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The Silent Suffering of "The Good Kid"
357 Plays1 year ago
Maggie Nick, MSW, LCSW is a trauma therapist, parenting coach, and has gone viral for her powerful and relatable videos about growing up as "The Good Kid." On this episode, we talk about Attachment Theory and how trauma and shame affect our mental and physical health. We talk about outdated parenting styles and how they've hurt us through generations and how we can break the cycle of trauma by using our "perspectacles." We'll talk about "punishments" vs "consequences," where Gentle Parenting falls short and what Functional Medicine misses. It's a jam-packed episode!
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Parenting with Perspectacles on TikTok
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Transcript
Content Advisory
00:00:00
Speaker
The following episode has themes of childhood abuse and some good-hearted adult language. Listener discretion is advised.
Maggie Nick's Viral Story and Coaching Journey
00:00:14
Speaker
Maggie Nick went viral for her videos on Instagram talking about the price she paid to be the good kid. Perfectionism, people pleasing, a messed up relationship with food. And now as an adult dealing with chronic autoimmune illnesses,
00:00:29
Speaker
Maggie is a licensed clinical social worker and parenting coach. Her Parenting with Perspectacles program is helping people around the world break generational cycles of abuse and trauma.
Healing Through Attachment Theory
00:00:41
Speaker
Today she talks about her own healing journey, the concepts of attachment theory, and how we can parent our children while dealing with our own trauma and stopping the cycle of shame. I'm Stephanie Greenwood and this is The Life Detox.
Shame-Based Parenting and Its Impact
00:01:12
Speaker
Many of us grew up with shame-based parenting styles where children's behavior was the number one priority. Being well-behaved, being quiet, doing well at school, being a good girl or boy, and not acting out, not talking back. How has this parenting style hurt many in our generation now that we're adults? It's like confetti.
00:01:37
Speaker
I feel like we find it here, we find it there. It's, it's everywhere. I mean, it impacts our self-worth would be the biggest. I feel like just because basically our compliance and our obedience was so much more valued than us expressing where I am in this moment. And sometimes that's us in an emotionally dysregulated place doing the freaking best we can. And we're made to feel like, nope.
00:01:59
Speaker
This version of you is worthless. And our parents had no idea that that was the message they were sending. And I think most parents who are perpetuating the cycles have no, I certainly didn't, right? When I learned this myself, but when we make our child feel like you should be ashamed of yourself, I'm disappointed in you for what you did. What my child feels inside is like, oh God, there is something wrong with me. And I don't deserve love when I act like this.
00:02:22
Speaker
And so I need to push away that part of me and like be ashamed of it and hate it too so that I can try to be more lovable. And so I feel like over and over again, multiple times a day, sometimes in our childhood, we internalize this core belief, what became a core belief that certain versions of us when we were upsetting other people or we were out of control or we were having a hard time, which for kids looks like resistance.
00:02:47
Speaker
It looks like disrespect and what our parents would have shut down and punished as disrespect. But that's like inevitable, like children act out their stress. So we learned, oh, okay, cool. If I'm upsetting anyone, that version of me is worthless. If people are disappointed in me, that version of me is worthless and has no value. And so we try to not be that person, but it's inevitable that we will be that person because we're kids and we act out
Understanding Attachment and Shame in Parenting
00:03:09
Speaker
our stress.
00:03:09
Speaker
When I was doing this work myself in therapy about 10 years ago, I had some FSBU type trauma, which you would think about as FSBU trauma. And I really thought that was the source of my suffering and walked through the other side of that with trauma therapy. Nothing really shifted. I just remember being like, well, then what the hell is it? And as we started really kind of diving into my attachment,
00:03:31
Speaker
coming back to my attachment. I kept coming back to parenting. When I was in grad school to be a therapist, I was like, well, I have access to the literature and I'm pregnant with my first child. I'm terrified I'm going to screw her up. So I'm just going to learn, is it possible to raise kids who aren't 29 like I was in therapy, having to learn how to feel their feelings, like begging my therapist to like,
00:03:51
Speaker
teach me is it possible to raise kids who don't people please and don't feel the need to be perfectionist and don't catastrophize the way i did and suffer with a really messed up relationship with food like all these things like all came back to my attachment it really came back to shame the confetti shame that was just
00:04:07
Speaker
everywhere because I feel like the goal of modern parenting to be a good parent, you have to have good kids because of how we are parented that like children should be able to control themselves and always behave and that that's like possible, which it's not. But also because I think we've internalized the sense from our parents that like if I'm in public or if I'm at this family function and my kid melts down, what does that mean about me? What will people think about me as
Historical Influences on Parenting Methods
00:04:34
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the parent?
