On a Friday evening, I sat at my kitchen table watching and listening as the conversation between my youngest teenager, Raegan, and my husband, Sam, begins to escalate.
"You're wrong!" Sam exclaimed.
"Why are you not listening to me?" Raegan replied.
I cringe. This is my childhood all over again. I start to feel my own escalation of anger and fear. I need to protect my daughter in a way that I wasn't protected.
He continued, "Because you're wrong. And you aren't listening to me!" That's it! He was not going to talk to her this way! I'm going in. Walking over to the pair, I put my hand on Raegan's shoulder to pull her back and attempted to put myself in between them. "Sam, can you stop talking and listen to what Raegan is saying?"
Before he could reply, something unexpected happened. Raegan shrugged my hand off her shoulder and said, "Mom, I've got this."
Shocked, I decided to speak up and protect her one more time. "Dad needs to hear you and he's just being argumentative."
"No he's not. We are just talking."
Seeing Through My Own Lens
What did she say? It didn't seem like they were just talking. I backed up and stood there. I opened my mouth to say something else, but didn't know what to say. Stunned, I retreated to the couch. I made the difficult but wise decision to let them continue. I needed some space to think.
How could she just stand there, take that disrespect, and call it a conversation? Suddenly, I am a 15-year-old again, pleading in my thoughts for my dad's lecture to stop so that I could explain myself. This is how most conversations with my dad played out. He was on a rampage to make sure that I knew it was his way or the highway. I could not be heard. I could not have a different perspective. I was always wrong and was going to be berated until I accepted that. However, in that moment, my childhood trauma was getting triggered in such a way that I was putting that trauma on my own child. But it was my trauma not hers.
A Different Outcome
I decided to just watch this conversation play out. I saw my daughter hold her own and respectfully tell her dad that she was feeling unheard. They volleyed their points back and forth until they both expressed validation to each other and a compromise was reached.
When I stopped viewing this interaction through the lens of my own pain, I was able to see that this conversation was actually very healthy. I heard phrases like, "That's a good point," and, "Oh, I see what you're saying now."
I took some deep breaths, and realized that my inner child just healed a little bit more. My children felt like they could listen to the blunt lectures and then explain their own perspective. But if I had continued to step in between them in the name of "protection" then I was only putting my trauma on them. They would then have to carry that heavy stone around with them and it wasn't theirs to carry.
Breaking the Cycle
As you raise your children, notice and support opportunities for them to engage with others in ways that may not have been available to you. You may have been bullied in school and feel the need to make sure your kids are hyper-vigilant to others bullying them. However, your trauma is not theirs. Encourage them to set boundaries out of empowerment instead of fear and survival. You may not have known it was an option for you growing up. Seeing your children walk in freedom from your own trauma will in a way heal your own.
Your Story Doesn't Have to Be Theirs
Do you want to identify the trauma that has skewed how you see yourself and the world around you? Do you want to heal that trauma so that it isn't passed down to future generations, especially your own children? I hope you will consider therapy as a tool to open up that wound, clean it out, and heal your inner child who desperately wanted love and acceptance. Your story doesn't need to be your children's story. Your trauma doesn't need to be their trauma. Change is possible!
