The Hidden Reality of Post-Traumatic Parenting: Breaking the Cycle | Dr. Robyn Koslowitz - EP 719

coming up next on passion struck not only will your damage not damage your kids but your damage

can be the catalyst for you to break the cycle right your damage can actually make you into a

better parent you're not flawed in some ways you're uniquely qualified to parent because you know

what your values are welcome to passion struck i'm your host john miles this is the show where we

explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters each week

i sit down with change makers creators scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience

and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning heal what hurts and pursue the fullest

expression with who were capable of becoming whether you're designing your future developing as

a leader or seeking deeper alignment in your life this show is your invitation to grow with purpose

and act with intention because the secret to a life of deep purpose connection and impact is

choosing to live like you matter

hey friends and welcome back to episode 719 a passion struck we're continuing our series the

meaning makers and exploration of how meaning takes shape early develops through experience

and a strengthen through conscious repair and our recent episodes we've been tracing how environments

shape the inner life last week i was joined by Alex emis where we examined how uncertainty

competition influence adult decision making and then earlier this week shana Pearson joined us to

explore how sustained misalignment between mind and system shapes identity and self-trust today

we move further upstream into the family system i guess today is robin cazluids

clinical psychologist parenting expert and founder of the targeted

parenting institute she is the author of the new book post-traumatic parenting

herding surviving into secure connection robin's work focuses on how early experience shape

regulation catchment and emotional safety and how parents can build secure connections while

continuing their own healing our conversation centers on post-traumatic parenting as a developmental

pattern one that reflects adaptation persistence in the nervous systems intelligence we explore how

early experience shapes emotional regulation why presence and attunement supports secure

attachment how parents can build stability while honoring their own history and how emotional

safety becomes the foundation for meaning across generations this conversation matters because

meaning begins early in our relationships in regulation and in whether a child experiences

consistency in care before we begin a brief note if you're interested in this broader work around

visibility worth and matter including how these ideas translate across generations you can learn

more about my upcoming children's book you matter luma at you matterluma.com and if this episode

resonates please consider sharing it we're leaving five star review on apple podcast or spotify your

support helps these conversations reach the people they're meant for now let's continue the

meaning makers with dr robin kazluids thank you for choosing passion struck and choosing me to be

your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now let that journey begin

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i am so excited today to be joined by dr robin kasselwitz welcome robin how are you today

i'm great i'm so excited to be here i'm going to start in a place that wouldn't have been the normal

start but i understand you just did a TED talk yesterday so i'm interested about that experience

having not done one myself yet so it was a TEDx event i've been applying to give a TEDx talk for

about five years and because i really have this big idea worth spreading about trauma and how it

impacts us and i've been applying and applying and getting no after no after no i don't know if

you're familiar with that idea of rejection therapy where you just like look for rejections as a way

of inoculating yourself against them hurting because rejection actually activates the same pain

sensors in our brain that stubbing your toe does or falling down a flight of stairs does so it's

painful and i've been applying and applying and had some heartbreaking last minute knows

one event that was that actually accepted me as a speaker they then cancelled the event because

one of the organizers got very sick so that was very disappointing i'm sad for her but it was

also very disappointing and then i had other events where i was through three rounds of interviews

before i got the know so it was hard and it takes a lot to keep applying even though you get

nose and then finally TEDx union women said yes and i finally got to do that TEDx talk so yeah

five years of preparing applying getting those nose before i finally got the yes

yeah now as you were preparing for it any secrets you want to share on how to give a good

TED talk given you only have seven to 12 minutes to do it you really want to only talk about one

big idea you have this desire when you're on that stage share everything by myself i tend to talk

fast i tend to be very excited about a lot of things so it took me a long time to figure out like

what's the one big idea and there's a lot of other stuff i'd love to talk about but let's focus on

this one thing and then really write the speech say it in front of people that you really trust to

you know the kind of friends who will tell you the truth not the kind of friends we're like it's great

but someone will be like well i didn't quite get that part and keep practicing until you have

something that you're happy with and i would say i think it was brunet brown who said like write

your speech cut out 50% and then cut out 50% more like and then you have your one big idea

yeah i remember a number of years ago i was talking to Susan Kane and her talk that she did on

quiet has 35 million views and people look at her and they think it's all easy and i was asking her

what was the preparation like and she said i probably practiced that thing about 250 times before

i gave it yeah then just the wrong way yeah no well congratulations yeah it's cringe when you

practice in front of the mirror and it feels very intense but in the end it was like someone

asked me what like what it was like and i said it was so scary and so awesome and i'm so glad it's

over all at the same time well i'm not sure what your journey to becoming an author was and today

we're going to be discussing your brand new book post-traumatic parenting turning surviving into

circular connection but for me my author journey was nothing but rejection along the way i must have

gotten rejected 150 times before my first book came out yeah and i feel like we don't teach kids

that enough how to i wouldn't say not take rejection personally because actually you do need the

helpful feedback aspects of rejection but how to look at rejection as only feedback and nothing

to do with self-worth and nothing to do with you even though it does make you feel like you are

personally being rejected i was bullied as a kid so it's activated the bullied circuitry in my brain

and made me feel like once again the cool kids don't like me but it had nothing to do it the cool

kids not liking me and sometimes i did well robin i'm gonna start before we go in the book with

something i read and an article that recently published on medium and authenticity and you share

this story that i think is so relevant it was about your 10-year-old i think he's older now but at

the time he was 10 years old and your son looked at you and asked where do you go when you go away

behind your eyes can you take us back to that moment because i think based on my work and my