00:04:34
Speaker
It's like there's shame everywhere just driving this like good kid thing and the good parent thing and it's just it's bonkers. It's really effed up an entire like entire generations, but I feel like our generation just really got it. And it was parenting advice that seemed to trickle down from the Victorian era, that trickle down through the generations where there is this very individualistic behavior focused.
00:04:58
Speaker
and each generation kind of improved on it and maybe we won't abuse our kids quite as much through the generations. I think that it's beautiful though that it's changing now so much and the word is getting out there thanks to people like yourself. When I was having an interesting conversation with Chas Lewis, Mr. Chas, discussing some things and spanking came up and
00:05:19
Speaker
We were just both talking about how I think we both believe that in an effort to cut down on parents hitting kids, that's where all this shame-based discipline really showed up. I think there was physical discipline.
00:05:32
Speaker
And so I think it was almost like the low fat, low sugar thing where like you thought we were doing something good, but it turned out, you know, not saying that we should have ever continued hitting our kids, but I just think the shame and making kids feel like I'm not mad. I'm disappointed. You all have that and that I'm not mad. I'm disappointed phrase that I'm famous for at this point for my crusade against it.
00:05:51
Speaker
I think that it was an effort by the best parenting experts of the time to give parents a way to shut their kid down and put them into obedience and compliance that wasn't putting their hands on. I do think it came from a good place. Unfortunately, it damages kids in a whole different way. We just didn't understand child development like we do today.
Attachment Theory and Relationship Patterns
00:06:10
Speaker
Can you give us a brief summary of attachment theory? We have our primary caregivers, generally our parents,
00:06:17
Speaker
sometimes older, like much older siblings can be an attachment figure, grandparents, extended family, but generally for us it's our parents. On such deep levels we can't even comprehend, teach us what it's like to be in a relationship. We learn and our brain forms all of these neural pathways and then on the emotional side it builds this whole blueprint of how we can expect people to think and react and feel about themselves and us
00:06:42
Speaker
and other people about life. It's like it's our blueprint for how to be in relationship with other people. Ideally we have a secure attachment. Almost nobody. I don't really think anybody walking this earth has a full set. I think we're getting there. I'm trying fighting like hell to have a secure attachment with my children. Almost none of us have a secure attachment. That's where all of our emotional needs were consistently met. Most of us have somewhere in the insecure attachment to disorganized attachment range. You see disorganized attachment when
00:07:09
Speaker
a child has trauma which is I would argue most of our population like 99% has shame trauma so that's everybody but most of the people I see have some elements of disorganized but with like primarily insecurely attached and so there's different patterns of insecure attachment there the two most common that people usually talk about are anxious attachment
00:07:30
Speaker
That's kind of our needy people. That's where I, I'm disorganized, trending, anxious. And the other one is avoidantly attached. So that's kind of the more independent, I don't need anybody. It's so fascinating the more you get into it because anxiously attached people tend to partner up with avoidantly attached people. And it's like this cat and mouse game of
00:07:47
Speaker
I need this from you, but I can't get that from you. The main reason that I created my framework was because I felt like so many of the gentler parenting frameworks that I, they resonated with me when I was first encountering parenthood and tantrums. They resonated. They didn't cover the shame piece. Like nobody else was talking about shame. Shame is everywhere. And that bugged me. Shame is a threat to attachment. I would argue one of the biggest threats to secure attachment.
00:08:10
Speaker
We have these attachment needs. This is Dan Siegel and Tina Paine Bryson's work. We have these four S's that are our attachment needs, and it's to feel safe, soothed, seen, and secure. And shame is gonna undermine every single one. I believe we have two other core needs that nobody talks about. One is to feel like we have value and worth like we matter, which shame is the biggest threat to that, because we are made to feel worthless. And then the other is to release stress. We're a balloon, and if we never let air out, we pop.
00:08:38
Speaker
or we're dealing with trauma like me as a child and we have to somehow contain more air than our balloon can contain. And so that's where we dissociate. Basically, like our bodies need to release consistently. I really created my framework and every single script I write, every single post, I'm always thinking, I want to give people a framework that's going to help them have a secure attachment. We're gonna identify these threats, mostly shame, that are going to undermine and threaten our ability to be securely attached with
The Role of Shame in Relationships
00:09:06
Speaker
our child.
00:09:06
Speaker
our children, every single relationship, not just friends, not just partners, not just their children and their extended family, but supervisors, coworkers, like your relationship as a human is so deeply impacted by your attachment and it drives depression and it drives anxiety and it drives low self-worth. I mean, it's truly ground zero. And so I just want so badly to give my children that secure attachment. It's about just learning, but it's really about unlearning so much of like how we were parented and kind of what's like typical and accepted in our culture.
