How To Deal ISSU by paigetate

Creator of Attachment Nerd

as much

Printed in China

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

This book is for informational and educational purposes. This book is not intended to be a substitute for the medical advice of a licensed physician. The reader should consult with their doctor in any matters relating to their health. The information in this book is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent disease. This book is not sponsored or endorsed by any organization or company. The information in this book is based on experience and research done by the authors. Neither the publisher nor the authors accept any liability of any kind for any damages caused, directly or indirectly, from the use of the information in this book.

ISBN: 978-1-63217-596-0

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This book is dedicated to my mom, who courageously lit a path of healing for me to follow and then continued to cheer me on even when that path meant I needed to illuminate and process pain from my childhood. And to my brother, who has been blazing this trail at warp speed. I am so amazed by you and so thankful that you are with me on this mission.

Dedication

Introduction

How to Deal with Feeling Angry

How to Deal with Feeling Anxious

How to Deal with Feeling At Odds with Our Children

How to Deal with Feeling Body Disgust

How to Deal with Feeling Defensive

How to Deal with Feeling Jealous of Our Children

How to Deal with Feeling Judged

How to Deal with Feeling Lonely

How to Deal with Feeling Powerless

How to Deal with Feeling Regretful

How to Deal with Feeling Rejected by Our Children

How to Deal with Feeling Sad

How to Deal with Feeling Shame

How to Deal with Feeling Stressed

How to Deal with Feeling Traumatized

How to Deal with a Control Habit

How to Deal with a Bias Habit

How to Deal with a Blaming Habit

How to Deal with a Toxic Comparison Habit

How to Deal with a Denial Habit

How to Deal with a Distraction Habit

How to Deal with a Guilt-Tripping Habit

How to Deal with a Numbing Habit

How to Deal with an Overprotective Rescue Habit

How to Deal with a People-Pleasing Habit

How to Deal with a Perfectionism Habit

How to Deal with a Permissive Habit

How to Deal with a Self-Doubt Habit The “I Wish I Had Known” Letter How to Respond When Your Child Gives You

How to Get Your Partner to Read Something How to Get Yourself to Go to Therapy (and Find a Good Therapist)

Introduction

I know very few parents who intentionally choose to pass on problematic habits, immature emotional patterns, or generational trauma to their children. The overwhelming majority of us truly want the best for our kids and feel sick to our stomachs at the thought of being a source of disconnection, struggle, or trauma in their lives. And since you chose to pick up this book, I’m going to assume that’s also true for you.

Like me you want your children to experience a secure childhood and a long-term positive relationship with you. You want to be able to give your children a healthier developmental experience than you had when you were growing up. Even if what you had was pretty darn good. And if your children are already grown, then you want to be able to mend the past and improve your relationship with them moving forward.

We are in the same club! We’re not the perfect parent club or the parents who always know exactly what to do club; we’re the parents who are willing to deal with our sh*t because we’re passionate about having positive relationships with our children club. (Let me know if you can think of something catchier, obviously.)

I wrote this book for us because I want us to have the maps, tools, and resources we need to avoid the pain of accidentally continuing (or creating) insecure, disconnected, or painful dynamics in our relationships with our oﬀspring, whether they are two or ﬁ y-two.

It’s a quest my mom started in my family, and it’s one that my siblings and I are working to continue. Thankfully it’s a quest that has been journeyed by many courageous parents, and it has been validated as a worthy cause in the rich body of research on the parent-child relationship over the past century, or close to it.

It’s not an easy quest, but that’s part of what makes it so profoundly impactful. The discomfort and challenges we encounter on this journey to becoming more emotionally reliable for our children are absolutely worth the cost. As we learn and grow, we not only develop better relationships with our children but also cultivate more peace, self-acceptance, and clarity on what matters in our lives.

The Five Gifts of a Secure Parent

Since developing secure relationships with our children is the most powerful parenting ﬂex we have, let’s quickly review the ﬁve core experiences that our children require to feel truly secure in their relationships with us.

1 The gi of feeling that we can handle their emotions

“My parent cares about what I feel and knows how to support me.”