own life it's something that's happening to more and more of us as parents what was happening inside

you and what did you realize in that instant about your relationship and with yourself but also

with your child initially when he asked me that question and it was really hard for him he actually

started to cry i realized in that moment that what i was doing in going away behind my eyes which is

what psychologists called association it was a trauma response it's something that i do whenever

i'm very stressed out i have and it happened through my intensely traumatic childhood i would

disappear into my work and like i could be chopping vegetables in the kitchen taking care of my kids

but my brain is coding data right now and it really helps because then i'm calm i'm like that if i'm

like when i was in graduate school if i was really anxious i could focus intensely on the patient

in front of me the research i was doing a book i'm reading really anything that takes me out of my body

and then my panic attack goes away all of those yucky feelings inside me go away

but i'm not present a piece of me goes away until my son said that to me i thought that i had my

whole PTSD thing handled i knew how to breathe through a panic attack like i had figured that part

out i had done some therapy the worst of my flashbacks they existed but they weren't taking me over

anymore but i thought that this association was great i was like this is fabulous i get to get so

much accomplished i do triple at what everybody else does and i never have to feel stressed out

and i thought great fabulous i've got this covered and then when my son started to cry it just

broke my heart and i said oh no this was my biggest fear like even when my husband proposed to me

and i knew he wanted kids was like i'm so damaged how can i be someone's mom like my damage is

going to damage my kids and then i thought i had this like brilliant shortcut

until he asks that to me and i remember when i looking at him and just thinking do you want me to

feel my stress because i will yell at you i don't want to yell at you it was almost like as if

he had said to me like mommy you're five feet tall and i need my mom to be six feet tall so just

grow a foot please because i need you to dunk basketballs okay but i can't it just felt so impossible

but at the same token for him i was willing to try in other instances of my life i had a friend

who said it to me in high school she said i hate that you space out sometimes it's so weird

and i remember looking at her i'm being like okay yep i do sorry take me or leave me like

i owned it i was like yeah sorry it's this weird thing my brain does i apologize but i don't think

i can change it my boss has loved it right because i got a lot done my husband knew how to be like

are you with me i need your attention now and i could shift gears because he was asking me for my

attention he knew let's not have any major emotional conversation when she's heavy on a research

project and it worked it was only my kid that i was willing to change it for and i think that's

one of the things that we're traumatized as parents many of us and we have these trauma

adaptations that our brain does for us but the only thing that at least got me to change it that made

me even see that i needed to change it was my son yeah i used to work at lows and one of my favorite

peers was a gentleman named Steve and Steve at the time ran all of our distribution network which

was a team of about 30,000 employees he went on to run all of supply chain for lows later on

but he was one of the best leaders i had ever seen we would walk into a distribution center and

these things are about a million and a half square feet they're like a city hundreds of people

and he would literally know everyone and not just their name he would know their wife's name he

would know what sports the kids were into and the associates loved them and i loved them but he

shared with me the more we got to know each other and became friends is that he was putting so much

energy into his job by the time he got home he was completely wasted and so his kids started to do

this routine where they actually bought a brick and painted the brick and anytime that he was

phasing out they would put the brick in front of him as a reminder for him to be present but the reason

i'm telling this story is here you have a highly performing person who ended up later in his career

getting burned out like so many people are but i think what was happening to you what's happening

to him is happening to millions of parents around the world where whether it's work whether it's a

trauma whether it's something else we're tuning out on life and i call this we become invisible

in our own life yeah you describe this kind of as a disassociation or your lifelong coping mechanism

but what do you recommend for parents or even partners who are facing the same situation

so i think you first before you take down a fence you kind of want to figure out what that fence

is protecting right so the first thing we have to do is figure out why does your brain do that

because it's to me dissociation felt like malware it didn't feel like i was consciously choosing it

it took me over like it took over my brain and i did not get a choice and on the one hand that was

helpful right but on the other hand it was a little scary so i think you first have to figure out

why does my brain do this at certain times maybe its perfectionism maybe it's being really critical

of people maybe it's putting all your energies into work and having none left when you come home

which is like an adaptive dissociation like workahalism or maybe it's scrolling your phone it could

be anything that you do maybe it's people pleasing i never say no to your kids because you're so

scared of other people being upset you can't tolerate that so what you do is first you figure out

what are my if then rules if i feel a certain level of stress then i dissociate if i feel a certain

level of stress i yell at people if i feel a certain level of stress i people please and i make sure

everybody in the room is happy and then you ask yourself how do you know that you say and again

i do this in parenting but it's really in any area of life when you mean to do x but why happens right

so you say oh today when my boss asks me to do that totally inappropriate thing and gives me a

project to finish by close of work today and it's three o'clock and there's no way i'll leave on time

and every fiber of my being is saying no and i find myself saying yes so today i'm going to say no

i'm going to say sorry i need to leave on time today my kids are expecting me at home or whatever

i have another appointment after work and somehow yes comes out again what just happened and it's

like that with anything today i'm going to stay calm i'm not going to yell at anyone and then you

find yourself yelling today i'm going to allow people their own process i not control every aspect

of it and then you find yourself micromanaging again that's where we say what just happened you did

you intended to do x and why happened that tells me there's a trauma app in your brain that's

what i call it in the book the metaphor for how trauma rewires us and that gives us data which is

really helpful if you think about that scenario with your son you're a psychologist so you already

understand trauma on a professional level but that moment for you was really personal so i'm

interested in how did it shift your relationship with your own expertise but then

putting your humans self in there as a mom and an individual what did it teach you about the

two and did it help you become a better counselor it definitely helped me become a better psychologist

i'll tell you why prior to that incident with my son i looked at trauma i looked at anxiety

