Dr. Robyn Koslowitz is the author of "Post-Traumatic Parenting", helps parents stop their damage from damaging their children—and heal their inner child in the process.
562: How Old Scars Show Up in New Families and What to Do About It
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz
Ever wonder how your past experiences shape the way you parent?
In this episode of the Mindful Mama Podcast, Hunter sits down with Dr. Robyn Koslowitz to explore post-traumatic parenting and how understanding our own histories can help us raise children with more awareness and compassion.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
How trauma can unconsciously influence parenting decisions
The concept of the “trauma app” and what it means for daily parenting
The five types of post-traumatic parenting
How connecting with your inner child supports healing
Practical steps for navigating challenges with awareness and compassion
Ep 562- Koslowitz
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
Hunter (00:03
You're listening to the Mindful Parenting Podcast, episode number 562. Today we're talking about how your past shapes how you parent with Dr. Robyn Koslowitz.
Hunter (00:17.74)
Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Training. I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans”, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Hey, welcome back. This is an awesome episode to dive into. I'm going to be talking to Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, author of “Post Traumatic Parenting”, who helps parents stop their damage from damaging their children. And that is exactly what we are going to be talking about. We're gonna talk about how our trauma can unconsciously influence our parenting decisions and kind of when it kicks in and makes its effect and how to know that and how to heal, how to heal all of that. it's really, this is a really encouraging episode. It's really eye-opening, really reassuring. You know, if your past sometimes gets in the way of the parent you want to be, you definitely want to listen, definitely want to share it with your friends. So listen together, talk about it, have a chance to go deeper. It would be really cool.
Let's dive in. Join me at the table as I talk to Dr. Robyn Koslowitz.
I am so happy to have you on the Mindful Mama podcast. Thank you for coming.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Thanks so much for having me, I'm so excited to talk to you!
Hunter:
Yeah, and we've talked before. really enjoy you and your energy. So I'm happy to share it with the audience and happy to talk about your book. I think it's so apropos to everything we talk about here on the mindful mama podcast, post-traumatic parenting. And I know that you are a PhD and you're seeing people and things like that, but I'm curious. My first question is, where does this work come from for you? Is it fully from the patients you've seen or is there something personal about this with post-traumatic parenting?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Great question. I think all research is research. I don't think it's ever an accident that we go into a field where we get curious about something. For me, I was a mom with undiagnosed PTSD when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. And I was a college student. And I just remember having this thought of, if it's this painful for me to be inside my body, like my panic attacks and my flashbacks are so painful, what is it doing to a fetus? That was my initial question. I went to the stacks at the library because this was pre-Google and there was nothing. There was no research whatsoever on the effects. At that point, I thought it was just panic attacks. So on the effects of panic attacks or stress on a developing fetus. It just didn't make sense for me. They said, yeah, don't do that. Don't be stressed out when you're pregnant. Thanks, that helps. I'll just do that then because when people tell you calm down, you just naturally do. That works.
Hunter:
It's so helpful. Thank you everyone for telling us to calm down.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Yeah, so there was really nothing on the effects of panic attacks. And then when I realized I had PTSD, I was looking for like, what's the impact of trauma on parenting? Even just practical questions like, how do you explain a flashback to a toddler?
Hunter (05:01)
How did you know you had PTSD?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
So I was in college and I mean, I was having panic attacks and I was having flashbacks, but I actually thought that maybe I was schizophrenic. Like I thought like, I'm hearing things other people can't hear. I'm seeing things other people can't see. That's just not considered a good sign for your mental health. And the only thing I knew about was schizophrenia. So I thought maybe I'm, you know, becoming mentally ill, which terrified me. I used to hide it from everybody. So like from 16 on, I was actively working to hide my PTSD from everybody, thinking that I was mentally ill. Not that there's something wrong with that, but as a 16 year old, that was terrifying. And then I was in college and my professor was talking about PTSD and he was talking about, you know, the really major stories of PTSD, like the famous one that might even be an urban legend about like a Vietnam vet who thought he was taking fire. He heard a car backfire and he shot somebody because he was, you know, he was transported back. And that was like the most extreme example of a flashback. And then he was, the professor was going on and I remember being like, wait a minute, that sounds like me. And I raised my hand and I said, is it only from being in war or could it happen if if something else really terrifying, you know, happened to you? And I said like, like, you know, witnessing the death of someone you love or being a really dangerous emergency situation. He's like, yeah, depending on the circumstances, that could do it. And I remember being like, my gosh.
