"The Traumatic Impact of Your Child's Trauma: What Parents Go Through Upon Discovery"

Tonight we're talking about something that doesn't get enough attention: what happens to parents when they discover their child has been traumatized.

If you're a parent listening right now, and you've just found out your child was abused, neglected, or exposed to trauma—this episode is for you. We're breaking down the emotional, psychological, and relational impact of discovering your child's trauma. You're not alone in what you're feeling.

Transcript

Welcome And Community Mission

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Terror to Triumph again.

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I'm your host, Alfonso Belt, and I am the creator of this platform. I just want to let you know that we had a very good time with Dr. David Marcus last time. And you guys, if you didn't check it out, you should go back and look at those for that episode. We had some technical difficulties during that episode, but we had so much information that it didn't even matter. It was so good. Also, this coming Saturday, May 16th, 9:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we have Tracy Smaldino coming on to show, and she has a magnificent testimony, you guys. You don't want to miss this. All this information I'm trying to share and bring to you, you guys, it's all about your it's like your coming of age. But it's the season of your coming of age. Guilt, the shame, the fear, you like stretching out through the eggshell like a bird hatching.

When Parents Discover Trauma

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You you you are finding your liberation. Liberate yourselves.

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Feelings are valid, and you deserve to be heard. This platform is a safe zone for you to come and get the information you need, and to also hear about things that you might not have known about yourself. I'm learning a lot on this show. Well, that being said, me being a survivor, we need to go forth. This show is about something that generally doesn't get talked about too much. What happens when parents discover that their child has been traumatized? We often think about the child, but who thinks about the parents? You know, the parents, that's a tremendous blow to a parent. Excuse me, to find out that their child has been abused, neglected or even exposed to other traumas. If if you're a parent listening right now and you found out that your child was abused, this episode is for you. We're breaking down the emotional, psychological, and relational impact of discovering your child's trauma. You're not

Secondary Trauma In The Body

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alone in what you're feeling.

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So let's start with the clinical term secondary traumatization.

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When they learn that their child has been traumatized. According to research published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, mothers of sexually abused children in comparison to mothers of non-abused children experienced significantly greater overall emotional distress.

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This isn't just sadness. This is trauma.

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Trauma to one family member affects the entire family. When a child is traumatized, the parent's nervous system also becomes dregulated. You're not the only one affected emotionally. You are neurobiologically affected for your child's trauma. Your own nervous system goes into threat mode. Your Agmodala, Agmandala, if I'm saying it correctly, forgive me if I'm butchering the word. It makes me really think if someone could have been traumatized by my abuse. But here's the paradox. In order to help your child heal, you have to manage your own trauma response first. Yeah, I could see that because trauma responses are something else. If you've been watching this show, you know we talked about trauma responses. We just got through a series called the React Series, which talked about each individual trauma response fight, flight, fawn, freeze. So if you as a parent are doing these things, and a child is picking up on that, you're not helping the child. That's what it's talking about. The child is going through its own trauma responses. You exuding that is only going to exacerbate what's going on with the child. I can see that. As a child victim, I can see that. If I saw somebody else going through, which in part I did. I saw my parents being victimized. They victimized each other as well as my siblings.

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So yeah. Yeah.

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Okay. Okay. We're not going to go off on the deep end. We got we got a lot of information to get through tonight. I'm going to try to just power through it.

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So I wanna speak directly to the parents. Parents who just find out their child child is hurt. But when you discover your child's trauma trauma, you experience a cascade of emotions. I'm gonna try to walk you through

The Emotional Cascade For Parents

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them.

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Well, actually, that's two, right? So you feel like this can't be real. Not my child, not in my family. Your mind is literally not processing what you're hearing. You're like you refuse to believe it. This is your nervous system's way of protecting you from the information that feels too big to handle. Because really, it's not something that should have happened.

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And it is overwhelming, vastly overwhelming.

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It's like the reverse of being abused, but not that gross.

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I'm not gonna go into that too deep right now.

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It's not about me, it's about y'all. So the next emotion you'll feel is guilt. Obviously, that's the big one, right? Because you blame yourself. How come I didn't see this? How didn't I protect them?

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What did I do wrong? Where did I go wrong?

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According to research from the American Psychological Association, parental guilt is one of the most persistent and damaging emotions following child trauma discovery.

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But the truth is you are not responsible for what happened to your child, but responsible for what happens.

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Okay, another emotion you'll feel, and I I can see any parent that's going through this feeling, feel intense anger towards the perpetrator, or towards yourself, or towards your partner, even toward child for letting it happen. This rage is actually your protective instinct, it's your nervous system saying, I will fight to protect this child.

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That's not bad.

