When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed in Conflict…
By Kristin Rodriguez, LMFTA
Every couple has conflict. Every couple has emotions in conflict. And every couple has times when they feel overwhelmed within conflict. Some of the emotions are directly related to the conflict, and some may be related to something else altogether, but are activated by the current situation. Some in the Couple’s Therapy field would say flooded, meaning, that one is too overcome with emotion to think or speak in a way that is helpful to the situation or to the relationship. So here are some tips if you and your partner catch yourself struggling with this.
First of all, remind yourself that it is okay to feel flooded or overwhelmed. You are human and the conversation may be hitting at a sensitive part of your heart or mind and maybe even pushing against something you are very passionate about. That being said, it makes sense to feel deep emotions about those things.
When you start to realize your emotions are reaching a point where you are feeling overwhelmed or flooded, let your partner know. This clues them into the fact that you are struggling to remain fully present in the conversation. This is not a time for one partner to have power over the other, but an opportunity to honor and respect that your partner has the self awareness to seek to understand what they may be experiencing.
Take a break and tell your partner how much time you need. This could be as simple as 30 minutes, to a few hours, or after a good night’s rest. What is most important here is that you communicate a plan for when you will show back up fully, mentally and physically, into the conversation.
During the break, do some grounding exercises. This can be something like journaling, prayer, labeling emotions and beliefs or memories that the conversation brought up for you, and actively try to regulate your emotions by breathing, meditation or a walk outside. This will help your nervous system regulate, help you feel more calm, and you will be better able to better articulate your thoughts and feelings and listen more intentionally to your partner.
Return to your partner at the agreed upon time and seek to communicate more effectively without being run by your emotions, but rather letting your emotions inform your conversation.
Emotions are good and tell us something about ourselves, thus they should not be avoided, but are not meant to control us. I hope this information leads you to better understand your emotions and to better care for your partner.
Bringing Your Newly Adopted Child Home -- Temperament
By Dr. Patti Zordich
Is this concerning behavior due to trauma, attachment experiences and adoption, or is it the child’s personality, the way they were born? Often newly adoptive parents, counselors and caseworkers often attribute the adopted child’s difficult behaviors to the fact that they were adopted or the result of trauma. However, the difficulty may in fact be due, in part, to the child’s temperament, and/or a mismatch between the child and parent’s temperament.
What exactly is temperament? You’ve probably heard of the nature vs. nurture debate about how we come to the way we are; how our personality develops. For a while now psychology has conceded that it is both nature (what we are born with) and nurture (our upbringing and other environmental factors) that determine why we are who we are.
The nature part is called temperament. Thomas and Chess first introduced their New York Longitudinal Study in 1952, in which they identified nine temperament traits. 1 through their research, Thomas and Chess determined that we are born with our temperament and live with it for the rest of our lives. In other words, our temperamental traits are stable throughout our lifetime and are resistant to change despite changing circumstances and experiences. 2
It can be helpful to familiarize yourself with Thomas and Chess’ nine temperamental traits. Here are the traits according to Thomas and Chess:
Activity: Is the child constantly active or more relaxed?
Rhythmicity: Is the child regulated in terms of sleeping and eating, or more chaotic?
Approach/withdrawal: Does the Child move toward new objects and/or people easily, or tend
to shy away?
Adaptability: Does the child seem to be flexible or rigid when changes occur?
Intensity: Are the child’s reactions (either negative or positive) intense or calm?
Mood: Is the child’s mood generally negative or positive, erratic or even?
Persistence and attention span: Is the child persistent or give up easily?
Distractibility: Is the child easily distracted or does the child tend to stick with an activity
despite distractions.
Sensory Threshold: Is the child bothered by sensory stimuli such as noise, texture or
unbothered by them?
You might be wondering how this information can be useful when you’ve just brought your newly adopted child home, or you’ve been a family for several years. Understanding temperament can assist parents to:
Be more aware of your child’s temperament, accept your child as he is and refrain from
comparing your child to others.
Become aware of your own temperament, and strive to use this information to help you improve
the quality of the relationship between you and your child.
Understand and accept the differences between your temperament and that of your child’s.
Enjoy the interaction between your temperament and that of your child’s.
Set clear limits that correspond to your child’s temperament.
Prevent melt-downs in your intense child by decreasing intense and unexpected experience.
In the next Adoption blog post I’ll introduce a scale that you can use to identify where you and your child fall on each of the traits from mild to intense, identify any temperamental mismatches between you and your child, and explain some ways you can use this information can to inform your parenting style. In the meantime, I recommend the book Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide For Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, persistent, and Energetic, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. She provides great information about how to use this information about temperament to reduce problem behaviors and improve the quality of relationship between parents and their “spirited” children.
1 Thomas, A. & Chess, S. (1989). Temperament in clinical practice. The Guilford Press, New York, NY.
2 Ibid.
When Grief Gets Complicated
It seems that the deep emotions most often stem from unresolved issues–hurtful memories, emotional and physical wounds, critical words, and trauma related memories.
Valerie Thorn, LCMHC
I frequently hear about the many different emotions that come after the loss of a family member or spouse. It seems that the deep emotions most often stem from unresolved issues–hurtful memories, emotional and physical wounds, critical words, and trauma related memories. I get asked, “How can I get past the pain? The anger? The bitterness?” Or they tell me that they feel guilty for even thinking about their own hurt and that it would just be easier to avoid it all together.
What about forgiveness? How would that help? They may desire to get past the hurt, yet feel that it seems so unfair to let the other person off the “hook.”
