Empathetic Parenting | Sensitive Children

Parenting Support, Highly Sensitive Children & Neurodiversity

Shyness and reluctance to try new things – parenting children with sensory issues

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Introduction

Sensory issues can be hard to spot. I have found that parents often get extremely anxious and wound up about the fact that their highly sensitive child refuses to try new things. Often they have no idea they are parenting a child with sensory issues. They are often distressed when they approach me for help with their child’s reluctance in new situations. Whether that’s the first day of camp, a new after-school sport or a party with people s/he doesn’t know, they can trigger meltdowns and flat refusals to participate. What is often distressing for the parent is that the emotional response seems so inexplicable – the child actually loves going to that place, or doing that activity, or hanging out with those people. So what is going on? This can cause great frustration and concern to you as a parent. You want your child to be happy and also socially integrated and “normal” as far as possible. You may end up seeking therapy such as cognitive or play therapy for your child – which I will argue here is not necessarily appropriate. The initial factor which is often overlooked is your anxiety about your child’s issue. I don’t say this as a criticism or to apportion blame. Rather the mechanism by which these issues are passed down is often invisible unless we can see the bigger generational picture. We will look at some of the dynamics of what may be going on, and how parents can support their children in these situations to feel better, be more relaxed, and continue to develop.

Anxiety, shyness and holding back – what do they mean?

You may be very aware that your child signs up for a new activity like soccer or drumming. Yet when the day arrives for the first class they cry or throw a tantrum and don’t want to go. If you manage to get them in the car and drag them along, they may enter the area clinging to your leg whilst protesting and looking away. Does this sound familiar? You’re well within your rights to ask yourself what is going on. It can be very frustrating, given their initial enthusiasm to participate and their repeated requests to you. Some parents even get so worn down that they develop anxiety in advance of the new class starting themselves. 

There are probably at least three separate issues going on here, which we will deal with separately. Understandably as their parent, you may wonder if your child has a “real” problem, and they may need to see someone. I don’t mean to diminish the severity of the behaviour and its dramas. However I am going to suggest you finish reading this article before you come to that conclusion. In my experience it often avoids resolving the real issue, which stems from the relationship between the parent and child – you will see how this works out below.

Often the second aspect of what is going on is that something is happening in the child in this new situation that leaves them feeling very scared or unsafe. When new things are scary even for adults, the level of fear can border on excitement because we know how to rationalise – we are able to think about the fear. So parents sometimes use this as an argument to encourage children – but it really misses the point as what the child is experiencing is way stronger. They are experiencing one or more emotions and body sensations that frighten them to the point of dissociating and spacing out, or they are simply overwhelmed and shut down to survive – hence the meltdown. They may include tingling, dizziness, nausea, stomach ache, headache and a number more. These are all indications that your child needs more support to go into this situation and be successful. I will suggest here that the support the child needs is best given by one or both parents, with support from a parenting professional.  That support comes from more attuned relationship from the parent(s). More on exactly what in a moment.

The holding back is often a self-protection mechanism, even though it may look like an annoying and unnecessary habit. Your child is sensing that there is something that will be unpleasant for them, too much and overwhelming, or just too frightening. Their body is sending them those signals, even though they may relate to past events, not to the present. To avoid trauma, they try to withdraw in advance. This is actually intelligent, and one of the first steps in working with you as parents is to show you how to trust your child’s instinct and take note.

A third aspect may be social overwhelm which is a separate topic. Highly Sensitive Children perceive and absorb vast amounts of emotional, physical and mental information when they meet new people. This is why they are usually better able to cope one on one, and even then they take a time to warm up and get comfortable. You may already have observed how if there are at least one or two children at a party that your HSC already knows, then getting into the swing of things is much smoother. Those people serve as anchor points, or safe islands to connect with and move out from. Or just to stay put with and weather the noise and chaos with more safety. So if your new activity or situation involves a lot of new people too, it may help to be aware of this. However, this is quite a complex subject so I will be dealing with it in a later article in more depth.