2 The gi of feeling that we understand their perspectives

“My parent listens to me and works to truly understand me.”

3 The gi of feeling that we want them close to us

“My parent lights up when I enter the room. They love being around me.”

4 The gi of feeling that we show up for them in important moments

“My parent shows up for me when I’m struggling and when I’m celebrating.”

5 The gi of feeling that we accept them for their full, authentic selves

“My parent is proud of every part of me.”

The Sh*t That Gets in the Way of Secure

Now that we have some clear goals of what we want to be able to oﬀer our children, let’s get to the core reason for this particular book’s existence: the ﬁve gi s of a secure parent are far easier said than done! To give our children those experiences, we have to be relatively emotionally mature. We must know how to handle the incredibly complex landscape of human emotion without getting stuck in habits and reactions that lead to disconnection and alienation from our kids.

We don’t have to be perfectly emotionally regulated all the time, that would make us robots. But there are certain habitual pitfalls that we should try to avoid and emotional skills we need to develop in order to cultivate the trust and emotional closeness our children need from us.

Let’s think about our relationship with our children as a video game. We’ll call it Super Mario Parents. Mostly because Super Mario Brothers was one of two video games I played growing up (the other one being The Oregon Trail, which always ended with me dying of dysentery).

The goal of our Super Mario Parents game is to create and retain a positive and close relationship with our children throughout each new level (age/stage).

As we walk/run/jump through each level, we encounter obstacles that can block us from winning the game. In Super Mario Parents the goal of the game is to protect our relationship with our children.

And just like any game worth playing, there are weird evil mushroom dudes trying to take us down. Things like unresolved trauma, perfectionism, and control habits. These “goombas” can really mess things up for us and our kids and prevent us from giving them the ﬁve gi s they need from us (page x).

We are most eﬀective in our human parenting quest when we are able to acknowledge our growth areas (our sh*t) with both self-compassion and determination to grow.

The Process of Dealing with Our Sh*t

I highly doubt that you will relate to every topic in this book. Especially because we all hold unique experiences and cultural backgrounds that inﬂuence our particular growth needs. No need to read it all at once or in any particular order. Use it as a reference guide to help you answer the questions, “How is my sh*t aﬀecting my relationship with kids?” And “What can I be doing to grow more emotionally connected and sturdy?”

I hope that reading this book will give you:

1 A shower of ah-ha moments! “I recognize this negative attribute or habit in myself.”

2 Motivation to make changes! “I see how this could aﬀect my children and why they deserve my eﬀorts to address this thing.”

3 Increased compassion toward yourself! “I also see why I’ve handled this issue the way I have up until now, and I know it doesn’t mean I’m a bad parent.”

4 Eﬀorts toward growth! “I’m going to take the steps necessary to change the impact this issue has on me and my children.”

You’ll also discover that some of these struggles overlap—a bit like baggage sets. If you struggle with managing anger (page 9), you may also struggle with a numbing habit (page 208). If you struggle with a people-pleasing habit (page 224), you may also struggle with a perfectionism habit (page 231). This is 100 percent normal. I’m working through a solid handful of these issues myself (“stressmess” is my middle name!), and I know and love and respect people navigating things in every single category here.

Each topic is organized around these nuggets:

1 A description of the issue

2 A description of how the issue could negatively aﬀect our children

3 Practical things we can do to mature and grow around the issue

4 Compassionate self-talk scripts: examples of things we can say to ourselves around the topic to encourage us to oﬀer compassion to ourselves as we work on these issues

5 Further reading recommendations* to help us dig deeper into our understanding of the topic

*Note that I do not agree with every single thing in all the recommended books and resources listed, and you don’t need to either. Find the resources that feel helpful to you, take the parts that resonate for your journey, and ignore the rest! We don’t need to align on everything to be able to support each other in some things.

Plus:

• Trusty Tidbits: snack-sized insights and advice sprinkled throughout to help us become the trustworthy parents we want to be

• Stop Signs: alerts to habits or emotional states that deserve urgent support (If you resonate with a Stop Sign, please stop reading and reach out to someone you trust, or to a community resource, and ask for support with the issue that you recognized in yourself.)

