the additive effect of having our needs disregarded over and over again by the people who were supposed to protect us.
These experiences cause us to feel 'triggered' by our children's behavior - because their mess and lack of manners and resistance remind us subconsciously of the ways that we were punished as children for doing very similar things. These feelings don't just show up in our brains, they also have deep connections to our bodies (in spite of the Western idea that the body and brain are essentially separate!).
If we don't decide to take a different path and learn new tools to enable us to respond effectively to our child rather than reacting in the heat of the moment, and because our physical experience is so central to how this trauma shows up in our daily lives, we also need to understand and process this trauma through our bodies.
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Jump to highlights:
01:00 This episode’s rationale 03:12 The two ways trauma shows up in broader family relationships 05:27 The separateness of the brain and the body has a long history in Western culture 06:05 Rene Descartes on the schism of mind and body 07:12 The held belief of the mind as superior to the rest of the body 08:09 The inherent bias of data 09:42 The lies our brain tells us 12:54 The so-called 4 ‘truths’ of the physical experience of trauma 16:22 When we are not attuned to the signals that our body is giving us 19:01 Difficulty in identifying feelings for people who experienced trauma 22:16 Saying OK when you aren’t really OK 26:19 The difference between reacting and responding 27:10 Using physical experience to bring order to the chaos in our minds 31:15 The first step to creating a safe environment for your child 33:26 The root of our inability to create meaningful relationships 34:18 Equipping ourselves with the tools to regulate our arousalOther episodes mentioned:
- 113: No Self, No Problem
- 069: Reducing the impact of intergenerational trauma
- Responding to the U.S. Capitol Siege
- Dismantling White Supremacy and Patriarchy on MLK Day
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References Boscarino, J.A., (2004). Posttraumatic stress disorder and physical illness: Results from clinical and epidemiologic studies. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1032, 141-153.
Fuchs, T. (2018). Ecology of the brain: The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hull, A.M. (2002). Neuroimaging findings in post-traumatic stress disorder: Systematic review. British Journal of Psychiatry 181,102-110.
Sledjeski, E.M., Speisman, B., & Dierker, L.C. (2008). Does number of lifetime traumas explain the relationship between PTSD and chronic medical conditions? Answers from the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R). Journal of Behavioral Medicine 31(4), 341-349.
Wolfe, J., Schnurr, P.P., Brown, P.J., & Furey, J. (1994). Posttraumatic stress disorder and war-zone exposure as correlates of perceived health in female Vietnam war veterans. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62(6), 1235-1240.
Zoellner, L.A., Goodwin, M.L., & Foa, E.B. (2005). PTSD severity and health perceptions in female victims of sexual assault. Journal of Traumatic Stress 13(4), 635-649.