Trauma & Parenting
“The parent-child connection is the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.”
~ Bessel van der Kolk
MEET SUZANNA
Suzanna is married with 3 young children and works part-time. She always dreamt of starting a family of her own, but lately she’s felt disconnected from herself and her kids and finds it difficult to engage with them. Suzanna feels like a failure as a parent, but has no idea how to turn things around. She finds herself becoming short with her kids and begins to disengage for fear that she will begin yelling at them like her mom always did. Her behavior looks and feels selfish to her husband and to her kids, but she sees it as protection over her kids. You see, Suzanna’s mom was an alcoholic who would yell, scream, and swear at Suzanna when she was drunk. Suzanna’s mom was raised in foster care and was abused for many years by many different foster parents and foster siblings. She drank to numb her pain and never learned any coping strategies other than abusing alcohol. Suzanna chose to abstain from alcohol for fear that she would also become an alcoholic. She is active in her church, exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, and eats healthy, so she is baffled by her feelings and her disconnection from her children. Unbeknownst to Suzanna, she is dealing with the impact of unhealed generational trauma from an emotionally immature parent.
“The greatest gift we can give our parents is to focus on creating our own healthy relationships, healthy homes, and healthy children.
That’s how we break the cycle.”
- Dr. Nicole LePera
UNDERSTANDING INTENT
It must first be understood that the majority of parents (think 99.99%) are doing the best they can with what they have and have no malintent. Parents raising children in this generation can only using the wisdom and research that’s available to them now. They will certainly look back on their parenting decisions in 30 years and regret many things, but they can only take ownership of mistakes they made, not of information they didn’t have. For example, baby boomer parents of Gen X and early millennial children may not have gotten their kids into counseling, even though they may have needed it. Let’s say one of the those parents had a child who was depressed. For most Gen X kids, there wasn’t the vocabulary of mental health that Gen Z kids have now. Many Gen X kids didn’t know they were depressed, because they didn’t have the language for it. Many of those kids suffered, silently, because they didn’t know what what was wrong with them and didn’t know how to describe it, other than maybe to have said they were feeling sad. Many kids are enigmas and are great at covering up their feelings. That being said, there are emotionally immature parents who choose not to address their childhood wounds and they pass down their trauma to their children with no apologies.
“Emotionally immature parents often have the fantasy that their babies will make them feel good about themselves.”
~ Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
4 TYPES OF EMOTIONALLY IMMATURE PARENTS
It is important to understand that there are several types of emotionally immature parents and they are all usually developed out of trauma. These parents were generally in unhealthy relationships with their parents and the trauma often goes back many generations. Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, writes in her book Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents about 4 different types of emotionally immature parents:
EMOTIONAL PARENTS - These parents make decisions, form relationships, and dole out punishments based solely on their emotions. They are easily overwhelmed and often live life in emotional extremes, based on current circumstances. They model erratic behavioral patterns to their children and can sometimes be frightening. These parents were most likely raised by emotional parents who had undiagnosed mental health issues, including substance abuse disorders.
DRIVEN PARENTS - These parents are the workaholics and over-achievers and they place those same expectations on their children. They could also be seen as, in the words of Dr. Nicole LePera in her fantastic book How to Do the Work, a parent who “attempts to mold and shape you.” An example of this is a parent who forces their child to take high level STEM classes because he or she works within the math and science field and believes that it would be the best career for their children. However, in their driven state, they have missed the fact that their child’s aptitude lies in other areas. In demanding that their child take classes outside of their strengths, they are risking poor grades, low cumulative GPA, a belief that they are stupid, and poor self-esteem. It is imperative that parents raise their children according to their individual strengths and not the strengths within themselves.
PASSIVE PARENTS - These parents struggle to be assertive and will often defer to the other more dominant parent. Passive parents were often raised in households where their wants and needs didn’t matter and they may have been raised with the idea that kids are not to be seen & heard. Passive parents may have dealt with childhood abuse and learned to push through it and assume their kids can, too. It’s not that uncommon to hear from a client that their mom was sexually abused in early childhood and no one helped her, so she glosses over any sexual abuse reported to her from her kids. It can be excruciating for that parent to revisit the pain of their abuse with their kids since they never received any support or healing of their own.
REJECTING PARENTS - These parents may have been rejected by their parents or they may never have wanted children of their own, but had them out of pressure from their family or because of societal norms. These parents want nothing to do with their children and don’t tolerate the wants and needs of others. They have their own agenda for life and don’t want to be bothered.
HEALING FROM EMOTIONALLY IMMATURE PARENTS
Suzanna made an appointment with a local counselor who specialized in EMDR and ego state therapy to better understand the emotional wounds that she has been carrying for many decades. She also began attending an Al-Anon group to better understand the implications of being an adult child of an alcoholic. Suzanna also began exploring her own identity and started to get know herself better through self-help books, journaling, and trying out new activities & hobbies. In doing so, she was better able to connect to herself, and then to her kids.
DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN SUZANNA?
ARE YOU READY TO WORK THROUGH YOUR TRAUMA FROM YOUR EMOTIONALLY IMMATURE PARENT(S)?
Begin Adult Trauma Counseling in Columbus, Ohio. You don’t have have to suffer any longer.