Forgiveness is more about letting go of bitterness that can destroy peace, and take away joy. I am sad for the lost opportunity to reconnect, to possibly heal, and to confront my fears and anxious feelings. The calm comes when I remember that today is a new beginning. I can get through this with my faith in God, the support of others and one small step at a time. My action steps–believe, hope and let go of things I can’t control.
Bringing Your Newly Adopted Children Home - Expectations
Parenting is never easy, whether your child is adopted or biological. This is especially important to remember when parenting an adopted child since it’s easy to chalk up difficulties as adoption-related. And it’s beneficial to remind yourself that the struggles may be “normal” or “typical” parenting experiences. The challenge may be due to expectations, parenting style, the parents’ temperaments, the child’s temperament, and sometimes a mismatch between the two.
Parenting is never easy, whether your child is adopted or biological. This is especially important to remember when parenting an adopted child since it’s easy to chalk up difficulties as adoption-related. And it’s beneficial to remind yourself that the struggles may be “normal” or “typical” parenting experiences. The challenge may be due to expectations, parenting style, the parents’ temperaments, the child’s temperament, and sometimes a mismatch between the two.
In this post we’ll talk about expectations. This is a great time to explore the expectations you have for yourself, your spouse and your child(ren). The expectations we hold about a relationship and how the other person is supposed to behave can interfere with a positive connection. You have waited for this moment for so long and you have prepared so hard. It makes sense to think that all this preparation would help to prevent your child from having problems. In my case, I expected everything to be pretty smooth sailing (in the big picture of course) when our one and only child was born based on lessons learned from personal counseling and five-years of doctoral studies in child development and attachment. But reality was different. I learned very quickly that the expectations of myself as a parent and my child were way out of whack. Things went more smoothly when I let go of exceptions. It’s not easy, but it’s simple.
If we have expectations that parenting “should” be a certain way or that our child “should” act a certain way, we will frequently be disappointed and even exasperated with the outcomes. I have heard it said that the amount of serenity a person experiences in any relationship is inversely related to the level of expectations one has for that relationship.
We can vastly improve the quality of any relationship just but letting go of expectations and accepting the person for as God created them. Sometimes the person we’re placing into God’s hands is ourselves.
The following exercise will help you gain clarity about the expectations that might be getting in your way and prompt you to let go. Plan a time to be alone for 15 minutes so that you can complete the exercise.
Becoming Aware of Expectations
Start by sitting quietly for a moment. Be aware of your breathing. No need to change it right now, just notice it. Close your eyes and breathe gently in and out seven times. Now think about your adopted child and ask yourself what expectations you have of him/her. Be honest with yourself and write them down. Try to think of at least three.
Now that you have written down at least three of your expectations you are more aware of them. Awareness is the first step to change. The next step is to let them go by giving them to God. Imagine yourself holding your paper in your hands and offering them to God. Then, for each of your expectations, write a statement of acceptance of who your child is. Here is an example:
Expectation: My child is six-years-old so I expect him to dress independently. I expect that I can leave him for ten minutes to be dressed or be well underway when I return.
Acceptance: The independent dressing never seems to work out the way I expect. For some reason, my child is better able to dress himself when I sit with him. I accept that my child wants my company while he’s getting dressed, even though I don’t fully understand why.
There’s one last part to this exercise. Go through the steps again, but this time about yourself. Write down at least three expectations you have of yourself as an adoptive parent. Hand them to God. Write a statement of acceptance of who you are for each of your expectations.
Return to this exercise weekly or whenever you’re struggling and everything you’re trying doesn’t help. Remember, awareness is the first step to change.
Keep a look out for the the next blog post in this series about helping your children grow up on the inside.
Bringing Your Newly Adopted Child Home - An Introduction
Building trust is the journey for all parents and their children, but with adopted children, this journey is particularly challenging. One of the most effective ways to build this trust is to create a loving, nurturing environment that best facilitates a loving, secure bond between you and your newly adopted child. In my book, Gotcha! Welcoming Your Adopted Child Home, 2011 (now out of publication) I referred to this process as “cocooning.” Cocooning not only helps develop positive attachment relationship between parent and child, it also helps to fill in the developmental needs your child missed in their first one to two years. This facilitates the crucial role of helping your child to “grow up on the inside.” Through cocooning, you make it possible for your child to begin maturing emotionally and developmentally.
The key to cocooning effectively is simple. Simple, but not easy. The key is to see your child through God’s eyes.Who is this child God has created? We can know, as King David did in Psalm 139:14, “. . . I am wondrously made. Wonderful are your works! You know me right well.” The key to cocooning is to discover the wonderful being God knit in her mother’s womb. As David cried out , “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” Cocooning will make it possible for you to search your child and to know her heart.
These ideas may run counter to what you think you should do with your child who is no longer an infant and who may even be a toddler or an older child. People in your life such as relatives, friends, pediatricians and social workers may frown upon these methods. You may find yourself alone in your conviction that giving your child and yourself the time and space to just be together, like when a new mother brings her infant home, is the most important thing you can do right now to solidify your child’s emotional development.
In this series, my desire is to give you the permission, support, encouragement and guidance to insulate you and your newly adopted child from the outside world and to be present in your relationship so you can raise your child who feels valuable, who is capable of having healthy and satisfying relationships, and who is able to be the person they were created to be. I hope you’ll join me on this journey of exploring cocooning!
Licensed Psychologist & Author