Ep 32: How to Work with Parenting Guilt and Self-Judgment Pt. II

[INTRODUCTION]

Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

Welcome to Episode 32 of the Come Back to Care Podcast. Let’s continue the exploration of guilt and self-judgment that we started in the previous episode. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly encourage you to do so. You’ll learn about the 4D’s framework that you can use to understand your guilt and self-judgement a little better. You’ll also explore one practice that you can use to stay anchored in moments when guilt and self-judgment arise. Those two exercises in the previous episode are like a warmup you do before the workout and the workout itself. And the exercise I’m sharing with you in this episode is like a cool down. Putting these two episodes together, you’ll have some practices that you can play with before, during, and after moments when your guilt and self-judgment bubble up.

In this episode, you and I will explore a practice that can lower the volume of your inner critics and strengthen your nervous system at the same time too. I’ll share why this practice can be really nourishing, drawing on lessons from neuroscience, western psychology, and social justice action. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started. 

You know, one of my professional pet peeves when it comes to social media tips, scripts, and tricks to quote unquote get rid of your child’s tantrums is that they are incomplete. These tricks often focus on getting your child to stop the behaviors that you don’t want and that’s it.  They never talk about what your child can do instead with the unmet needs that prompted the behavior in the first place. This applies to some of the gentle or respectful parenting approaches too where you can validate your child’s feelings all day like “I see you’re upset. Ah, you’re upset. Yes, I see you’re upset.” No matter how exquisitely you name those feelings, your child won’t know what to do differently the next time if you only validate their feelings and stop there. The key is this: every behavior you’re trying to reduce needs to be replaced with something more adaptive. Instead of pushing the plate on the floor when they’re finished, your toddler can learn to sign, gesture, or say “all done.” Instead of biting friends at school, your preschooler can put their hand out and communicate “no thank you” in ways that suit their developmental skills. Instead of slamming the door at you when upset, your teenager can practice saying “I need a timeout.” You get the idea and I’m getting off my soapbox. But I’ll leave links to a free self-directed audio guide and a podcast episode on tantrums and meltdowns for you in the show notes at comebacktocare.com/podcast.

I’m saying all of this to say that we can honor our inner child and inner critics in the same way we honor our children by meeting their needs where they’re at (most of the time). 

In the previous episode, we got to the roots of our guilt and self-judgment to understand what our inner critics were afraid would happen if they stopped being so harsh. With this self-compassion, we lowered the volume of the inner critics. To say it another way, we reduced that self-judgment and now we gotta replace it with something more adaptive … whatever that may be for you in this chapter of your journey. 

According to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, guilt, shame, and inner critics are considered negative core beliefs. To fully address these negative core beliefs, we need to build enough positive core beliefs to balance the scale so to speak. 

If you’ve been listening to me for a while, you know that I’m not a fan of the idea of “negative core beliefs” because of their individualistic connotation. You have negative thoughts? Then, you need to adjust your mindset, fix your face, and be grateful. This blame on an individual is missing the social, cultural, and political context that means if you’re not in a body that’s white, cisgender, heteronormative, middle class, Christian, and abled, you might have to use guilt and shame to make sure you’re not too ethnic, too queer, or too weird and therefore risk losing your jobs and your ability to pay bills and put food on the table. Or you might have to use self-judgment as a whip on your back so you keep your productivity high for capitalism and keep your authenticity at bay because it causes discomfort in the dominant bodies. Is this survival strategy a “negative core belief” or an adaptive response to the inequitable social context? 

Whether you’re stuck in patterns of guilt, shame, or self-judgment or you’re automatically using them as survival strategies under systemic oppression, you’re so much more than your survival. And this practice I’m about to share will show your inner critics these receipts. 

I nicknamed this practice: Remember Who You Are. I first heard it from a scientist and psychologist, Joan Borysenko, and I adapted it by adding the political analysis and embodiment layers to it.

I’ll walk through the 4 parts of this practice so you can discern and decide if it’s generative to experiment with it or not. If not, that’s great too. Your agency is beautiful. As always, play with what resonates and leave the rest. 

Here’s the invitation: Appreciate, Visualize, Savor, and Share.

Let’s start with part one, Appreciate. Before you go to bed, please bring to mind one moment from your day where you showed up as the parent you know you can be. Please feel free to substitute the prompt for: as a decolonized parent, as my highest self, as a good enough parent, or a compassionate parent who caught the voice of the inner critics but moved through it with compassion.

It doesn’t matter if three seconds after that moment you snapped at your child or if you felt awkward and clumsy in that moment. The moment was the moment. You did what you intended to do.

