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Parenting and the Serenity Prayer: Acceptance and the Peaceful Home

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

If parenting could be summed up in a prayer, that prayer might be the “Serenity Prayer”:

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This is part two of a 5 part series exploring the essential points of this prayer and how it can help parents find grace and peace in their family relationships.

Acceptance and the Peaceful Home:

Finding serenity in our lives is a matter of achieving balance. This balance can be precarious at times as parents deal with the many stressors of work and family life. Parents might look to outside sources for this place of peace. They might even hold others responsible for upsetting that peace, blaming them for the hurts and rejections they might have caused in themselves and their home. The cause of this imbalance might include drugs, alcohol, affairs, gambling and many other vices. It can also come from non-malicious sources that we don’t have control over, including job loss, divorce, death, illness, etc.

In order to create lasting peace in the home, we have to look inward to our values and beliefs. Parents can identify a “value system” that keeps them focused and motivated despite all the outside trials and tribulations. These beliefs will guide parents behaviors, help them make choices, and keep them intentional in their efforts to support one another.

The deepest beliefs come from our identity about what it means to be a good or bad parent. It is hard to create peace if we feel like a bad parent. We will try to avoid doing what we feel a “bad parent” would do and work to do what we belief a “good parent” should be doing. Of course, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. This often occurs because parents belief that being good is the same as perfect. They hold themselves and their family members to a standard that is impossible to maintain. When they fail and fail they will, they think they are now a bad parent.

The reality is that there is no such things as a perfect parent or a perfect child. It is important to have the courage to be an imperfect parent who raise imperfect children and can still love one another through our mistakes. This road of unconditional love and imperfect relationships will require a constant review of our values and a lot of forgiveness, of ourselves and our family members.

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Four Steps for Working With Trauma: An Interview with Bessel van der Kolk

Step 1: Start with Self-Regulation

Dr. van der Kolk: I would say the foundation of all effective treatments involves some way for people to learn that they can change their arousal system.

Before any talking, it’s important to notice that if you get upset, taking 60 breaths, focusing on the out breaths, can calm your brain right down. Attempting some acupressure points or going for a walk can be very calming.

Dr. Buczynski: So this is learning to modulate arousal?

Dr. van der Kolk: Yes, and there’s alarmingly little in our mainstream culture to teach that. For example, this was something that kindergarten teachers used to teach, but once you enter the first grade, this whole notion that you can actually make yourself feel calm seems to disappear.

Now, there’s this kind of post-alcoholic culture where if you feel bad, you pop something into your mouth to make the feeling go away.

“The issue of self-regulation needs to become front and center in the treatment of trauma.”
It’s interesting that right now there are about six to ten million people in America who practice yoga, which is sort of a bizarre thing to do – to stand on one foot and bend yourself up into a pretzel. Why do people do that? They’ve discovered that there’s something they can do to regulate their internal systems.

So the issue of self-regulation needs to become front and center in the treatment of traumatized people. That’s step number one.

Step 2: Help Your Patients Take Steps Toward Self-Empowerment

The core idea here is that I am not a victim of what happens. I can do things to change my own thoughts, which is very contrary to the medical system where, if you can’t stand something, you can take a pill and make it go away.

The core of trauma treatment is something is happening to you that you interpret as being frightening, and you can change the sensation by moving, breathing, tapping, and touching (or not touching). You can use any of these processes.

It’s more than tolerating feelings and sensations. Actually, it is more about knowing that you, to some degree, are in charge of your own physiological system.

There needs to be a considerable emphasis on “cultivating in myself,” not only as a therapist, but also as a patient – this knowing that you can actually calm yourself down by talking or through one of these other processes.

So, step number two is the cultivation of being able to take effective action. Many traumatized people have been very helpless; they’ve been unable to move. They feel paralyzed, sit in front of the television, and they don’t do anything.

“Programs with physical impact would be very, very effective treatments.”
Programs with physical impact, like model mugging (a form of self-defense training), martial arts or kickboxing, or an activity that requires a range of physical effort where you actually learn to defend yourself, stand up for yourself, and feel power in your body, would be very, very effective treatments. Basically, they reinstate a sense that your organism is not a helpless (tool) of fate.

