Navigating Overwhelm & Dysregulation in Parenting

Episode 73

Today’s conversation is a direct response to the following listener request:

"I am a parent to 4 young kids (one with special needs and another with some extra needs). I struggle immensely with keeping myself regulated and calm with their big emotions. I wondered if you might explore in further episodes about how to let go of the need for control as a parent and how that need for control influences feeling dysregulated when the kids are rough housing and noisy/chaotic. I struggle so much to just relax into parenting, I constantly try to control things to avoid big emotions and meltdowns. If you might also touch on the topic of hypervigilance and the need to control as a trauma response? I’d love to learn how we can sit with life happening without trying to micromanage it as a way to avoid something unexpected happening, kid meltdowns, chaos, etc…

I’m struggling so much with this right now as a mom, but really it’s been a theme for much longer than that. I realize the work ahead for me as I am learning your tools to regulate my nervous system."

What I'll share doesn't just apply to regulated parenting, but in how we all approach these things in our healing. Hit play for the full conversation!

Looking for more personalized support?

• Book a FREE consultation for RESTORE, our 1:1 anxiety & depression coaching program.
• Join me inside RISE, a mental health membership and nervous system healing space.
• Order my book, Healing Through the Vagus Nerve today!

Want me to talk about something specific on the podcast? Let me know HERE.

Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast

Email: amanda@riseaswe.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaontherise/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise

Transcript

Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

Today's conversation is going to be a direct response to one of you who emailed and asked if I would cover a particular topic on the podcast. And I'm going to start by just reading that email in case for some of you this sounds or feels familiar to let you know that you're not alone. So this person wrote in and said, 

"I am a parent to four young kids one with special needs. I struggle immensely with keeping myself regulated and calm with their big emotions. I wonder if you might explore in further episodes about how to let go of the need for control as a parent, and how that need for control influences feeling dysregulated when the kids are roughhousing are noisy and chaotic. I struggle so much to relax into parenting, I constantly try to control things to avoid big emotions and meltdowns. If you might also touch on the topic of hyper vigilance and the need to control as a trauma response, I'd love to learn how we can sit with life happening without trying to micromanage it as a way to avoid something unexpected happening, Kid meltdowns, chaos, etc. I'm struggling so much with this right now as a mom. But really, it's been a theme for much longer than that, I realized the work ahead for me as I am learning your tools to regulate my nervous system." 

This was such a beautiful request. And there is so much to unpack this could be its own long series, I'm going to keep it as condensed to one episode as I can. And I think what's mentioned here is not just going to be helpful for parents, but for anybody, any of you listening, who have felt the need to control things, to micromanage as a way of avoiding something unexpected from happening for those of you who have struggled with patterns of hyper vigilance. And in this conversation, I will likely talk a lot through the lens of a parent in answering this question because of the context in which it was written to me. But what I'm going to say, I invite you to filter through your own circumstances. So in a minute, I'm going to set the scene of being at home with noises and chaotic environment and things going on that are unpredictable. And for you, maybe that's your work environment or your home environment in a different context. I'm gonna start by setting the scene here. 

What I can imagine this person writing and experiences is your home, the kids are playing suddenly, the noise level spikes, it's a mix of laughter and shouting some bumps and bangs. And for any parent, this scenario, can quickly feel overwhelming. And I can only imagine especially so for those of you who have children with special needs. And as I have worked with a number of parents through this, what they often tell me is that they can feel their body getting really tense, their mind starting to race, just prepping to intervene at the first sign of any potential trouble. The other thing that I often hear from parents that I work with is they tell me something like their stress bucket is full or already overflowing before they even get out of bed in the morning. And when you are someone especially when you're a parent, and you are feeling overwhelmed more often than not, it makes sense that you try to control situations so that they don't escalate because Hello, you just can't handle one more thing. So you're going to try to prevent those one more things. I've also worked with a lot of parents whose stress bucket feels like it's always overflowing who are frustrated with their habit of disconnecting, of Mindlessly scrolling on their phone as a way to buffer away this sense of overwhelm. Parenting also comes with so much sensory overload. 