Parenting with Perspectacles Framework
00:09:35
Speaker
How did you start parenting with perspectives? When I was in grad school doing all of that work, I really was just doing it for me. I was so terrified of having kids and I was terrified that I would just mess them up so much. It was a frantic effort from like a frantic, terrified place of like, I need to learn this. I cannot do this to my kids. I have a very tumultuous, now a strange relationship with my own mother. It's been the hardest thing I've ever gone through consistently. And I just thought,
00:10:05
Speaker
I can't do that to my kid. And I understand enough about attachment to know that if I don't heal, I will perpetuate all of those. Attachment is so interesting. Like I'm one of those people, but if people don't text me back quick enough, there's the like, are they mad at me? Have we done something wrong? You know, I'm that person. I have that because my attachment tells me that when my mother iced me out and gave me the silent treatment, I was in the doghouse.
00:10:26
Speaker
That was true for my entire relationship with her. Now I love internal family systems theory, the parts work, where it's like, I have parts of me that are like, wait, wait, wait, we've been here before. They're not responding. They've gone cold. Alert, alert. It's going this way. They've seen us be hurt before. And so they signal this like 12 alarm fire. My childhood in a nutshell was like my mother being mad at me being like,
00:10:49
Speaker
What could I have possibly done wrong? And when you're a kid, you don't, you just don't get it that like your parent, this is their trauma talking. You take it on and you're like, well, I guess, I guess there is something wrong with me. I guess I did mess up. And so then you're like trying to find the needle in the haystack and you're like,
00:11:04
Speaker
Obviously I messed up somewhere. And so I think that shows up in present day. That's our attachment talking. And so I was in graduate school, really just became an accidental expert in parenting and shame for me. But then when I started in graduate school to be a therapist, you have practicums and you go in and see clients and just kept
00:11:22
Speaker
I'm finding myself applying my work, and if I saw children, I found myself giving them parenting advice. And eventually, once I was out on my own, that continued, and I started. People were like, can you just coach me on parenting? And I'm like, I guess. And had to figure out how to be a coach versus a therapist, which is different. I'd been feeling this calling to do something, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. And when the calling came that it was build a parenting framework, I was like, no thanks. No, I don't accept.
00:11:50
Speaker
Try again. I don't know why I had this deep resistance. It was in November, December, and all through Christmas, it was this nagging cat that would just follow me around. I'm like, go away. I don't know why I had such a deep resistance. Then I surrendered to it, but I'm proud of myself for letting myself take the time I needed to
00:12:11
Speaker
work through whatever that resistance was. And then at some point I was like, oh my gosh, this is my dream. Like, let's go. You know, I never expected to have a parenting framework. I certainly never expected to have people in 76 countries learning my parenting. I mean, it's just blown up way beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
00:12:26
Speaker
but it's pretty special. It's pretty neat. Some of your content has really gone viral because it's so relatable for so many of us. Do you see a lot of people suffering and struggling with these issues? By far the theme that has traveled far and wide consistently gone viral and that I get the most DMs and emails and comments on is the good kids
00:12:48
Speaker
And I had no idea. I still remember this. It was 2021. I just remember I like was at the store and I was driving home and literally my highest self was like pull the car over and like make a video and that was the first like the price I paid to be the good kid and it was the weirdest thing and I'm like okay universe like I'll make this video and it did pretty well like I don't want to say it got to like a hundred thousand views which was a lot for me at the time and I was like wow okay and
00:13:13
Speaker
And then like a month later, it randomly started going, and that one went to, I think 1.6 million views. It was the first million view video that I'd had. And I was, I just remember just being astounded, like at how many people, I heard from people all over the world.
00:13:28
Speaker
I'll play that viral video now. The price I paid to be the good kid. The easy to parent kid. The kid who nobody ever needed to worry about. I never tested boundaries. I never acted out. I never burdened anyone with my feelings. The first 29 years of my life bottling up all of my feelings. Perfectionism. People pleasing. Eating to control everything. A really messed up relationship with food. A crippling fear of disappointing and upsetting others. Vicious self-hatred.
00:13:57
Speaker
Completely incapable of setting boundaries without feeling super guilty. For Spectacles on, good kids suffer silently. They need you to check on them. They are not okay.
00:14:11
Speaker
there is such a cost to bottling those feelings and pretending you're fine when you're not and efforting to like be seen and make other people happy and never disappoint them and just how you you you crash and burn as an adult at some point like you that's not sustainable it's been shocking honestly that experience of like
00:14:30
Speaker
Oh my gosh, there's so many of us good kids. What's interesting is my business partner is Abby Williams. She's you, the mother. She is the opposite. Like she's, she was the bad kid and it's funny because now we've done some projects together. And so there's the good kids kind of find us through me and that like air quotes, bad kids find us through her. She and I had a very similar mother experience, a strange man experience, but it's like, we're two sides of the same coin. It's really our attachment, right? I was at anxiously attached and she's the avoidantly attached.
