Heart Centered Parenting

Mark Brady's blog post this week struck a chord with me: a bit of an a ha really. 
Here is an excerpt:
It used to surprise me to discover that people who have suffered greatly in their lives are some of the kindest, most joyful, compassionate people I’ve ever encountered. It no longer does. Traumatic memories are primarily stored in our right brain circuitry. Out of the healing that comes from profound suffering, many of those encapsulated or disorganized circuits become reactivated, apparently helping to bring much greater right brain strength and balance to counter our culture’s left brain dominance. It’s often described as strength of heart, true grit or compassionate heart. And while many of my right brain friends assure me that the heart is definitely involved, what we know for sure, both from science and from anecdotal evidence like Jill’s, is that right brain reclamation appears to be the primary driver of Compassionate Heart.


What’s the takeaway from these brain hemisphere discoveries? Parents would do well to honor and embrace everything they can that will help mitigate the left brain dominance designed into western education and culture.

-http://committedparent.wordpress.com/

Big out breath. Silence.  Gratitude.  Oh. This is what makes my 18months of depression, of digging deeper than ever before, of facing more directly my attachment wounding worth it.  I am slowly learning to stay in my heart, my right brain, for longer periods of time than ever before.  To me, right brained and heart centered are synonymous. 


Then I thought about psychotherapy.  The "fix it" mentality that mirrors my religious up brining's teachings of original sin that says "you are flawed the way you are so you better be working towards getting better."  It is the single thing I hate about therapy and why I went to a school rooted in transpersonal psychotherapy.  And what I fundamentally believe good therapy is about is finding our way into our heart, delicately balancing change with self acceptance and self compassion.  So of course, I hate this critical way our culture self flagellates around parenting practices.  As if we could possible be perfectly attunded to loud, chaotic, irrational screaming all the time!?

What the heck, though, does heart centered mean?  And how do I relate it to all this nervous system hijacking that seems to take over for me in relationship.  The Heart Math institute has found that emotionally focused psychotherapy is more efficacious and producing real change than cognitive behavioral therapy because there are more neuronal connections from the heart to the frontal lobes so learning new nervous system regulatory processes is more expedient if psychotherapy works directly with the heart.

"While two-way communication between the cognitive and emotional systems is hard-wired into the brain, the actual number of neural connections going from the emotional centers to the cognitive centers is greater than the number going the other way. This goes some way to explain the tremendous power of emotions, in contrast to thought alone. "

http://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/introduction.html

What does working with the heart look like?    From a groovy well respected site in the meta physical community I found this entry. 

" [Being heart centered]... doesn't mean, "be good", or "be loving", or "be forgiving". Although these things might happen when we stay heart centered, but only as side effects.

To stay Heart Centered is an actual physical practice. It's like going on the treadmill to keep your physical body fit.  This exercise is designed to move our awareness from our head center/ego to our heart center/higher-self."

http://ascension101.com/en/ascension-information/20-february-2010/63-stay-heart-centered-what-does-that-mean.html

Pema Chodron, groovy Buddhist nun with loads of Huts pa points out it is hard to stay heart centered. 

"It’s like there’s an opening in the clouds. We sense that we're connected to something that wakes us up and makes our world feel bigger. It makes our heart and our whole being feel expansive; we feel confident and inspired. But, unfortunately, our habitual patterns are so strong that the opening usually closes again. We revert to our old ways of staying stuck in negative mind. We get hooked again in our old patterns. "

http://shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1469&Itemid=0

I was also having an inspired discussion with one of my MOST heart centered friends earlier, a therapist, who is deeply in her own work on herself.  She isn't floating above the clouds better in spirituality she is in it, growing and trusting her heart. She said this: We poo poo "being in our head" and it isn't that we leave our head for our heart.  Its that when we enter our heart we also are in our deepest knowing in our heads.  Her comments were very integrative: ah yes the body gets us into our heart which in turn gets us in touch with our truer knowing.

Dan Siegel points out that our brains can really just process too much information and we are more wired to pay attention to the high alert information.  Probably why parenting books that promote fear and "you are going to fuck your kid up" sell better. But also why Mark Brady's point about teaching kids right brain capacities; art, dance, music and emotional intelligence and really human to human foibled connection and repair with parents who are actively striving to be heart centered as opposed to "good parents" will benefit in the longer run.

So let's personalize this for a second.  Here is a recipe I have been thinking about because yesterday and frequently lately I have been crabby with my sons.  They are nearly at an impossible age:  Two boys ages 2 and 3.5.  My house feels like one long temper tantrum these days.  I stay heart centered 3/4 of the time but I was reflecting on what is it that helps me stay heart centered and what screws it all up for me. Some of what I will say is my "stuff" and other ideas is just plain old humanity that we all share. 

Heart Centered Parenting

1. Take Care of yourself - sleeping, eat, excercise, get out in nature, listen to music, dance, meditate. It is a non option to not do these things if you want to live in your heart.  If I don't do these things I am bitter, angry, resentful, intellectually unskilled because I can't be in my heart.

2. Practice Being in Your Heart - we probably didn't learn heart centeredness well, most of us, and our brain seems to want to grab hold of all trhe neuronal stimulation so to be heart centered we have to practice some kind of heart meditation practice, loving kindness practice etc.

3. Make a Plan - for things like household chores, money/budgets, how you will handle temper tantrums at the grocery store before you go.  Planning ahead allows one to stay calm when the house gets chaotically messy because you know it will get cleaned at 9pm so no need to freak about it now.  Planning ahead allows you to know how you will handle aggression with that particular kid so your expectations aren't off.