OCD whatever i was treating as a monster that we keep at bay so we learn techniques like debriefing

a progressive muscle relaxation behavioral techniques that can help us and i thought that was enough

if i learned those techniques every time i have a panic attack i breathe this way and i can

manage and i can get through it i thought i really thought that was enough after that conversation

with my son i realized i need to process my trauma i need to go back into the story and really

examine it and really process it on a deep level and integrate it into my sense of self and in the book

i talk about how and that's when i really started researching trauma therapies not just behavioral

trauma therapies which is a good place to start i always say cognitive behavioral therapy has its

place it's fabulous to know those basic behavioral tips a kid comes into your office and she's i'm

really shy i'm really scared of people and my school has a public speaking requirement and i can't

get out of it no matter what do i do write me a letter your psychologist say that it will

traumatize me to do it and i say or perhaps instead of writing that note we could learn how to not

be utterly terrified of public speaking and get you through that speech and imagine the sense of

victory you'll feel it and we would use these cognitive behavioral techniques to learn how to

lower her heart rate and how to reinterpret her body signals it's a great place to start but it

doesn't really help you deeply process and understand yourself so in the book i have this

model but after that i studied every single form of trauma psychotherapy and they all have these

three things in common equal at a i m acceptance integration and meaning the first part is acceptance

like you really have to accept that what happened to you you cannot undo it you can't like

think your way out of it it really did happen like it wasn't okay that my childhood was so traumatic

not that it was my parents fault my dad had a very severe heart condition he didn't choose it other

than the fact that he was a smoker and he couldn't break that addiction but he didn't choose to be

addicted right so he didn't choose that he didn't choose to have heart attacks in front of me

that was his life but i can't undo it i can't somehow go into my brain and imagine it differently

that's what a flashback is and trauma where you keep let's say you were in a car accident and

you're traumatized and your brain keeps replaying the moment of the accident and somehow you keep

seeing yourself at the corner and you're about to turn left your brain is trying to get you to

turn right because the part of your brain that houses traumatic memories can't tell the difference

between past present and future so that part of your brain is trying to get you to turn right

you can't it happened it's over it was 15 years ago you're never going to have turned right your

brain though doesn't know that so that's acceptance we undo what's called counterfactual thinking

if only i had better parents if only my dad hadn't been so angry so then i wouldn't be yelling

at people whatever it is we undo that it happened it is as it should be it wasn't great it happened

then we have integration which is we're going to integrate it into our sense of self now that

this happened to me i am this person who experienced this and also has a big life around it and it's

part of my sense of self it's not the thing about me it's offing about me and it's fine and

so that instead of me being like i am a damaged person i am a person who carries some damage

and i've integrated it into my sense of self i'm also many other things right and then mission

we make some sense of meaning or mission out of it now that i have this unique knowledge of the

world based on this traumatic experience based on it being part of my sense of self i have a mission

in life i know something about the world that no one else knows maybe for me it's like a macro mission

of teaching people about the impact of trauma on parenting maybe it's a micro mission my family

will not have a parent who will not come home to a parent who's drunk and passed out on the couch

my kids will know they matter my kids will know that they are the most important thing in the world to

me my employees will feel valued whatever that micro mission is so whether it's a macro mission or a

micro mission we turn it into a mission when you do those three things the a the i the m you've

really processed your trauma and if you look at every trauma psychotherapy out there they all

have an a i m component whether they're the very behavioral ones like trauma focused cognitive

behavioral therapy whether they're the more processing ones like em dr i movement desensitization

reprocessing or ifs internal family systems all of them have the a i m component and i think it's

important for parents to know because not everybody can access therapy and not everybody right now

can benefit from therapy sometimes you've got a whole bunch of kids and a really demanding job and

you're gonna have to do some of it on your own maybe your favorite therapist is on maternity leave

for a year or your local clinic closed down and you haven't found someone good yet so you have

to be able to do some of it on your own because we don't all have the privilege of a guide

so knowing that i think is super helpful before we continue i want to pause for a moment

conversations like this offer insight reflection turns insight into integration

inside the ignited life each episode in the meaning maker series is paired

guided prompts and tools designed to help you recognize patterns clarify values and apply

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you're listening to passion strike on the passion strike network now back to my conversation

dr robin chaselitz for those of the audience who are not watching this video i love the background

behind you because you've got stuffed animals and children's toys surrounded by your book and i think

to make sure everyone is on the same terminology can you explain this term that you coined

post-traumatic parenting so post-traumatic parenting is just parenting after trauma

and the way i look at it is a lot of people question themselves whether or not they've experienced

trauma and i always say is there an experience that you had in your childhood that you would

cross a continent or spend your last dime to avoid your kid having to go through it

congratulations you're traumatized right whatever that experience was because if you look at

trauma checklists that like you might get from psychology right like you'll get questions like

did you ever see someone die or were you in fear of death did you experience a serious assault

like they'll have those sort of major rip from the headline stories and those certainly can

traumatize us but what's lacking there is were you fat-chamed your entire adolescence were you

completely bullied to the point that you didn't even feel like a human did you have parents who

were super critical a mom who's a functional alcoholic and one day you came home and she was

lovely and one day you came home and she was just absolutely ready to hit you that doesn't make

its way onto that list but that's also traumatic if you grew up and you said my kid will never have

a parent who does that or if my kid is being bullied i'm going to intervene the minute it happens

that experience was traumatic for you it's like as simple as that i like how you started the book