Like that's me. I just sort of found myself in the pages of the DSM, right? And I went to the college counseling center and I, you know, asked for first time ever. It took a lot of courage. And I just always want to say anybody who actually goes to therapy for the first time, I really know from lived experience, the courage that takes. It is so scary because it took me weeks to work up the nerve, even though psychology is what I wanted to study. It took me weeks to actually go into the college counseling center. And I went in and I asked for help. And I remember that the therapist who helped me who was great and really was helpful, especially for like this initial stage, did not want to diagnose me with PTSD. Even though I had flashbacks, re-experiencing hyperarousal, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, mean, all the stuff, right? All the diagnostic criteria. Because she said, “you're too functional. You're a college student and you're getting straight A's and you work and you're engaged”- at that point I was engaged. She was like, “you don't have PTSD, you just had one really bad experience that you need to process and get over”. And it's so funny because now I know that hyper-functional and very capable, yet traumatized is like, it literally should be added to the DSM because every trauma survivor I know is like that, is functional in some areas, capable in some areas, but struggling greatly in others. So that's really when I realized that I had PTSD and that sort of started my healing journey. But that awful feeling, that thing that I never wanted to say of, will my damage damage my kids? That took me much longer to crystallize.
Hunter:
Yeah, and you were pregnant with your first child while you were studying. so that came, I mean, imagine it is hard to study because how do you study a fetus in the womb and what's happening to, guess it's like sort of through large numbers and surveys and things like that. But that is something they're studying now, right? Is the effects of anxiety and things like that in developing fetus.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Yeah, now there's so much attention, but remember that this was prior to 9/11. Trauma was actually something we were not talking about. Right now it's so part of the zeitgeist. Everyone talks about trauma. Everything's a trauma response. Everybody's like very educated about it. But prior to 9-11, no one was talking about trauma. was like a little, you know, side note in psychology. So it just wasn't in the ether. People weren't studying it, so it just wasn't there. So it was hard to crystallize a question when, you know, the literature I would be questioning didn't really have any place for it. There were two places where somebody spoke around it. So one was, there was a paper, a psychoanalytic paper that a professor of mine pointed me towards called “Ghosts in the Nursery” by Selma Fraiberg. And it was about basically a mom's damage, damaging her children, like young mothers in Chicago who were having a hard time connecting to their babies because of their past trauma. And that was the ghost in the cradle, right? It was like their inner child or, you know, wasn't written in that language, but that's what she was writing about. And I just think it's brilliant that my professor, the late Dr. Buchholz, like was able to take from like my very unformed question and say, you might want to read this. And then in trauma and recovery, Judith Herman was talking about, you know, the various women's groups that she was leading. And some of them were talking about how their trauma was making it difficult to parent. But it wasn't like there was a chapter about it. It wasn't like a topic, but it kept coming up in the book. And again, it had that aha moment of, that's me, there that is. Somebody is paying attention to this. And then that became my question of number one, how does trauma impact our kids? How does our damage impact our kids? And number two, what do we do about it? Right?
Hunter (10:23)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
I feel like in some ways, like, you know, we've been talking about this for years on the Mindful Mama Podcast- talking about generational cycles in that language and like breaking generational cycles. And I feel like I had, you know, in some ways, like the way I've been thinking about it in the last couple of years is like, I guess I had just kind of like the right amount of trauma, right? Like enough so that I was like, there is stuff to work with that I had cycles to break, not so much that it was, didn't have flashbacks. mean, actually in my dreams I have had flashbacks, but that kind of thing. It was just the right amount, but it is something we're so much more familiar with now. We know about capital T trauma and lowercase T trauma, right? We know that things in our past, we can process them differently in different places and sometimes we can't, we don't process them. And you use the metaphor, I like this, of the trauma app kind of running in the background of our parenting. Can you walk us through, you know, what that means and how it shows up for us in everyday moments with our kids?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz (13:46)
Sure. And I think it's very true, you know, like your observation of like now, like sort of the just right amount of trauma, right? In a way, the just right amount of trauma is worse because when you had the ripped from the headlines trauma, you know, you're traumatized because you're like, okay, you know, this horrible thing happened. I was in a bombing or, you know, I was in a car crash. You know, my story, which is in the book is pretty traumatic. Anybody would agree with that. But the truth is I push back on the notion of “Big T” versus “Little T” trauma. Because my definition of trauma is any experience that's too big for your brain to metabolize, anything that shook your sense of self or that shook your sense of safety in the world, and anything you had to cope with alone. And if you have those three things, you're traumatized. So when we expand the definition that way, a lot of things that people would define as little T-trauma are quite traumatic. Being harshly mocked and criticized by a teacher and the whole class laughs could be quite traumatic depending on who it happens to and how it lands on their nervous system.