00:14:56
Speaker
And it's just so fascinating how the same experience can hit two people, depending on their attachment and kind of their wiring. That's how I was made and that's how she was made. And so it's been fascinating to create projects and build stuff with someone who's like the other half of me. So there's a lot of good kids.
00:15:13
Speaker
And then I think the like problem kids are just wired for a fight response. Like it's not their fault. It's just how they're wired. I was wired for a fawn, like a people pleasing response. All kids are just trying to be good. All kids get the same, be good, be good. What is wrong with you? I'm not mad. I'm disappointed. Some of us are wired for fawn. And so that's how we become a good kid. And then some of us, it's just not in our wiring. And so then they suffer.
00:15:36
Speaker
the consequences of trying to be a good kid who's wired for fight response. It can play out so similarly. Those problem kids can still deal with all the same things that good kids, the perfectionism, the people pleasing, needing to control everything, terrified of disappointing other people, messed up relationship with food and substances, all the same stuff, that just for me further validates that the culprit here is shame. It just impacts avoidantly attached kids, fight modes kids differently than it does anxiously attached or phone response kids.
00:16:07
Speaker
After the break, Maggie will tell us how to differentiate between a consequence and a punishment in parenting. We'll discuss where functional medicine falls short and how to deal with disrespect in our kids in a way that protects attachment. Stay tuned.
00:16:30
Speaker
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00:16:50
Speaker
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Attachment Styles and Adult Relationships
00:17:12
Speaker
Do you see people ending up in abusive relationships when they grew up with shame? 100%. Well, because their attachment tells them that they deserve that. And so when you've been mistreated, when you've been violated, your boundaries, when boundaries, honestly, for so many of us, we were made to feel like we were
00:17:28
Speaker
difficult, ridiculous, dramatic. And so you try to set boundaries as an adult and your partner's like, that's laughable. You're like, yeah, no tracks. That's what I've been told my whole life. So cool. The parts of us that want to heal are going to be drawn like a moth to a flame to someone who's going to light up the board for us.
00:17:45
Speaker
trigger us up and down. I mean, we, I truly believe that our psyches want to attract healing partners. And so we're going to attract someone who's going to trigger the hell out of us. And ideally that would help us heal. So many of us just have never had the capacity or the resources or the insight of the tools to heal. And the other thing that I think is so fascinating is that nervous system dysregulation can mimic arousal, not just sexual arousal, but like nervous system arousal.
00:18:12
Speaker
Often the people that we are the most intensely attracted to, that's really dysregulation talking. That's our nervous system. It feels safe and it feels good, but that's because it feels familiar and it's really not real. That intense attraction is often a big red flag. You're dealing with some chronic health conditions. Would you mind telling us about this? I had like IBS type stuff growing up and that's really
Stress, Trauma, and Autoimmune Health
00:18:35
Speaker
resolved. That's probably the biggest one. I do have Hashimoto's, which is autoimmune thyroid.
00:18:40
Speaker
and I have hypothyroid. And I have a couple of other early autoimmune diseases that are sort of, the conditions are right if I don't derail the train. I'm staring down some pretty scary autoimmune diseases. My initial approach to all of that was through food as medicine and really trying to work on inflammation and kind of food triggers. And that did help, but healing and really learning how to regulate my nervous system and learning how to meet that core need I have to regularly release stress.
00:19:08
Speaker
almost everything I feel every day is laced with something from before. I'm just in that season of trauma healing right now where my body's like, oh good, we can heal now? Cool. And it's just like handing over the trauma. Like here's some more. Can you release that? How about that? In the last like three or four years, I've been really focusing on learning to regulate my body and like actually tell my body in its own language that we're safe.
Emotional Release and Coping Mechanisms
00:19:30
Speaker
and there's no threat. Sometimes I'm talking to my kids and my brain and nervous system and the unconscious parts of my psyche. I think I'm in front of my mother. Kids are like little narcissists. There's a lot there to feel real familiar. And so I have to literally be like, this is our child. This is not my mother. And talk myself through that. So regulation has been huge. One of the things that annoys me about when other people talk about regulation is I feel like they're just not talking about the release. Like you really can't regulate without releasing. Like this whole idea of the calm down corners, I get a lot of heat for this, but like,
00:19:59
Speaker
When I'm in a nine out of 10 and rage is about to take over, like the last thing I want to do is like snuggle a stuffed animal. Like I want to punch someone in the face. Like, you know what I mean? Like I would love to snuggle after I hit 10, which is where our body kind of forces the release. And like, as I'm coming down, like, yes, snuggle things. But like in that moment, what I need to do is let my body blow.
00:20:23
Speaker
Whether that's letting the tears come, or letting myself get frustrated, or just punching the shit out of some pillows. Lately, I love to scream the f-bomb into pillows. Like, that's my jam. And, I mean, I've got nice, thick pillows at my house. And so, like, my kids can be right next to me. And they just heard, when I have an overreaction.