First things first – helping you the parent manage your own reaction

Parents often don’t count their own reaction to their child’s issue as a factor in what is going on. The child has the problem. But this isn’t always so because HS children’s behaviour are hughely influenced by their parent’s emotional state. I always ask how a mother or father feels about their child’s behaviour. Often the answer is anxious, worried, and often includes frustration. If the reaction is strong, the first thing we do is work on clearing the charge to their child’s behaviour. I have worked with a number of mothers who have been able to clear their own anxiety and learn to be (mostly) calm and present in their bodies when their child goes into the typical behaviour. Sometimes this takes weeks, sometimes it can take a year or more when there are long-term deeper family issues at play. As soon as the adult shift happens there is usually an immediate change in the child’s behaviour. Why? Because a non-anxious parent who is present with their child makes their difficult experience a whole lot safer, just by being there. Their nervous system supports the child’s parasympathetic system and ability to sense the body. And if they learn to accompany the child and talk to them whilst they are having the experience, things are guaranteed to work themselves out. We’ll look at this idea with practical suggestions below.

Sensations – slowing down and getting to the bottom of things

I’m going to suggest something here that has worked for many of the parents I have accompanied. First of all, think back and remember what signs of discomfort you have observed in your child before the new situation. Do they go through a familiar sequence as the moment approaches? Would it be possible for you to be calm and as the moment approaches, connect with your child as soon as you start to notice them getting upset or agitated? You might just ask gently how they are and what is going on. Or offer a hug and a glass of water. Or a comforting touch. Something to let them know you are with them.

For example, “Hi Sam, I can see you’re getting a bit antsy or nervous. What’s going on?” You may get a reply about that funny feeling, or feeling dizzy, or sick. The important thing here is to be very connected inside your own body as the parent so that you can get a good sense of your child, independent from yourself. You may be able to ask them if they can feel their feet, or what part of their body feels good. You can reassure them that whatever they are sensing, you can take a few moments out to feel it with them, have a drink and some quiet, breathe some fresh air and wait until they are ready to proceed. You may want to share that you sometimes get these feelings too, and that it’s ok to feel them but they don’t are not dangerous and don’t mean you have to stop what you are planning to do.

Helping your child regulate their nervous system can increase their capacity to sense

What is going on here neurologically is that you are helping them to regulate their nervous system by reducing the overall load, helping things subside, and lending them your own calm system to attune to. If you can help your child to be aware and stay inwardly connected, they will start to regain a sense of safety even with the sensations inside their body. Over time this means this means that the same sensation will be something they recognise as familiar, rather than causing panic. For this to happen they will need your help in practising noticing, slowing down and naming the sensation. Try to stick to actual body sensations rather than emotions, as sensations are easier to isolate as felt facts. Emotions usually come attached to very loud circular mental stories about things that take you into the mind and right away from sensations. This is useful if the sensation scares you, but not so useful if you want to overcome your fear of it!

A real-life recent example

I recently worked with a mother of a five-year-old girl who repeatedly refused to go to ballet classes although she loved dancing. It got so bad that the girl started vomiting every time before even getting in the car and her mother had to stop classes. When I started working with the mother she was convinced her daughter needed medication. However after three months, we had begun to tackle the mother’s high anxiety, and she was learning to handle her own stuff separately from her daughter’s reaction, things turned around. The mother was able to stay calm as a birthday party approached instead of dreading her daughter’s reaction. She managed to spot her daughter literally going pale twenty minutes before they were due to leave, and was able to pause the proceedings. By sitting her down and asking questions, being calm, gentle and connecting sensitively, she found out that her daughter was experiencing tingling in her legs and thumping in her chest. She was able to make her daughter feel a lot safer by being present with her until the sensations had passed, and later on shared what sensations she herself would feel when she got anxious. Her daughter had a lot of detailed questions! She didn’t make it to that party, but she wasn’t sick. Instead, they stayed at home for a quiet afternoon – a wise choice on that occasion to help her child integrate rather than pushing her immediately. She went to the next party and was able to enjoy part of it before getting overwhelmed. Fast forward to a year later and her daughter is back at ballet classes and her phsyical co-ordination has improved beyond the teacher’s expectations. This often happens when children integrate an unresolved sensory disturbance… 

What are shyness or anxiety issues really about?