But that's not the rip from the headlines, 14 people in car crash kind of, right, story. So in a way, the just right amount of trauma is deceptive, because we say, oh, I'm not really traumatized. And then we play trauma poker. We're like, well, she has this, I'll raise her that. But that might not actually be the traumatic experience, like the thing that left the scars. So the way I look at the trauma app, it's a very long way of answering your question. But the way I look at the trauma app is when we're traumatized our brain needs to create an operating principle to restore our sense of self and our sense of safety, right? Because in that moment of trauma, the brain says like, my gosh, what just happened to me? All right, from now on, I'm gonna do this so that it never happens again. And that this, that's the trauma app algorithm. So let's say you're harshly mocked by your teacher, you have a parent who constantly criticizes you and fat shames you, right? An experience that many of us have gone through, right? And it's not a rip from the headlines experience. And from that you learn, “I will always people please. No one will ever be mad at me. If no one's ever mad at me, no one will have a reason to criticize me. No one will have a reason to make me feel bad or to exclude me”. So you become a people pleaser. So your trauma app says anytime you notice people upset, say yes. Right? Makes you feel more safe. Does it actually make you more safe? Probably not. If you say yes to your drunk boss about like going with him to the back room during a holiday party, that might not make you more safe. But the trauma app toggles on. makes you feel safe.
When you're parenting, you want to parent from a place of humanity, right? I mean, your book is raising good humans because we're human. think that's why your book resonated so much with me because of the essential humanity of what you talk about. You know, I don't want an app parenting my kid. I want to parent my kid. But if I'm a people pleaser and then my kid is upset, I might say yes when I meant to say no. Right? If the opposite, if I lash out whenever I feel slightly impinged on, anyone dears get near my boundaries, I yell. You know, kids are going to get near your boundaries sometimes, frequently, all the time, right? Like, so the trauma app turns on, not consciously, not mindfully, the opposite. It turns on when you don't want it to. And then you're not parenting your child. The trauma is parenting your child.
Hunter (16:57)
That’s exactly my experience- is like, I am doing exactly what I have chosen not to do. It is because of what happened to me as a child, right? Is that, that this is what's happening to me as a child, you know, and here it is, we are in the situation again, I am in a different role, but it's still that sort of same pattern playing itself out. It's, it's frustrating. It's incredibly frustrating. Right? Yeah. I mean, and this, it's so frustrating because we have awareness of it, right? Maybe we don't, we're not aware in the moment. We're not making a choice in the moment, but then we can, we can part of ourselves sometimes sees what's happening and can't stop it yet. And part of it, and then we have the awareness after the fact and we can start to say, this is, you know, and then if we have the, the wherewithal to say, this is exactly how I didn't want to raise my child, you know, and you talk about this idea of like that parenting are, you know, in the real world, the messiness of parenting, all that, that can be part of healing, the healing process. But we want it to happen right now, right? Like we don't want to perpetuate anything. How do you walk people through that?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
So first of all, think and you something that you write so beautifully about it, something that I think deeply about is shame is the thing that blocks us from really looking at that. Right. So like if I meant to not yell, right, I woke up in the morning like today I'm going to be a calm, present mom and I'm not going to yell. And then I go to bed feeling like how did the incredible hunk hulk come out of me? Right. That was a trauma response. So if I understand that, I'm not going to be yelling at myself so much. I'm not going to be like, what kind of a mom gets so enraged by a three year old? Every kind of a mom of a three-year-old is going to feel rage at some moment because three-year-olds can be incredibly determined, which we want them to be because when they grow up, they're going to use that for all sorts of great things. But in the moment, it can be very frustrating, right? So that shame blocks us from thinking about it and saying, this is data. This interaction that didn't go the way I wanted it to go is a learning moment for me if I could just pay enough attention to it and say, what have we learned? Like what could I, what did I learn from today? What can I take out so that I can do something different tomorrow? Right? But I'm not going to do that. If my brain is like, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. Don't even think about it. You're the worst mom in the world. Like just go to bed and hope tomorrow goes better. Right? Think about something else. Netflix, eat popcorn, whatever. Then I'm never going to learn. And if I say, I got so mad because really needed a break and he wasn't going to bed and I needed my me time Then I can say, when else can I get me time? Is there a time? Am I filling my cup enough? Is there a time that I can devote to myself? Because self-care is childcare, right? If I filled up my cup, if I made me into me, then I don't need that as much as it's like my kid is delaying bedtime. I'm not gonna feel rage because you're taking away an essential nutrient for me. I'm gonna feel maybe mild annoyance. I might feel like, “how many times are you gonna like pop out of bed again”? But I'm not gonna have that sense of like, you are depriving me of something I need. But I can only do that if I think it through.
Hunter:
Yeah, if you can look at it clearly. I mean, I think the problem is like so many, the guilt stops people from even seeing that, right? I mean, the guilt is so heavy, especially if we've been a victim of someone else's trauma, of another generation's trauma, right? And the shame, et cetera. I mean, for parents who are stuck in that, they're saying, yes. Robyn, I want to be able to look at that. I want to be able to see what my needs are met, like, the people who feel just so awash in the guilt and the shame, how can they start to step out of it? They can see, okay, maybe I had a trauma response. It's like, is it a process of forgiveness? Like they have to forgive themselves.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz (21:17)
- or noticing, right? You have to notice that you have a trauma app. You know, every time I feel stressed out, this is my go-to response. Every time I mean to say no, I say yes. Every time I, you know, every time I mean to, you know, stick to my schedule, I let this thing derail me. Like, what is that about? That keeps happening. Patterns are very, very educational, right? If I can notice the pattern and if I can do it from a place of curiosity, not from a place of self-blame, but from a place of what have we learned? Like I'm so curious why I do that. That would be step one, like identifying your trauma app because it's really not you, it's your trauma. Like you are not a bad mom because you yelled or you are not a bad mom because you forgot once again to do whatever.
