12. Breaking the Cycle - How to Parent Differently After Generational Trauma

Breaking the cycle and parenting differently after trauma is one of the hardest, most courageous parts of parenting after trauma. It means parenting in a way you've never seen modeled when you were a child. A lot of us are trying to break generational patterns we didn't choose. And we're doing it without a map, while still healing, still learning, and still trying to raise a child who needs us, sometimes intensely. If that's you, you're doing work your parents never did.

This is the transcript for Episode 12.

Let's think about the reality of breaking the cycle

If we're being honest, parenting differently from what you grew up with is not instinctive. Instinct is what trauma shaped. You're not just learning new behaviors, you're unlearning old survival reflexes. For example,

• if you grew up being punished for crying, your body will tense up when your child cries. Even if your mind knows better, you've internalized that crying equals punishment.

• if you grew up with adults that made you walk on eggshells, then your nervous system is going to panic when your child is loud, chaotic, or dysregulated.

None of that is bad parenting, actually it's your history, your childhood rearing its head. And your history is loud. It's in your nervous system, in your body.

"Breaking the cycle does not look like being perfect, it looks like noticing. That's it!"

Every time you pause, or you repair, or you do something even 1% gentler than what you were taught or what you went through, you've already broken that cycle. Because trauma is transmitted unconsciously. Unconsciously. It's what you do without thinking. Whereas breaking the cycle is done consciously. It's the decisions that you make. Even if it's messy, even if you make mistakes because it doesn't come naturally to you and you end up apologizing 3 times a day.

That's what you want to achieve. Breaking that cycle consciously.

And then we think about parenting a neurodivergent child without a map. So for many of us, that cycle-breaking work is even harder because our children's needs weren't modeled either. Maybe you didn't grow up in a home that supported neurodivergence. Maybe you never saw healthy emotional regulation. Maybe your parents never admitted that they were overwhelmed. And they never admitted that you were neurodivergent. So you've got all of that going on. And now you're raising a child who stims, melts down, gets overloaded, avoids demands, needs structure and flexibility at the same time, has sensory needs that you were punished for having...

So you're not having to parent like neurotypical parents of neurotypical kids are. The rest of us over here, neurodivergent parents, we're having to learn a whole new language - with zero modeling offered to us by the previous generation. And so we're rebuilding our nervous system, we've got the trauma going on, while helping regulate theirs. It's a lot. It's heroic work.

Even if it doesn't feel heroic, now that I've got enough perspective to look at what I've learned and the solutions that I've put in place, I can somewhat humbly acknowledge that, yeah, it's a big deal. It's a big deal that I've even thought about doing that and that I've implemented it. And it's a big deal that you're here because it means that you want to know what others are doing and maybe how you can do things differently and better. And all of that is amazing.

So here's a practical example from my life. There were moments, especially in the first years, where my body reacted before my thoughts did. And that's something I talked about in another episode. So if my child was stimming loudly (I'm hypersensitive to sound personally) or moving nonstop or spiraling into a meltdown, my nervous system would go straight into panic because that's how my body learned to respond to chaos.

So sometimes I'd have to close my eyes. Sometimes I'd look away or I'd have to plug my ears for a moment or put my noise-cancellation headphones on all the while staying present - just to stay grounded so I wouldn't lose it while he's already losing it and struggling. So for a long time, I thought, "ugh, real moms don't need to do this. I'm failing. I'm sure healthy parents don't ever get overwhelmed by their own child." I was wrong. We all know that I was wrong. Everybody gets overwhelmed.

But what I was doing in those micro-regulation moments, was actually breaking the cycle. Indeed, my parents didn't regulate themselves. They would dissociate, shut down, cut me out emotionally or physically leave the room. Or they would make the kids responsible. And I wasn't doing that. When I'm looking away, closing my eyes, plugging my ears, whatever, I'm not doing any of that. I'm staying in the room. I'm staying present. I'm still here. I'm still connected.

"Even if it's imperfect, I'm still connected to my child"

And now that he's older, when he sees me put my noise-cancelling headphones on, I'll be talking to him as I put them on. And I explain to him every time, "I can still hear you. Look, we're still having a conversation. It's all good. I just need this so that I can actually hear you better." So now he understands that me putting this on is the opposite of me shutting him out. It's me wanting to stay connected because when I don't have the headphones on, it's a lot harder for me to be present and to connect with him and to have quality time with him. It takes a toll on my nervous system - all the noise that he's making, and the stimming...

So these are conversations that you can have. The goal is to stay connected and your child is going to know, is going to see the difference.

