My Own Trauma

Why was it that I felt my husband could so easily deal with my children when they were in trauma mode and I could not?  Why did I turn into a monster when my children needed me most?  I was physically unable to be of any help to my kids when they were having meltdowns.  In fact, I became abusive during some of those times.  Why?  Why did parenting seem so much more difficult for me than for the next person?

Thank goodness for my attachment therapist, who pointed out that she felt I had trauma in my early childhood.  I knew things were tough in my family when I was between the ages 0-4.  I did not know how bad things were.  I talked to my mother to find out more.  My mother got married to my father and moved to another country (his home) when she was 19.  She had me at 24.  My parents fought horribly.  My father yelled and lost his temper often.  He shook me when I was a colicky baby.  He was extremely jealous of my mom and had her followed because he was paranoid that she was having an affair.  He had a gun in the house and he threatened her with it.  He often told her that it was legal in his country for a man to kill his wife in matters of infidelity (this was true at the time).  In the heat of an argument, he put his hands around her neck and chocked her so badly she was afraid he might kill her.  She pretended to faint so he would stop.  He went out of town on business a lot.  He himself had many affairs.  My mom never reached out for help.  She did not tell her family (who lived in another country) or anyone about their problems.  She lived in constant fear.  She could not take me out of the country without his permission and he threatened to take me away from her if she ever left him.  This was the environment in which my brain began developing.  This trauma left me with scars.  I was completely unaware of this effect until I was pushed to my limits.

As a new mom of two, sleep deprived (I do not do well with little sleep) and challenged beyond anything I had ever experienced, I cracked.  By that I mean that my children screaming, tantruming and just being children pushed my own trauma buttons.  Fight/flight/freeze!  That is what their behavior elicited in me.  And I fought.  I fought them and mostly I fought myself.  When I pummeled my fist into the ground and broke my hand, I realized I needed help.  I got on antidepressants for the first time.  I started seeing a therapist.  Things got a lot better, but my own trauma background and its effect on me was not discovered yet.

It was not until 4 years into our life as a family that our attachment therapist named the fact that I also had a trauma brain. "You are right.  Your children's behavior does not have the same effect on your husband or on your friend because they do not have a trauma background."  Light bulbs went off in my head and a huge load of guilt and anger at myself rolled away.  I was not a horrible mother.  I was a wounded mother.  There was hope.  After years of thinking I was the worst possible mother for my oldest child, my therapist changed how I viewed myself when she said:  "No one will understand how hard it is for your son to calm himself down, to keep from losing his temper, to keep it together - no one will understand better than you because of your background."  These words opened the floodgates for me to finally give myself and him the empathy we both desperately needed.