Hunter:
You didn't make that choice. It wasn't even a choice you made consciously.
Dr Robyn Koslowitz:
Right. It's sort of like, you know, like when you're pregnant and you're having morning sickness and sometimes like the puke's going to happen, you did not make that choice. Right. It had a mind of its own. Your brain sometimes has a mind of its own, literally.
Hunter:
Yeah. Or even it's your nervous system, I think. Right? Like it's like, I don't know. I mean, who knows? Is it helpful to identify a specific body part or things like that? I love this. It's really, you want to build this understanding, right? You want to build this understanding of yourself. The more curiosity and understanding you can have about yourself and your reactions, the more you can get a little distance from it and make some choices to maybe prevent reactions that you're not wanting. So you talk about five, I think this is in the spirit of understanding and self-awareness, you talk about five different post-traumatic parenting types in the book. Can you describe those briefly and kind of like talk about how they can help us move forward?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Sure, so every post-traumatic parenting default type, because like after doing so many years of these classes, I've sort of figured out where people tend to go. Every one of these is a trauma response. Like again, it's not like we're labeling you as deficient in some way, it just makes so much sense. So the first post-traumatic parenting type that we talk about in the book is the entangled parent. And that's somebody who is so caught up in past drama of their own and their own past trauma, past relationship that they can't move forward- parent their actual children. So you might have someone who's-
Hunter:
Now this is tricky because we're trying to like have self-awareness and trying to understand it, yet not get to this point of being entangled. Sorry, go ahead.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
No, 100%. And then what, so what happens is, for example, you might have, you're so busy with the drama with your ex and your brain is so consumed with everything that's happening that you're not paying attention to your real world children. In the book, I talked about a woman who was so tangled up in her family of origins dysfunction, and they kept pulling her in and pulling her in, needing her to drop everything to help them that she wasn't able to parent. And she actually came into my practice asking me, “give me the right words so can explain to my kids that my mom needs me more than them”. And then she was like, “Wait, after a few weeks, give me the right words to explain to my mom that my kids need me more than she does”. And it was so interesting because it's not about the right words. It's about objectification, right? It's about does your mom understand that you're an independent human in a reality outside of her own, right? Your kids do need you because you're the only mom they have.
But your mom needs to understand, particularly in a family dynamic where there are other siblings and other people who could step into those roles, you do have another life. And we really were working on that. And then this idea of becoming a container for our kids' emotions. If your container is so full with everybody else's emotions, you don't have room in your container for your kids' emotions. That's a problem. So those are the entangled parents that we learn about boundaries in the book. And then we have the paralyzed parent. The paralyzed parent is someone who really doesn't have a sense of discernment. Maybe they were criticized a lot growing up. Maybe their trauma just made them feel like a really incompetent person. They're constantly rushing around trying to accomplish everything at once, but nothing purposeful is actually happening. And that's because like they hear something on social media and it sounds great. So they're trying that and then they're cleaning up the mess and then the kids screaming to them from the other room. And then they're criticized about the mess in their house and they're just running everywhere, trying to make everybody happy. But there's no like purposeful action of like a hierarchy of we're going to prioritize this task. And that task means it won't happen.
And that's okay, because values are hierarchical. My kids are more important than the neatness of my dining room. Fair enough, right? And we learn about prioritizing values. And then we have the disengaged parent. This is somebody who really deep down so fears their damage and they feel like their edges are so sharp that they need to constantly take the edge off so that they won't harm their kids. A lot of times these people outsource parenting. Sometimes these are people who dissociate and who space out and who are just not present interactions with their kids so that they won't get stressed out and yell at them or harm them in any way. For many years, I was a disengaged parent. was one of the things, undoing that was one of the things that led me to write the book. Then we have the perfectionist parents, and those are parents who are trying to be perfect, right? They're just trying to do everything. They memorize all the parenting scripts. They buy all the books. Very often, two perfectionist parents marry each other and they police each other. Like, this happens a lot.
And they're just trying so hard to be perfect that they forget to be present, which is so tragic because their kids want them, not the script, right? Not the perfect technique. There’s a beautiful book called by Annie Burnside- and she coined the term in her title- “Soul to Soul Parenting”. Like, soul to soul versus role to role. And I just, that resonates with me so much when I think about that, right? Like when we're trying to put on this perfect role, this perfect, you know, we're listening to all the podcasts or reading those great books and we just really, our kids want us to be real.