When a child is shy, anxious or reluctant these are usually symptoms of something deeper going on. This is not really such a revelation – probably most people would assume this to be the case. The question for parents is how do you resolve the symptoms if you don’t know what the issue is? The answer often lies in looking wider than the behaviour. Sometimes there is a family history of anxiety that is being passed on. Other times the root of the answer lies in a lack of sense of physical and emotional safety for the child – simply put, feeling unsafe. In Highly Sensitive Children this is sometimes at an emotional overwhelm level where they shut down and pull back to protect themselves, and more often simply at the level of unfamiliar sensation in the body. Without going into too much detail, traumatic events like birth, early infancy, breastfeeding, and even events in the womb can leave unresolved experiences that affect small children’s ability to develop higher capabilites. The area of the brain that deals with survival and fear develops before the part that thinks, processes thought and speech, and social relations (the pre-frontal cortex). I’m not a brain expert, I’m more of a super-detailed behavioural observer. And yet I can tell immediately when a child won’t be able to respond to requests to use their words or to calm themselves down. Children develop this ability at different ages from about 3-4 onwards, and some much later if they have sensory issues. If a child is having an experience at a sensory level that is life-threatening, then they won’t be able to think about it and even less communicate it in words. What will really help them is for you to perceive what is happening and be with them at the sensory level to help them readjust their sense of the surroundings from dangerous to safe.

What I learnt from taming that scared wild animal

The best way I can explain this in simple terms is dealing with a wild cat or any hurt animal. Most people know that you can’t go straight over to a wild or injured animal with an outstretched hand. First, you have to stop dead still and notice. You might calm your own nervous system and just look, but not in a too direct or threatening way. You establish a sense of being there without expectation, like companionship. You wait, you receive. You see the animal breathe and soften, or you feel its system decrease at least one level in alert. It may blink at you – you blink back. Only then can you take a very slow step, make a subtle movement and wait for adjustment. You may offer food but it will take a long time usually for the animal to creep out, and maybe not until you leave. However, over time, if you are consistent and very aware, you will build up a relationship. This is how you can tame totally wild animals that have never been in contact – and it works for calming totally traumatised people, and helping them to feel safe and trusting. The body needs to feel safe by connecting with another safe body – even without touch – that perceives them accurately but allows them to be as they are.

How to apply this to improve your relationship with your child

You can develop your relationship with your own child in exactly the same way – and I’m not joking here.  If it works with an animal that can’t process thought, it will work with your child and their instinctive self. If you have a highly sensitive child with behaviours you can’t resolve, then they may well need this kind of careful attentive approach. Of course you need to put aside your offence at their being that scared – often its hard to say what has caused your child’s issues, and its unlikely to be through any conscious fault of your own.

Only an extremely traumatised child or adult would need the level I describe for a wild animal. And yet I routinely work in this way with all new clients who exhibit body tension or fear, as it resolves all underlying developmental issues quickly and they can make huge strides through old patterns of behaviour to new, much safer and better-feeling states of functioning and relationship. I worked with one infant from about a year old for several years who was later diagnosed with a genetic disorder. I mainly worked with her sense of safety in the body, and was able to regulate her digestion and get her to poo when constipated just by gently touching the top of her head, as I got to know how her scared sensory system responded to the right touch. As practitioners, we know immediately that a body is tense if the digestion has stopped and there is constipation. It’s also incredibly easy to release and regulate. But her system was always very scared – and I explained this to her mother, who listened and adapated. The amazing thing about this girl was really her mother’s dedication to the relationship. Her mother’s attention and persistence allowed the child to develop her own signing system by age three not only to communicate needs but to have very warm and humorous interactions with people she cared about. She still couldn’t speak and yet went to school, and had an active social life. All against the predictions of medical experts who didn’t ever think she would get that far. By age 4 she was swimming unassisted and beginning to make sounds. I feel that the early work we did with her nervous system via observation and craniosacral touch will have set the foundation for her success, and continues to support her development, along with her mother’s instinctive support and understanding. I realise that few parents have time to function at this level of detail or calm in daily life. And yet you may be motivated if you have been having long-standing difficulties with your child. All it takes is 20 minutes a day or so. And over time you are likely to see dramatic improvements.

