Parenting Under Dysregulation: Our Reaction is Their Reaction

No Crying Over Spilled Milk: A Step to Embrace the Dysregulated Mess After Narcissistic Abuse

By Hope Gaudet

Picture it: Tennessee 2023. A recently single mother of 2 disabled boys and one teenager as she and everyone in the home are stuck in fight or flight mode after surviving fourteen years of narcissistic abuse. “Good morning my little love bug! Time to wake up for school. It’s going to be an amazing day!” she enthusiastically wakes up her 5-year-old to begin their day. He wakes up out of the blue screaming, running around the house repeating ear piercing noises. He must have had another nightmare. Mom tries to calm him and gets frustrated that nothing is working. She tried somatic regulation movements, but he refused. He was stuck in an entirely different realm at the moment, and she couldn’t even bring him out of it. She was so hopeful for an easy morning. Her heart begins to pound, and her ears begin to ring. “IT’S AN HOUR INTO THIS MORNING AND I AM ALREADY UNABLE TO HELP MY KID AND NOW HE’S GOT ME FEELING LIKE CRAP,” she thinks to herself as she steps into the bathroom to take some deep breaths. He bangs on the door incessantly. Big brother comes downstairs and begins to yell at little brother for making so much noise and being “mean” to mom. They begin to argue, and she must remove herself from the bathroom to mediate. Her head feels like was beaten with a hammer, her heart hurts, chest is heavy, and she is completely dysregulated. “THAT IS ENOUGH!!!!! WHY EVERY TIME WE WAKE UP DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY? CAN’T YOU JUST LISTEN? AM I NOT A GOOD MOM? I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT KEEP YOU GUYS SAFE, LOVE YOU, AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS. EVERY DAY. ALL DAY LONG.I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE!!! MAYBE I CAN’T BE YOUR MOM. MAYBE I AM NOT CUT OUT FOR THIS. WHY DID YOU LISTEN TO YOUR DAD AND BE NICE TO HIM WHEN HE IS THE ONE THAT TRIED TO KILL US?!!!! WHY???!! WHY DO I DESERVE THIS?!!!”  She just lost her entire cool on her kids. How many of you have done this? So, you know as soon as this happened, you immediately bursted into tears and apologized. You said things that they will replay in their head all day and longer. This she was me. I knew in that moment that I had brought up our trauma while yelling at them that this had to stop. We had made some progress, but I was so panicked and exhausted all day everyday that I felt like my kids were doing this on purpose to me. The house was always messy because they were like tornadoes all day. I was over it. We were doing roughly ten hours of therapy a week for intensive trauma treatment. I was spending all day just regulating and trying to get them to do the regulation skills, but they wouldn’t. I was so angry and hopeless because how do they get better if they don’t try? I was stuck in this “if they don’t do this, we are doomed” mentality. I faked a smile, laughs, and tried to be the best mom…but in reality, my own dysregulation was making it more difficult and I had no clue until this explosive day.

               So, we finally got off to school that day and I was unemployed due to the nature of our situation…we will save that for another time. I had a ritual of getting my coffee from a local coffee shop because I am a permanently exhausted mama bear that cannot function without it. I headed home and put on free yoga videos. Yoga By Adrienne to be exact. I found her videos and fell in love with them. She incorporates mindfulness, chakra balancing, and wellness into her routines, and I needed all of the things. After doing my yoga routine, I was calm. I began meditation after that for however I wanted to feel for the day.  YouTube guided meditations. Free stuff. I was broke and needed all the help I could get. This particular day, I somehow ran across these videos while looking for a meditation for parenting because I was lost in the guilt of the morning. I found something different and life changing. It was a short video on CO-REGULATION. The guy was blowing bubbles with this dysregulated child to get him to do his deep breathing. What?! That is genius! So, I went about my day and when I got my kids home from school, I was excited to try this new technique. “Gavin, Carson, come here for a minute I think I need some help!” I yelled to them in the silliest voice I could think of at the time. “I need help keeping these bubbles off the floor, but we can’t use our hands.  We have to blow them up!” I demonstrated and their faces lit up and they laughed and laughed as we blew these bubbles up in the air and ran around chasing the bubbles to keep them off the ground. Then I noticed the mess it was making. “Okay guys, that’s enough. I must clean up this mess now.” I muttered to them in a monotone, sad voice. They hugged me and thanked me for the fun and then went their separate ways while I sat in the kitchen and cried. I was tired. I was happy. I was grateful to see them working together and laughing. I had a talk with myself in the kitchen about the mess. “Look at what just happened in there and that is worth any mess. I just said the issue of the mess out loud, and it made their face change. Crap. I didn’t mean to upset them. I just wanted them to feel better, but I still sabotaged it. Why did I do that?” I was angry at myself for “ruining it”. Mom guilt is so real. Sometimes our EXPECTATIONS get in the way of just having fun. Sometimes the voices of our parents, spouse, or other loved one is how we are speaking to ourselves and our kids. I had to really sit and think about why it was an issue. Well after determining that perfection was expected from their father and he would belligerently walk through the house yelling at us for the smallest infraction, I decided that it was a contributing factor to why I was on edge about the consequences of having the fun. It wasn’t just that. I always wanted my space clean and not looking lived in or it made me feel panicked and unorganized. I grew up that way. I realized that the perfection expected in my childhood had followed me into my own home. I remember being twelve or thirteen years old and coming home to my entire wardrobe in the middle of my bedroom floor. I was tired, I had cheerleading practice until like six that day. I was depressed because I was bullied all day everyday for my weight, my glasses, for being a nerd, for being white. It was never-ending my entire childhood. So, I just wanted to go to my safe space, put my music on…Papa Roach “Last Resort” was my solace. I walked into my room and saw a mountain of clothes and I was confused, angry, and over it. I am pretty sure I used my teenage tantrum that day. I was told my clothes were hanging out of my dresser drawer and it was too messy. My punishments for not being perfect were always over the top, but not physical. I never realized how this would grow to impact me later in life. I expected myself to be perfect and it was fucking exhausting. One dirty dish in the slew of dishes I had to wash daily as a child and every dish we owned came out of the cabinet and I was stuck crying at the sink for hours. I didn’t dare rebel. I wasn’t the type. I was a straight A student and a “goody two shoes” and everyone expected me to be calm, quiet, smart, and succeed. I was going to be the first high school graduate in my family. I HAD to succeed. I didn’t want to live like my family did. I wanted to be better. Then I ended up here, repeating this cycle but not to the same extreme. I just allowed that anxiety to get the best of me. Well, now that I have picked this chicken to the bone to understand myself, I began making small improvements.