Hunter:
Yeah, like don't worry about what are, I can think of myself like when I was in plays in high school, like when you're on a script, you're not present, because I'm like, wait, what am I supposed to say next? Not in the scene. When you go off script, you're more authentic. You sound like a more real, you know, actor certainly, but you sound more like a you man. If you're busy thinking about what's the script, what's the words I'm supposed to say now, your kid can sense that. Like you're not there. Like you said, I love that soul to soul instead of role to role. It's a beautiful way of pointing that.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
The final post-traumatic parent is just someone in survival mode. That is not someone who's post-traumatic yet. That's a person who the trauma just happened like five minutes ago, right? Just we were in a fire. just, you know, I was talking to someone who was just waking up from survival mode and she's like, I don't know, one minute I'm living here in this marriage with these kids and doing this job and it's three years later after COVID and like I'm divorced in another state within a completely different job dealing with this entire financial mess that happened, and it's like, wait, what just happened? Like, what happened in the last three years? Survival mode is you're really just trying to like stay alive and keep your kids alive because you're punch drunk. Like something just happened. And sometimes people can be in survival mode for many years. Just happened means just happened in terms of your psychological processes, right? But you're just getting through the day. So you're not yet post-traumatic. You're like, what we would call a psychologist, you're in acute stress disorder. You're not yet- past the trauma.
Hunter:
Wow. Okay. we can, I imagine, dear listener, you may be hearing yourself in one or maybe even a couple of these different types and we can see how it affects our parenting and that we can't- if we think about really the essence of parenting is that parenting is a relationship and the relationship is communication and that is presence, right? That is like, “I am here with you, I'm listening to you”. And modeling maybe for you and my child what you want to see. Like all of these things you described are not, you know, there's not a lot of conscious choice in that. And that's got to be incredibly hard and frustrating. Where do people start to, A) show up a little bit more- maybe while they're healing- but then also heal.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
So yeah, it's hard, right? Because we're trying to like, all these clocks are ticking simultaneously, like my own healing and then my kids healing and then raising my kids in a different way. Because if you think about it, we're a little bit operating against our neurology. Parenting is somewhat in our brain, a cut and paste system. Like if you had good attachment, you're just supposed to sort of like do like, what would mom do? And then you just do that. And that's great if what would mom do applies to you or if what would mom do is a beneficial thing. It's very hard. know how parents have these major to-do lists at all times? But when you're a post-traumatic parent, you also have this major to-don't list at the same time. It's so, so difficult. So first of all, recognizing that it's so hard to start from scratch. Our brains don't want to do that. Our brains just want to copy paste. That you're really doing something very, very difficult here. But then, I need to just underline that because that is so true. Our brains want to take shortcuts, The paths that have been there before are myelinated, meaning they're fattier, they're easier to go down, they are the superhighways. Our brain wants to conserve energy. so when you are making, it's not so simple, right? It is actually using extraordinary amounts of energy to do something that is basically sort of bushwhacking through the forest and making a new choice.
Hunter:
Yeah, you're 100 % right. You sometimes hear people talk about neuroplasticity as though it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. “Wow, our brains are neuroplastic. This is great” This is terrible, right? Because neurons that fire together wire together. And if neurons fire together a lot, they weld together, which means it's harder to get them to stop firing together. Right? That's why trauma responses are so sticky. Like what you're saying that the myelination gets stronger and stronger.
Dr Robyn Koslowitz:
Knowing that this is very, hard, first of all, is super, super important. But then also, I think in part three of the book, I break down what you need to know about parenting. Meaning I have this concept called “R2 Parenting”. What's important to emphasize and what sort of nonsense and fluff and like just like the zeitgeist of the moment on social media so that you know, like, okay, you don't have that gut instinct for parenting, no problem. Here's what to double down on. And here's what's not that important.
Hunter:
What are these things? Tell us.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
So I really break it down to two things. In parenting, you want to be, I call it “R2- Responsive and Responsible”. Social media makes us think that you either are a gentle parent or you're like one of those like one, two, three magic type, I don't know what you want to call it, authoritarian parents. And like, there's no choices in between. You can't possibly be both validating, kind, empathetic, gentle, and also sometimes teach children a skill or help children navigate the demands of the world. But somehow you have to pick one or the other. When the truth is you can do both. You can do all the gentle validating, I notice your emotions things with kids. And I think that's so important. It's so neurodevelopmentally informed and it's exactly how our brains learn, right? We certainly don't want to go back to the eighties where it was like, suck it up, you're fine, right? Which is how many of us were parented. Not because parents were necessarily- they thought maybe they were doing the right thing. I'm teaching them to be tough. teaching them to like be resilient. That's what they were thinking. Being able to be like, oh, you're so sad. You fell down. You have a boo boo. And then teaching a skill, right? Maybe later on that night, like, “Remember when mommy said that you shouldn't climb on that one- it’s too high?” Mommy didn't say that because she's mean and she doesn't want you to be happy. Mommy said that because it was dangerous and then you got a boo boo. So next time, what are we going to do? Are we going to go on the red whatever, know, that type of thing?” There's nothing wrong with teaching children.