Back to cycle breaking

Why does it feel so hard? Well, when we're trying to parent differently, we are fighting three things at once:

• The nervous system,

• The inner child,

• The lack of model.

You're trying to parent differently. You're fighting those three things at once. Your nervous system, your inner child, your lack of model.

• Your nervous system; it reacts fast. It's designed to keep you alive. It's instant reaction. It's faster than thought. And so again, you're not feeling. You're working against deep, ancestral survival instincts.

• Second thing you're fighting when you're trying to parent differently is your inner child. They're watching how you treat your child. Your inner child is watching. And that creates huge emotional pressure. I can't remember how many times I felt an emotion inside me triggered by the situation that I was in with my child. And I was like, "gee, I wish I had had that". Or, "I know that what I just did is because that's what my inner child expected in that situation." So it's definitely something that we're fighting when we're trying to parent differently and break those cycles.

• The third thing I mentioned is the lack of model. We're over here doing the research, following influencers, listening to podcasts, reading alllll the books, going to therapy, whatever. We're inventing something we've never seen. We're having to create a parenting style and go-to sentences, safe practices, habits, routines that we've never seen modeled, without a roadmap.

  
  

"Kudos to us, because that's why we feel exhausted"

It's because we're doing two jobs at the same time. We're healing ourselves. And raising a child. It's a lot. So here are the four anchors that I look at for cycle-breaking parenting. The four things that matter, and really everything else is optional:

1. First anchor is awareness over perfection. I'd rather be noticing and changing what I notice than worry about perfection. I can't do that. I can't change what I don't notice. Noticing is a start.

2. The second anchor for cycle-breaking parenting is repair over performance. I happen to not yell because it wasn't the way I was raised. I wasn't raised with yelling, so I'm not going to yell. But I can't say that I've never left the room or checked out emotionally. These are things that I might unconsciously reproduce in how I'm raising my child. I don't necessarily need to never do that. What I do need to do is catch myself, see what I just did there, and then come back and reconnect with my child. So repair over performance.

3. The third anchor for cycle-breaking parenting is regulation over reaction. So every time I can take a three-second break, like one breath. Or five seconds to find three things I see, two things I can hear, one thing I can touch. Any tools that you have in your toolbox for sensory grounding. Any little thing I can do that's a pause for regulation, and prevents me from reacting, that's cycle-breaking right there.

4. And the fourth anchor for cycle-breaking parenting is connection over control. Trauma parenting teaches control. Like, okay kid, you're going to do this, or else. And a lot of us have learned that that's just how it works when we were kids. Cycle-breaking parenting teaches safety. So we're still going to have boundaries. Our kids are still going to have to learn from natural consequences. (So I'm not talking about permissive parenting either. That's another extreme.) But what I do teach is safety and connection over control. I'm single. I'm solo parenting what is one day going to be a man who's going to be taller and stronger than me. Do you really think I want to be in a power struggle with him? Attempt to control him? No. When he turns 14, he's going to be stronger than me. Why would I do that to myself? No. I want connection with him. I want safety and peace in my home.

   
   

So just to summarize the four anchors that I truly believe in for cycle-breaking parenting:

1. First, awareness over perfection.

2. Second, repair over performance.

3. Third was regulation over reaction.

4. Fourth is connection over control.

   
   

And it's very likely that you're already doing all that if you're listening to this episode, if you're on a podcast platform looking for this stuff. That means you're questioning the patterns that you've inherited. You're trying. And you already are the mother that "younger you" would have needed. You're already well on your way. And I'm so glad.

Cycle breaking is not loud. It's not dramatic. It's quite the opposite of that actually. It's peaceful. It looks like quiet, steady, definitely imperfect effort. I'm going to emphasize that word. Effort.

Yes. It takes a lot of energy

But think about your bloodline and the generations after you. You're breaking the cycle. Yes, it takes a huge effort. Yes, you wish your parents had done it for you. It is what it is. You're doing it. Well done. It stops with us.

And your child feels it. Even if you don't see the results yet, I'm convinced that those kids are going to turn out to be well-rounded, adjusted, emotionally safe kids because of all that effort that we're putting in.

You don't have to erase your past to build a different future. You have to interrupt it. Understand it. Maybe analyze it a little bit. If you've been to therapy, great. If you've read some books about attachment theory, great. The key is to really interrupt the transmission to the future generation of the stuff from your past. And I'm talking about small shifts, very imperfect choices while we get better and better at it. And awareness.

You're doing the work that changes generations.

If you've enjoyed this piece, you might also like 13. ASD-Friendly Grounding Technique to Stay Present With Your Autistic Child When You’re Overwhelmed: Trauma Parenting with Autism