What is it like to feel like you’re drowning? It is slow and fast at the same time. It is surreal, almost like you can see outside yourself, know what is happening to you and have little to no control over it. Your internal dialogue consists of trying to convince yourself that if you just calm or just swim you could get to safer waters. You know how to swim, you tell yourself all the steps to get out of the danger but nothing you do seems to work. In fact doing anything seems to drag you further down. To scream for help only invites more water into your already exhausted lungs. Signalling for help feels like it draws away energy you need to stay above water. Despite attempting to signal for help the people on shore who may see you don’t understand you are struggling, it does not look like trouble from shore. When someone does see you and starts their own swim out to help you it feels like they may not make it in time. In your mind you fear for their lives knowing they could be swimming toward their own danger. At the same time you know without their help you may not make it back to shore.
This is not a metaphor for walking the path of parenting a traumatized child…..and it is. I truly did have a terrifying experience of near drowning in the lake this summer. I am ever grateful for two of my teenage sons and sister in law who heard my quiet calls for help and swam to support me back to shore. Without their courage and love I may not have been able to stay above the water for much longer. We will all be affected for a long time. At the same time it fits so closely to what I have experienced and continue to experience as a parent of a child with relational trauma (early neglect and disrupted attachments).
Knowing how to parent from a place of security and understanding may keep a parent above water longer but even the most skilled swimmer gets exhausted. You can be taken by surprise to find you have drifted into deeper waters. What once seemed manageable because feet could find bottom after each wave suddenly becomes a struggle when you have lost that stability. Catching your breath after each wave is no longer an option. Sometimes you are left holding your breath knowing the next wave is coming quicker than you can recover. Parenting a child who is unable to regulate their emotions, a child who rages or shuts down, a child who pushes you away or clings so tight they can’t let go is very much like trying to stay afloat in rough waters.
It is easy to think that all children face these issues at times, and most likely they do. Parenting any child comes with it’s challenges. Imagine though, and I really could never until I lived it, that your child pushes you away at almost every turn. Not the irritating kind of behaviours that make us want to maybe not be a parent sometimes but true rejection. Create a picture of living with near constant opposition and defiance, violent outbursts verbally or physically that seem to be about random things like not wanting the snack you prepared. Live in a world where your child seems to behave to challenge you to believe about them what they believe about themselves; they are worthless.
Parent a child who pushes you to your outmost edge of patience, pushes you off the edge and then turns to you in such dire and desperate need for your love and empathy in the exact moment that you feel ready to give up. They cling to you when you feel like you have already given your very last drop of energy. And then do it all again an hour later.
Like coming close to drowning, parenting a child with a trauma history can be something you have to experience to really get it. Supporting people, professionals, family members can educate themselves, they can witness and be there to hold your hand or give you new suggestions. They can watch from the shore or even be wading in the water waiting to help you. Living this day by day, hour by hour is something that needs to be experienced to grasp the intensity of the emotions, and the exhaustion. As solid as their advice is or as reasonable as their strategies may seem, trying to employ them while you are gasping for breath each and every day is wearying.