00:20:40
Speaker
It makes sense in my history. Like whatever is needed to come out, I just finally have this deep trust of my body. And if my body needs to scream these like unspeakable things, it's not really about my kid. This is all about little me and the shit that she's been carrying since childhood. The stuff I had to push down all the times I needed to speak my mind and I had to just be that good girl and hold my tongue and like, you know, you're right, I'm the worst and all this stuff. Like just let it go.
00:21:07
Speaker
Like releasing is such a massive part and I don't feel like that part is understood well enough or taught. Learning to let my body be frustrated when I need to be frustrated instead of just bottling and like pushing on and pretending I'm fine. That's been huge. What I've noticed is and with really the IBS symptoms is that if I don't release it in my mind, then my mind will hand it off to my body and my body will release it its own way. For years, I got nauseous all the time.
00:21:35
Speaker
and upset tummy all the time. And once I kind of took that back from my body, it's been crazy how infrequently that has to happen now. There is some like really early childhood trauma. I think sometimes when we have like trauma from when we were so little that we are pre-verbal, right? And that part of us just can't speak about what happened. Like there is some trauma that's so gnarly or it was so early.
00:21:59
Speaker
Whenever the IBS shows up, I'm always like, that makes sense. Good job, body. It's like I can see it as my body releasing what I can't release because my mind won't let me or because it's just something that I can't do. Seeing the autoimmunity, seeing whatever it is, it's just like my body is being so brilliant right now. Like when I think back to how much I hated my body for the IBS and now I look back and I'm like, you had no other way to release stress.
00:22:24
Speaker
No other way. You are so freaking brilliant body. Like you came up with a way to release stress every day. There was no other safe way to release stress when my body figured it out. Like how freaking cool is that? I'm not saying it was fun. I think with excessive sweating, like all these symptoms that we want to like take meds for, like just as a clinician when I have someone in there reporting like excessive sweating.
00:22:46
Speaker
excessive hair loss, like any of these things, my mind's like, what are we releasing? Like your body's got something and it's gotta find this other way. I had a like heart thing for a while and it was like my heart would speed up and slow down. Of course, like cardiologists did the workup, did the heart monitor, did everything, checked out just fine. And one day I put it together that that's abandonment stuff. Like when my deep abandonment trauma gets hit, my heart thing happens. My heart is literally holding that like deep abandonment trauma. And when it gets activated, I have the heart thing.
00:23:15
Speaker
And so now I'm not scared of it because I'm like, well, we've been checked out. Every time it happens, I'm like, well, okay, that makes sense. Like, good job, buddy. You just figured out how to release that trauma. Fascinating when you think about it that way. Six months later, I lost my hair for nine months, lost about half of my hair, and it was terrifying, but thankfully it stopped. But that was my body release. Like, that's a release.
00:23:35
Speaker
Why do you let go of all that? This is just a theory that I have. And there's maybe a little bit of research that can back it up, but still emerging. When you carry that shame for so long, if there's something wrong with me, there's something wrong with me, there's something wrong with me, the body gets that message of, oh, there must be something wrong with this body. Let's go ahead and activate the immune system and attack it. And we end up with these immune system issues.
Linking Childhood Trauma to Health Issues
00:24:02
Speaker
I totally agree. Anytime somebody says, oh, I have an immune condition or I have a thyroid condition or I have a hormone imbalance, I'm like, okay, tell me about your childhood trauma. It's nuts to me. I have this chronic skin thing that pops up and for years I went to doctors and like, oh, we don't know. And I could like kind of connect it to sugar, but like not always just looking for like sources of inflammation. And literally it's like 48 hours after I have a big trauma pop up.
00:24:28
Speaker
I can expect this condition. It's like clockwork now. And it's maddening to me that more practitioners, I mean, functional medicine has done so much to like root causes, but they're still not trauma-informed. Not one doctor suggested it was emotional. Like, come on. I can literally set my clock by this. Like, it's going to flare up. My body's handing that trauma off to my, mind is handing that trauma off to my body and my body's going to figure out a really creative way to release it.
00:24:53
Speaker
When you have trauma as a child from your attachment figure, that shame, and you can't release stress or you get in trouble for being disrespectful, it's like swallowing explosives. Like how could we not expect it?
00:25:07
Speaker
to have catastrophic impacts on our whole system, every body system. I mean, way past our mood and how we feel about ourselves, but like, how is every body system not catastrophically, exponentially impacted by swallowing explosive after explosive after? I mean, that stuff has to blow up inside of us because we can't get it out.
00:25:26
Speaker
And functional medicine goes and looks, okay, let's look at your heavy metals. Let's look at your gut health. Let's look at all of these mineral imbalances. But the poor gut health, the heavy metal toxicity, the mineral deficiencies were all caused by the trauma and that hypervigilance state that you've been in for years and years and years and years. Okay, switching gears. Let's go back to parenting for a minute.