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That's love, but you have to be careful about which way that goes because you could actually end up earning your child, even if your child was not totally innocent, being where they were supposed to be, you know. Nothing, no child asks for this, first of all. Let me just clarify that. So you can't say how did the child let this happen? Would say, Come on and rape me. No child would say that. Come on and abuse me, come on and slap me up, come on and kick dirt on me, come urinate on me.

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No child would say these things.

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So you can't blame the child, say you were not supposed to be there because that person was. The child doesn't know that.

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The child is not fake these things happen the child out the hard way, but your anger is normal. Sure, you're supposed to be enraged.

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I I can't say that you shouldn't be. If you if you're not enraged, I would question what kind of parent you are at that point.

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Grief. Grieving the childhood that your child should have had. Because it's gonna hurt because your child has lost its innocence.

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This grief is real and it's necessary. So feel helplessness because now it's already happy, you can't do anything about it. You feel powerless, you couldn't prevent it, and you blame yourself for that. You can't undo it, and you can't take away your child's pain, you can't make it better, like instantly, you can't make it better, you can't make it go away.

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According to the NCTSN, parental helplessness is one of the most difficult emotions to sit with because parents are wired to protect and protect and think, but sometimes all you watch suffer constantly after the fact. Ooh, I get that, man.

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Well, we're gonna forage forward, y'all. What did y'all need this information? I'm gonna keep giving it to you.

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The last emotion that we're gonna discuss concerning this the parent will go through fear, fear that your child won't recover.

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Fear that this might define it to change who they are.

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Fear that you'll say the wrong thing around them.

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Fear that your family is broken.

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All of these emotions are normal, all of them are valid, and all of them need to be processed. Processed. I don't know if that came through that protest, processed, processed, not suppressed.

How Trauma Warps Relationships

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They need to be processed, not suppressed.

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Okay, so the body tells you discovering your child's trauma can fracture your relationships with your child, with your significant other, even with yourself. With your child, your child might withdraw from you. Flat out.

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When my mother ate me, I didn't want to have nothing to do with her no more. Flat out, but she was the one that accosted me. So it just a matter uncle had accosted me. I might have withdrawn from my mother because I would have felt she didn't protect me.

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Okay, your child might feel shame or embarrassment, they might blame you for not protecting them. I just said that. Wow, I'm on point. Okay, so even though it's not your fault, right?

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According to the NCTSN again again, children who have experienced experienced trauma trauma often struggle struggle with trauma trust. Even with their parents, have a child to experience what I went through in my childhood. Yeah.

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I don't want no child to suffer what I went through.

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No child. And the thing this is constantly happening, even as I'm speaking this right now. And then the parents are going through this, trying to deal and help the child, but the child is rejecting them because they feel like they weren't protected. This is a this is this is so you can feel how overwhelmingly heavy this is. Knowing your child, the one you care about, the one you wanted to nurture and see grow into greatness, has been taken down so far that they feel like they can't trust you, the one who you want to protect the most. They feel like you just dropped the ball, like you betrayed them.

unknown 19:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

In my own ways. I feel that too.

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Like a parent had dropped the ball concerning my.

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Others become distant and unable to look at their child without feeling the weight of what happened.

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Neither extreme gives the child a kill with your partner. Partner discovery can either bring you together or tear you apart.

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According to research from Kansas State University. Couples often have different emotional responses to child trauma. Okay, that's understandable. You two different people shouldn't always be having the same exact response. I mean, partially from the shock of it, right? But you know, one parent might go into the rage, and the other parent might go into the try to coddle extra, you know, protection over hyper-vigilant, controlling every aspect of the child's movement from there on out. You know, I might be overwhelming to the child, you know, even after the trauma is already overwhelming to the child.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

Giving me the willies. Okay. Gotta push forward. Gotta push forward. Gotta push forward. Okay. Okay. Okay. Gotta calm myself down a little bit. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

So if you if you uh excuse me, let me get a drink of water. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Okay. One parent might be in rage mode, the other's in shutdown mode. One parent might blame the other for not being vigilant enough. These differences, if not addressed, can lead to conflict.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I can see that. I could see that. Resentment. Mm-hmm.

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And even separation. Okay, I can see that. I can see that. I put I'm very empathetic. I'm an empath, you know what I'm saying? So people shoes instantly. Like I can feel like what they would be going through with yourself, okay. You might experience what's called moral injury.

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A deep sense that you failed in your fundamental duty as a parent. You might develop anxiety. Parents be going through it.

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Y'all think y'all focus on the child, and the child child needs to focus. Child needs to be looked after, true enough. But what needs to also happen is somebody needs to check in on the parent. The parent is going through a lot. And the parent needs help. Who's gonna look for the parent? That's why both parents are supposed to look out after each other. And I know y'all heard that, and I just noticed something fell on the side over here, just toppled over. That was just something trying to distract me, but I'm staying focused with you guys. This is way more important than anything else. Okay. So according to the National Center for PTSD, parents or parents of traumatized children often develop in nightmares.