Step 3: Help Your Patients Learn to Express Their Inner Experience

The third thing I would talk about is learning to know what you know and feel what you feel. And that’s where psychotherapy comes in: finding the language for internal experience.

The function of language is to tie us together; the function of language is communication. Without being able to communicate, you’re locked up inside of yourself.

“Without being able to communicate, you’re locked up inside of yourself.”
So, learning to communicate and finding words for your internal states would be very helpful in terms of normalizing ourselves – accepting and making (the communication of internal states) a part of ourselves and part of the community. That’s the third part.

Step 4: Integrate the Senses Through Rhythm

We’re physical animals, and to some level, we’re always dancing with each other. Our communication is as much through head nodding and smiles and frowns and moving as anything else. Kids, in particular, and adults, who as kids were victims of physical abuse and neglect, lose those interpersonal rhythms.

“Rhythmical interaction to establish internal sensory integration is an important piece.”
So, some sort of rhythmical interaction to establish internal sensory integration is an important piece that we are working on. With kids, we work with sensory integration techniques like having them jump on trampolines and covering them with heavy blankets to have them feel how their bodies relate to the environment because that’s an area that gets very disturbed by trauma, neglect, and abuse, especially in kids.

For adults, I think we’ve resolved rhythmical issues with experiences like tango dancing, Qi Gong, drumming – any of these put one organism in rhythm with other organisms and is a way of overcoming this frozen sense of separation that traumatized people have with others.

Dr. Buczynski: These are four keystones that can make healing from trauma faster and more effective. In order to give patients the best chance for recovery, consider these steps as you plan your interventions and treatments.

– See more at: http://www.nicabm.com/bessel-van-der-kolk/confirmed/?del=7.8.15BesselLMtoall#sthash.tU3FljBE.dpuf

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In Defense of “Broken Families”

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

I have been noticing this term “broken families” pop up a lot recently in various professional writings and parent blogs. Each time I read it, I shudder. The underlying connotation is that a family that has undergone a divorce, death, adoption, abuse, etc. is somehow broken and unrepairable. It is a fatal diagnosis that leaves families without hope. I know, I know, it’s just language but words do have power. They percolate in the brain and become belief systems and self identifying references. The more we hear the word, the more we start to belive them and then we start to give up.

When someone witnesses a teenager with substance abuse issues, for example, people will comment: “You know they come from a broken family”. Everyone who goes through foster care, adoption, or experiences a divorce is going to have mental issues, right? Wrong. Many families deal with teenage substance abuse, not just nontraditional families. While it is possible that children of divorce may act out in antisocial ways, this doesn’t mean that all children of divorce will have issues in life that impair them. The same is true for adopted children or someone in a foster home or raised by a grandparent.

I am not denying that families do suffer from going through experiences like divorce or death or adoption. Loss is central to each of these things but that should not be a life-sentence resulting in mental and relational problems. Life is full of suffering. The focus here needs to be on how to help others cope. How can we learn from those who survive and thrive and teach it to everyone. I take affront at these comments and attitudes because they assume a dark, gloomy fate just because they have undergone a loss. That is just one path.

A recent national study on foster care and adoption in the child welfare system listed that 48% of children, in the system, have significant behavior problems. At first glance, that feels devastating but what about the other 52% that don’t? Who studies them? What makes them more of a survivor, better able to cope, more reselient? Let’s see those studies. Perhaps we could learn some useful tools to help us build strong families.

My challenge is too guard our language. This means we have to closely guard the thoughts that produce them too. We have to start looking at loss for what it is, a painful experience and not as destiny. To counter these negative connotations, try identifying the strengths of families and individuals in them. What have they done well that we can build upon? What new words can we use to describe them and assume their inevitable success in life?

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Children Heal in Healthy Families

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

When parents decide to build their family they don’t want to believe that their child may in up with developmental or special needs that require a lot of time, commitment and yes, money. They are dreaming of the perfect family, playing and enjoying warm, cuddly time together. There is nothing wrong with that but not every dream turns out that way. 

