EP 378: How to Parent When Your Inner Child is Still Traumatized with Nicole

This episode is about healing our traumas while raising children. Today’s caller, Nicole, says her children and home responsibilities are triggering her trauma. She is constantly in survival mode. She asks for guidance on how to relieve her anxiety and overwhelm. Christine offers tips for how to set healthy boundaries and regulate her nervous system.

 

[For show notes, go here: Christinehassler.com/episode378]

 

Often, there are places inside of us that are still unhealed and that are still tender. We have managed those tender parts but haven’t ever transformed. It’s a huge distinction between what brings peace and contentment in life and what just gets us through the day. So many of us have had a painful past that we have learned to manage or sweep under the rug, or we’ve distracted ourselves with work or taking care of others and haven’t really, truly taken care of ourselves.

 

Our past trauma, past issues, and challenges are not forefront every day but we aren’t living to our fullest potential. The deepest level of contentment that we can access is limited because so much of our energy is spent on managing what we’ve never truly transformed. To get to where we want to go in life, we have to transform and that requires healing on deeper levels. There is nothing that can catalyze that like having children.

 

Children often bring forward the things that we have swept under the rug. They force us to look at ourselves. They trigger us. They are the perfect teachers because we love them so much and we don’t want to pass on our pain and trauma to them. We want to transform. but we don’t know how because our inner child is still wounded; we haven’t healed our traumas from our childhoods.

 

Consider/Ask Yourself:

• Are you a parent and do you sometimes question your parenting?
• Do you have unresolved trauma from your childhood and has being a parent activated it, or if you’re not a parent, do you know you have unresolved trauma from your childhood and you’re not sure what to do with it?
• Do you just feel too busy, or that there is too much going on in your life to deal with any of your trauma or do any healing?

 

Nicole’s Question:

Nicole is triggered by her child and would like guidance navigating her parenting journey while healing her trauma.

 

Nicole’s Key Insights and Ahas:

• She has food insecurity issues.
• She has child abuse, neglect, and abandonment traumas from her childhood.
• She isn’t in contact with her family.
• She feels she has to run the family and home by herself.
• She feels stuck in her relationship.
• Her nervous system is deregulated and in survival mode.
• She feels anxious and overwhelmed.
• She is unpredictable and inconsistent based on her trauma.
• She feels she doesn’t deserve her daughter.
• Her daughter was abused by someone close.

 

How to Get Over It and On With It:

• Make time for herself to heal her trauma.
• Regulate her nervous system daily by humming and taking deep breaths.
• Make a place for her daughter to have a temper tantrum.
• Be present with her daughter.

 

Takeaways:

• What are the things you can do daily to regulate your nervous system?

 

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Resources:

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