Gentle vs. Permissive Parenting
00:25:48
Speaker
What's the difference between gentle parenting and permissive parenting?
00:25:53
Speaker
Gentle parenting is an umbrella term. Like I consider, I guess I consider parenting with respectacles, like under the umbrella of gentle parenting. The idea is that we're going to understand the kids have needs and attempt to meet their needs, but in a gentler, more respectful way without traditional authoritarian style discipline and punishments.
00:26:14
Speaker
I like to think about parenting with respectacles as a gentler framework, like probably under that umbrella, but then also it's shame informed. So like, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding within the gentle parenting, conscious parenting community of like, what is a consequence and what is a punishment? And like this obsession with like, it must, the consequence must be related to the thing that happened. And if it's not, then you're punishing the child. Like then there doesn't need to be a con, I don't know.
00:26:41
Speaker
I like differ in key ways to a lot of the gentle parenting and I stand by everything I've put out there on that topic, by the way. But I just think understanding that it's about how we make our kids feel when they're disciplined. I could have a natural consequence, but if I make my kid, if I use shame and fear and make them feel
00:26:58
Speaker
worthless like I don't love them like they don't deserve love right now because of what they did like there's something wrong with them to me that's a punishment even if it's related to the thing the distinguishing thing is not whether it's related it's how are we making the child feel all of gentle parenting it's kind of this huge community of us where we're like I don't need to like read my child the riot act I don't need to make them feel terrible and make them suffer the way we had to suffer
00:27:22
Speaker
I can say, hey, you're having a hard time controlling yourself right now. I don't need to just take the thing out of his hand that he's being unsafe with and put it on top of the thing. It's more of a, huh, perspective goes on. His impulse control has gone offline. He needs my help right now. It's this basic understanding that children's behavior is telling us about their needs and they need our help. It's not that they should know better or they need to make better choices or any of that crap that I can't stand.
00:27:52
Speaker
My kid can't control themself right now and they don't need me to yell at them or spank them or make them feel terrible and suffer and beg for forgiveness the way we had to. They need me to be like, whoa, I'm your loving parent here. I'm your leader. It's okay that you messed up. There may be consequences.
00:28:09
Speaker
as there are sometimes for things like this. We'll get to that, but like, what do you need right now? How can I help you through this emotional storm that you're acting out? What's going on underneath? When our kids are lashing out, it's from shame. This is something that I feel like gentle parenting as a whole doesn't get, again, as the shame piece.
00:28:26
Speaker
When my kids mad, it's not really about what they're mad about. The lash out is coming from the, I'm bad. What is wrong with me? You don't love me right now. When they're in the lash out, if I kind of speak to the shame, and sometimes they need to release before we can get to this point, obviously they wouldn't hear me talking, but at some point I'm like, are you feeling bad about yourself? Are you worried that there's something wrong with you because you can't control yourself? I just had this conversation with my son this morning. It's just like,
00:28:51
Speaker
There it is. Then sometimes he's resisting. He's like, there is something wrong with me, but that's okay, right? He needs to push back right now. And I say that kids resist to release, to regulate, right? So the resistance is how they release the stress and how they get regulated. And so now he's going to be like, you don't love me. There is something wrong with me. I am bad. Like get that out. That's how it feels for you. He needs me right now to get that. That's how it feels for
Addressing Shame in Children Without Reinforcing it
00:29:15
Speaker
him.
00:29:15
Speaker
He doesn't need right now for me to be like, no, that's not true. He needs me to get that like right now you're in a shame spiral and you need me to like see that, that you're hurting. And it's so scary to be in that place where you think nobody loves me. I'm so bad that like
00:29:30
Speaker
My parent doesn't even love me right now. That's a terrible way to feel. And so I often say things like, oh, I'm so sorry that that's how it feels for you right now. I see you. I see that that's how it feels. And I'm so sorry that that's how it feels right now. And as he releases and I let him without shutting him down, which is among the hardest things I've ever had to do.
00:29:48
Speaker
As a human, learn how to not shut down my kids because that's what I got. As he regulates down, there's the like, mommy, why did I yell at you like that? Mommy, why did I hit you? Shame spiral number two. And I'm like, because your impulse control went offline. I'm not going to let you talk to me like that.
00:30:03
Speaker
I'm not going to let you hit me. It's not okay to hurt people when you're angry, but you lost control. You're six. The parts of the brain that control impulse control, it's like a massive orchestration of different parts of the brain and they're not fully developed and working together and neurotypical kids until seven-ish. That's why you see that massive leap developmentally between seven and eight. He's six. We're right here. Like it's insane for me to expect him to like always have control. A lot of times I'll see these posts about like, oh,
00:30:32
Speaker
Just do special time with your kids. Just do one-to-one time with them. They won't tantrum anymore. It's like, nope. That sixth core need of releasing stress, sometimes that's it. They've been bottling their feelings all day and they just need to blow them up right now. It's not that you didn't do enough. It's not that you didn't do enough special time. There's nothing anybody can do. This balloon is about to pop. We want the balloon to pop. We don't want the balloon to have to hold more than it can hold.