Just slow down and tune in

When you slow down and attune your relationship with your child, by not pushing them in these sorts of holding-back situations, you create a space for healing to occur. Staying very present in your own body and sensation, and emotionally and verbally connected with them when they are frightened creates increased safety. This safety allows things to happen on their own that would otherwise be too scary. Having an emotion or sensation is possible when your parent is really with you and it may be impossible or overwhelming if you are alone or disconnected. The child may spontaneously make a step towards development when they are allowed a safe space. You don’t need to know exactly what emotion or sensation your child is experiencing or why for it to move through and resolve. You just need to be present with them. They don’t need to know either. Breathing and allowing are very powerful and things can resolve in moments and minutes, and undramatically. As your child starts to recognise the things that scare them being triggered they will learn to reach out to you for help. “Mum I’m having that feeling”, for example. “Which one?” may be a helpful response. “The one where I get scared and don’t know what to do”, may be the reply. This is a queue for you to step into a calm presence and be there with them. A brief time-out may be necessary before plans can resume.

Small steps create big changes

If I were working directly with a child I would work exactly in this way. It’s also the same way that I work with mothers when they show up for their session panicked or disconnected. I have done the same with scared and wounded animals since childhood to get them to trust me. We relate. We look at one another without moving, we feel each other. We breathe, sense, and get back into the body, allowing sensations. When you support your child in this way as their parent you are simply making some adjustments so that the child can feel safe in small steps. You are noticing how they are, the difficulty they are experiencing, and slowing things down so that both you and they can accept what is being experienced, together. Instead of the experience creating fear and overwhelm, your joint acceptance creates a space for it to exist and integrate. What seems huge shrinks and melts away. When you practise these small steps consistently every time your child freaks out, you create deep trust with your child. They learn cumulatively that they can count on you when they run into difficulty, that they can speak up or reach out their hand when they are scared, and that you will be there with them. You will sense them, speak with them, listen, and maybe hold, cuddle or touch them as they need until they can calm down and readjust. This is an attuned relationship at its best, and if you are patient, it will resolve the majority of your child’s issues over time. It also allows the opportunity for really detailed communication, and for teaching your child about their inner world of sensation and emotion. This can set you up for good two-way understanding as your child grows up and their needs change and develop. It’s like a problem- preventative and future problem-solver all in one.

Isn’t all that the therapist’s job?

Well it really depends on if you are invested in having an excellent relationship with your child. I was talking to a parent this week about how much her son’s anxiety has reduced. She reminded me of a time when she wanted to take him to a therapist, and I gently nudged her into doing her own work instead. She carried on doing the work of taking him aside when disturbed, allowing downtime, letting him feel, helping him feel safe and verbalise, and refocusing her own anxiety on other things.  She went through her own process to be able to come off her long-term anxiety medication. She really began to live as her authentic self with all her feelings intact. She commented how absurd it would seem to her now to take her son for help rather than working on her relationship with herslef and him and his sense of physical and emotional safety. That was such a profound moment where she verbalised her own experience of building a consistent empathetic bond with him where he knew she understood and was available to be with him. Results like this can be really life-changing in the depth that they touch parents and children.  And the process is simple and within many parents’ reach. Why does our culture encourage us to hand this over to a therapist I wonder? I don’t consider this the therapist’s job, I feel it is the parent’s role – in fact because of the deep bond and level of trust that the child has with the caretakers they live with, that person has way more power to shift the relationship fast. The child is primed to notice and respond to mini-shifts in emotion, mood and attitude for their own survival in a way that they are not with a therapist. The therapist needs way more skill and depth of feeling to connect with the child and it takes time to build up the kind of relationship necessary. Of course it’s possible  – however, in the long-term, I feel it’s beneficial for the parent to have these relational and problem-solving skills themselves if at all possible. Not least because their state constantly broadcasts a nervous system model to the child that they can’t help but imitate.

In the words of the same dedicated mother last week: “we took our son to a baseball match last week. In the past he needed noise-cancelling headphones and he would have been anxious and overwhelmed. But he has got so much better at trying out new things – his anxiety level is right down and he even went out on the pitch with the other kids without thinking about it. I’m so grateful for the work I’ve done with you – I can see the result in my child first-hand”.

Conclusion

I have tried to give a sense of how anxiety and reluctance to participate in new events may relate to an HS child feeling afraid at a sensory and scared for their survival. I have shown this by anecdotal evidence of my own experience of working with parents to show them how to resolve their children’s difficulties. In my view, it seems logical that when a child has these sorts of issues, the first avenue for help would be supporting the parent in refining and improving their relationship with themselves and with the child, rather than sending the child for external support. Since a child will usually return to their family after any kind of intervention, it is their parents who will most influence their nervous system and sense of safety. So working on helping parents be calm, creating an accepting non-judgemental environment, and slowing things down would seem more effective. That way they can accompany their child in their everyday activities after school and so on, and resolve any recurring blocks that cause emotional issues or disturbances. I have also suggested that building this kind of relationship is a useful investment for preventing later problems and resolving other issues as the child grows up. Ultimately it also empowers the parents to know how to solve their own problems by trial and error and to trust their child’s instinctive behaviours and learn from them. Behaviours that appear problematic can provide rich learning opportunities that improve family relationships and create deep trust and connection for life.

