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?

Parenting Ourselves While Parenting Our Kids

I am melancholy today.  It is that sweet kind, the kind that has your chest aching and your stomach in a tug of war with your throat...tears come and go at the corners of my eyes. I am sad because I have tasted what it is like to be held by a family.  I am sad because I am more powerfully aware that my experiences of family have left me profoundly longing and only now, this many years later, am I able to sit with myself and these feelings.  I spent years distracted, running around, keeping busy - you know the usual American thing - anesthetizing myself to whatever didn't feel GREAT inside. 


I really love my in laws.  They annoy me sometimes and I certainly don't think they are perfect but you know what, our relationship is so honest and direct and I have to say, after this third time having them in my house I feel a) really sure that they love me and b) really sure that even if they are judging me that they are aware that judgment is a product of the mind and they don't let their own judgements grab hold of them in a way that would interrupt our connection and c) we can fight and repair and there is always shared responsibility. I am never left holding the I am wrong bag.  In fact, my mother in law has taken responsibility for some pretty amazing things.


I am also sad because I reached out to another friend of mine on Friday, when I was having that really bad day.  She too visits the underworld and she too was woefully under nurtured and continues to be in her family and she is also a very powerful spiritual force and psychotherapist.  Turns out she was going through another dark patch herself.  I wanted to know what she was doing to get through it.  I asked her for some advice and here is what she said; (oh and it isn't lost on me that I have great friends!)

“…call up a picture of the mom you want. (…use the imagination.) can be anyone, real or in a book or on tv or a movie, or parts of various people. create what you need. get a full picture -- her image, her smell, her touch, her sound, her words. when you get a really good picture that you can see, hear, feel in your heart, sense in your body, tap 6-8 times (right [and then] left is 1) on your legs or arms (you can cross your arms across your chest so you have that extra holding, hug thing). you can go longer as long as the image stays in the positive.”

-From a therapist friend, EMDR, Installing Resources

Her words are so powerful.  These are techniques I learned several years ago and yet, there are days where I do find my old habit of turning away form the hurt one inside and leaving her to fend for herself has become so wired in that turning towards her is excrutiating.   The piece that she didn't mention was what we were doing over the wire.  We each needed eachother.  I felt held by her and I hope she felt held by me for I responded right away.  I realize I should call her again right now to check in.  She and I have often been support forces for one another when we need another to connect with in these spaces.  I speak to her less often than my two closest friends but I must say, I feel more understood by her.  There is a way we know what it feels like to not have a "home inside" like most people do that allows them to not have to think about or feel these hard longings and  all the ways we organize around them.

I continue to carry a lot of fear around that I fundamentally have this lack inside of me that  will ultimately hurt my kids.  I feel sad that this "lack" is what gets all my attention.  I think the whole Attachment Parenting movement freaks me out bc I just can't be an "attachment parent" and stay regulated in my nervous system - another fueller of my "lack".  My brother in law told my mother in law he felt we had damaged our children by sleep training them.  We may have and we considered it long and hard before sleep training them but I also realized, one of the things I needed to be a regulated and attuned care giver was sleep and waking up ever 90 minutes wasn't working for me and working so at roughly 8 months with both my sons they cried their eyes out as we stayed awake with them and taught them how to put themselves to sleep.  I am confident I will post on this in another post. Just found research from an attachment parenting site on how I have screwed up my kids forever.  ahhh....well...out breath....

That said, I am always looking for clues that I might still be a good parent despite my childhood.  Because there days when I feel like "hey man my kids kick ass, they are incredibly emotionally astute" and I catch myself doing something great!  I found my answer in Mark Brady's three parenting practices based on his training as a therapist and neuroscientist.  I should ask him about the sleep training piece;

3 Parenting Practices

1. Provide kids regular access to the working of our minds: or allow them to know us and our humanity, how we feel inside, where our yes's and no's are etc.

2. Collaboratively Communicate: meaning we are present with our kids in mind, body and spirit and receive their communication both the verbal and non verbal and fully take that communication in and respond to them quickly.  He said that lack of timely response is the great neurological despair.  