00:30:55
Speaker
and that follows us into adulthood with dissociation so like let the balloon pop let them regulate like let them release all that stuff maybe we can let them release it before they pop even and there are things that we can do throughout the day to make them feel safer like not shutting them down every single time they are acting disrespectfully and to start seeing that as their resistance right if we see that my kids being disrespectful and i'm like okay
00:31:17
Speaker
I would have been shut down for this. This is going to be triggering. Okay. Buckle up and then just allow the disrespect with boundaries. Like, oh, I see you're upset. I'm not going to let you talk to me like that. It's okay to be upset. It's not okay to hurt me with your mad. Okay. I'm going to hold your hands. Not going to let you hit me, bud. You know, and oftentimes he ends up like faced away from me in my lap and I'm just
00:31:36
Speaker
It's not about like restraining him. It's just like you are not able to control yourself right now. And so I'm going to help you until you can control yourself again. It's not that I can't trust you right now. Don't say that. Please for the love of God, don't say that. Just say you're having a hard time controlling yourself. I'm going to help you. And at some point,
00:31:52
Speaker
he'll resist. Sometimes like older kids, they're not getting held as much. There's a point of like five to six where kids are heavier to pick up. It's harder to kind of get that physical intimacy. And so I truly think that sometimes their psyche has them do things to get their needs bad. And so that
00:32:07
Speaker
physical proximity if I can stay regulated and just hold him and keep him from hurting me. It's like that need of like, I'm okay and my mom's got me and she's more powerful than me, not in like a power struggle way or like I'm gonna put you in your place, but like when I get out of control, she's there to help me. She's stronger than me. I can't take her down. I don't have to worry. She's got me. In these moments for my kids, especially when they're like vicious and nasty, the thing that goes through my head intentionally is can you love me?
00:32:37
Speaker
even like this. It's like they're literally saying, can you love me even when I'm vicious? Can you love me even when I push you away? Can you love me even when I call you this name? And there's a way to lovingly own the hell out of my boundary that it's not kind of talk to me like that, but show them that I do love you right now. If we go into shame, we're sending the message, no, I don't love this version of you. I don't love you when you act like this. It's simple. It's not that hard if we're regulated. It's a heavy lift if we're dysregulated. Understanding that he's
00:33:06
Speaker
a caterpillar. He's not a butterfly like me. He's gonna struggle and for me to expect him to be able to fly like a butterfly, we were, don't you think?
Building Secure Attachments Through Love
00:33:15
Speaker
so expected to be butterflies and shamed and made to feel like we were disappointing everybody because we couldn't regulate like adults. We couldn't critically think like all these capacities and capabilities that were like way beyond what was even possible for us as children. I can see him and be like he's a caterpillar doing caterpillar things. This sucks. That's not my favorite part but in a weird way those moments where I feel like they're saying can you love me even like this are like my favorite moments. It's so weird. They used to be so triggering but now it's like oh goodie
00:33:45
Speaker
I get to love them when they're at their worst, right? What they would probably describe as their worst. I get to show them and give that to them in a way nobody ever gave that to me.
00:33:54
Speaker
It's an important attachment moment. So important. And I think those are the moments clinically seeing children who are presenting with anxiety, depression, self-harm, disordered eating, that kind of stuff. When parents have those moments, after those like incidents where the parent was able to stay regulated and calm and love the child through it and talk down the shame, that's where you see this massive healing and growth. I can tell without them even telling me that they've had one of those. They impact us deeply.
00:34:21
Speaker
Like it's like the ripple effect of just one of those incidents where a parent's able to be like, my magic nine, I see you.
00:34:27
Speaker
I've got you and I love you. The kids would walk in and I'd be like, wow. From the parent standpoint, I feel so much more like a successful parent. I feel so much more deeply connected to my child. On both sides, it's just this cataclysmically positive experience.
Embracing Imperfection in Parenting
00:34:42
Speaker
Do we have to be perfect parents in order to have secure attachment with our children? When a parent is trying to be perfect, they're hiding the mistakes and the mess ups and the places where they're not enough.
00:34:54
Speaker
I've had so many clients come into my office who were like, my parent never struggled. What is wrong with me? What was modeled for them is like, we hide our struggles. We don't show any of our work, darling. And so the child grows up into this parent who believes their parent never struggled. I think as long as when we mess up, we always circle back.