Most important of all, I hope we can all hold onto the truth that the goombas on our path are not issues that bad parents struggle with, they’re issues that human parents struggle with.

This Won’t Be a Walk in the Park, but . . .

I will do my best to keep you feeling engaged, and I will deﬁnitely make a joke or two. But overall I’m guessing this book is going to feel less like a pedicure and more like getting a toenail or two surgically removed. (And as someone who is personally down one toenail, I can tell you that it’s not the worst medical procedure to go through, but it sure ain’t fun. Rest in peace, big toenail from my right foot.)

Growth is rarely a walk in the park. In my almost two decades as a therapist, I don’t think anyone has ever le my oﬃce a er facing a growth moment and said, “That was fun! I wish I could do this every day!”

But just because it’s work and not necessarily fun doesn’t mean it won’t come with a tremendous amount of fulﬁllment and relief. It took me ten years to ﬁnally decide to remove my toenail. It had been unruly and mean to my foot for a long time, growing in the wrong direction and wreaking havoc on my ability to wear

pointy-toed shoes. It was uncomfortable (and a bit expensive) to say adieu to my malfunctioning nail, but the relief I’ve felt since I ﬁnally let it go has been well worth the pain it took to remove it. Just like hiking up a mountain, this book will involve using your muscles, feeling tired, wanting to turn back at times, and acquiring a few blisters. But, and this is a big “but,” (big butt—haha! Sorry—I spend a ton of time with my twin ﬁve-year-olds) the view from the top is exquisite.

Remember the gi of perspective can only come as a result of having walked up a hill. I hope that as you work through the topics in this book, you’ll ﬁnd yourself surrounded by beautiful views. Even if that means you lose a toenail in the process.

Heroes Have Allies

You might be able to battle a few of these topics on your own, but most of them will be far easier to handle with help. I can say with conﬁdence that there is no wiser choice in life than the decision to seek the support of others. For so many of us carrying generational trauma, asking for help feels like failure. But in reality it is o en one of our greatest achievements.

Emotional growth, healing, and change are team sports.

Confide in sweethearts, friends, and trusted mentors, or find a therapist or support group that you genuinely feel connected to. (For more specifics on how to find a good therapist, check the Think of Finding a Therapist as a Dating Process section on page 267.)

Warning: Awards, Acknowledgments, and Gratitude Are Not Guaranteed

Unlike public feats of heroism, our journeys to heal generational patterns are private and lack the expected glory that we deserve for doing something heroic.

When we break cycles on behalf of our children, we also create a reality in which they cannot understand what we’ve done for them.

If we can ensure that our children have enough food to eat, they won’t understand the pains of starvation that we protect them from. Without the ache of a chronically empty belly, our children can’t comprehend what a privilege it is to complain about the food on their plates instead of worrying that their plates are empty.

That’s what generational progress looks like. We’ve changed the game. The fact that their understanding of “suffering” is different from ours also means their feelings of gratitude will be different. If our children are “ungrateful” to us for preventing them from experiencing so many painful realities, it means we’ve successfully separated them from those things.

Even though our children may not be handing us parent of the year awards, that doesn’t mean we won’t feel the beneﬁts of this work. We will be rewarded with close and authentic relationships with our children. We can savor the gi of knowing that our children intuitively trust that we’re people they can rely on when life gets crusty, musty, and tender.

And we can always celebrate ourselves. I feel very proud of myself when I deal with one of these issues in my life. I take time to reﬂect on what I’ve done and let it seep into my identity and self-assurance. I am a mama on a mission, determined to give my kids a parent who is as emotionally healthy as possible. Sometimes just telling myself I am doing a good job is enough. Other days I give myself a nap or a cookie.

If you need more acknowledgment, celebration, or reward during this journey, invite friends to celebrate you. Just don’t invite your kids. It’s not their responsibility, and since they don’t understand the pain that you protected them from, they can’t possibly give you the type of gratitude you are craving and deserve.