Many families choose to build their family through adoption or end up taking care of a relatives child due to many misfortunes and circumstances. Consequently, many children come with a history of trauma and loss. The dream family is still possible but it must be modified and made more realistic. You have to say goodbye to the old dream to allow room for the new one to unfold.

Research and common experiences proves that children can heal in a healthy family. A child needs a secure attachment relationships in order to maximize all the areas of their lives, socially, physically, emotionally, cognitively and spiritually. 

Because many children comes from insecure attachment relationships, they don’t always know what it means to be in a health family. Their special needs may be based on survival in high stress family situations. Their “abnormal behaviors” in a normal family were perfectly “normal” in their abnormal situations before entering the new home. A bit of rehabilitation is necessary to help them make the internal and external adjustments. 

Trauma situations impact the children development. This includes their brain development as well. The child needs to adapt to overwhelming and hostile environments and can create a position of offensive behaviors that don’t want to submit to parental controls. An internal model develops that believes the world and caregivers cannot be trusted. 

Fortunately, the same brain that adapted to stressful circumstances can re-adapt to calm living environments. This happens over time, sometimes quickly and sometimes not so quickly. This is challenging for parents to understand and cope. 

The brain must be re-activated to change. Experience dictates form and function when it comes to brain adaptation. New, positive experiences that happen repeatedly will open up new neuronal brain growth that allows for a feelings safety and security to settle in. Once this happens, parents can begin to enjoy that “dream family” once again. 

The Fourth “F” of Trauma
By Ron Huxley, LMFT

When I work with traumatized people, I always keep in mind that they have one of three reactions: Fight, Flight and Freeze. These are primal brain mechanisms that manage threats to the self. Each type of reaction has its intervention but at the core of these interventions is the fourth “F”: Fusion.

Trauma disrupts relationships and self/other organization. At extreme levels it can cause dissociative disorders (what we used to call Multiple Personality Disorders) splitting off internal parts of the self in an effort to survive and function. At milder levels it can cause us to build defenses or social masks that allow us to get through our days despite feelings of pain or loss. Either we are not acting out of our true self. We also have difficulties with others manifesting by poor intimacy, commitment fears, unmanageable anger, feelings of anxiety and depression.

What we want to achieve is fusion. A fusion of self and personality and a fusion of relationships (self with other). This is easy said than done but it is possible. It is not hopeless as we once thought. The real challenge is trying to help others who are in a state of fight, flight or freeze without ourselves going into a similar state. Staying “fused” in our emotions, in the face trauma, is hard!

(via inner-healing)
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The 101 on Fidgets:

I think of a fidget as any small item or toy that helps keep one’s hands busy and helps them focus while completing an activity. Almost anything can be a sensory fidget. Even basic household items or small party favor toys can make great fidgets. You can make your own fidgets, or buy them from catalogs, online or even in local stores such as Target, a party store, a craft store, or the dollar store.

A Toy or a Tool?
I have found fidgets to be a very helpful tool for me for many years. When I was much younger, I was taught that fidgets were to be used as a tool, and not like a toy. A tool is something that can help one focus, while a toy can distract both the individual playing with the fidget and others around them. This can be a hard thing for an individual to understand as some of the best fidgets that I have found are indeed toys, but they make great tools.

Let Ron Huxley help your child succeed at home and school. Click the Get Parenting Answers in the nav bar.

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Dream Parenting: Winning the Battle

You don’t have to win every battle with your child. You don’t have to be a perfect parent. Some days are going to be sweet one’s, with lots of cuddling, peaceful interactions and other days are going to be more chaotic and bumpy. It is important that parents learn how to ride these ups and downs and now that they are still headed in the right direction. if today was a bad day, than you get to have another day. Make tomorrow different. If tomorrow is bad too, look forward to the day after than and so on…

You were there to write the first chapter of your child’s life and you get to help write the next one until the day they start writing their own chapters. You are never totally powerless and no mistake cannot be forgiven and un-reconciled. It make take a while but time really is on your side and it can heal the most grievous hurts. Use this to your parenting advantage. 

Action Parenting Tool: Don’t focus on today’s problem. Visualize how you want tomorrow to look and start working toward it. Be OK with small adjustments until you achieve the family you dreamed about.