How a time-out can be a first step for parents to be kinder to themselves again.
The importance of 'being kind to myself' is something I have increasingly encountered since having children. It has become a long journey to maintain this "kindness with myself".
I tracked down a force that seemed to constantly prevent me from doing so: developmental trauma.
Developmental traumas can be described as unprocessed wounds in childhood that still have a negative impact on our experience and behavior in adulthood.
Due to the complexity of the relationship between childhood and adulthood, it is often difficult to clearly understand the connections between childhood and adulthood.
If we leave aside the complexity of the underlying mechanisms for a moment, we can also try to describe the adversaries of "kindness to oneself" in simpler terms:
You are always as kind to yourself as people were kind to you when you were growing up. The way others treated me in the past is how I usually still treat myself today. So today I am often still "identified" with how I was seen and reflected by those around me in my early years. Such an identification could be: "I'm not lovable if I don't agree" or "I don't deserve to be taken care of" or "It's up to me if something doesn't go well" or "I'm only lovable if I make the right effort" etc.
Parents are often shaken to the foundations of their (mis)identification when children upset them and parents lose their composure.
What might be seen as the most valuable opportunity of your life at some point in hindsight often looks very different in the middle of things. That's when you might not know what to do. You sense that something is wrong, but often don't know how to deal with this inconsistency.
Now there is rarely any help available at precisely that moment to help you pause and reflect, let alone see the situation as an opportunity.
Life often moves on rapidly at these points, you overreact and see yourself displaying behavior in an instant that is not at all what we think a "good father" or "good mother" does.
The image of the "good father" or the "good mother" no longer fits with the behavior that you observe in yourself towards your children.
It is precisely AFTER such behavior that the confusion occurs, which can actually initiate a de-confusion much sooner if the state BEFORE such behavior is investigated in more detail.
This is a precious moment when an old memory in our body - or more precisely: information stored in our nervous system - comes to life and before we know it, it takes over and controls our behavior (without us?). We watch ourselves doing what we never wanted to do: we shout at our child, insult it, shame it or in some way give it the feeling of having to be different, of being wrong.
But what would there be to see if we could pause BEFORE this behavior? Would we see that most likely everything that is happening in us right now has something to do with a hardship we experienced ourselves in the past?
And what would there be to see if we were to perceive our inner dialogues AFTER the behavior? Would we perhaps hear ourselves inwardly shaming ourselves and judging ourselves for how bad what we have just done to our child is?
How absurd would it be to be "kind to yourself" at this moment? Habitually very absurd for most of us, I dare say...
So if we look closely AFTER the behavior, we would find ourselves in front of a double pile of broken pieces: one pile is the result of what is going on with our child on the outside and the other pile is the result of what is going on with ourselves on the inside.
A highly unpleasant situation that is part of everyday life for most parents, often several times a day. But because it can be so unpleasant or even extremely overwhelming to face this situation alone, you go on with your everyday life, forget and suppress it as quickly and as well as possible and reassure yourself that it is normal to be overwhelmed when you have children. This can then be confirmed by many people and that's that. Let's move on.
Under the given circumstances, this is actually quite "normal" and has become part of our culture.
And yet it doesn't have to stay that way.
Today, we can get to know the good reasons for our behavior anew and connect them with our own more or less injured possibility of relationship or relatedness.
We can learn to see that we are often not kind to ourselves and that there are good reasons for this in the past, which we can look at anew today and revise in a new connection with other people.
It was very often the choice for attachment and security that we made as adolescents when we were still dependent on the care of others. We adapted to unfavourable situations both internally and externally in a highly intelligent way and organized ourselves perfectly in line with them in order to increase our chances of survival. This must be appreciated as a fundamental life-preserving force within us.
And since we have survived, this battle as adults at the level of the nervous system is now actually over - we can also consciously acknowledge this and realign ourselves.
Today, we have new opportunities to look deeper and understand where our behavior sometimes simply takes place without adult intervention. We have new tools at our disposal to get to the bottom of these self-perpetuators, to take ourselves along in a self-friendly way and to take back the lead in our behavior. Where we become bewildered, a new understanding can emerge from knowledge, learning and kindness towards ourselves. In this way, we are increasingly able to protect our children from our own injuries and break the cycle of developmental trauma.
Allowing yourself time out can be a first step towards opening up space for insight, learning and kindness with yourself.
We now know that it is possible for young parts of our development that have been neglected or unanswered to mature in adulthood.
When accompanying parents during time-outs, parent coaching sessions or therapies, we focus on relaxation, self-awareness and effortless self-connection. Through inspiring impulses from parenting work, there is always something helpful for everyday life. However, the focus is on the lightness of being, in which one's own intuition and, in turn, parental care and competence naturally have their place.
I offer 1:1 consultations online or in my practice on site in Degersheim (Switzerland). In addition, there are always parent time-out offers that I offer at beautiful locations in cozy rooms. I am also happy to be invited to join groups of parents who are interested in a change in child guidance. Group support is possible online or, if possible, on site with the people who invite me.
I can highly recommend www.transparents.net for accompanied online training. This work has fundamentally improved my everyday life as a mother and parenting companion. You can find out more on my website: www.imago2.ch - I look forward to seeing you!
Estherina De Stefano
Clinical psychologist (Master of Science University of Zurich), parent coach according to TransParents (Transformational Parenting, transparents.net), NARM™ practitioner for healing developmental trauma according to Dr. Laurence Heller
IMAGO 2.0 - Be aware of the space for change, www.imago2.ch