The biggest lesson: NO CRYING OVER SPILLED MILK. No mess was worth making my kids feel like I did growing up. No mess needed to stop the fun. How I react makes a difference in how they act. I challenged myself to allow the mess and see how it changes things. First incident: rain and mud. It began raining for days and days and it just didn’t feel like it would ever stop. The kids were antsy being cooped up. Gavin, an earth -loving Taurus, was miserable when he couldn’t physically touch the earth. So, I decided to challenge my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. “Gavin! Carson!Let’s change into some play clothes. We are going on an adventure!” They got dressed and ready, shoes on, and asked eagerly where we were going. I guided them outside and found the biggest mud puddle. They asked me what I was doing and were complaining about the rain. I kicked my shoes off and jumped in the mud. Their eyes were so wide, and they were so confused. I said, “Come on, kick your shoes off and get in here with me!! This is so much fun!!” They looked at each other, laughed, kicked their shoes off, and began jumping and running through the mud while it was raining. They had the time of their life and so did I. I felt like a kid…one that was allowed to be dirty. It was such a surreal moment, almost like it was happening around me in slow motion as I stopped and started soaking it in. I looked up to the sky and said “Thank you for this,” as I thanked my ancestors, spirit guides, and my team of Gods. I didn’t run across that co-regulation video by accident. It was placed on my path to help me get to this very moment.

 Then it was time to go in. I was a little overwhelmed with the “how do we do this without ruining the house,” and my kids were saying “Mom this is so messy, now what do we do?” I just took a breath and said, we go to our rooms, take your clothes off, wipe down with a towel, and bring me your dirty stuff so we can wash it. Messes are okay sometimes. It’s okay. We will take turns taking a shower. Who wants to shower first?” That was that. It was fun, it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated on cleaning the mess. It taught them a few things. First, mom is not perfect, and they don’t need to be either. They began trusting me more and opening to be themselves. Second, a mess is a small problem and not worth hurtful words, anxiety, and avoiding fun. Third, fun can be had in any situation, even when it’s raining. Take advantage of the “bad” things by creating good memories from it. Lastly, we can’t control everything, not people, not events, not the weather, none of it. We are in control of our reactions, our mindset about it, and how we choose to handle it. So, why cry over spilled milk when we can show them how to grab a straw and drink it off the counter? How fun is that? Sometimes we just have to see from an unconventional angle to solve problems and grow together as a family. So go out there and embrace the mess, reparent yourself and restructure your own beliefs to create your best life and they will follow suit without forcing them. They learn by watching, not by force. I learned that the hard way. I wanted them to just do the things. Sometimes that’s not the way, and when you want to scream at them or anyone, scream out jargon and noise and then laugh at it. Release it, but tell them, “Shew I had a big feeling stuck in there and I just had to get that out!! You can do it too!” In the end, you all laugh about it as you strengthen the bond. Healing and regulation are possible and we are living proof of it.

Love,

 A Feral Healer and Regulating Mom