because you described the striking contrast between the endless to-do list every parent carries

and the invisible to don't list that post-traumatic parents juggling their heads and it reminded me of

my own parenting because when i started to parent my son i realized i was falling into the trap

of how my father had parented me which is something that i didn't want to do and i didn't realize

how difficult it was going to be to unlearn his parenting styles and but to completely shift

it was really a struggle to do it why you know why that is our brains are really in some ways

extremely efficient we might even call them lazy so what our brains do is whenever they can

they're going to copy paste and attachment like the attachment system the whole system of

parenting in our brain the fancy term is internal working model right you create and your brain

creates this internal working model of attachment and you get it from your own parents so your

brain is set up to have this circuitry to say i know what to do what would mom do what would dad do

do that your brain has to work really hard to say i don't want to do what dad did like you've

probably fought before you became a dad you were probably like oh yeah i'm just gonna not do that

and it'll be fine and then you find yourself doing that and it's like what just happened i didn't

want to do that because your brain was primed to do it that way that that's literally how you're

brain your neural circuitry around parenting was formed so you're fighting the circuitry that's in

there because your brain doesn't want to work hard it doesn't want to say instead of this i want

to do that your brain is like to do this what would dad do do that that's easy copy paste our brains

very often function on a copy paste system like sometimes we even call that a social skill you want

people to be able to read the room right there's a good aspect to that there's an adaptive aspect to

that but it's when your brain does not even realize like wait a minute no we're gonna have to put

in the mental energy to not do you know wwdd right what would dad do and do something else instead

that is much harder i'm impressed that you did it because like that you realized to do it and that

it must have been a lot of work i think people who haven't parents and don't realize just how hard

that is well the first thing is i have still to this day have never found a parenting book that

gives you the absolute map for how to parent and i think i had an internal working model

because of the trauma that i had faced that was insecure and so my default mode was to go back to

what i knew and it's hard as you're we're just talking about to do something that's different

to change the pattern but i knew if i didn't change the pattern my son was going to turn out just

like me and so it was really important for me to parent on a different level and to not criticize

and to not be physically i don't want to say abusive but be physical with my son and he's

we call harsh discipline because that's how i grew up and i also grew up with a parent who was

absentee who and who wouldn't let me make any mistakes because any mistake i would make i would

just get screamed at and so i realized in my own son that if you were going to make mistakes it's

far better to make them when you're young than when they count like i did so many times when i

became an adult so i started to just put myself into the future about what i wanted him to be like

when he got older and i realized if i didn't start to think about that future self i wanted him to

he was going to end up being more like me and so that's what finally got me to change

and what you did was so incredible right because one of the things trauma does is it takes away

our ability to envision a future self so you had to build your ability to envision a future self

you had to build your ability to say what do i want him to remember of his parenting when he's an adult

and you had to retrofit it and figure it out backwards because you didn't have a model of it

that takes an incredible amount of work because our brain doesn't want to do it

our brain's like what's wrong with the old system it's there like don't make me work so hard

and yet we have to work so hard otherwise we can't break cycles it's absolutely true

but if you're a parent like i was and maybe they haven't had the wake up call that i reached

what's the first self-check you might want them to try i think the first thing is and we just

said it this idea of time travel to the future what do you want your kids to remember about their

childhood or about you we call that the castle on the cloud from the thorough poem right you

should build castles in the cloud and then we have to build the staircase okay so how do we get

there from here what's staircase so if you want your kids to feel like they had a really

functional well-run home where things were stable and predictable what are some elements of

that kind of a home i had a post-traumatic parent come into me and she said i grew up in absolute

chaos my parents were completely dysfunctional we're talking like mold on the walls empty fridge

multiple child protective services visits no routine medical care i do not know the first thing

about running a home and now i'm pregnant i don't know what to do and the first thing we did was

rather than be like okay let's start from the bottom up as we started from the castle so you want

your kids what do you want and what she really wanted was her kids to feel the sense of safety someone

feels when they go into a well-run organized home where you know there's always going to be dinner

on the table at the same time like that there's routine health care the sense that the parents are

in charge of keeping you safe and so we just then went backwards from that what would be those

ingredients and she had this one foster family as a model and she was like i want it to be like

that foster family i was there really short but like it felt so homey i would come home and there

was a smell of cooking and she would say all right now we're going to do our homework and then

we're going to eat dinner and then we're going to do our chores and then we're going to go to bed

and it sounds crazy but having to do chores made me feel taken care of like a grown-up was telling me

what to do and i didn't just have to figure out myself had to pay the mortgage so we don't get

evicted and i'm eight years old this is great i want my kids to feel that so we worked on that

there might be another mom who has the opposite my friend was so authoritarian and strict and rigid

i want my kids to feel like they can breathe in this house and like i don't want meals to be at

the same time every night i wanted to feel like we're coming together for dinner because we like

each other great that's your castle in the cloud what do we need to establish to make that happen

and that's what we're really saying is your values and what blocks you from getting to your values

usually your trauma usually what you learned or the fact that your brain just wants to replicate

your childhood but once you know it once you say that that's the image that's the shining goal

great then let's just get to that castle and cloud i want to just give you a scenario so let's say

as a child you grew up in a dysfunctional family where maybe your father was very abusive

to your mom and and maybe that was a verbal abuse and it wasn't physical but it could have been

both but that's what you grew up seeing so now you're an adult and you're having a hard time

letting all of that go how do you break free from something like that

so in the book i talk about the trauma app which is this idea that in a moment of trauma your brain

creates if then rules sometimes if then rules are just like that i will yell whenever i feel