3. Heal ourselves: unpack our unconscious motivations that have us unwittingly moving out of connection to ourselves and our kids

So, I must say, after I read this I thought well I need some work @ number two but crap I kick ass on #1 and #3. In fact, as I was hanging out with my kids today and well we were just all in attunement - drifting in and out of connection together and then with ourselves- we just all had fun but it wasn't work and no one was neglected.  In fact, my fear of not being a good parent is the biggest piece of #3 I need to work on because the amount of time I dwell in my own fear actively has me disconnecting from my kids.  Isn't that ironic, my fear of parenting badly actually leads me to parent badly.  Sorry, loaded with judgement but another way to say it is that I could just have a good time and be in connection rather than working so hard at doing it well. And that my friend is more #3 stuff that I wish I had a "turn off" button for.    I believed I had to "do it well" rather than "trust my lived experience" from a very early age.  Sadly, doing "IT" well has nothing to do with connection and relating and definately not parenting.  

Hmmm....going to go sit for a bit before time to wake the kiddos up.  I need to hold the part of me that must " do it" rather than "be it".    

Response Flexibility

Integration integration integration.  A lot going on last week.  I am trying to integrate a lot at the moment; studying for my Marriage and Family Therapist licensing exam has me steeped in heady ideas about mental health and the new format of the exam has me studying the hundreds of differing ideas on this question instead of specializing in one as the old exam required.  In the midst of that, I am revisiting material from my young life in deeply profound ways.  I am finally deeply feeling the painful abuse that I suffered in my childhood - I am not angry and I am not running, I am just breathlessly mourning what happened. I found it hard to hold myself in the midst of triggers that ignited painful memories and some intense nervous system stuff.  Found it hard, for the first time in a long time, to get on my own side and get inside of my body. Leaving myself is old habit.   

Of course all of this was happening while my husband was away on business and my children's strong reaction to his lack of contact with them left me deeply needed whilst I was deeply unavailable.  What is more, my own work with my psychotherapy clients is demanding that I be INSIDE myself too and to trust my experience and be authentic and flexible in how I respond.  So I needed me, my kids needed me and my clients needed me.  I am grateful for good friends who helped me regulate my nervous system so I could get back inside of my body and hold myself in the midst of these painful feelings.  It is ok that I/we need help doing this.  The challenge is reaching to the right people, doing so directly and cleanly and being connective in the moment rather than thinking about solutions.  I am aware that thinking, as Gabrielle Roth says, does not lead to clarity.  Being alive in our experience and trusting that experience does.  Last bit are my words.  This is why I am a somatic therapist.  I believe in the body is where we have our lived experience and where we know how to respond to ourselves and the world. 

I put two and two together and found, when I am anxious about how I am experiencing myself, I will look outside myself for answers instead of inside of myself.  That includes looking for parenting advice outside myself.  Getting some solid training in child development and some very good awareness how and when we are disconnecting relationally, what triggers make it hard to connect with our children and ourselves are great ways to develop response flexibility. Reading "how to do it the right way" kind of books, however, leave us/me in my head thinking about parenting rather than connective parenting.  I love what Mark Brady wrote in his email to me last week in response to a question I had about a particular parenting group.  He said;

"...anything advocated as "one size

fits all" is going to have problems. Kids' brains grow and change

way beyond anything most parents and few schools are really aware enough to keep up with. The result is that the majority of us end up to some degree "developmentally delayed" compared to what's possible. Kids need in-the-moment, creative "response flexibility" from teachers and caretakers. Without that, they are unnecessarily slowed down in development.

What's your experience? Ever wake up and discover your child has leapfrogged from where they were just yesterday?"

Mark Brady, http://committedparent.wordpress.com/

I feel like response flexibility is embodied compassion...compassion for self and other.  From a place of compassion our boundaries don't fall apart, we aren't riddled with fear and anxiety and we don't leave our bodies.  Embodied compassion allows us to stay in connection with ourselves while being in connection with our kids. So I am on a mission to find my way back to embodied compassion.  Going to do some 5 rhythms movement on Thursday night.  More about it here.  Love that Gabrielle says fuck in this interview!