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So the relational impact is real, guys. And it okay.

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If you're a parent who's

Regulate Yourself To Help Them

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just discovered your child's trauma, here's what you need to know. First, your child's trauma is not your loser. You did not do this, you're not responsible for what happened. You are responsible, however, for your response. Response is normal, it needs to be managed for the child's sake. Think of it that way. No, you want to go out of control, you want to blow up on somebody, or or you want to just try to control everything, but you got to manage it for your child's sake.

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You cannot, if you're in active crisis, not inactive, in like in active crisis.

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You're currently going into crisis. You have to seek support for yourself. This isn't selfish, this is necessary. You have two people in the family. Well, three, if you go both parents, not just a mother and a child, but mother, father, and a child. Three people now who have suffered trauma from this one incident. So all of y'all need the help. The parents have to go through a lot as well because they have to manage their stuff while they're going through it, while it's fresh, while they're trying to help a child go through. That's a lot, man. And you got a lot on your plate already with the bills, with the current situation around us globally, politically, financially. Bills are sky high. Car insurance, doctor bills, whatever the case, putting food on the table, keeping heat on, electricity. Man, it's so much going on. You're already going 500 different directions trying to make sure just the house is secure, and then this happens.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Oh man, I'm I'm kind of getting a headache just thinking about it, all that, and then this happens.

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Now you got your sponsors, innocence loss, and you're grieving the innocence loss from your child, and now you're going through all these emotions because you want to go find the culprit and do something dastardly to them. You're trying to find what went wrong. Well, you're blaming other people, you're blaming yourself if it happened in the school, you're blaming the school of the counselors. How come y'all missed this? You might have the child happen to be over a relative's house. You're blaming them. How come y'all let this happen? You blame yourself for even letting the child go there. So, yeah, you have to manage your stuff. You got to get your emotions in check for your child's sake, even though it's normal for you to wow out. So seek support for yourself. Third, your child needs you to be regulated. I just said that, didn't I? It needs you to manage your stuff. In other words, handle your stuff, right? You need to handle your stuff. Your child needs you to handle your stuff. I said that like three times statement right there.

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Your child needs you to hold yourself together, right? Now more than ever.

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NCTSN, parental emotional regulation is one of the strongest predictors of child recovery.

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Wow, did you hear that?

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I gotta repeat that one more time. Parental emotional regulation, that means keeping your shh together, right? Keeping your ish together is one of the strongest predictors predictors of child recovery. That means if you got your if you keep your stuff in line, like ain't nothing happening, ain't nothing falling apart, but you still managing something on the side to make sure to get that person taken care of. But you showing the child that everything's everything, it's it's all good, it's 100. We love you, we're gonna love on you, we gonna ain't nothing changed. That's the strongest way your child will have a chance to recover by seeing that there's consistency in the household, and that you ain't losing your shit.

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Okay, I'ma just say it. A chance to come out of the shit they're in. Okay.

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So if you're in constant panic or rage, your child's nervous system will mirror that. That sounds like I'm I'm talking to somebody out here.

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If you're in constant panic or rage, your child's nerves feel more panic and more rage. They see you wilding out, or your rage might make your child have more fear. That's for the child's sake.

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We know you want to go off the deep end, but for your child's sake, you're trying to protect your child, you gotta keep your shit together. That's what it's saying. Okay,

What To Say And Not Say

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so you need to be calm, you need to be present, you need to be grounded, not perfect, but just present.

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Consistency, didn't I say that? You have to be there because you were there's don't force them to talk about it.

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They'll talk about it when they're ready, but don't minimize what happened either. Like, but you can go to your child and say, you know, I'm glad you came to us with this and what happened. Well, we know uh that's a lot for you to be going through, and we're sorry that that happened to you. We're gonna try to make sure it never happens again. If you want to talk about it, you can always come to either me or your mother, but we're not forcing you to talk about it.

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We know it's something that you should talk about sometime down the line, but it doesn't, and it doesn't have to be to us.

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You if you don't want to talk about it to us, we can have you see a therapist, but that's the topic for another conversation at another time.

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You can you can run it down like that just to give them the option to know that hey, I can talk if I wanted to. Wow. This episode is giving me chills to my core, I swear. Don't minimize what happened, don't try to fix it with logic, just listen, validate their emotions. Their emotions are valid too.

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So validate their emotions and be present, be there for them.

Professional Help And Support Networks

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Okay, fifth, seek professional. I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a trauma-informed informed specialist, I'm not a cultivational speaker. I don't deem myself to be a motivational speaker, but what I am is someone who wants you to have the information you need available when you need it. Because the information ain't readily out there. If you look at that ticker tape down there at the bottom of the screen, all of that information is for you guys. Numbers, you can write them down.