a certain amount of stress or just like that i will criticize everybody around me because

i can't ever be to blame it's too threatening for me to be to blame so i have to look for who to blame

and that's your trauma app and think of an app on your phone right in an app on your phone there's

permissions right and what you do is you go to that app on your phone and you de-select its

permission so in your brain you say trauma app today is going to be stressful let's say you're moving

right or you're making a wedding or there's something major going on there's a family thanks giving

dinner and everyone's coming over and there's a lot of moving pieces it's going to be stressful

you are going to want me to criticize people this is your default when i feel stressed i

criticize people i am deselecting the criticizing people i am not allowed to criticize anybody today

every time i want to criticize someone i'm gonna have to talk in a daffy duck voice or i'm gonna

have to think okay if i need to criticize someone if i'm like don't put that even something like

don't put that on that counter i can only sing it i can't say it and what's your trauma app

gonna do all good apps it's gonna say warning deselecting these permissions is going to destabilize

the entire system are you sure you want to proceed it's gonna do that by making you anxious and

you're gonna say yes i want to proceed and then that's what you're gonna do you have that rule

for yourself and that's what you're gonna do you're gonna interrupt that pattern i will only sing

very hard to criticize someone harshly if you're singing right i can't do it a friend of mine

has opera training because i could yell at someone while singing i'm like most people don't have

the benefit of your arts education i cannot so the idea is you come up with something that interrupts

that automatic pattern and you do that thing for me it's like gonna shut off my phone

because that's a great association engine and i'm gonna name three things that are red and two

things that are blue and one thing that's green i'm gonna stay present sometimes it's all right kids

let's all dance together so i can get some of my energy out you're also gonna set yourself up for

success right if you have making a Thanksgiving dinner and you're already stressed out because like

your family of origin has drama you're gonna prepare as much as possible in advance you're gonna

hire whatever you can you're not gonna let bake muffins yourself you're gonna buy them you're

gonna be smart about it so that day of you've taken care of as much of the stress as you can

so that those little stressors aren't so stressful that you revert to old patterns so you're

gonna do it on both levels right you're gonna open the spigot on the bottom also getting some of

that stress out beforehand but the idea is you're gonna be very mindful about it i want to break

the cycle it's really hard and then you're gonna celebrate it like you're not gonna do because a

lot of post-traumatic parents do it when the day happens and it's good and you didn't yell at

anyone you're gonna be like okay so i basically behaved like a normal human you're gonna be like

i did something amazing 14 times today i wanted to yell at someone and i didn't i deserve a

medal of honor even if it's just me and my own brain giving me a medal of honor because

i did something that's really hard to do i just rewire a neural connection in my brain

maybe you say that to your significant other maybe you say that to an adult child they know

what you've been through and it's appropriate maybe you say that to your best friend or your

therapist but you really acknowledge it because you also have to tell your brain yeah brain

that's it that's what we want to be doing from now on you did it right because your brain like

anybody else needs that feedback or it won't change oh that's what you want it to me to do great

i will keep doing it then and that's what you do it's hard work it's not easy i'm making it sound

like very simple right you just do this and like it's it's it's hard it can be done but it's

the most difficult work you'll ever do and in my own journey i i had to go through cpt i went

through e-m-d-r i went through other one through a long therapy exposure i went through other

modalities and this stuff is not it's not easy but if you don't get to those step points

it's very difficult to lead the life that you want to lead if you've got so much baggage

and i was one of these high-functioning trauma survivors that you describe in the book

i look calm on the surface but underneath i felt myself

paddling furiously yeah yeah and i think what i was doing is i was equating having control and

competence in my professional life was safety but what it was happening underneath it was

quietly destroying me and numbing me why do you think so many of us equate control and

competence was safety well i think it is safer right if you felt very out of control at a certain

point in your life and you felt very vulnerable there's a certain safety in being one of the top

executives at the company because there's not that many people on top of you can fire you right

there is a certain sense of safety there it's just not psychological safety it's one level of

practical safety and it's worked for you for so long i was a perfectionist for a very long time

in my in the book i talk about like when i actually and this is hard to hear but when i actually

performed CPR on my father during his last fatal heart attack he died in my arms and i thought

i had done something wrong i thought that and i for a long time had this like image of myself of

like robin the girl whose mistakes kill people right so therefore i must not make a mistake

and so i always lived my life doing everything perfectly and having to do double what anyone else

did because otherwise i didn't feel safe until i first of all learned that i actually didn't kill

my father there was no way a young woman like my father was a very large man he was on a bed when

he had his heart attack you can't perform CPR with enough force on a mattress there was no way like

the physics of it i could never have moved my father with the amount of muscle mass i had back then

and so there's no way i could have moved him to the floor i didn't know too it's not like my CPR

i was lifeguard but we have never told that you should move someone onto the floor i don't know

that they don't include that i don't know if if it's someone smaller than you maybe you could exert

enough force to perform CPR but if you're not cracking ribs you're not restarting someone's heart

i didn't have that kind of strength in my body back i probably weighed like a hundred pounds soaking

wet back then there was just no way i could have ever exerted enough force i didn't i knew that sort

of intellectually in my 20s until i was in my mid 40s and my very good friend who's a trauma

nurse pointed it out to me again did i really believe it well yeah perfectionism made me feel safe

for a very long time but it wasn't making me actually be safe and that's what the trauma app does

it doesn't make us safer it makes us feel safer it's perceived safety not actual safety

i'm so sorry that happened to you i had a similar situation it wasn't my parent i was

