The Cycle Stops With Me

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COMMENTARY

Trauma can create cycles of secrecy and shame that can span generations. Here are a few tips on how parents can open up to their children about emotional and mental health struggles and trauma.

1. Children learn by example. If parents shut down or lash out rather than process their emotions, children might learn that feelings are to be feared, avoided, or dismissed. They might continue to suffer in silence and cry themselves to sleep, or even worse, they might engage in self-harm or find unhealthy ways to self-soothe and cope.

2. Parents can be the best role models on how to engage healthy and safe ways of processing difficult topics like sadness, anger, and even clinical depression and suicide. If you do not talk to your children, someone else will, and if they do not trust you with their worries and concerns, they will find other ways to address them.

3. What matters is not what to share, but how to share it. Self-disclosure can be therapeutic to both parties, as long as no one gets overwhelmed in the process.

4. Children should not carry the heavy burden of being their parents' "therapists." It is important for parents to find and use community resources outside their loved ones for their catharsis and healing.

5. One healing tool parents can use with their children is self-care. This includes teaching about healthy structure and routine, a robust support network, and as many hobbies and release avenues as possible.

6. Parents should be a united front. Hopefully, parents can share how to carry the heavy weight of trauma together, so no one feels like a burden or struggle with resentment.

7. Children are not to blame. Children should know in very clear terms that they are NOT to blame for what their parents are going through.

8. Big and scary feelings could be explained in simple terms to young individuals. One way that I found effective with my girls is using cartoon movies like “Inside Out,” “Encanto,” and “Finding Nemo.” There are many more that family can watch together then debrief.

9. Spend quality time together. One of the best ways to create memories with those we love is to spend quality time together. Even if we do not have the luxury of quantity, what matters is being emotionally available, staying away from our devices, and having eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart high-quality and meaningful conversations—not lectures—especially around meal time and bed time.

10. Let the cycle stop with you. Maybe the cycle did not start with you, but you have the power to have it stop with you. Work through your trauma story so you do not end up passing it to your children. Be their safe space and the first name they think of when in distress.

Wishing you the best as you tend with tenderness to those who matter most.

Dr Reda is a psychiatrist in Colorado. He is the author of The Wounded Healer: The Pain and Joy of Caregiving.