All rights reserved. Mira Watson, July 31st 2023

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Highly Sensitive Children – A Basic Guide to What they Need

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Introduction

If you are the parent of any Highly Sensitive Children (or HSCs) you may be familiar with the frustration and mystery of trying to work out what your child needs. What are they trying to communicate with you and what do you need to do to help them develop? HSCs have very particular needs which we address here. This article is intended to guide and orient parents, school teachers and relatives to know where to start. It´s also a handy reference point to give to people who have never come across the term Highly Sensitive. It contains pointers to help you learn to feel and relate to your child, and to understand what their world is like from the inside.

In broad terms, Highly Sensitive Children often need help calming their nervous systems, processing emotion, and learning to name and express the wealth of sensations and emotions they are experiencing. They experience everything on volume ten and when it gets too loud they meltdown, just like a fuse. No two children are the same, yet this article contains the broader principles within which you as adults can work out the details by observation, trial and error.

Finding additional support

You may also find it helpful to work with a practitioner (like myself, most craniosacral therapists, and those who work with gifted/sensitive adults and children). Someone who is trained to focus on perceiving at a very sensitive level can be of great assistance in translating the child’s world and experience to you as the parents. This can facilitate an easier relationship between you and your child… S/he may be able to help you as parents or teacher adjust to the child’s needs and show you how to make more empathetic contact that will support the child’s healthy development.

What do Sensitive Children Need?

HSCs need to be taken more seriously, they need fast responses to their emotional needs. They also need more time and space to recover from activity and to figure things out for themselves. They need frequent soothing.

Sensitivity is not just an inconvenience or something that you can make disappear if it doesn’t suit you. One in five people have a much more sensitive nervous system than other people. This means that their experience is heightened – things are louder, brighter, faster, and much deeper for these kinds of people. Sensitive people are more easily overwhelmed and take longer to recover than others. They feel things more intensely, need to process events more thoroughly. Usually, they are very careful about making decisions to do things. In general, they only act when they are absolutely sure.

Such people also respond extremely well to craniosacral therapy or somatic experiencing because it is sensitive and does not overwhelm their delicate nervous systems. This is true for adults as well as children. However if parents can acknowledge and support their child’s sensitivity, an HSC can grow up healthy with their sense of self intact, rather than being heavily traumatised and having little confidence – so it’s well worth the effort.

How are HSC requirements different from those of other children? 

They need more sensitive parenting! In practice, that means that attuned attention or precise emotional empathy is vital. Imagine a child with a highly magnified bubble around them full of their own experiences and thoughts and observations. Their nervous system picks up every nuance and change in the surroundings. They have a rich inner life and many beauriful things they want to share with you. Showing you a sesame seed on their fingertip for example. A caterpillar on a leaf. Chalkdust under the blackboard.

If you don’t make the effort to tune into their world as a parent, you will miss out on connecting with them. Meanwhile, they are left with the sense of being totally alone, unconnected, and ignored. They will try to make sense of this by assuming they are wrong and will think their needs are not relevant, which can be really crippling for such sensitive children. The cycle of self-criticism and self-denial begins and often leads to later depression, addiction and relational problems.

Importance of Attuned Attention and Emotional Regulation

More than other children, they really can’t exist without daily quality attention and feedback on their states. They require a more immediate response to their emotional needs than other children because their sensitivity means they don’t have as much tolerance. A small change in their internal environment may feel huge and very frightening. If left unattended it can lead to shock and then trauma as the nervous system overloads and shuts down.

To help you understand, HSCs react more intensely when their blood sugar falls and they get hungry. A Highly Sensitive Child can’t be asked to wait to eat when they are hungry. The resulting internal storm of sensation and emotion becomes so intense that the rest of the day is a wipe-out. This is not a dysfunction in the child, but rather the result of a highly sensitive nervous system with less slack or tolerance of extremes.