Once you have that moment in mind, the second part is Visualize. Go full IMAX. That means bring on a full sensory experience of that moment. What were you doing, feeling, or wearing? Sight, sound, touch, smell, whatever floats your boat. Really relive that moment and breathe life into it. 

If it’s okay with you to linger here for one more breath or three more seconds, please do. You could have gone with your autopilot; yet, you made an intentional choice there. It’s okay to savor this hard and heart work for another breath if that’s not too much. And this is part three, Savor.

Then part four is Share. If you’d like, please take the elevator from your body back up to your thinking brain and share this moment with someone you love or trust or invite your child to share their moment with you too, if that fits. Or share this moment with yourself by writing it down in your journal. 

A bonus point, run an experiment and practice this exercise for 5 days in a row. 

So that’s the invitation of this practice called Remember Who You Are. Nothing brings me more joy than seeing the parents and caregivers I work with play with these invitations and adapt them to make them their own. 

Khalil is a single queer parent in polyamorous relationships and he’s raising a 16-year-old, a five-year-old, and a two-year-old. Khalil’s inner critics can be really loud, criticizing him for not giving his children- in the inner critics’ words- “a normal family to thrive in.” Ouch, I know.

And before I continue, I want to mention that Khalil and I looked at the literature on the effects of polyamorous relationships among adults on children. And studies show that children, in fact, benefit from having multiple role models and they can grow up to become adults with secure attachment. I’ll leave the link to the work of Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, a sociologist and pioneer in polyamory, in the show notes for you if you’re interested.    

Despite all the literature, Khalil’s inner critics aren’t convinced. The 4 D’s framework that we covered in the previous episode revealed that Khalil’s inner critics are really afraid that his choice to have a relationship that’s different from patriarchy’s norm of heteronormative couple will negatively impact the development of his children. The fear is valid because Khalil clearly loves his children. But is this fear always true? I invited Khalil to experiment with our Remember Who You Are practice as a way to build a collection of receipts to show to his inner critics when they’re overly protective and unnecessarily harsh. 

Khalil described one Appreciate moment or the first part of the Remember Who You Are exercise when his 16-year-old got in Khalil’s car and he was upset about a soccer practice. Khalil would normally default to a coping strategy of buying his son a gift to cheer him up. Seeing his son upset triggers Khalil’s inner child wound of abandonment, something he and I continue to work on together in our In-Out-N-Through social justice parenting and inner child re-parenting cohort. But in this moment, instead of buying something to appease his son, Khalil shared with me that he said to his son “Seeing you upset makes me wanna rush in and fix the situation for you. But today, I’m here if you wanna talk.”

I invited Khalil to go full IMAX on this scene which was part two Visualize. He said he wanted to throw up because buying his son a new pair of sneakers would have been much easier. His stomach felt tight like a giant knot. He grabbed onto the wheel tightly. Then, he slowly loosened his grip on the wheel, rolled his shoulders down and back, and unhinged his jaw. He still felt uneasy but after he said what he said and his son looked back at him with a sense of gratitude (which he said was rare for his 16-year-old), he felt a buzz through his hands and feet and his throat unclenched and he could sigh out loud. 

Khalil and I stayed with the softness in the back of his throat and the openness in his jaw and diaphragm and that activation in his hands and feet for three more breaths. This was part three Savor. Then, Khalil said that these were his bodily sensations of “oh yes!” A feeling of hashtag parenting win, to use his words.

For the final part, Share, Khalil started recording these reflections in his journal. But he shared with me a few weeks back that he upgraded the practice and changed from journaling that one moment from that day that he felt really good about to sharing it out loud with his children during dinner. Some days his 16-year-old and 5 year-old joined in and shared their moments too. Other days they stick to their iPads during dinner. 

I love that Khalil made this practice the Khalil method. How are this practice and Khalil’s example resonating with you? How might you adapt this practice and make it your own method?

Now that you and I have covered the practice, let’s explore the neuroscience and social justice action that can shed light on why this practice is important. 

Appreciation, visualization, savoring, and sharing all affect our nervous systems, our bodies, and our overall wellbeing in different ways. Let’s go over the research together. 

First, appreciation. adrienne maree brown wrote in the Emergent Strategy that what we pay attention to grows. And this practice invites you to bring your attention to those moments where your actions align with your values -- moments you feel really good about. Paying attention to aspects of our lives that are meaningful and showing appreciation is an aspect of gratitude. And a consistent practice of gratitude can reduce our stress hormone, cortisol. With less stress comes less cellular inflammation, better sleep, and less fatigue in heart failure patients according to the Researchers from the University of California San Diego. When you feel good in your body, your emotional wellbeing increases. Many studies in Korea and the US show that gratitude helps us better navigate stress and intense feelings. So, these are some of the physical and psychological benefits of appreciation and gratitude. All the links to every research study are in the show notes at comebacktocare.com/podcast. 