Even for me at dinner just tonight, I had to tell my son that he could ask one more question. And then I explained to him that my ears were tired and I needed to turn them off for two minutes and so I wouldn't hear him. He seemed a little confused about turning off my ears, but he went with it. I know firsthand the feeling of the sound of the kitchen fan or little hands pulling at you while you're trying to finish dinner making you want to crawl out of your skin. And when we as parents, or we as individuals lack other regulation skills when they weren't offered to us as kids. Of course, it makes sense that you're going to snap or yell or placate with a lollipop because you have nothing left to give to manage Just situation in a more regulated way. And I love using those two words, of course. And I hope that when you hear those words, you feel a gentle softening in your system. Or you can sense a little bit of compassion towards yourself in all of this. And my hope is that I can offer today some reframes, and a conversation that puts a light at the end of the tunnel that feels hopeful in experiencing parenting that feels overwhelming right now.

When it comes to the desire to control these situations, this oftentimes stems from our own anxieties, our own survival mode, our own fears about safety, our stress bucket being so full that even the thought of a potential meltdown feels like too much. There's also for most of us, just a general discomfort that can come with chaos. And if you yourself lack your own regulation, if you lack emotional regulation skills, again, of course you do. Of course you do if they weren't modeled for you when you were a child, it makes sense that this feels really hard. And I want to touch on this concept of hyper vigilance. This hyper vigilance and urgent feeling or this need to control situations will always be there. Unless you can regulate your own nervous system and find some helpful reframes for parenting. hyper vigilance is a symptom of a nervous system that is stuck in survival mode that is stuck in a fight or flight state. 

And I'm going to unpack that a little bit more hyper vigilance in case this is a new term for you. It is a state of increased alertness. This is when you are especially sensitive to your surroundings, you often anticipate the potential threats or danger, if you constantly are often feel on edge, there is an element of hyper vigilance happening for you. And this is really common for those who have experienced trauma or who are walking through the world chronically stressed. Trauma, because your nervous system is constantly trying to predict for the dangerous thing that it needs to protect you from. And so what happens here, physiologically, and psychologically is that we get stuck in this loop, where our nervous system is in that sympathetic activated state, which is causing our mind to go through all of the like, what if, who's here, hypersensitive, observant, things, that spiraling in our mind is then re feeding our nervous system stress signals, that is keeping us in a sympathetic activated state. And this can feel really, really overwhelming. And over time, it leads to a breakdown in the system. Over time it wears down the system, usually to a point of shutdown, we can only be on extra high alert for so long before the system is like gotta take a break, got a dissociate got a disconnect. 

And in this conversation around this hyper vigilance as a trauma response, I want to remind you that that we define trauma as anything that overwhelms your nervous system beyond your ability to cope. Trauma are the times where you got activated into a stress response. And you were never able to discharge that stress, you were never able to close that stress loop. So yes, trauma can be the big, awful, overwhelming things that happened to you. It can also be the more subtle mental or emotional needs that went chronically unmet. For a client that I worked with recently, they were able to identify that having an emotionally unpredictable parent at home, was what created the hyper vigilance in their system. Having an emotionally unpredictable parent causes a child's nervous system to get in the states of hyper vigilance needing to be hyper aware of the parents mood, to be sure to adjust their behavior so that they can still get their connection or safety needs met. All of this is to say another perspective I want to leave you with is that to those of you parents are not who feel overwhelmed, who feel this need to control who feel like you're in this constant hyper vigilant state. You come by these present characters characteristics responses that you come by all of this honestly, it is a pattern that served you at one point, it is a pattern that is now though likely unhelpful and feeling more dysregulation in the long run. 

Now, I want to come back to this need for control. I told you at the beginning, there's so much that we can unpack from that one email. I'm going to try to keep it as streamlined as I can but I'm going to be bounced around a little bit. So with this need for control, the pesky as part of this is that your need for control can sometimes escalate the very situations that you're hoping to manage. And as a parent, this need for control and the actions that you take and attempt to control also rob your children of learning their own conflict management skills. I want to share with you a quote from a child psychologist who specializes in parental stress, and it reads, 

"When parents jump in too quickly, it can send a message to children that their environment isn't safe, or that their behavior isn't appropriate. Even when it's completely normal for their developmental age. This can increase anxiety for both the child and the parent." 

And she went on to suggest that by stepping back, instead of jumping in so quickly, trying to control intervening, we allow our children to explore their own boundaries, and develop resilience, while we also get a moment to assess whether the intervention is truly necessary or not. And so it's all about just having some reframing around parenting and what's needed and your own capacity to give you that moment to pause, potentially providing yourself with a regulation toolkit, identifying the particular tools that help you ease some of the intensity in those moments of dysregulation for you. 