Getting present

So as the parent of such a child, you need to be present and connected with your feelings and sensations. It is not helpful to be lost in thought constantly. Your active presence will allow you to perceive what is going on with your child, and to respond instinctively through the connection you build up with them. If you don’t know how to do this, craniosacral treatments can be a huge support for you. They will help you to learn to sense, to connect with yourself, and to be able to connect with your child.

Since in-person sessions are currently not so accesible, I am also offering a limited number of sessions as 6 week programmes online. These provide a foundation of excercises on your own and with your child that will teach you tools to sense your body and stay present in any situation. You will see results in your child´s response and development from day one. And if you are an HSP parent you will feel far less overwhelmed. 

How Craniosacral Therapy can help deal with Sensitivity

Craniosacral therapy also opens up blocks in your core energy and can enable you to be more present and freer with expressing your instincts. This will probably help you more than any parenting “technique” in accessing your instinctual response to your child. You will know how to help them develop, soothe them when distressed, etc. Even if you feel you don’t know how to parent, the thousands of years of human parenting are stored in your body. They will naturally come out at the appropriate time. All you have to do is allow yourself to set aside your thinking, your fear of getting it wrong, and the ideas you’ve been told. Everyone can parent, it’s literally, natural! Craniosacral therapy can help you get back in touch with that embodied nature…

Calm down before trying to relate

HSCs are usually very sensitive to sound and smell, and easily disturbed by abrupt movements, loud aggressive people, and hysterical or frightened behaviour. These are children who really need adults to calm down before they approach them. Their systems are so sensitive that they pick up and resonate with the slightest hint of emotion or nervous energy. They don’t have the capacity to get themselves calm again whilst that stimulus is still around. If you´re agitated they will be too. It´s good to check your own state first as a general practice.

If you as the parent are highly strung or nervous, then then your HSC(s) (and partner) are likely to suffer constantly… which is why working on your own calm as a priority is even more important for these children. Again, learning to regulate your own nervous system or self soothe through craniosacral sessions can be highly beneficial.

Your child may also need help calming down

Your child can also benefit immensely from having the chance to learn to feel sensation in their own body.  A quiet, safe craniosacral session where they will not be overwhelmed or too frightened to cope can enable a child to sense inside. Craniosacral sessions can help them to begin to learn to name emotions, allow anger, and express their inner states and needs. In a normal family environment, this can be very hard for sensitive children. Often they just can’t seem to find enough space or quiet to get connect with themselves. Parents may simply not know or be able to tell what they need. They tend to end up rather quiet, lost, and ghost-like. This is a shame given the huge amount of felt experience and imagination they have to contribute to life. By paying proper attention as the parent you can help them connect with life more fully.

More rest and quiet time

Highly sensitive children also need more downtime to rest between activities. In general, it is not that they are anti-social, but they tend to enjoy their own company. HSCs need solitary time several times every day. Other people are so “loud” energetically and emotionally that they smother and squash them so they can’t feel themselves.

Once their nervous systems get aroused they take longer to calm back down to a comfortable state. HSCs are also more affected by eg. a visit to the swings, or a friend coming to play. They take longer to recover and come back to themselves. Similarly, if you give them strong or sugary foods, they may react more than a less sensitive child. This doesn’t mean they need to be sheltered from life but rather shown more tolerance in handling their experience. HSCs also need space to work out what they need for themselves without interference.

Above all, they need to be taken seriously. When a boy says he wants to play football for 5 minutes in the garage, then he really does want that, and out in the patio is not the same. A sensitive child will feel the denial of his wishes as an extreme hurt and rejection of his self, whereas a more robust child might be able to brush it off.

Shyness is not always what it seems

HSCs also tend to appear to be “shy” in that they pull away from new people and observe. It’s not actually the case that they are shy. It´s rather that they perceive a lot more than other kids, and take longer to process the information. They also test people carefully to see whether they are respectful of their needs and boundaries or not. They will physically run away from adults who unknowingly try to overwhelm them. This is a very healthy trait and should be respected and encouraged. Such children know what they can and can’t handle, and even at age 12 months are taking active care of themselves. If you can acknowledge this as a parent you will actively encourage your child to have very healthy boundaries. 