Second, visualization. When we go full IMAX or picture ourselves performing an action, we’re activating our motor cortex in the brain and that helps our bodies make this action smoother and more efficient in the future. According to Dr. Srini Pillay, a Harvard-Trained psychiatrist and brain researcher, visualization is like mentally rehearsing the actions we want. By activating the motor cortex through visualization, we remember these intended actions better, whether we’re parents, patients recovering from strokes, or athletes honing their movements.  

Third, savoring. Under systemic oppression, many of us have to contort our bodies to conform to the expectations of white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy and to perform the identity roles these oppressors violently assign to us. Otherwise, I might not be trans enough or Asian enough and I’d risk losing my community. Or, you might not be professional enough and risk losing your jobs and access to food, housing, and health insurance. To keep up with this contort-conform-and-perform survival strategy, our nervous system is often stuck in a survival mode of fight, flight, freeze, fix, people please. Stress hormones are pumping through the body resulting in chronic stress and a cascade of inflammation in the body according to Dr. Rupa Marya and Raj Patel the authors of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Stuck in a survival mode of fight, flight, freeze, fix, people please, we might forget that when our bodies feel safe enough and supported enough- no matter how fleeting- we can be in that neurological bandwidth where we feel curious, connected, compassionate, and anchored. In this bandwidth, your stomach might be a little softer, your shoulders drop a little more, and your spine sits a little taller after having to contort yourself for so long to make yourself small and invisible. Savoring is an intentional practice to return to our neurological baseline from having been in the fight, flight, freeze, fix, people please activation mode; to reconnect with the nourishing resources that are already within our bodies even just for three breaths…as if we took a pit stop to take a sip of water before resuming our marathon survival mode. In the In-Out-N-Through program, I often say to the parents that we’re inviting our nervous system to play hokey pokey. We step out of survival mode into safety through savoring and then step back out into survival mode. The struggle and systemic oppression will still be there and we won’t “love and light” them away. Instead, we’re building agility in our nervous system to shift in and out of protection and connection. Deb Dana, a trauma expert specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory, wrote quote “it’s an acknowledgement that our nervous system is capable of holding both moments of safety and moments of survival” end quote. 

So that’s Appreciating, Visualizing, Savoring. The final part is Sharing. Whether you share this moment out loud to yourself, or quietly in your journal, or with someone you love and trust, the act of sharing is a way to continue that savoring in part three a little longer, deepening your experience of safety, wellness, and nourishment. To say it differently, by sharing you’ll hang out in that neurological state where you feel curious, connected, and compassionate a little while longer.  

To recap, we walked through a practice I’m inviting you to experiment with called Remember Who You Are which has 4 parts to it: Appreciate, Visualize, Savor, and Share. We explored how one family used this exercise and how this exercise shapes our nervous system. 

Guilt and self-judgment are very human. However, when guilt turns into shame and self-judgment becomes debilitating, it’s extremely challenging to show up as our whole selves to both parenting and social justice organizing. And you don’t have to get stuck in shame that gets in the way of you being the parent and advocate you know you can be. I hope that the previous episode and this one provide you with caring and concrete practices that you can experiment with before, during, and after your guilt and self-judgment arise. 

Before I sign off, I want to share a favorite story with you. A Buddhist monk took a group of people on a walk along the rice field next to the temple. I was one of the few children there. The monk pointed to a tiny rock on the sidewalk and asked me “Child, do you think this rock is heavy?” I said “No.” Then, he pointed to a humongous rock by the temple’s wall and asked me “What about that one? Heavy?” I immediately said “Yes, it’s huge and heavy.” The monk smiled and said “No, it’s not heavy if you don’t pick it up.” We all laughed and he was so pleased with himself. The warmth in my heart in that moment stays with me. 

Your inner critics often have wisdom to share with you but not in the most effective way. I hope you can heed their wisdom that you need and leave the unnecessarily harsh criticisms behind. There’s no need to pick up all the rocks, right?

Thank you for Remembering Who You Are with me in this episode, for remembering and savoring your growth and healing, and for being the main character in your story. 

Every link to the research studies, books, and extra resources mentioned in this episode is in the show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/podcast.

To support my work and keep our psychoeducation and political education free and accessible, please consider leaving a rating and review or offering a one-time financial redistribution by heading to comebacktocare.com/support. 

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.