I can imagine at this point, some of you listening are like, okay, cool. But how how do I break out of these patterns of hyper vigilance? How do I break out of this pattern of feeling like I need to control every single situation in my life. And I want to offer you three, three things, three things to work with. Maybe you choose to take the one that works best for you, maybe all of them resonate. But the first thing is, I'm going to share a reframe I've shared it before I'm going to share it again. And it is to proactively practice a mindset shift. From what if to even if, instead of what if this causes a meltdown? Can you choose to think even if this causes a meltdown? What if this ends up in the kids fighting even if it ends up with the kids fighting? Because even if it's workoutable, even if the kids have a meltdown, if they fight, if you yell, if something breaks, it is figured-out-able. And this is something that's come up so much for those clients inside my membership. I feel like almost all of my coaching in the last few weeks has been able to come back to this conversation of can we get regulated for a second together? And play out that even if let's turn the what if that you're so afraid of the what if that spiraling your anxiety out? And can we play it out as an even if and what this often does is it boosts resilience it boosts self esteem, when you can realize that even if it's figured-out-able it's work-out-able. 

And why I specifically tell you here that you need to proactively practice this mindset. Because in those moments of extreme dysregulation for you, when your nervous system is at its most heightened state, your prefrontal cortex, that logical part of your brain is offline, it is not going to let you access a new thought. You are always going to default to your old ways of thinking especially when you're the most dysregulated or stressed out. And so in smaller micro moments of stress. What if I forget to take the trash out tomorrow morning, even if even if I forget to take out the trash out tomorrow morning, whatever feels small or minor to you. Because if you are catastrophizing in one area of your life, if you are what iffing in one area of your life if you're trying to prevent and control chaos in one area of your life, you're doing it to some degree in every area of your life. So find the area of your life that is the less intense area maybe parenting is really intense for you right now as it is for the person who wrote in. Can you practice this mindset of even if that is going to flex this resilience muscle in you that you can handle things that are uncomfortable that you have the capacity to figure it out? This oftentimes, you know is a sister to my favorite anxiety definition which is that overestimation of threat paired with your underestimation of your ability to manage that threat. Can we quit under estimating our ability to manage stressors and with that skill alone we can drastically decrease the feedback that is the mental stress back to our body. It's going to take some somatic nervous system regulation tools to quiet and calm down the fight or flight state in our body. But there is a role that our mindset plays the thoughts that we think the stories that we tell, can we proactively practice shifting from what if, to even if?

The second thing I want to offer you to answer this question of like, but how, how do I break out of these patterns? How do I let go of this need to control and number two is likely to do way, way less. If you're waking up in the morning and your stress bucket already feels full. There's too much in your stress bucket. We work with clients often to assess your stress bucket, and then edit the heck out of it. And if you're not sure what I'm talking about, scroll back in the podcast feed a little bit, I have a whole series on the stress bucket, how to assess your stress bucket, edit it, audit it, go through that whole process. If you're stressed bucket is full to the top, if you always have more to do than you have time and energy in a day, then you're always going to fall into patterns of fight flight or freeze, which is going to feed hyper vigilance and this need to control. This is something we also unpack and an even deeper and more personalized level in our one on one coaching program. 

The third thing that I want to offer you in terms of the how, or take away from this conversation, something to work with, if parenting feels overwhelming for you, is four of my parenting mantras or reframes or sayings. Whatever you want to call them. Some I've shared before, but I want to offer these again, in case they feel helpful for you in the context of today's conversation. The first is when my kid is doing something that makes me want to crawl out of my skin or flush them down the toilet. I have a go to thought that I've practiced and practiced and practice so that it can be more of a default thought for me even in moments of high stress is Oh, all right. How developmentally appropriate have you to insert behavior? How developmentally appropriate have you to ask me 45,000 questions before I've even sat down for dinner? Sweet four year old, I'm turning my ears off for a minute. So when there's a behavior, that you're feeling this urge to control, whether it's some roughhousing, or some bickering, how developmentally appropriate of them to be roughhousing right now, how developmentally appropriate of them to be loud right now. And what that does is that offers just a moment to pause and recognize that you and them are having a different lived experience of the same thing right now. What's your role? What's their role? 