Hunter (33:55)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
I love that: “Responsive and Responsible”. Yes, like you can be responsive and say no and hold some boundaries. You can be responsive. I know you're so upset and I'm still gonna, I still need to get your arms through this car seat strap because we need to wear this for me to drive the car, right? Are all these places where we can be kind and hold a boundary. But I love the way you say “responsive and responsible”. Those are exactly the two most important things.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
And I feel like there's just so much weird polarization that happens where we feel like we have to make this choice. The other super important thing for people to know, and this is research that actually was really aggregated right after I handed in the final manuscript of the book, because for people who haven't written a book, just so you know, the book takes a very long time from writing the last paragraph till it ends up on the shelves, right? So research came out about how brains are uniquely neuroplastic, particularly for mothers in the postpartum period, what we call the Matrescence Period. And as your children are growing, your brain is very neuroplastic because your brain really wants to keep little humans alive. So it's ready to rewire almost like, know how we talk about critical periods for language learning when kids are little? That's why like you can teach your three-year-old French and they can like pick it up in a second. But if you're trying to like do Duolingo and you're like 37, it's going to take a lot longer to learn a language. Parenting is a critical period for rewiring our brain, which means it's the optimal time to reprocess our trauma and change our trauma response because our brain is sort of ready to rewire. So it's not only that your damage won't damage your kids. What I always say is your inner child, which to me, your inner child is just a metaphor for you at the moment of trauma, right? The version of you that was created, that existed the moment you were traumatized and that you may have many inner children. The time you were mocked in second grade and the time something really scary happened in seventh grade and the time your best friend dropped you in 10th grade, like all of those. There are little inner children inside of you that are part, that turn your trauma app on whenever they think something bad might happen to you again. Your inner child can't raise a child, but in raising your real world child, you can heal your inner child if parents know that, right? Because I actually have meditations in the book where sometimes something that I hear from a lot of post-traumatic parents and it shocks every post-traumatic parent when it happens to them. But when I talk about it, people are like, yeah, sometimes your inner child is actually jealous of your real world children sometimes.
Hunter:
No, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah, like you get you have it so good You have no idea like you think this raising my voice is yelling you have no idea
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
I don't want to tell you what yelling is, right? It's really true and everybody's like, wow, yeah. And sometimes in that moment, the inner child comes out and they're the one parenting your kids. I know when I was a kid, I was raised with a very chronically ill father who eventually died of his illness. He had a very bad heart condition and he was constantly having heart attacks. And I remember when my kids were little, my husband would sometimes come home and he would like be roughhousing with them, Like just, you know, rough and tumble play. And I would get super mad and I would say, “It's almost bedtime”. Why are we rallying them up? We have to keep to the schedule. Let's go. He needs to get in the bath. She needs to finish her homework. You know, like I'd be, I'd get like really, and I would get more mad than I should, which by the way, disproportionate is a signal that it's not you. It's your trauma happening right now. And then I realized my inner child was so jealous of my kids because I never experienced a dad. I never experienced that rough and tumble play, you know, you know, healthy dad, you know, that interaction. She's never had that. So I was jealous. So when I was able to look at myself and look at my inner child and say, “hi, little me, you're watching this and you're very, very sad. And this is why. And as we participate in this, from the perspective of an adult who's participating in this, you're gonna get to see what it feels like. So I can do that rough and tumble play too with my kids. And then a little bit of my inner child gets to experience what rough and tumble play with healthy parents is like and it heals”.
So I actually have on my YouTube channel, which is also post-traumatic parenting, like meditations where you can like mourn your childhood, where you can mourn the version of yourself that perhaps died the moment you were traumatized, where you actually can, you know, tune your inner child in to experience her giving your real world children. And it's profoundly healing. And it's also great for your real world children because my kids didn't need to be yelled at for like, not that I was yelling that much, but like I was like annoyed, like, why are we running around and giggling and, you know, doing that when it's so close to bedtime? Like, what did I need to give them that pressure for? Can they just enjoy the moment? Right? Like a couple of minutes of like, you know, daddy chasing you down the hole pretending to be a monster is fun. Right? It's okay. It's we'll fall asleep. It's like not, it's actually not going to derail bedtime that much. Like I could have chilled a little, right? But my kids didn't need to feel something normative that they were doing was annoying me and wait, I'm having fun, but mom's annoyed. So is that a good thing or a bad thing? I didn't need to give that to them, right?
Hunter (41:19)
And so kind of what I'm hearing you say is that as we as we maybe look at and say, here's this this trauma that happened to me. Here is how is coming up. Right. As we start to examine, here it is. And we start to care for it. Right. We we give it some compassion. We we give that inner child some love and some compassion. It's really building that capacity for love and compassion for our children too. We're getting perspective on our own heart and our own hurt. we're also having perspec- you know, that gives us some perspective and more compassion as we look at our child. like, as we practice this compassion, we just develop that muscle a little bit.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Yeah, and a compassion for ourselves, right? Because sometimes we just turn it back on ourselves. And if you say, you know, that inner critic that's saying all these horrible things about your parenting, how would you want to talk to your own child? She came to you and said, “Mom, I did this really bad thing. I'm such an idiot”. Would you not stop her and say, “sounds like you made a mistake? And it sounds like you really, really hate that you made that mistake”. But I'm not hearing “idiot”. I'm hearing “human who made a mistake’. Isn't that how you would want to talk to your kid? But we don't talk to ourselves that way.
Hunter:
So that may be one of the steps we could start to practice. I like that. I always think about how would you talk to a good dear friend, but I love the idea of how would you talk to your child? You mentioned already that sometimes when there's an overreaction, when we have an out of place reaction, these are the things that I talk to my clients about, when you have an out of place reaction that's often when it's coming from an old wound. Is that all worth looking for or what are other ways parents can start to recognize when their reaction is coming from an old wound rather than what is needed in the moment?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
So yeah, disproportionate is the big one, right? Like it's just way too big a reaction for way too small a stressor, like upon mature reflection, right? That's definitely one. Another one is when you're disproportionately anxious, right? Like this is too, you're too scared. And when you're, and what I call experiential avoidance by proxy, when my child must not feel this way, right? As opposed to all emotions are welcome: my kid might fail and if she fails, she'll be miserable. And if she's, right, and it just gets bigger and bigger when, you know, maybe my kid will fail and learn something from the experience and it will be okay. And I'll be there to support her through it. It's very different. That's what it was for me, was like these feelings that my kid is having, this is unacceptable and it feels unacceptable in my body. Just like a whole body reaction of this is unacceptable. That was like the big flashing red light of like something is happening here that I need to work through and understand and take care of, right?
I mean, if all emotions are welcome, right, then all of my kids' emotions are welcome too, including the uncomfortable ones, including the, you know, including the times that they're mad at me for something that I am correct in doing, right? Like going back to that people pleasing, you can't people please your teenager unless you want to mortgage your house and, you know, do whatever. Like I just recently had a whole conversation with a mom and her teenage daughter, or her tween daughter about this child just wanted everything, right? She wanted the Stanley Cup and the little boo boo dolls and the, like all the trends, like whatever she saw on TikTok she wanted. And the mom was just, the mom was sort of explaining to I just can't afford all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, like, like I'm not judging you, right? Somebody's judging you. Who's judging you? Cause it's not me, right? She's trying to like, as though I'm, she's the lawyer defending herself to me. I just can't, I like, and I'm looking at her like, wait a second, why do you feel like you have to? Right? Where is that coming from inside of you that you an't say no to your daughter. And then, because then she won't have all the stuff and then her friends won't want to be friends with her. Okay, where's that coming from? Because I'm hearing an inner child. I'm not hearing an adult right now. Nobody will be friends with my daughter because she doesn't have a Stanley Cup. That sounds like an 11 year old. Let's talk about when you were 11, right?
So then we look at that and we start to then take some steps. Maybe we write it down, right? We write down what happened so we can remember, here I was in this moment when my child asked me this or my child did this or, you know, what this happened and it caused a big reaction in me. And I think it's interesting because we have to kind of be careful about that in some ways, because like we can have discomfort about a lot of things.
Hunter:
But where is it a place where it's gone beyond your average discomfort? I guess is that- you talk about one before we go, I want to talk about this idea: you say that your children can co- create healing with us. And I think that's a beautiful, hopeful message. Can you share a story or example about what that might look like?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Yeah, I think for me, one of the things that really got me on this journey was, know, so I told you the story about how I was, you know, when I was pregnant and how I had PTSD and I didn't quite know it. When my son, my son was 10, he looked at me one day and this was after I thought I had really dealt with my PTSD and I thought I was so much better. But one of the ways I dealt with my PTSD is I used to dissociate. So my son would, my son looked at me and he goes, “Mom, where do you go when you go away behind your eyes? I don't like when you do that”. And he started to cry. He's like, “you're talking to me, but you're not there”. And I remember just having this real moment of panic because it was as if he said to me like, “mom, you know, you're five feet tall and that makes no sense. You can't reach high cabinets. Go be six feet tall and then you can be my mom”. Like I remember just being like, “what do want me to do then? You want me to feel my feelings? Because if I did that, I would probably yell at you and that would be the worst thing I could ever do”. Because in my mind, that's what I thought: that if I was human and I yelled, it would be bad. But that's when I realized like, my PTSD journey is not done. This dissociation that I'm doing that works so well for me in other contexts is really harming my parenting. I need to get a handle on this. I need to learn how to manage stress and remain present. Which was terrifying because the thought of that was just, you I'll have to feel stressed then. I don't want to do that. I will yell. You don't want the messy me, right? You want the perfect mom that I'm trying to be. And that really forced me because I saw it was harming my son, like it was painful for him, really forced me in a way. always say parenting is the one thing that will motivate us to reprogram our trauma because, know, at work,
People just understood that sometimes Robin is super focused on her research and you can't get her attention. My husband knew that. My husband knew that. If I was super busy with a project and my brain was all in it, don't try to talk to me now because I'm not there. Wait till I'm done and then I'm available. And an adult can make space for you to do that. A boss can just be like, okay, great, this is how Robin is. I won't interrupt her every half hour to ask how the project is coming along. I'll just let her work for four hours and then she'll hand me a perfectly finished project. Kids won't do that. They won't make space for you that way, as they shouldn't.
