Processing a traumatic past or a traumatic experience can be incredibly difficult and you can suffer for years. For example, I helped a woman who had a terrible childhood culminating in her being evicted at 17.
Then again, this had all sorts of implications, because what do you know when you haven't really had an upbringing, but have only been severely mentally abused (and the rest for that matter).
For you are without a home, you keep fleeing to the next shelter instead of being able to choose your shelter.
The hell of your past also haunts you in your adult life with the relationships you then enter into.
How to make sure you break that cycle, so you can be there for the people you love, like your children you got in all the chaos without immediately becoming submissive because you want to keep them with you.
Impact of trauma on your way of parenting
Research shows that women who were sexually abused in childhood can raise children as effectively as women who had "normal" childhoods. However, women who have a history of abuse are more likely to have difficulty parenting, but this is not necessarily because of the abuse, but more because they themselves came from a dysfunctional family.
The effort is there, for example, in recognizing stress in children and then helping to remove that stress to help your child self-regulate when something gets tense.
Another difficult thing can be that you would like your child to do what you say and this makes you somewhat controlling.
Finally, you can become much focused on yourself and emotionally dependent on your child. This is also called "boundary dissolution," because children are normally just emotionally dependent on the mother. In turn, you may have difficulty setting boundaries or you may let your child figure out how to solve a problem when he or she is not yet mentally ready to do so. This can cause the parent-child relationship to become reversed[1], which of course is not very convenient.
Knowing that this is a thing for many women with a sexually traumatic past, you can take this into account when raising your children.
Children and parenting
Children are children, no matter what life you've had as a parent. That means pushing boundaries and seeing how far you can go to get your parent to do something for you.
This can feel very separate, when you didn't have that space before.
Children engage in discussion because they love you and their love is reciprocated
The first thing that can feel weird is having your children argue with you. If you had a traumatic childhood there was a good chance that when you started an argument it didn't end pleasantly, so you allowed it to happen.
Because you want your children to know that you love them and you don't want to give them the same thing you went through, so you need to win the discussion with words rather than your hands.
This means your kids can always argue with you, because after all, it always ends well. To you this may feel disrespectful, but actually it is a compliment that your children feel safe with you to "fight" with you.
Actually, you can take it as a compliment.
Transparency with your children
To still win the discussion, it is always helpful to be transparent with your children. For example, I often tell my children that this is also the first time for me to be in the house with four boys to raise.
In addition, you can let your children contribute to a solution to achieve the desired outcome. For example, what household tasks they can take on.
In this case, you can be transparent about the time spent in the household. How difficult this is to combine with work and that they can help mom or dad with it, which can prevent burnout.
Child chooses to leave and is not sent away
If you have an eighteen-year-old child who chooses to leave, that's okay. After all, it is his or her own choice and very different from when you yourself evict your child.
After all, your child can and should always come back. The bed is still there and he/she has his/her own bedroom.
Your child breaks the cycle
What you often see is that at certain times in his or her life, your child makes the same choices you once made or makes the same mistakes you once made. How cool is it to see that despite all the emotions and struggles, your child handles things differently than you did?
How cool is it that you gave your child the foundation to do it that way anyway and that your child can make the right choices?
Releasing your trauma: freeing your inner child
Another thing that can be helpful is releasing trauma so that it has less impact on your thoughts and thus on the way you deal with certain problems on a daily basis.
The child you used to be, suffering from all the trauma, is still inside you somewhere. For this, you can do an exercise that will help you suffer less from the trauma in life now.
After all, it's already over and you've built your own life by now.
The exercise is just an example. See a hypnotherapist if you want to perform the exercise properly on yourself.
For that exercise, close your eyes and visualize yourself how you were as a child. Maybe you were cowered in a corner somewhere. Say to that child, "You can open your eyes quietly, it's already over. I'm xx now, I have children of my own and I'm doing really well. It's already over."
You just watch and say this quietly until the child opens their eyes feeling fine. Nice that it's over. Thank you for letting this pass for me.
Maybe this doesn't happen so fast and you have to talk a little more to the child that everything is okay. You do what that child needs to open their eyes and feel okay.
You keep trying this until the child opens their eyes and trusts you. If necessary, you say, "Come with me, we'll get out of here and I'll help you."
If the child is smiling and feeling good, then you can move on to the next step.
When the child understands you and knows it is over and the child smiles, you give her/him a hug and allow the child to melt into yourself. Then you feel the child growing up, from eight to nine, from nine to ten, and so on until now. You feel the child growing up smiling, free, happy and joyful until now.
You will find that all situations change and become lighter.
When you are completely in the now, you open your eyes and feel simply amazing.
Releasing trauma makes parenting more relaxed
Releasing trauma also allows you to be more relaxed about the struggles that come with raising children. That discussion is suddenly much less important. The choices your children make that you cannot control are suddenly much more their choices and not a reflection on you, but on them.
Everyone has their own path.
This allows you to react differently, so even your children can suddenly react differently. Your energy is then changed.
Also listen to this session about a woman struggling to raise her children after her traumatic childhood:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/5428675-hoe-kom-je-los-van-een-traumatisch-verleden
Want to learn more about hypnosis and what you can do with it for yourself and others?
Please join us for a free online master class on hypnosis.
Or enroll directly in one of our training courses. The trainings are conducted online, so the flow of the training can always continue, regardless of outside influences.
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