Okay, my second parenting mantras, second parenting, reframe is firm, but kind, firm, but kind. I'm not perfect at this. Sometimes I am firm and unkind. Just yesterday, my son let me know that I used my yelling voice again. And I need to cut that out of me. I love when they mess up sayings. And it's I almost don't want to correct them. I'm like, please, please, please just say so to saying cut it out, cut it out of me forever. And I have established a relationship with my son, where when we are kind of regrouping, after a moment of Miss attunement. He is allowed to tell me that there were ways I talked to him. That didn't feel good for him. I don't label that as disrespectful he's not in trouble for that. We had a good conversation around that because my goal as a parent is to be firm but kind my kid is never giving me a hard time my kid is having a hard time. 

And this leads to my reframe number three, which is I am the anchor while he storms. And for me it's a he I've got two little boys. But if you've got kids, different genders, mixed genders, I am the anger well, they storm. That is your role as an adult who has context and lived experience and maturity and a more developed brain. Our job is to learn how to self regulate. And if there wasn't somebody in your childhood, too, for you to co regulate with. Of course you struggle with self regulation now, of course you do and that Is your work. So when I say I'm the anchor while he storms, my role is CO regulation. My My job is not to fix his feelings. But my job is to be a regulated anchor. Think about it think about a ship in the middle of a storm. That anchor is not sitting here saying, oh, man, I have to fix the storm, I have to make the storm stop faster. No, the anchor is just firmly planted. And it's letting the storm happen around it. But it's there as a steadying mechanism is not my job to fix my kids big feelings, but to be calm enough to make space for them. An anchor doesn't stop a storm, it just keeps the ship from wandering too far off course. It holds it steady enough until the storm passes. Because inevitably, my son's anger, my son's frustration it passes. 

And oftentimes when I think about myself as the anchor, right what I just said the anchor holds it steady enough, which means I am allowed to set boundaries. Again, for context my son is four when he's angry, he sometimes hits my son was so angry, he spit at me the other day. And I get to stay calm. And say I won't let you hit me. I won't let you spit at me. And usually the first time when I say I won't let you hit me, what does he do, he hits me right away again. How developmentally appropriate of him to test boundaries. I am committed to being firm, but kind that means I'm going to be this anchor. And for me, that usually either looks like if we're in a place where I can go to the other side of a door. I'm you I am with my son with big feelings. We don't do timeouts, we do what we call time ends unless he hits me. And now I get to set the example of it's my job to keep my body safe. So I'm going to go to the other side of the door. And I will come back in and we will try again. And if you hit me I'm going to go to the other side of the door or four in a place where there's not a door. That's when I do I will restrain him a hold his arms. Hands are not for hitting hands or not for hitting I will not let you hit me. I'll let you go would you like to try again. 

It is our job to be that anchor while they storm. And this is really challenging. If you have an internal story that your kids behavior dictates whether you are a good mom, a good parent, if I have a story that my kids meltdown means that I failed. Of course, I'm going to try to control the meltdown. Because I don't want the shame that comes with that story of well, his big feelings, his loud expression of them means that I've done something, I failed in some way kids just have big feelings. And so if we can create this reframe, it's not our job to fix their feelings. It's our job to hold them steady. It's our job to stay calm while they storm. And that's going to look different and unique for each child. 

And my fourth parenting mantra is connect before correcting connection before correction, connection before correction. Can I offer a moment of hey, I see you, hey, you're having a hard time. And we need to do differently. And I think next week I'm going to unpack some of these not only in how they apply to parenting, but also how each of these can apply to how we interact with ourselves on our healing journey. 

Now, to finish up this conversation today, I want to offer a quick recalibration to one of the statements that was made in the email and a couple of tangible tools that might help you in moments of dysregulated parenting. And the statement I want to touch on briefly is quote, 

"I struggle so much to just relax into parenting. I constantly try to control things to avoid big emotions and meltdowns."

And the first recalibration I want to offer here is what if you didn't expect yourself to relax into parenting? Especially not to relax into parenting as a whole. But what if instead, you looked for ways to relax into moments of parenting, micro moments of parenting, to celebrate and be fully in, sitting on the porch, or looking out a window as your kids play for a few minutes without wanting to pull each other's hair out? Inevitably, as parents we have to intervene For some reason or another, but can we wait for that reason to come instead of constantly trying to prevent it. 