in my late 20s at the time and i had recently gone through CPR training and in the office building

we were working in we got a call that there was a person not even in our company but who had a

heart attack and a coworker and i went up there and unfortunately too much time had passed i can

still see him i can still yeah feel those moments because it seemed like eternity while we were

trying to save them but for a long time i really felt down on myself because i felt like i

should have been able to save them but we got there too late to do anything all right and our brain

does that it's like you should have been able to you should have done it better and sometimes

there's nothing you can do you just not gonna work but there's something about those moments and

i think people who haven't performed CPR don't understand just how intense an experience it is

but it really it can be a very intense thing and i think that a lot of the traumas we experience as

kids we almost gaslight ourselves oh that's not traumatic lots of people were bullied oh that's not

traumatic lots of people were criticized a lot by their dad yeah that was like old men of that

generation were like really critical and barely around and when they were around hitting you

or yelling at you like that was just like what dads were back then but that doesn't mean it wasn't

traumatic just because a lot of people went through it exactly well robin in the book you introduce

pretty early on three blunt questions to help people determine whether they're caring trauma

and i'm just gonna go through them real quick one of them is did something happen that changed how

safe in the world well did something happen that changed how safe the world feels to you the

second one is do you still live as if that event could happen again at any moment and then do your

relationships especially with your children trigger that sense of danger is there one of these

questions that you think happens more predominantly than the other or is it really do all of them work

together they do all work together i think that really that first question there's a fundamental

misunderstanding of the nature of trauma that we have in this world because of the word trauma right

and this is what i spoke about my TEDx spoke the word trauma comes from the Greek word trauma which

means a wound and really time heals wounds so we expect like it's been a long time i'm over it it's

like i'm better now but trauma's not a wound trauma is an experience you happen that makes you feel

unsafe that makes you feel whether you feel unsafe like physically unsafe like i might die or

whether you feel unsafe in the sense that i know i thought i understood this world and now i

completely don't understand this world thought i was a competent operator of this world and now

i don't get it picture a kid who's bullied right you she comes to school at all of a sudden all the

other little girls were like we don't like you anymore she used to understand things like if you're

nice to people they're nice back to you if you share your snack then your friend will share her snack

she thought she understood the world and now all of a sudden wait i don't understand the world at all

and whatever she tries to get the other little girls to like her again backfires so she doesn't

feel like a competent operator of the world so what's her brain gonna do in that moment her brain

is gonna create some form of software to help her feel safe maybe it's i don't need other kids i

can just read and be a perfectionist student as long as the teachers like me i'm good maybe she's

oh no they will like me i'm gonna figure out how to be as ingratiating as possible and i'm gonna

become a real people pleaser but i'm gonna make friends maybe she's gonna like really embrace the

i don't care about society i'm nihilistic and i don't care about anybody and lash out in some way

her brain is gonna do one of those things there's a lot of options that her brain can do in order

for her to feel like this is a safe world that i know how to operate it and once her brain does that

once your brain creates that trauma app it just rehearses that response over and over again

because that's the only response that feels safe that works that you know how to do so for me like

dissociate like whenever you feel stressed just go into this like sort of compartment in your brain

where you're thinking about something else you're fine and any experience that makes your brain

develop a trauma app is traumatic it doesn't matter if it fits on some checklist if it's ripped

from the headline it doesn't matter if it's something that other people would say oh yeah that's

for sure traumatic or if other people would say i don't know why that's traumatic it's the impact on

you that matters and your sense of safety if it's too big for your brain to metabolize

it's traumatic that's just the way it is since you were just talking about the perfectionist in the book

you describe common parenting defaults perfectionist is one of them disengaged is another entangled

paralyzed and survivor and you include a post-traumatic parenting quiz to help someone find their

default can you go through that quiz and maybe what's a tell-tell scenario that distinguishes

like a perfectionist default from a paralyzed default sure and this really came from years of doing

post-traumatic parenting classes and talking to parents and realizing that they fit into these

categories not everyone fits into one category sometimes people are like i'm this with a flavor of

that this is not a diagnosis this is just oh yeah i do tend to do that a lot so a perfectionist

post-traumatic parent is someone who feels like i'm so damaged by my childhood and i am so on guard

against ever harming my child that i must do parenting perfectly so i'm gonna read all the

bucks and i'm gonna memorize all the parenting scripts and i'm gonna go on to all those forums

on social media and i'm gonna do it perfectly because if it's not perfect it's terrible like they

have no in between aspect the paralyzed parent it sounds very similar right the paralyzed parent

is somebody who is frenetically busy but they're never accomplishing anything and it's usually

because they lack discernment like deep down in their gut they really don't trust their own judgment

so you might have uh in the book i described this woman Maria who's one minute she's her kid comes

home from school and she's helping one kid with her homework and then one of the kids is screaming

from another room but suddenly the rice is burning on the stove and then she's cleaning up because

her husband hates coming home to a mess she's trying to like keep everybody happy she's never

finishing anything she's like a real people pleaser coming from her childhood where she was

criticized so much she doesn't trust herself she doesn't trust her own ability to say

the kid who's bleeding is more important than the kid who's screaming for help with their homework

even if they're screaming loud i'm gonna go in order like maybe tonight my husband doesn't like

takeout but sometimes takeout is what we're having for dinner sorry you don't like it you can cook

and we're gonna do that trust my own god then we have the entangled post-traumatic parent that's

somebody who is so tangled up in a prior relationship they can't actually get towards their kids

i have this image in the book of a fish that's trapped in a net and their kids are out of the net

they're trying to swim towards their kids but they're trapped that might be a toxic expaus