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They've been scrolling for the whole entire show so far. So, continuing.

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A trauma-informed therapist can help you process your own secondary trauma while also guiding you on how to support your child. Ain't that something? You think I just said something out of the trauma Bible? Right? Because I've been telling y'all y'all need to see somebody. I'm talking about us adults who have suffered childhood abuse. I've been saying we need to go see a professional, and I recommended a trauma-informed therapist. Start there, and then as you go on, try to seek other forms, something that might help your personal situation. Because it may be a trauma-informed therapist might not be enough for your situation. You might want to go through somatic experiencing, or maybe your therapist doesn't, maybe you need to go through some hypnotherapy, you know, to help you unlock those blocks in your subconsciousness.

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It just depends on what route you need to go. What route you want to take, what route you feel comfortable, but all routes lead to healing. Don't just jump off the deep end, take the steps, okay?

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All right, so okay, so you are finding this support that you need. This is not a sign of weakness, but wisdom. If you know you need help and there's no other person around you that can do it, you have to seek that help from an outside source, do that. That's not a sign of weakness. That's not saying that you can't do it. That's just saying I don't know how. And think about it this way. So all my parents out there, think about it this way. When you were coming up, you didn't know nothing about no damn two plus two.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Who told you that? Your parents? They explained what equal two. Two plus two equal four. Well, you got that from some somebody who taught you that. So basically, going through this source, I can teach you.

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As you can see, we're having technical difficulties. I'm trying to circumnavigate these technical difficulties. So try to bear with me for a second. Uh, yeah, so as we go through these things, we often learn from other people, from other people. We have to learn from other people. We have to learn from other people because because we might not have anybody who's not around us, who is who knows what we need, what we need. So we have to. So we have to go and find the answers. And find the answers from other people.

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From other people.

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Ain't that something we had to go and find from other people? We had to go and find the answers from other people.

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So learn how to connect with others. We'll know what they'll see what we're going through, and they'll they'll let you know that you're not alone. There's support groups out there, online, communities, and resources city. So you don't have to fight this battle by yourself. You can know that others understand what you're going through and can be really capable of giving. You a profound healing. I ain't gonna say that over there. I like that guy. He's funny.

Hope, Healing, And Closing

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Seventh, you can remember that recovery is possible, right? So hell can heal. Your family can heal. You can heal. It takes time though. Time, support, and intention. You have to want the healing, right? But healing. And you're carrying the weight of your child's trauma. I see.

unknown 45:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

I honor that in you. Not broken. Your child is not broken. Neither one of y'all broke. Y'all not broken. Your family is not broken. No. What happened was wrong. There's no question about that.

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But what happens to what happens in the next hours, days, how you respond, how you support your child, and how you heal yourself.

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That's where your power lies. Gotta keep it in control. For your child's sake. And your own.

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Self-care is not selfish. It's the ongoing practice of honoring yourself, and that's what sustains trust.

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I love y'all. I thank y'all for being here. Don't forget to tune in tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

This episode is draining. It's draining me.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

I I am I'm not gonna even hold it up and lie to y'all about it. This this episode drain drained a mess out of me. It's it would emotionally pull in this uh action. But it's caused me to think about putting myself in other people's shoes.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

Now looking back at it, I never told my dad what my mom did to me. Having that knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

I don't think he even knew. I don't think nobody ever told him. But hey, here's one thing. I don't have to hold on to that. I don't have to hold on to that. And you don't have to hold on to it either. Nope. That's not your cross to carry. There's a bird and a bear. The only thing you should be focused on is helping your kid get back right. And maintaining yourself and finding all. Oh, excuse me. So y'all can make it out of this. I'm rooting for y'all out there. I'm really rooting for you. Y'all out there.

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I want y'all to be able to make it. I want y'all to be able to purpose that deals with family issues, child, childhood trauma, family trauma. Maybe even find somebody that deals with gender.

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Because that that could be the birthplace of where it all begins in your family. If you haven't had any generational trauma. But it's gonna take you to keep ahead in the game. But this is something else. This is something else.

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Trying to put yourself in somebody else's shoes like that. That's crazy.

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That is crazy.

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But I thank y'all for joining under the Terror to Triumph community, or as we call now the 3T community. Stay we don't forget about our special guests coming up Saturday, but we got another show for you coming up tomorrow. So keep your eyes open and your ears open. Keep your head on the swivel. Be aware of your surroundings. Because it's it's it's crazy out here, y'all. I want y'all to be safe. I want y'all to find the healing that you're supposed to have so you can become the man or the woman that God wanted you to be in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Okay. I love y'all dearly, man. I I need y'all to stay alive. Remember, help is closer than you think.