And the second thought that came to mind in reference to this, if I struggle so much to just relax into parenting, is the context that none of us at least I don't believe, I don't believe any of us. were meant to parent, the way that most of us are parenting. Raising kids was supposed to happen. In a village kids were meant to be out of the house running around with other kids, grandparents nearby daily, Labour's shared. So please, please, please offer yourself a little grace, that this is just a harder way of doing it. And the reality remains that this just is how many of us are doing it. And so just offering yourself again, those two words, of course, this feels hard. Of course, this feels heavy, this is a lot, this is a lot, for one person to do. If you are a stay at home parent, all day long, by yourself or even for two people to do to have a full time job, maybe two full time jobs and the child rearing. It feels like a lot because it's a lot. 

And this is why I get so honest with so many of our clients, that if you want to regulate your nervous system, it starts with doing way, way less. Let's look at that stress bucket. Let's edit the heck out of it. We're gonna get rid of anything that's not aligned with your core values absolutely necessary. Or fun for you? What can go and it doesn't mean it always has to go. But right now in this season of healing in this season of overwhelm, something's got to give your kid doesn't need to be in 15 extracurricular activities. Can some clutter in your home go? How do we make space. 

And where I want to finish is just to offer two tools two tangible things that you can do in these moments where you feel this urge to intervene. Where you're feeling, really out of control in parenting, or you feel that need to control and parenting which we only ever feel the need to control when we ourselves feel out of control. And it would be that the next time you want to intervene? Can you notice that urge to move forward, right? That's us getting into the fight response or moving towards a conflict in hopes of stopping it. Pause. Take a single breath, one breath and count to five before you intervene. You may still intervene. But get good at Pausing first. Over time, this will decrease how often you intervene. Because in that pause, you may decide it's fine, it's fine to just let this play out on its own. It'll also drastically change how you intervene. Do you rush and quickly and loudly try to fix the problem. Or can you calmly walk in offer a moment of connection before correcting. So the next time you feel that need to intervene? Can you just take one breath and count down from five, five, or three to one. 

And the second somatic tool I want to offer is one that can be really helpful in both anger or for this need to control. And it's just called a tense and release practice. So when you feel this need to control, you're going to inhale, make fists as tight as you can. And as you exhale, you're going to release letting your hands drop open your shoulders drop down away from your ears, maybe do it with me now inhale, tighten those hands. Flex everything, everything everything. Exhale, let it go. shoulders drop hands fall. This invitation and encouragement to physically let go can often help us make space to mentally let go as well. 

And the very last thing that I mentioned before our three takeaways is that there is undoubtedly some deeper work to unpack here. What are your beliefs around what good parenting or bad parenting is? What should be allowed or not allowed as a child or for children? A reflection on how you were responded to as a child. Were you allowed to have big feelings or were you asked to shut them down? When you faced conflict, did a parent intervene and shut it down so that they didn't have to deal with it? Or did they sit with you in conflict to help you learn how to navigate it better? It makes sense. You don't know how to do the things for your children that will We're not done for you as a child. And it's not too late to learn. And this is the work that we support clients with all the time. I feel like I could do an entire other podcasts not podcast episode, I could do a whole other podcast just on the regulated parenting conversations that come up both in my DMs from all of you as well as inside our membership and with our one on one coaching clients. And so much of what I talked about today doesn't just again, doesn't just apply to parenting, but in how so many of us show up in every area of our life. All right, we're at time, bringing it together three tangible takeaways. 

Number one, we often have to let go of control to manage dysregulation, which can be especially tricky, because the dysregulation feeds into us needing to control what can you do when you feel that need to intervene? Pause, breathe 54321. 

Number two is an understanding hyper vigilance as a natural consequence, or follow up to those who experienced trauma or chronic stress. And when you can recognize that this hyper vigilance feeds the dysregulation which feeds more hyper vigilance, that awareness hopefully can help you interrupt that feedback loop. Oh, I'm being hyper vigilant because of what happened then. But I'm here and I'm now and you can insert some of those tangible regulation tools to help settle your system enough to maybe also settle that hyper vigilance. And this can lend support to that narrative of going from what if to even if this can give you that space to entertain or practice some of those other regulated parenting reframes. 

And TAKEAWAY NUMBER THREE, is just a reminder and a repeat of those reframes. Number one, how developmentally appropriate have you to insert the behavior that is making you crazy. Number two, as a parent, it is my job to be firm. Number three, I am the anchor while they storm. And number four, connection before correction. 

All right. That's it for today. Until next week, sending hope and healing and some regulated parenting your way. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai