Why do we yell at our children - even when we know we shouldn't?
Why isn't just knowing what to do enough to actually interact with our children in a way that aligns with our values?
For many of us, the reason we struggle to actually implement the ideas we know we want to use is because we've experienced trauma in our lives. This may be the overt kind that we can objectively say was traumatic (divorce, abuse, death among close family members...), or it may simply be the additive effect of having our needs disregarded over and over again by the people who were supposed to protect us.
These experiences cause us to feel 'triggered' by our children's behavior - because their mess and lack of manners and resistance remind us subconsciously of the ways that we were punished as children for doing very similar things. These feelings don't just show up in our brains, they also have deep connections to our bodies (in spite of the Western idea that the body and brain are essentially separate!).
If we don't decide to take a different path and learn new tools to enable us to respond effectively to our child rather than reacting in the heat of the moment, and because our physical experience is so central to how this trauma shows up in our daily lives, we also need to understand and process this trauma through our bodies.
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Jump to highlights:
03:12 The two ways trauma shows up in broader family relationships
05:27 The separateness of the brain and the body has a long history in Western culture
06:05 Rene Descartes on the schism of mind and body
07:12 The held belief of the mind as superior to the rest of the body
08:09 The inherent bias of data
09:42 The lies our brain tells us
12:54 The so-called 4 ‘truths’ of the physical experience of trauma
16:22 When we are not attuned to the signals that our body is giving us
19:01 Difficulty in identifying feelings for people who experienced trauma
22:16 Saying OK when you aren’t really OK
26:19 The difference between reacting and responding
27:10 Using physical experience to bring...