4. Presence and mind the expectations - I think I have said I used to think parenting was like a Norman Rockwell painting.  That shit still bites me in the ass.  It just makes me grumpy because most of the time it is not.  It is grueling hard work that frankly I wouldn't trade for the world.  Presence/acceptance of the presence is the antidote to this.

5. Slow down transitions - No, I don't mean for your kids.  I mean for you, for me.  I used to burst in the door from my corporate gig, my therapy gig etc and expect to be in my heart.  No way.  I also used to leave my kids for my corporate gig to abruptly.  The worst is to come into the house after a long car ride totally still moving at 50mph and a to do list a mile long.   Take time before entering the front door to breathe in, breathe out, feel your feet (take your shoes off if it helps).

6. Know when to throw the plan out - sometimes we have to surrender and be flexible.  Last night I could tell my oldest son just needed some one on one time with me so spontaneously we had a date night  - just he and I and stayed out til 9pm.  I just felt it and he woke up more in alignment with himself.

7. Share what you are feeling - talk to your kids, say I am sorry when you screw up.  My kid said to me yesterday after a sharing incident that I had to recover from my own mistake he said "Mama, I made a mistake.  I am sorry.  And we all make mistakes.  You make mistakes, papa makes mistakes and I make mistakes. "  Beaming mama, he is 3.5.  Gave me a big hug.  He learned that language because of my apologizing when I make mistakes.   Of course don't burden them with issues that are yours to manage.  Share with others -  talk to friends about your angst and off load - get held right there in your heart if you need it.  In my case, I am still learning to reach for people I can rely on - I tend to reach for people either not in their heart or who are flaky and unreliable or can't handle heart felt distress.   I have stopped doing that, for the most part, and am grateful every day for AMAZING friends.  I do think I have the best friends on the planet.   If you don't have them, go join a mom's group and there are bound to be a few there you can develop lasting connection with.  Sniff em out.  And if they can't do it, keep lookin. 

8. Mind the parenting books and parenting advice - get ideas but keep in mind, if you are feeling "afraid" you aren't in your heart.  See if you can use them to help you generate ways to plan ahead so you can stay in your heart rather than fodder for how you suck as a parent.  Test out if the idea feels right to you personally, in your heart.  One parenting group I was found of was advocating physically restraining a child and holding them in your lap when they are angry and wanting to pull away.  This is controversial and used for highly disturbed kids.  They used as evidence that this technique is a good one because once the parent let go the kid would come running back to them.  My heart knew this wasn't right and my training as a therapist and more research showed it wasn't. 


Behaviorism has long been touted the best parenting ever.  Alfie Kohn, Dan Siegel, Naomi Aldort, Jane Nelson, Dr. Sears are all challenging our notions of behaviorism which was originally designed for training animals!

9.  Over Parenting - The Atlantic Monthly was alluding to this in last weeks article about how to land your kid in therapy.  Your kid needs to experience pain.  Don't protect them from your humanity.  Trust them and trust you to be human and heart centered.  As long as you repair well, you can be pretty darn imperfect as a parent.  More importantly, over parenting can have this mystifying fake happy quality that can leave kids feeling totally dislocated from what they are picking up intrapsychically but not being overtly acted out by the parents.  I think this was more the cause for the morose Ms. Goldstein was referring to in her Atlantic Monthly piece.

10. Stop comparing yourself or worrying what other parents think.  Um hello this IS my biggest Achilles heel.  It has sent my ass back into weekly therapy.  When we do this, we are no longer in our heart.  I will personally have to work on this the whole of my life. I was just too criticized as a kid so whole being is wired to be on the ready for this.  Ironically, being heart centered is its antidote.

11. Empathize with other parents rather than judge or parent their kid for them.  I was really struggling yesterday as I had had ENOUGH of my oldest son's grabbing toys and being unwilling for me to help him negotiate some sharing.  He saves this all for his younger brother - totally developmentally appropriate sibling behavior and I was just spent and was with other mothers whom I frequently compare myself to or imagine are judging me.  Said differently, I wasn't in my heart AT ALL!  What would have helped: If the other mother came over to me, put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Man I am sorry.  That is a really hard situation to navigate.  Do you need anything?"  Instead, she stepped in and tried to distract my son for me.  He didn't respond because he wanted me and now I was feeling ashamed along with irritated. 

This last one is so potent.  It is the greatest opportunity we women have to offer one another in parenting.  Who cares if you are using whatever style of parenting you are using.  Sometimes we just want someone to say "Man that is hard.  I see how hard it is.  Hang in there."  My therapist friend and I were talking about this today. She witnessed a sweet interaction in H&M of all places.  Two 25 year old moms who didn't know one another.  One was leaving her 2 year old to cry out her angst in a corner alone while she shopped.  The other mother came up to offer advice - ooo I thought as I listened, this can't turn out well. 

But what happened instead is the advice giving mom shared what she had just learned in a parenting class and teared up as she did and she moved from such honest vulnerability, not better than posturing. 

11. Be vulnerable  - when it doubt stay in your heart of hearts with other mothers, other kids and speak from there.  We aren't perfect.  We need to stop trying.  Our kids will learn more resilience if we quit trying to be and other mom's will feel more supported if we stop the ruse.  This job is vast and what we feel in our heart isn't often ease, it is discomfort and speaking the truth of that helps us not act it out with our kids.  I love this 20 minute talk by Brene Brown on vulnerability and shame.  Check it out. http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Heart centered - the practice of being in your heart, your body and your higher knowing which leads to greater relational vulnerability, honesty and meaning.  My first stab at a definition.  How would you define it?