This article is less about the modalities I offer and more about where I'm at, which is part of what many practitioners have to offer.
I've been listening to a podcast, and I would like to share some quotes/insights.
"For a healer to be able to offer healing, they need to work on themselves because, if healing is going to come to someone, it's going to come through a conduit, someone who has been there themselves."
"Good anger should be like lightning, it comes fast, hits its target, and when it's over, there is no anger left. Our immune and (regulated) stress systems should be the same."
"A traumatic memory is missing its timestamp, so when the memory is reactivated, the person can not tell the difference between what happened then and what is happening now. In the past, the need may have been life and death, now it may not be, but everything inside them, triggers them to react like it still is. We break this pattern, by surprising their brain, by not getting angry at what may seem like an over reaction, showing them love and meeting their present need instead, so they can return to their owl brain (instead of their watchdog, possum, or poisonous cicada state), from protection to connection mode."
In preparation for this weekend with our extended family on my husband's side, youngest has been really struggling. My husband gets tired of the outbursts and trauma reactions. I was ready to dig through my Esogetic treatments, to try to calm her brain and unhook her attachment to certain traumas. I was hoping to get a kirlian photo of her fingers tips and toes, to help guide me to her present need, but she's not quite ready, as the person cannot lift their fingers tips or toes when the machine is running, or they will get a shock.
I didn't have to apply any treatment, because we experienced the perfect storm instead. This is a photo my sister in law took of her brother and their niece:
Maybe you can see that it's from 1.5yrs ago, and that it's been cut up and put back together?
This photo has been haunting our youngest until we put it back together (see below). What was absentmindedly staged as a cute (but fake) photo, became like as if someone thought it would be cute to pose me in a romantic position with someone else for my husband to see all the time. Not fun, not easy to process. "Why is my younger cousin baking with my dad?!!"
After my husband got fed up with our youngest ruining another night, with her rigidity and chaos (how she copes with stress), he cut up the photo, and showed it to her, thinking this would put an end to it. Our youngest cried and said "she loves her cousin" and, with my help, she put the photo back together, and placed it on her dad's desk.
There are of course layers.
Having recently lost his 99yr old grandmother, his 88yr old father is likely next. While his father won't accept earplugs when our youngest has a meltdown, he will also check in on her when she is done and say "how is the little one doing now, feeling any better?". He has been the easiest of my husband's family for me to hold space for. His grandmother would have been second, however, after having children, each with their own special needs, I was no longer able to hold space for his grandmother too.
My husband wanted to spend Mother's Day with his family, I get that. But our youngest had already had several violent outbursts and, after this trip having so many wins, with our youngest finally able to bond and communicate a bit with her cousin, I didn't want to chance another event. I wanted to enjoy my own Mother's Day, with my kids too, and I need my husband's help with our youngest, when we are in highly distractable public places.
This world has been too much for my eldest and my youngest. Middle would like to insert herself into it, but people disappoint her often. For each, I have had to protect, but also step back, when they seek something from others, that I would rather protect them from, that I don't have to give, because it's not in me, I'm only half of their DNA. Even though I have to put the pieces back together, when what is offered to them, was done without sufficient longterm thought.
I don't like the person that I become to do this for them. But I've learned to watch what I do with more understanding and compassion. I put up walls to protect myself and my child. The adult relationship takes the hit, to protect the child and my ability to parent. If I don't do these things, my children don't get what they need, and that to me is more important. My kids are here in this world, speaking their firm truth, and when they waiver, I protect, so they can find their truth again.
Sometimes it's bitter sweet for me to look at the photos below. Where I can see them struggle in this world, trying to regulate their bodies, when no one else seems to understand "why can't you just force your child", "I don't understand, I never had that experience, I just tell my kids this", but it's so invalidating.
Just because someone else didn't have or doesn't remember having an experience, doesn't mean another person can't have it. And also, that person is just being honest. We are all just being honest. Even when our honesty fails to hold others in the way that they need to be held.
This is why I react the way I do, when people enter bubbly, and I'm like "there is nothing bubbly about what I am dealing with, and what you create for me to deal with, when you fail to see what is really going on, for me and my child".
I hope this helps someone see, how we may have the tools, we may wait for the opening, and life may show us another way. We may want to do better, but we continue to show up as we are, because doing so meets what we need. As we learn to soften our judgements, of self and others, seeing everything as honest reflections of what is, even if we can't be what we would like to be, we are what we need to be.
Just like I had to be patient, when uploading these photos caused me to lose 32 minutes worth of edits, I have to be patient with myself and my family, as we add and remove protection, so we can grow.
From the first podcast link above, they also shared that "parents of kids with vulnerable nervous systems end up being their child's case manager, because they need to see so many healers to be understood, and that this is not ideal, because parents should delight in their kids". I have found that I am certainly my kids' case manager and parent, I literally have a binder of information for each of my kids, and contribute to one for my clients too. Let the bubbly, disorganized, non long term thinking people, who drive me crazy, delight in them (we all serve a purpose). And I'll be there, in the shadows, ready to catch whatever they drop. I enjoy my kids very much. I also see their needs, limits, and long term goals. I delight in the progress we've made, working together, day after day.
Comments