The Moment Everything Shifted
A couple of weeks before Christmas, my ten year old didn’t want to clean his desk. There were projects on there that he was working on, and it was Sunday, the day that both the boys clean their rooms. He kept asking why he had to clean his desk, and I kept answering “Because an ordered environment means an ordered mind.” This child is a slob. Teaching him to keep his space tidy has been a challenge. I wanted to hold the line, I didn’t want to give in and let him be a slob. He kept badgering me, and I kept giving him the same answer. He has been struggling lately due to having a teacher who yells a lot and uses shame to motivate. He internalizes it, and. It causes him to escalate more frequently and to a greater degree at home. When he started screaming, I asked him to stop screaming at me. I could feel myself getting activated. Being screamed at is a huge trigger for me. I said I was going to go for a drive, as it was cold out, and it was dark. A walk was probably not realistic. But his younger brother didn’t want me to leave. I felt trapped, and our older son wouldn’t stop screaming. So I went into his room and cleared the desk in one fell swoop. This was my rock bottom. This was the moment that everything shifted.
Just before I cleared the desk, there was a moment when he realized what I was going to do, and he said “No Mommy no!” And I did it anyway. That was the moment that should have shook me, should have woken me up, should have stopped me in my tracks. I should have stopped and hugged him. I should have thought about it and realized that the desk wasn’t that messy, that he did have projects on it that he was working on. That he was trying to assert his independence, and I wasn’t listening. That I was trying to control him and control the outcome. I had felt trapped, and he had too. I had let the need for control become more powerful than love.
I did a session with Ryanna Battiste. She had me go back to the moment when my son said “no Mommy,” and had me hug him instead. She explained that I had been operating in the role of the masculine in my parenting. Whenever the boys fought, sometimes physically (if you have more than one boy you know), I would insert myself and try to get them to stop. But our ten year old was almost my size now. Their dad is 6’3, so he will be tall and a big boy. Our four year old is smaller, like me, but very feisty. We found out when he was a baby that his name means “Strong in Battle,” and it is accurate. If he is mad at his brother, he will chase him, tackle him, and land a punch before I have time to know what is happening. “Whenever the feminine tries to step into the role of the masculine, it distorts. It’s not going to go well. Their dad needs to intervene when they’re angry. You need to be there to comfort them when the anger dissipates.” Ry was right.
Research shows that fathers and mothers play very specific, biologically based roles in the raising of a child. According to research, children who are missing either one are at a disadvantage, especially boys. According to Erica Komizar, author of “Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters,” when it comes to raising children, both the mother and the father release oxytocin, the bonding hormone, but the effect is different. The effect for mothers is helping to regulate children’s emotions of fear and sadness. The effect from fathers is more playful, think tickling, throwing the baby in the air, and more tactile play. Fathers also play another important role biologically: They release vasopressin. Vasopressin helps children, especially boys, regulate their aggression.
So I talked to their dad about this. I would continue to work on my need for control, and I asked their dad to step in and be the protector. To be the one to break up the boys’ fights and regulate their aggression. The next time the boys started fighting, I said to their dad “Okay, I need you to go in there.” I watched him freeze.
Our trauma shows up in the way that our sympathetic nervous system reacts to stress. The way that we respond when we are “triggered.” Are you a fighter? Do you yell and scream? Are you a flier? Do you leave when you’re triggered? Do you freeze and go numb? Do you fawn, trying to please everyone so that no one will be mad at you? All of these are ways that your nervous system can respond. Unfortunately, we don’t have control over how we respond. The roots of how our nervous system responds is a result of evolution. It’s what ensured that the maximum number of us would survive throughout history.
Think of it this way: your tribe is attacked. Some people will need to stand and fight. These are the fighters. This ensures that some people can get away. These are the ones who take flight. Some people may freeze and play dead. Some may play nice to the invaders so that they can stay alive. Having different physiological responses ensured that the maximum number of people survived to have more offspring. Which way you respond when you’re triggered has everything to do with your genetics. You can’t help it. When it becomes a problem is in our relationships. No one likes to be yelled at. No one likes to feel abandoned. No one likes to be given the cold shoulder. Being one who fawns, trying to please everyone, all of the time, is disempowering and exhausting. It results in much resentment and bitterness. Our early environments play a role too. If fawning, taking care of our caregivers, is what kept us safe in childhood, then that is what we will do as adults. If freezing kept us safe, then we will do that.
At that moment, I figured out that the boys’ dad was in a trauma response. Before she passed, his mother had filled me in on his dad. He would get angry and throw things, and when my husband was a little boy, he would run and hide. He would flee and freeze. That’s why he hadn’t been helping. So I said “You are freezing because when you were a little boy and there was conflict, freezing kept you safe. But it puts us in danger. You’ve got to go in there.” I watched him take a few deep breaths, and then he went in and broke up the fight. And when the activation was over, and the tears came, I hugged each of the boys and gave them comfort, which is the role of the feminine. Now we are no longer in distorted roles, and the energy is shifting. Their dad even got a part time job. It’s a new way to go into the new year.