it might be a boss or like a golden handcuffs job where you get paid really well but you can't say

it might be a family of origin you see this a lot especially with immigrant families where

one kid is the one who speaks english for the family and then they're just always functioning for

the family even in adulthood they just get that role of like i carry the burden of the family

sometimes it's a toxic best friend like it's a frenemy kind of situation and in that situation

you want to put your psychological resources into your kids but you're putting them into your

family of origin your expaus whatever it is instead maybe it's a divorce right but like you're

tangled up in something else then there's a disengaged parent and that's somebody who deep down

feels like my damage is so sharp it will definitely damage my kids will let me stay away so they might

outsource their parenting they might dissociate like i do they might become a workaholic but they're

really they might be drinking to take the edgel off because their edges just feel very sharp

but really deep deep deep down they feel so damaged that let me stay away from my kids i'm going to do

this wrong like when i have a parent who calls me and says my kids going to camp i think someone needs to

give them the body safety talk and can you do it for me i will mess it up or they'll go to the youth

pastor to do that they'll just outsource everything they can because i will mess up and the

kids just feel so lonely because all they want is the parent's presence the kid doesn't want a

child psychologist giving them the body safety talk they want their own mom or their own dad or

preferably both giving them that talk because that will make them feel safe and we work on that

like in that for me i was somewhat entangled and somewhat disengaged and i had to learn how to

be present i had to learn how to set boundaries with my family of origin to focus on my kids because

they deserve my psychological energy and then we have the survivor parent and that's someone who's

not post-traumatic they're actively living in trauma right now we call that acute stress disorder

their business is imploding around their ears they're they're about to get divorced there's a

huge illness in the family and they're just focusing on keeping the little humans alive for one more

day but sometimes survival mode can last years and years and suddenly you wake up and you're like

wait what have i been doing my kids are five years older i just had this with somebody who in the

post-traumatic parenting commute one of the one of the like membership groups she was talking about

how one minute she was living in one state with a business and a husband and three small children

and the next thing she knew COVID happened her business failed she lost her house

and she's back in her home state living with her parents and her kids aren't like five

years older and she's divorced wait what just happened

and that and she's like waking up out of survival mode and she's not post-traumatic yet but she's

about to be right so there's a lot of people and there are people who do that for 20 years

well thank you for going through all of those and one of the things i want to make sure we

talked about is you underscore a hopeful concept in the book called earn security

which is repairing our own attachment by giving secure cat attachment to our kids

what does earn security look like for a parent on a typical since it's a Friday we're doing this

typical Friday afternoon so i think like a lot of times people hear about attachment theory right

and they're like if one sentence oh man this explains so much about me i get it yeah that's my

attachment style and then you go wait a minute i have a terrible internal working model of attachment

like i'm insecure or i'm disorganized or whatever i am and oh that's it that's my attachment style

my poor kids i hope i saved up enough money for their therapy thankfully though there's this

other concept in attachment theory called earn secure attachment you can repair your own

attachment in adulthood it's not only that i had secure attachment i can give it i can repair my

attachment so in the book i have this line that resonates with a lot of people which is your inner

child can't raise a child but in raising your real world child you can heal your inner child

so you can repair attachment by parenting in accordance with your values you say to your inner

child look how this is possible yes we are we wished we would have had supportive adult

attention and now we're experiencing what supportive adult attention feels like from the

perspective of the adult giving supportive attention and something heals like we start to get

better and when we do that we really do heal our own attachment for our inner child we're not

our kids are not responsible for healing us we are responsible for healing us

but at the same token in raising our kids we can heal ourselves too and i think that's the

most hopeful thing about post-traumatic parenting that parenting is the most opportune time

for healing yourself and rewiring your own brain so yeah it's great for the kids and we do it for

their sick that's the engine that's the why that's the mission it's the only thing that may have

gotten us to be willing to do this hard work and look at ourselves and examine ourselves

but then it's for us in the end it benefits us as well and i think that to me was the most hopeful

thing from the book that you're not like you're not finished just because yeah my childhood was

terrible so that's it i'm damaged irretrievably like i can heal parenting is the vehicle and the

venue with which i heal like i use my parenting and for me at least i don't know that i would have

ever undone my dissociation had my son not said that to me because i really was working very well

and like on the surface i really looked i was so productive and i had very small children while

in graduate school traveling from New Jersey to NYU every single day managing my home both me

and my husband were students so managing like a family on a limited budget and going to work and

going to grad school and doing research and getting it all done i looked like i was doing great and

i wasn't yelling at my kids so i looked like i was doing great it wasn't until my son held up

that like mirror to me of what i was really doing that gave me the energy to even undo it otherwise

i would have stayed that way forever i think so i it's parenting that gives us that mirror

and maybe for some people it's not parenting i think it can be done you can do it for your inner

child it's just i personally wouldn't have ever realized that i needed to thank you for sharing

that robin the last thing i really wanted to hit on was you have something in the book called

r-squared parenting which is responsive and responsible and in my own book passion struck i had this

concept of the gardener leader and i described this as a leader whose eyes on but hands off and this

kind of reminded me of it because you need to be responsive to the needs but you want an employee a

child to learn from themselves so you don't want to be overly directive to them what's a quick

litmus test for listeners for how they can use connection over correction if they're in a heated

moment so i think this goes into this whole debate online between like gentle parenting and more

authoritarian forms of parenting but and for some reason the online rhetoric makes it sound like you

have to pick one or the other either you're being this like positive discipline kind of one two

three magic person where it's my way or the highway or you're responsive to your kids and you're

