Your Parenting Triggers: Understanding Your Trauma
Ever feel yourself slipping into anger when dealing with your children? It could be that you are experiencing a parenting trigger. Your past trauma could be dictating how you view your current situation, family and yes your children. Understanding your trauma and parenting triggers are keys to breaking the cycle of anger.
Parenting Triggers: A personal story
I am not sure where it comes from, or what the background story is, but growing up the women in my family had a joint trigger–when children stick their tongue out at you. As I write this, I realize that it began with my maternal grandmother. It may have gone back further, but I don’t know.
If you stuck your tongue out at her you were sure to receive quick and decisive physical punishment. My mother and aunts had a shared hatred of this sign of disrespect. As a child I knew, “this is something you do not do.”
However, recently my 3-year-old started sticking her tongue out at me. She is the only one to do it consistently. Normally she is feeling wronged and up set at how something is playing out in the home. So she shows her distaste. I am able to understand this and give her a hug and a little more understanding. It was easy for me to see this trigger coming and avoid it.
My (surprising) trigger
Turns out my trigger is completely different. I have always wanted to be a mother. I always wanted to give myself fully to the task. But I never thought about how and why I needed to maintain balance by also getting my needs met. I often (and somewhat joyfully) push myself to burn out.
So along comes my oldest daughter. She was clearly not interested in pushing herself to exhaustion and would demand her downtime regardless of what tasks needed to be completed around the house.
To make matters worse, she thought nothing about adding to my plate tasks that would make her feel good.
It got to the point where just looking at her sitting on her phone (sometimes right next to the sink full of dishes!) would drive me into a rage. I couldn’t imagine why she was being so blind and why I would have to consistently ask for help over and over again.
To make matters worse the cycle was repeating itself with other children.
What in the world was going on?
I thought the issue was my children not wanting to help. But in actuality the issue was me not meeting my own needs–constantly pushing them aside and then demanding my children help.
Often our triggers come from a need that is not being met. Perhaps it is one of those basic needs like sleep, hydration and nourishing foods. But sometimes it is something bigger (or a combination of things). Maybe we don’t feel like we have a supportive community. Or we have a financial need and are constantly living under a state of stress. Maybe communication has broken down in a significant relationship.
Our society is an expert at giving us a sense of lack. After all why would we be motivated to buy anything if we feel content and happy?
Walking out a solution
While some triggers are actually encouraged by society we don’t have to be a victim of them. By noticing when and why we feel angry we can pinpoint our triggers. This can be difficult if we always feel angry. In this case begin with focusing on sleep, hydration and nourishing foods for a week. Notice how your thoughts change when basic needs are met.
Back to my trigger. I set a goal of noticing and meeting my basic needs by
- Cutting out unnecessary tasks
- Taking the time to meet my needs (begin with the 3 basics)
- Encouraging my children to notice their actual needs (not vegging out on phones)
- Teaching them self-care routines that actually make them feel rested–begin with food and sleep
I noticed when we are all rested a more healthy environment makes it easier to deal with more complicated parenting triggers as they come up.