Relating to sensitive children effectively

Parents of sensitive children need to be careful not to dominate them with their own emotions. They also need to learn to leave plenty of space and time in conversations for these children to form their own opinions and responses. This can be agonisingly slow and frustrating, especially when there are other children in the family who are not like this. However, if you don’t make these allowances you give the child the message that they should be different. Not only does this destroy their self-worth, but it is an impossible demand on their nervous system. They can only process things at the speed and volume that they naturally can. Pushing or rushing can create physiological problems, nervous system disturbances and eventually extreme trauma.

What does not dominating your children mean in practice? In practical terms, it means asking questions without expecting a particular answer. Emotionally it means listening openly without thinking, and experiencing the answers without reacting. Regarding parenting style, it means not forcing them to do what you want, but letting them be and negotiating a course of action. This can require a lot of patience and time! In energetic terms it means speaking only after you can feel your feet, are calm and with yourself.

In practical terms it works to check that you can feel yourself, and feel the child when you communicate. If you take the time to sense yourself, you will feel where the edge of your being or energy meets your child. You will notice whether you are meeting them at the right distance and intensity to make them feel comfortable and able to respond. When you do, you will see things shift.

To Conclude

If this is something that is unfamiliar to you or you would like to know more, I offer face to face sessions by zoom. I can show you online how to increase your awareness and ability to relate empathetically to your children. When you improve your ability to feel your own body and experience your emotions directly many of your parenting issues will evaporate. Most parents won´t be aware of these relational abilities consciously but may already be using them instinctively. Parenting gets so much easier when you learn how they work. In addition, having craniosacral therapy will support this process. These are some of the many simple steps that can help you to parent and relate to a Highly Sensitive Child.

Please feel free to share but always credit the author and source. © Mira Watson 2011

Emotional Regulation: why children need you to help calm them down and stop them screaming, and why they can’t do it themselves. (Key lesser-known parenting skills part 1)

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Introduction

Emotional regulation is probably the least discussed parenting topic until things go wrong. Soothing and calming babies is a natural mothering (and fathering) instinct. When babies are born they scream and cry to alert the parent to needing something. We pick them up, rock them, hum, talk in soothing tones, feed, change and love them. When the need is met they tend to stop. They signal hunger, discomfort, need for touch, pain and toilet needs this way. Unless there is pain or the parent has misidentified the need.

In the photos above we can observe a variety of parents emotionally regulating their children. Infants don’t know how to calm themselves down – this is their parent’s task. Yet there is a strange modern assumption that infants ought to know how to behave properly emotionally so as not to inconvenience others, and that if they don’t they are somehow doing it on purpose. I’m referring to comments I hear about why does he kick and scream, or why won’t she go to sleep on her own… This indicates a very dangerous fundamental disconnect in the adults themselves. The whole letting them cry themselves to sleep movement and other similar practices are offshoots of this.

I’ll attempt to explain here why these are adult projections based on adult convenience and not much to do with the way an actual child functions and develops, and what they need. You can’t just have a child like you have a fruit tree and expect it to grow up and develop. Sometimes when I read comments in facebook parenting gropus I am really astounded! As we will learn below, an infant needs a specific form of attention known as empathy or attuned attention, and this is something it generally receives from its parents or main caretaker. The idea that children ought to know how to stop screaming and calm themselves down if you talk to them in an adult manner is wrong. Or that if you take them to occupational therapy someone else can make this happen for you. It is an incomplete take on some partial parenting concept about communicating when the child is calm rather than in the middle of a tantrum. It totally misses the point that to actually calm down a child’s nervous system and emotions requires much more than intellectual talk. Everyone has embedded in them the image of a woman holding a tiny infant in her arms, singing, rocking, stroking and talking to the child to comfort them. It’s an archetypal instinct, and emotional regulation is just a technical term for instinctive comforting. Some people just know how to do it, and the others could arguably do with learning from them. Either way if your child doesnt get enough of it, you will be in for some major emotional storms at home.

 

Woman soothing child in a crowd

Emotional Regulation is the foundation of your child’s health

“Why does my child scream and hit, and when I tell him/her to calm down s/he won’t? What am I doing wrong?” I hear these kind of sincere questions from parents all the time.

The simple answer is that you are not showing your child how to do it. You’re not really doing anything wrong, you’re just forgetting to relate to them when they need you most. They can’t actually calm themselves down on their own before they learn how from you. And they learn from repeated demonstrations. They learn from the way you show them over and over when you help them. Their nerves and thoughts learn to do it for themselves. But it takes a lot of repetition.