Hunter (49:20)
Holding up a mirror and sue you like such a clear mirror, the one that you can't ignore, maybe.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Yeah, if you care about your kids, which I think most post-traumatic parents do, right? Then it's like, wow. And I always say they're like the map, the mirror, and the motivation, right? Because to him, to my son was where I wanted to go. So that was my map. I wanted to be present. And then it was, you know, this mirror that he's saying, this thing you're doing that you think is fine is not fine, right? And I'll never have a better reason to change it. I don't know that I would necessarily change it for anybody else, right? For my kid, I would change it.
Hunter:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Okay, just for the listener, as we wrap up, the book is wonderful. “Post-traumatic Parenting: Break the cycle and Become the Parent You've Always Wanted to Be”- out now, everywhere books are sold. For the listener who is thinking, “this sounds like me, but I don't know where to start”, besides getting “Post-Traumatic Parenting”, what is the first step you would invite them to take?
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
The first step I would invite them to take is to really check in with their inner child. Really check into what was your childhood like? What are the things you'd repeat and what are the things you would never repeat? What about your early adulthood? What were those big events that if it was a movie, the dramatic movie would start playing? And what are those montage events where the movie would just show repeated absences, things that weren't there? And does that make sense with how you're parenting now? Like, do you now start to see the through line between what your childhood or your early adulthood was like and what you're doing now? Like, I would just invite them to start telling that story. And by the way, if you don't remember your childhood at all, it's a pretty good indication that there's something your brain's actively trying to forget.
Hunter (51:17.452)
Yeah, I think that's so important. You know, I hear people say things like, I would die for my kid, but will you examine your own childhood for your kid? That is a much better question to ask because it is scary. It is a big ask that I'm asking it too. I'm with you, Robyn. It's so important, but it's so, so important because then we can start to like carry our own baggage, right? We can start to do that healing rather than just shunted on down to the next generation. So, so valuable.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
And then there's the other side of it, by the way, which is the castle in the cloud. If you were parenting the way you wish you were parenting, what would that look like? So let's like build the castle. Let's dream of the castle in the cloud. This is like a Thoreau quote, right? Like if you have castles in the cloud, they should be there. Then the question is, how do we just build the infrastructure to get from where we are now to there? Because it's just a matter of, what skills would I need and how would I get there? Right? It breaks it down to size. It makes it hopeful.
Hunter:
Yeah, I think it is hopeful. Think for people who are willing to read “Post-Traumatic Parenting”, who are willing to examine these things, who are willing to do the work, there is a lot of healing that can happen and a lot of transformation that can happen in the 12, 18, whatever years of being with that kid. I think that I could see for me that path of I am gonna- me and my child are in this path of a really destructive relationship and I was able to turn it around. It is possible. It's doable. And anyway, that's my hopeful story. Robin, I love the work that you do and I love this book- again, “Post Traumatic Parenting”. Go get it. Thank you so much for what you're doing and what you're putting out into the world and the way you've taken your own healing and made it something that's so valuable for us as well and so many people you touch. think it's awesome. So thank you so much for coming on.
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz:
Thanks so much for having me. It's just for me, this is a real mission. if not, if even one post-traumatic parent doesn't feel as alone as I felt when I just was panicking that my damage is going to damage my kids and there's nothing I can do about it because no one is telling me how. If even one mom or one dad looks at this book and says, here's how the whole entire book journey will have been worth it.
Hunter (54:07)
I hope you enjoyed this episode and let me know. I'm @MindfulMamaMentor on Facebook and Instagram and stuff. And remember, we have Q& A episodes: you can send in your questions if you have questions and I'll answer them. If if I need help, I'll get help answering them. You can find that and so much stuff at MindfulMamaMentor.com- lots of freebies, lots of resources, information if you want to have me come to your school or your group, all kinds of interesting stuff there. Blog, books, lots and lots of stuff. All the stuff you could want at MindfulMamaMentor.com.
I'm wishing you a great day. Hope you have a good week. It's fall here and the leaves are turning and I'll give you an update later. Yeah, wishing you the best. I hope this podcast helped you. I would really, really love to know if it did. It really makes my day when you just respond to an email and let me know. That thrills me. yeah, wishing you a great day, friend, and I'll be back to talk to you again next week. Namaste.
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