Ep 79 - Positive parenting for EMDR
 Hello, and welcome to the EMDR Doctor Podcast. This is episode 79, just possibly a week late, I hope you excuse me for skipping a week! If you haven't seen my podcast before, welcome. If you listen along occasionally, please do like and subscribe, because it really does help other people find the podcast.
It's hard to believe it's October already October's birthday month in our household so I always feel like when we get to October it's a very quick run until we reach Christmas in the end of the year and then suddenly January so things always feel quite speedy for me this time of the year.
Today I'm kind of mixing my genres. I'm gonna talk a little bit about positive parenting and the way I use it for EMDR. Now this may sound a little bit weird but in my work with my D I D clients my dissociative identity clients find that the positive parenting series are really incredibly helpful and not just my clients. Many many of my clients have had really tough childhoods with not a lot of great parenting or maybe a bit of patchy parenting and so what people learn about themselves when they're not parented with kindness is that they should treat themselves with maybe contempt or disdain or sometimes full on hatred. They might learn that they are not worthy of treating being treated well so they don't treat themselves well as adults and they allow other people to not treat them well so of course the origin of all of this often sits in childhood and quite often when I have conversations with clients who had an awful child they are absolutely determined not to revisit this kind of behaviour in the next generation so they are determined to give their children all of the things that they didn't get when they were young and so they really makes such a huge effort to treat their children with kindness Consideration and fairness but sometimes this is not extended to themselves and so their internal monologue the things that they say to themselves might be quite hateful and disrespectful and contemptuous and so sometimes I give people a little bit of coaching about how to talk to yourself so say something comes and I'll give you a bit of an example about this. Say something comes up in life and things don't go well in the day and there's a bit of upset or a bit of anger or a bit of impatience if someone has grown up in an environment where they are neglected and punished they might say to themselves some really strong language around. You're such an idiot. Why couldn't you do that properly? You deserve everything you got Today you're hateful. You should just go crying in a corner or something along those lines. I don't even like saying these words on a podcast because I don't want to perpetuate them and it feels really vicious of me just to say those words out loud let alone on a podcast that's going out to so many people but they are an example of what not to do. And sometimes people come back to me with well, what else am I supposed to say? What do I do if I've made a mistake or if things aren't going well?
Great question. So the whole underlying basis of positive parenting is that we raise our children in an environment of kindness. And respect and we approach them with the idea of seeking to understand before we respond not just hearing something and reacting and maybe controlling so what does this look like in real life? So if a child falls over and skins their knee apparent might be tempted to rush in and say don't worry about it come here look at this get back on your bike have a biscuit or something like that so they maybe perhaps rushing to distract or minimise or invalidate the child's feelings in order to get the crying to stop. Instead of this what would it be like as a parent to go over to the child to sit quietly with them and validate their feelings first so seeking to understand what's going on for them and saying something like oh did that hurt? Oh nasty I'm so sorry that looks really sore and then the child might burst into more tears and say yes, it hurts. It h and if a parent can just hold their com and just say gently to their child yes it does look like it hurts a lot. Oh that's sore as a starting point. They've already done probably 90% of the work that they need to do once the child feels heard and validated that they know that you know that it really hurts then you can move on to the comforting or the regulation so what that might look like is shall we have a little cuddle or hold you until it stops hurting or we'll just wait a little minute and then I'll go and get some cold water or a Band-Aid for you and that will help it to stop hurting. So once the validation and the listening and trying to understand is done then we can move onto the fixing the reassurance The solving of whatever problem comes up next. And then after that we might go to the distraction or the changing of the attention to something positive or something different like okay let's go inside and we'll get you some water and maybe we'll have a read of a book or would you like to help me make dinner tonight or something like that. So after the validation of the feelings the empathy the seeking to understand then comes the fixing of the problem. Let's get your Band-Aid and after that comes the distraction or the diverting of the attention and that point might be the point in which you do some teaching so if a child has hurt themselves because they were doing something that you told them not to do it's only after you've done the first couple of steps that you can actually do the teaching the why do you think you fell over and hurt your knee today? The when mummy tells you things are hot. That means that you shouldn't touch them because otherwise you'll get a sore finger that sort of teaching so you can't rush straight to that and you certainly can't rush straight to punishment.
So for my adult clients who find it difficult to parent themselves kindly, we might go through some teaching exercises around what to say in those difficult adult moments. e they have just had a car accident, and they are filled with anger towards themselves. I might coach them in using some kindness - speaking to themselves with empathy. “oh caroline, that was really scary, you’re allowed to feel scared and angry, you’re allowed to feel sad, and now the car is dented, the feels so hard, the feels so awful, you are allowed to be upset, things will feel better in a moment, just breathe, it will be OK, we will get it sorted in a minute, you don’t have to do it all right now, give yourself a minute“ that sort of thing. And I will often suggest to hold your arms firmly, because that feels really regulating, a bit similar to a mum giving a kid a firm hug.
And for my DID clients, this becomes even more important - so often they have been treated so badly during childhood that their internal conversations will revolve around punishment and denial and taunting each other. So just encouraging an atmosphere of kindness is so important. Starting with the parts who are in charge, or powerful in the system, to help them give compassion and understanding to the other parts, and gradually building up a culture of kindness and respect and alliance of feelings, instead of minimising making fun of and degrading each other for their feelings. This is such a huge part of therapy, for everyone, not just DID clients, to learn to self soothe, listen to each other and themselves, so parts can freely express themselves and their emotions. I like to use a phrase which I think came from the chronic pain therapy world - Listen to your body whisper, so it does’t need to shout. If we listen to the small expressions of sadness, shame, fear, anger, then we or our clients, or our parts, don’t need to use a megaphone for us to respond.
So if a part of you is whispering today, or feeling sad or angry or shamed or anything, listen, approach with compassion, and empathy.
 Listen first. Seek to understand and be there for yourself, help yourself regulate, and only then move on to the next step, which might be about solving the problem, or it might be about moving on from there. Well, I haven't really spoken much about EMDR today, and I think that's okay. Like, I think probably this is enough for you to be thinking about this week. And so I really hope it's been helpful for you. If you wanna contact me, please do. I love to hear comments from my listeners and please feel free to reach out. And if you have a subject that you would like me to talk about or something you're curious about, or maybe I've said something that's a bit confusing, please feel free to reach out, and I would love to address your questions in my next podcast. All right. I hope this has been helpful. Take good care. I will speak to you next week. Bye for now.
