Postpartum Depression

Trauma Therapy Company Ohio

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Monica Bartley - Being a parent is already hard enough and doesn’t come with an instruction manual. We often learn that we parent and teach our children the way we were brought up. We take a step back and look and sometimes say, well we didn’t turn out so bad even though we had trauma. But in reality, we are fighting against ourselves to break habits and change but find ourselves sometimes stuck in old ways. I am by no means the perfect parent and I have had to relearn how to parent my three children. I always feel extreme guilt because my oldest son who is now six had to endure the me that was struggling with trauma and I parented him that way. I often yelled and didn’t know how to handle meltdowns of his because I was never taught to regulate my emotions. His screaming made me spiral and it was like I just saw a black screen in my brain and everything went downhill with it. I used techniques I thought made sense that my mother used on me, but looking back they were awful and not at all affectionate, loving or beneficial for my son. I had to accept that I messed up but have made up for it by learning myself and getting in tune with my son. I changed the way I speak, or handle situations with my daughters and I feel parenthood has been easier (for what it can be with three wild children). I also had a mother who had total influence over my life and would interfere with how I would parent. For that reason and some others, I decided to cut ties with the relationship. Was it the hardest thing I had to do, yes… but by doing this my children are flourishing and this mama is free and can make her own decisions and feel good about them. You may have parents who are still in your life and have influence on how you raise your children. You could be turning to social media with unrealistic expectations which causes you to feel bad about yourself and ways of parenting. Or you may just be stuck in your ways and you want to change but you don’t know how. Trauma can be an all-encompassing construct that includes a spectrum of different experiences, we define trauma as abuse endured during childhood in terms of physical neglect or abuse, emotional neglect or abuse, and sexual abuse.

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