00:35:11
Speaker
With the repair, it's important to mess up. You're showing your children that you're not perfect and that you mess up sometimes and there's nothing wrong with you and people make mistakes. What that does to their psyche and the way that their psyche is going to generalize that unconsciously, we want to teach our kids that like messing up is okay. It doesn't make you a horrible person. I believe that about myself. I'm also going to believe that about other people.
00:35:33
Speaker
It's so important to mess up. Just always repair. Tell me about the Parenting with Trauma project. Abby is that you, the mother, she and I did the estrangement project for people who have a mother wound and they are estranged from their mothers.
Project on Parental Trauma and Resources
00:35:44
Speaker
As we were working through the estrangement project, we were like, we've got to do one for trauma with parenting.
00:35:49
Speaker
It's been tricky because I think that a lot of people are seeing it and they're like, oh, my stuff's not bad enough. Like, I don't have enough trauma. We all have trauma, like all of us. You might not think you do, but we all have shame trauma, at least from the way we're disciplined. But we were just trying to build out a project that would address when you've been parented in a way that traumatized you. It's going to impact you as a parent.
00:36:12
Speaker
I think this story is so universal for so many of us who have trauma from childhood. You read the books, listen to the podcast, buy the courses, you've got this game plan, how you're not going to lose your shit, and then you lose your shit. You're like, well, I'm a failure. No, you're not. Trauma.
00:36:27
Speaker
trauma is going to hijack you, trauma is going to show up. We just wanted to put something out there that addressed all the ways in which when you've had trauma, it impacts your ability to be that parent that you want to be. We brought in Chaz, Mr. Chaz, and then a in real life friend of mine who's brilliant, Logan Cooper. She's at Crooked Counselor Cooper. We're the team and we put out 22 videos. We've got videos on discipline without hurting, hypervigilance. Abby's got a video on the silent treatment and how that impacts us.
00:36:56
Speaker
We've got three videos on rage. I did a video on the mother wound. Logan did a video on the father wound and how that shows up in our parenting. I'm just so tired of people beating themselves up for the trauma and not understanding that that's the trauma. And there's so much we can do to heal that. And so
00:37:11
Speaker
We are three trauma therapists, and Chaz is a trauma-informed educator and parenting expert. I'm so proud of it. I'm so excited for people to get it and be able to work through it. Tell me about the programs that you offer.
Workshops and Parenting Tools
00:37:23
Speaker
My best-selling workshop, they're like neck and neck. I've got one called Raising Children Who Don't Have an Anger Problem, and that's more about regulation. Mostly for the kids who are like the problem kids, I feel like is mostly the people who tend to buy that one.
00:37:36
Speaker
talking through how when we let them have their big feelings. Got another workshop about dealing with disrespect and defiance where I talk more about like disrespectful behavior, why it's so triggering for us and how to get perspectives and see that disrespect as our child asking for help and how to lovingly own the hell
00:37:55
Speaker
out of our boundaries. And then I have another one about parenting a good kid. So for the children like me, where nobody needed to worry about us, understanding that those are actually the kids I'm the most concerned about. And so I made a whole workshop about how to parent those kids, how to help them stop bottling their feelings, how to help them feel safe, not people pleasing. How to parent in a way that nurtures these ideas that they get to take up space and it's okay for them to mess up. Is there anything else that you want to share with our audience?
Encouragement and Breaking Trauma Cycles
00:38:24
Speaker
You're doing so much better than you think you are. It's so easy when we're trying to heal and trying to parent differently to just only focus on the times when you mess up. There are magic moments every day where you are giving your child the parent you needed. You are. You're doing it. And maybe you did it for 59 minutes and at minute 60 you lost your shit, but like those 59 minutes matter. And like losing your shit at 60 minutes does not undo the 59 minutes where you stayed calm and you saw them.
00:38:50
Speaker
and you tried, it's important for you to acknowledge where it is working and where you are doing what you're trying to do.
Conclusion and Credits
00:38:57
Speaker
I've linked to Maggie's website, Instagram, and TikTok in the show notes. If you're a parent doing the work to break these generational cycles of trauma, Maggie's programs can help give you the tools to regulate yourself and your children.
00:39:13
Speaker
But if you or your family is experiencing ongoing trauma or abuse, whether it's from a family member or a spouse, it's time to have a talk with yourself. Make a safe plan because you might need a life detox.
00:39:36
Speaker
The Life Detox is produced by me, Stephanie Greenwood, and brought to you by Bubble and Be Organic. The views and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not necessarily represent those of myself or my company. Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and is not medical advice. Being a guest on this show does not imply endorsement of Greenplay LLC or any of its projects. Stay well, friends.
00:40:11
Speaker
This will be the only episode for November. I'll be attending to our annual big sale, which runs November 10th through the 14th at bubblemp.com from here on out. I'll see you again in December for the final three episodes of season one of the life detox. Thank you so much for listening.