Breaking Cycles for My Boys
A year ago, I wrote about physical healing. The latest scans are completely clear. Now I scan once a year. As I finished healing physically, I began to research the causes of cancer, and I came to the conclusion that unresolved trauma from my childhood, known as Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACES, was the culprit. I created the emotional healing course, and I began using the tools on myself. As I did, I began sorting the pieces of my personal history, especially the parts that had resisted reflection.
The tools helped to soften that resistance so I could process these pieces and put them together, revealing a map that I could follow to finish taming my triggers, seeing my shadows, and watching them shrink as I shined a light on them. I used to think I was broken, beyond repair. Now I know that we are all just puzzle pieces, waiting to come back together. I still don’t have the whole picture, but it is becoming clearer.
A few weeks ago, we went on our annual family vacation. I was incredibly anxious beforehand, as it tends to be an intergenerational minefield of neurodivergent dysregulation in which, like dominoes, one goes off, and then the rest tumble into full meltdown. All .Week. Long. This time, however, I made a point of saying I wanted us to work on regulation, accountability, and gratitude. I was explaining this to our nine-year-old when he suddenly said “Mom! It’s an acronym: RAG. Instead of ragging on each other, we will do these three things.”
So we did, and the trip went more smoothly than usual. We even added “acknowledgment,” as in “acknowledge when someone has apologized and thank them.” My mom was the first to be triggered, as her fear of waste kicked in on the first day. Then I blew up, feeling like I couldn’t please everyone. But then, we went back to the strategy, and she actually admitted that waste was a trigger for her and settled down. I acknowledged that feeling like I couldn't make everyone happy was a huge trigger for me. For the first time in our relationship, we each felt seen and heard. On the way home, however, our nine-year-old had an epic meltdown. He was exhausted from too many late nights and too much junk food.
When I saw that he wasn’t going to be able to regulate himself, I wrapped my arms around him, kept telling him to breathe, that I loved him, and that he was doing great. He calmed down and thanked me. We stopped at a Starbucks after, and I went in to order, feeling the tears coming. But when I checked in with myself, I realized they were tears of gratitude. When he was younger, his meltdown would have triggered the chaos I felt inside me. I would have struggled to regulate myself, nevermind be able to help him. This time, I realized, I wasn’t triggered. Not only did I not need to regulate myself, but I was able to help him coregulate.
As I sat there silently weeping in the Starbucks, I realized that I had given my son what I had most craved at that age: validation, comfort, and a feeling of safety and security. I had let him know that he was not alone. In that hug, I sent healing back in time, to my child self, and forward, to his adult self. In that moment, I realized that by healing my own insecure attachment, I am able to be a secure base for my boys. In healing my abandonment wounds, I am able to be present with them. Much of this emotional healing journey has involved becoming conscious of the shadows that hid in the subconscious.
The subconscious rules ninety-five percent of our thoughts, behaviors, and actions. We’re basically being guided by the puppet strings of our past. In order to make the unconscious conscious, we must be present. We must practice introspection. However, as humans, we resist being present, numbing in any number of ways so that we don’t have to feel our triggers. In an effort to protect us from the pain of the past, our subconscious mind and ego drive this process. Instead of protecting us, however, the same situations are magnetized right to us in an attempt to heal them. When we operate from the subconscious, we create the very outcomes we fear most. The child who was abandoned pushes partners away as an adult, recreating that same abandonment. When we heal our subconscious, we cut the puppet strings of our past. The key to healing our subconscious is noticing our triggers and naming them. I like to call this strategy “name it to tame it.”
Research shows that a key piece of breaking cycles is when a parent with childhood trauma can feel the feelings they felt during the trauma in order to process them out. However, if a parent has repressed their feelings, they are far more likely to act from the subconscious, repeating intergenerational patterns. When I was a new mom, I hadn’t done much emotional healing. I was triggered all of the time. I desperately wanted to do better for my children. I didn’t yet understand that my ego had constructed defenses so that the feelings that simmered in the shadows remained repressed. Instead of introspecting, I was projecting everything I didn’t see onto everyone else. I tried therapy myself, and it didn’t work. I could talk about things that happened in my childhood, but my ego, and the defenses it had built to keep me safe by repressing these feelings, wouldn’t allow me to let go enough to feel them.
Life force energy flows through us and everything that is alive. The Chinese call it chi, the Japanese ki, and Hindus prana. Energy healing is the act of using universal, life force energy in a directed way to heal. Over the last year, focusing this energy on emotional healing has proved to be the key for me. The energy went around the defenses of the ego, healing at the energetic level, dissolving the emotional blocks and allowing me to feel the feelings so that they could be released. I finally had a way to process this trauma out of my body, brain, and nervous system. This is why I wasn’t triggered when my son had his meltdown: I had processed many of my triggers out. In the process, I performed an intergenerational act of alchemy: breaking cycles for my boys.
Cycle breakers tend to be the black sheep of our families, holding up a mirror to our family’s dysfunction, incurring the wrath of those who do not like their reflection. We become the targets of unhealed family’s members ' projections. We may be tempted to toe the line, but instead, we must draw a line in the sand, stating what behavior we will and won’t tolerate, detaching when necessary. Instead of burning bridges, we set boundaries. And then, we focus on our healing, knowing we can’t make anyone else heal. This is a radical act of love, for ourselves and our children. On this family trip, that love was reflected back to me. I see it clearly now. In fact, I feel it.
1. Adverse Childhood Experiences: Ports, K. A., Holman, D. M., Guinn, A. S., Pampati, S., Dyer, K. E., Merrick, M. T., Lunsford, N. B., & Metzler, M. (2019). Adverse Childhood Experiences and the Presence of Cancer Risk Factors in Adulthood: A Scoping Review of the Literature From 2005 to 2015. Journal of pediatric nursing, 44, 81–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedn.2018.10.009
2. Research on Parents with Childhood Trauma: Fraiberg-Ghosts-in-Nursery.pdf copy
Ghosts in the nursery. (n.d.). https://frcnca.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Ghosts-in-the-nursery-paper-copy.pdf
