2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Dangerous mom
The phrase “psychological trauma” will surprise no one, and mothers do their best to protect their children from this. But if the danger is not in external distant factors, but much closer - in the mother herself? More precisely, in her reactions to a certain behavior of the child, for example, in the form of fiery anger, icy silence or a contemptuous look, etc.
In such situations, the mother herself eventually begins to be afraid of traumatizing the child's psyche. And this fear disturbs everyone - both the mother and the baby.
How it can manifest itself:
- the mother's habitual active calm behavior disappears;
- she becomes too anxious; afraid to say an extra word, to react somehow “wrongly” to the child's behavior;
- endlessly scrolls thoughts in my head: “Is this right? Or maybe I should treat him differently? What if I tell him, and he gets hurt from this …”;
- experiencing despair and powerlessness due to the current situation;
- due to the inhibition of his own spontaneous reactions, he becomes irritable and aggressive;
- loses self-esteem and self-esteem.
A wall of emotional alienation grows between mom and baby. And just a piece of advice: “Calm down, everything will be fine” here, alas, does not help - there is too much of everything behind this fear.
Where does fear come from?
In most cases, the mother's own childhood traumatic experience is behind the fear of injuring the child. The common phrase, “We all come from childhood,” suggests that something happened in my mother’s childhood that left a deep, painful imprint.
How did she get this traumatic experience?
In psychology, a trauma is considered to be some kind of strong experience that the child's psyche cannot cope with on its own. What kind of experience can it be? For example, a child cannot independently cope with his fear, anger, rage and for this he needs the help of a loved one - mom or dad.
Why does the child have such strong experiences?
Because he is faced with dangers, prohibitions, surprises and reacts to these situations very emotionally, strongly, brightly. He still does not know how to control his psychic energy - he is not structured, not conscious of it. The child often does not understand at all what he is feeling - he needs help to name his feelings and appropriate them. He also cannot independently restrain them in himself, control them, rather they control him.
Parents help the child to see and understand his feelings. They show how he can express his anger, rage, fear, anxiety, how over time these feelings are replaced by others, more calm.
Thus, as we have noticed, for the appearance of not traumatic, but ordinary life experience, the child definitely needs an assistant in experiencing and living through the feelings that arise in difficult life situations. Sometimes there is no such assistant nearby. And sometimes the parents do not help with their behavior, but they themselves create situations that traumatize the child's psyche.
For example:
● are dismissive of the child, ● humiliate, ● show emotional coldness, ● mental cruelty, ● ignore the child's problems and desires, ● voice double messages, ● negligently treat children's age-related needs, ● communicate aggressively with the child, etc.
If the mother did not have parents-helpers when difficult situations arose, but there was humiliation, neglect, ignorance by them of her experiences, this probably hurt her soul more than once.
It is on this basis that her fear grows with the appearance of her own child - the fear of causing the same injury to the child. Fear that it will turn out to be just as cold, cruel, rude to the most beloved little person.
What to do?
Let's think and analyze how to overcome such fear for mom.
Firstly, you need to decide: what, in your understanding, does it mean to injure a child? Is trauma screaming, hitting, threatening, ignoring? What manifestations of your own are you afraid of?
Secondly, it is important to understand in what situations this can happen? What does a child have to do to make you “hurt him”? For example, a child must break some rules of behavior or shout or cry for a long time.
Thirdly, back to understanding trauma. Trauma is the inability of the psyche of a child, and indeed of any person, to cope independently, to digest, to survive a certain situation. The child is not yet able to experience such situations on his own, his psyche has not matured. In this case, the child needs an ally to help him get through such difficult life events. To experience is, first of all, to speak out what the child has encountered, to create in him an understanding of what happened, what he feels and how he experiences it, what he will do next, how everyone will live further.
Parents are the best candidates for the role of such allies and helpers.
Therefore, third, you need to become an ally of the child in experiencing difficult situations, and not add difficulties to him.
But then mom has difficulties.
Yes, many mothers at consultations admit that they do not know:
how, without offending, to limit,
how to culturally say, without intimidating the child,
how to convey your demand without humiliating it,
how to fix a mistake without yelling
For example, calmly tell the child: "You are shouting right now. Probably, you are angry at something. While you are shouting, I cannot understand what you are angry at. But I do not care. I really want to know what makes you angry. me? When you calm down and shut up, you can tell me, and we will figure out how to be together."
Or: “What you are doing can be done differently. Let me show you how, and next time, if you want, you can do it differently, even better."
Or: “I am now at a loss, we were going to go for a walk and agreed about this with you. I see that you completely ignore our agreement, you are not going to sit and play. Don't you want to walk? Why? What happened?"
Or: “You knock your feet and are silent. It looks like you're angry. Or are you upset? Or are you worried? What exactly is happening to you? Let's discuss"
It seems easy to say such words calmly when you read an article, but not in real life.
It turns out that it is difficult to talk in this way with a screaming, demanding, breaking rules of your own child, because at the same time you need to cope with your own emotions that arise: anger, confusion, fear, anxiety, despair.
Emotions, which at one time no one helped to structure, understand, experience, did not teach how to cope with them and keep in themselves, expressing the feelings that arise in words that will not hurt the soul of a loved one.
It is necessary to help the child to cope with what you cannot cope with yourself - it turns out "a shoemaker without boots."
Therefore, sometimes it is impossible to "speak calmly", it turns out to shout in response, to call or punish with ignorance, silence, a contemptuous look. What is in the arsenal of unconscious behavior.
This is how the experience of family communication is reproduced from generation to generation.
But, our mother has an advantage over previous generations.
Despite the fact that she sometimes breaks down and acts under the influence of emotions or is afraid to break off, she has an understanding -
this behavior is malignant and unacceptable and must be removed
And it is this negative attitude towards one's own reactions, on the one hand, that creates the fear of traumatizing the child, and on the other hand, it opens up the opportunity for the mother to change and create a new way of communicating with her own child
Means, fourthly, it is necessary to create a new communication experience.
Let's summarize.
Life is both pleasant and unpleasant events.
In the relationship between a mother and a child, difficult situations will surely arise, since the upbringing process involves restrictions, certain prohibitions.
Also, the child will surely face difficult situations outside the home, this will cause anger, scare him, upset.
If the mother beats, screams, be silent in such situations - this will traumatize the child's psyche and the mother should be wary of such reactions.
To prevent this from happening, the mother has the opportunity to create new communication experiences without the traumatic methods of parenting and influence. As we discussed above, for independent formation, a mother does not have enough of her own emotional and psychological resources to understand and experience both her own and children's emotions at the same time. Therefore, you can seek help from a psychologist.
As a result of working with a psychologist, analyzing specific life situations, the mother will be able to learn:
- understand, cope and manage your own emotions, which so far arise spontaneously;
- understand the child's experiences in various specific situations;
- to react to his experiences in such a way that the child, thanks to such a reaction and help, becomes calmer and more balanced, learns to manage his emotions, to experience various situations without trauma;
- communicate restrictions and rules of behavior in such a way that the child is not afraid of the mother's cry, her silence or humiliation, but communicates with her with trust and interest.
Ultimately, through counseling, the mother will regain her self-esteem and peace of mind, and a new, understandable way of communicating with her baby will emerge.
You can be afraid, sit in the bushes and reproduce old behavior, or you can work and create new life experiences.
You never know what you can do till you try.
Ready?
I will be glad to see you at the consultations.
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