Parenthood might just be the biggest trigger for those who have had traumatic childhood and are complex ptsd survivors though I don’t know your story inside. You do. Only you do. And only you have the key to decode you.
My son, has from conception pushed me into being me and integrating the wounded self, my gosh it has been a journey, and now after yesterday and the year gone, I have understood fully that we can change our neural pathways by using each time we are triggered as opportunities to expand oir awareness of awareness so that we realise we are reacting not to the present but that the present is triggering the wounded child within bringing out the child’s anger towards parents or parents towards child.
What’s amazing is that most of the automatic response have to life which we simply cannot control yet takes over our lives and even sabotages, stems from the implicit memory which blocked the memory from becoming explicit or conscious. So we are reacting mainly as the wounded child or wounded adolescent. I don’t go beyond this because the brain literally slows down into habitual wiring and firing so that we literally become set in our ways. Unless of course you keep learning and learning engaging your neuroplasticity. Although one can have a traumatic or at least enough of an experience to become embedded in our brain forcing us to create another mental model like a failed relationship, an accident, loss of loved ones.
Well it all sounds nice on paper but not so when your bubba just won’t fall asleep and you being sleep deprived and most likely to get triggered even after cajoling your brain stem you still voila fall into the automatic response! It catches you unawares!!! This is how quick the “gut” firing is. You literally accelerate and put your blinkers on. It’s so quick and when you have the awareness it’s also quick to dissipate.
But that’s not the end of it. The guilt that follows will chase you and you will doubt yourself and even question your sanity and fitness to be a parent. You will wonder why you thought you could parent. I mean really who me??!?! Okay so when you are past the feeling of guilt or have managed to put it on the back burner, you are now eaten up with the feeling of a total loss of control. What happened to all those yoga sessions books you are reading classes you might be attending and what have you all aimed at lengthening the gap between a trigger and your response. Gosh you may even have Bach playing in the background or brain wave music, enya, Kitaro – well you catch my drift.
Our awareness has arrived and we have also learnt what we don’t want to be. But the rewriting of history will have to start with having a coherent narrative to incorporate how your left and right brain perceived your own source of the mental model you have formed.
This is true not only for parent child but all of our relationships.