hearing their emotions and you're allowing them to grow and i look at it as a seesaw you got to do both

you can on the one hand be very responsive you can say to your kid i get that know is hard to hear

you really wish i would say yes you badly want to watch that movie because like your friends are

making it sound cool i get it i really see that it's hard for you i feel for you and my know is

going to stand that movie is dangerous i i know you and i know that movie will give you nightmares

for weeks so i'm going to say no you can do both you don't have to either be responsive and then

give into everything your kids want without ever saying no this is not good for you and you don't

have to only be responsible and teach skills and make sure they get good grades and all of that

there's no reason why you can't honor both sides the reason i even put that into the book is because

post-traumatic parents doubt themselves about parenting all the time it's i'm so flawed i don't know

but i saw the social media account and she sounds smart so i'll do what she says

and i want to give people that rubric for understanding that what the research actually shows on

parenting and what like good common sense and what me as a child psychologist knows is you absolutely

have permission to do both there are corners of the internet where people will talk about how like

forcing your kids to brush their teeth can be an element of coercive control i guess your sponsor

by the american dental association who really want a lot of business i don't think you should force

your kids to brush their teeth with a horse whip but i do think that as a parent perhaps you're

going to use a sticker chart and be like i get it but you don't want to brush your teeth you want

to run around and play and it's going to take two seconds and we have this really fun toothbrush

that plays a song and we're going to play the tooth brushing game now i don't think you're being

coercive and controlling i think you're being a responsible parent so there are corners of the

internet that will make you feel like doubt what you're doing whether like you're being you're

raising a snowflake and you have to like demand everything over your kids or oh my goodness telling

your kid to brush their teeth or using a sticker chart is coercive and abusive but it's not

let's get real here sometimes you got to do the sticker chart to get the five-year-old to brush his

teeth and then like when he gets an extra episode of bluey all is good in the world and eventually

it becomes a habit and you haven't harmed anybody and all is good you've taught him that yeah

we got to maintain our bodies robin if a listener remembers only one thing from post-traumatic

parenting what line do you want living on their fridge i think this idea is that you're not only

will your damage not damage your kids but your damage can apps can be the catalyst for you to break

the cycle right your damage can actually make you into a better parent you're not flawed in some

ways you're uniquely qualified to parent because you know what your values are i love it and can you

tell us a little bit about your podcast sure so by podcast it's called post-traumatic parenting

and we do one of two things we either talk to big experts in the field of trauma we talk to experts

in the field of child psychology or parenting people who've written books that are really

interesting that are relevant to the post-traumatic parenting community or people who have a back

story about trauma that's really compelling and can teach us something because we have to keep

restoring hope and remembering that trauma is the beginning of the story not the end of the story

so we just really want the whole post-traumatic parenting community i don't want anyone to ever feel

as isolated and alone as i felt when i started that post-traumatic parenting journey and i felt like

my damage is going to damage my kids and there's nobody who gets it and nobody who can help me with it

so it's like one post-traumatic parent at a time hearing what they need to hear and we were on

both youtube and on the regular wherever you get your podcasts and we try to release two episodes

a month we're about to start season three which is exciting awesome and where's the best place people

can go is there a central hub so my website is posttraumaticparenting.com the posttraumatic parenting

community tends to hang out a lot on instagram which is my instagram pages at dr castle at psychology

that's also my twitter my tiktok that's really where we mostly hang out on instagram we have a

membership we have a community a lot of conversations in there i really do my best to respond to

DMs and to people ask topic suggestions or they'll send me a real and say can you comment on what

this parent is doing and stuff like that i really do my best to stay on top of it because this

always was the mission of making sure no posttraumatic parent ever feels isolated and alone so we really

are a community and you can find the book wherever you get books okay and the last question what does

it mean to you to live a passion struck life to me it's really about the mission it's about

doing something that only you know is important that will then change the world

awesome love that answer robin such an honor to have you today thank you so much and congratulations

on the TED talk and your brand new book thank you so much thanks for having me that brings us to the

close of today's conversation robin cassilets what stayed with me is how clearly this work

reframes parenting as a relational practice grounded in presence regulation and consistency

robin shows us that awareness creates capacity when parents understand their own patterns they gain

the ability to build safety intentionally as we continue the meaning maker series this architecture

becomes more visible Alex Emas helped us understand how systems influence behavior under uncertainty

on Tuesday john a person illuminated a sustained effort shapes identity when support aligns with

need and today robin cassilets brings us to the origin point where early environments shape worth

boundaries and belonging next we move from family systems to the interdiscipline of excellence

next week i'm joined by Jim Murphy author of the book inner excellence for a conversation

on internal stability self mastery and sustaining performance under pressure fear is where you're

in self protection you're concerned with other people thinking and will I fail and that

lifetime in this is saying look the default is if you don't do anything you're going to go towards

fear that's human nature you're going to start thinking about yourself you're going to think

about everything you want but can't control you're going to start comparing yourself to others

subconscious minds can remind you of all your failures and you're going to move towards anxiety

in fear so you need a clear intentional plan and path to live an extraordinary life and that path

is based on the three most powerful resources i believe in the universe's love wisdom and courage

today's episode resonated please share it with someone who might benefit and leave a five star review

on apple podcast or Spotify if you'd like to continue the work visit the unitedlife.net

for episode workbooks and reflection tools watch the full conversation on youtube at john

our miles or passion start clips or explore intention driven apparel at startmattering.com

as we continue the meaning makers remember significance grows where safety supports truth

contained grounded forward i'm john miles and you've been passion struck