Stop the painful patterns with this one skill
Have you ever caught yourself reacting to your kids exactly the same way that your parents reacted to you, even though you swore you would never treat your kids the same way that they treated you?
Yeah, me too.
Most people think that breaking the cycle of dysfunctional family patterns requires more patience or more love.
But I came across this incredible idea recently that shows that just being more loving towards your kids isn’t actually enough to stop you passing your wounds onto them.
How much you love your kids, it actually doesn’t predict whether or not they’ll be securely attached.
Instead, there’s one specific skill that you need, one skill that you can learn and that you can teach to your kids that can make all the difference, something called mentalisation.
And this research by Peter Fonagy – and I’ll link to his paper below – shows that learning this one skill can completely stop the cycle of trauma in its tracks, even if you had a terrible childhood.
Our corrupted rules
As kids, when our parents behave badly towards us, whether that’s abuse or neglect, we don’t yet have the ability to understand why they’re behaving that way.
So we assume the problem is with us.
We change our behaviour to try and fix their response to us.
But when our new behaviours don’t seem to work, instead of realising the problem actually lies with our parents, we just try harder and harder and harder until our entire internal system gets corrupted.
And this is our trauma.
And as adults, when we carry this unresolved trauma into the world, into our interactions with the world around us, we act as if the same rules apply.
We get triggered by other people’s behaviours and our dysfunctional survival strategies kick in.
We don’t understand why we feel the way we do.
We’re just overwhelmed by it and react automatically.
And as parents, instead of soothing our kids when they’re upset, we project our fear and our anger onto them, recreating the same experience for them that we had as kids.
And so the cycle continues.
What is mentalisation?
So what is mentalisation?
Mentalisation is the ability to reflect on your mental and emotional state and that of other people.
It’s being able to understand how someone else might be feeling or thinking – their internal state – that might explain how they’re acting.
As a child, if we were capable of this, when mum yelled at us, instead of thinking, “Oh, I’m a terrible person. I’m bad.”
We might realise that mum’s actually stressed about money right now.
But unfortunately, at this age, we just don’t have that skill.
And as adults, when we’re triggered by our kids’ tantrum, instead of thinking, “Oh, they’re such a monster,” and yelling at them to stop, we might realise instead that maybe they’re hungry or tired or overwhelmed, and they just don’t have a better way to handle what they’re feeling.
We can also reflect on our own feelings in this situation.
Instead of thinking, “Oh, they make me so angry,” we can think, “I’m feeling angry right now because this reminds me when my mum used to yell at me.” What we’re doing is we’re reflecting on the mental and emotional states behind the behaviours.
And this skill is a miracle-working circuit breaker that allows us to turn a knee-jerk reaction into a considered response, and that makes all the difference.
How to practise mentalisation
So how do we put this into practise?
First, we need to acknowledge that this is super hard to do to begin with.
And why is that?
Because when we are triggered, we are in survival mode.
We are not in control.
Our fight or flight response shuts down the rational part of our brain that can reflect about things.
Step 1 – Pause and notice
So our very first step, the very first thing that we need to do is to create some kind of pause.
We need to stop everything.
We need to stop yelling.
We need to stop.
We need to stop talking.
We need to stop everything, stop doing and just notice.
We need to notice how we feel.
We notice our thoughts, the sensations.
Do we have a tight chest, or a lump in our throats, or a weight in our belly?
Do we feel hot or restless or trapped?
Step 2 – Remind ourselves what’s really going on
The second step, once we’ve done some noticing, is that we need to remind ourselves that this is a reaction to the past, not to the present.
We need to tell ourselves, “I’m triggered right now. How I’m feeling is not really about what my child just did or what that person just did.
I’m feeling strong emotions, but I’m okay. I can calm down. I just need a minute.”
Step 3 – Start to reflect and ask questions
And the third step, once we’re a bit calmer, is that we can actually start to reflect.
What might our child be feeling right now?
What’s driving their behaviour?
Are they hungry or tired or frustrated?
What needs are they trying to meet through this behaviour that is frustrating us so much?
Questions like these can help us better appreciate why they’re acting the way they are and see that it really has nothing to do with us, which actually puts us in a better place to help them, instead of just dumping our emotions all over them.
How I learned to use mentalisation
Going no contact with my parents for over 18 years was an extreme version of this pause.
But that time away from them gave me the space I needed to better understand myself them so I could avoid passing that same baggage onto my kids.
And then, when I had kids of my own, I had to learn to do this three-step process in real-time.
I had to catch myself about to lose it at my kids, realise that I was triggered, stop myself from acting rashly, and take a moment to understand my own state of mind as well as theirs.
Sometimes I even had to walk away, when I was so strongly triggered I knew I would do something I’d regret, like putting myself in a time out.
But with practise, I found myself able to recognise my triggers and better manage my reactions and better understand why they might be acting the way that they were.
And with time, I could also begin to teach them to understand other people’s states of mind including mine, so they didn’t take so much upon themselves.
Breaking the cycle with mentalisation
In Peter Fonagy’s words, “The cycle of disadvantage is interrupted if the caregiver acquires the capacity to fully represent and reflect on mental experience.”
But we can’t do this if our nervous system is fried.
So very soon, I’m going to be releasing an entire series around somatic healing, using our bodies to heal so that we can get our brains back online and calm down enough to be the parent we want to be.
Sign up now, and I’ll email you when that series is released.
And may you have a more conscious day.