How do you calm yourself down using your thoughts, your own breathing, activity, physical touch from another etc.  if you are frightened, shocked or upset? This is emotional regulation. It means bringing your emotions back to neutral from whatever extreme extermal events have triggered. This is what infants don’t know how to do and what you need to teach them every time they are out of balance. Every single time. The faster you can do it for yourself, the more resilient you are. But if you are able to do it at all, and are aware of how you do it, you are doing well… many people were not given the attention they needed to develop as infants and have had to learn as adults. Of course not having had that kind of attention yourself may make it seem unnatural or even painful to give it to your own child. But it is essential to learn – it’s not the therapists job, or the nanny’s. It’s an innate human instinct that can be relearned – and its based on empathy, paying attention, and being able to sense your own body.

What is Emotional Empathy, and why is it essential for your child’s development?

Emotional empathy is about being able to feel how someone else is. That means being in touch with yourself enough to feel your own body, and then also being able to feel how your child is. It’s a direct sensing, a physical checking in with yourself and the other. It’s what creates relatinoship – autistic people can’t do this, and they live cut off from others. It’s very important. It is also the basis of attuned attention to a child, which helps regulate the child’s emotions and establish a healthy and functioning brain, nervous system and immune system.  It is vital for development.  Emotional empathy involves being emotionally available and present with the child – a form of attentive and neutral “being with” – and this is a very crucial experience for the child’s healthy development.

What do babies need?

Babies are like the raw material for a self, and how they are treated affects how they develop. This applies not just to food and clothing, but especially to emotional responsiveness. In the early months of life a baby is establishing what the normal state of physical arousal is in terms of chemical and electrical nervous system signals. A normal range is established through social interaction, by the baby co-ordinating his systems with those of people around him.

This last sentence has big implications because if the baby is surrounded by volatile adults whose emotions change rapidly and don’t create any kind of sense of calm or neutrality, the baby will never learn to feel safe or stable within themselves. It will affect their whole emotional, mental and even physical development adversely. It’s totally impossible, as their nervous systems resonate with those of the adults around them, just like strings on a guitar resonate with another guitar. I’m not talking about parents who have the occasional discussion. Im referring to parents who are unpredictable and not at peace in themselves. On the other end of the scale a baby who is left alone or ignored will also not develop because their nervous system is underactive. What matters is the right kind and amount of attention at the right moment. Since babies can’t speak, that’s why parents need empathy!

In an ideal world

Babies who are given an attuned response learn to expect a world that is responsive to feelings and that will help bring intense states back to a manageable level. It is only by experiencing having it done for them that they learn to do it for themselves. Babies systems are so sensitive that if early experience is inadequate, the stress response can be adversely affected, and brain growth and development may be hindered. Research indicates that the outcome seems to depend far more on how responsive the parents are than on the baby’s innate character or genetics. So parental relational ability is crucial in shaping the child.

What does Emotional Empathy do for the baby?

The most important thing for the baby is the degree to which the parent is emotionally available and present with him to notice how he is, because this helps him regulate his emotions. It involves tuning into the baby’s emotional and physical state empathetically, and calming him down or stimulating him to get him to a comfortable level. Regulation is about relieving the baby’s discomfort, since babies cannot do this for themselves. A frightened child, for exmple, needs to be soothed. This takes the sympathetic nervous system from a state of frantic flight or fight, back to the calming effect of the parasympathetic system.

For many parents, this is a totally natural, unproblematic and normal response to their baby, and happens without thinking about it. Touch, tone of voice, and feeling the parent’s calm nervous system all help the baby to get back to tolerable levels of stimulation in the body.

Parents who get triggered and can’t regulate their own emotions

For other parents, the crying or screaming may trigger their own pain, overwhelm or feelings of helplessness so that they freeze, disconnect from themselves, and are unable to respond to the child’s needs. If this sounds familiar, please find someone to help you get through your own difficult emotions. Asking what is wrong with the child is a sure sign that the parent needs help. There is nothing wrong with a child screaming or hitting out if they are not comforted or met in relationship. Any kind of non-response by the parent is a sign that the parent needs help to reconnect with themselves and to cope with the needs of their child.

Without wanting to sound judgemental, it indicates that they are somehow unable to feel, connect or empathise and this is serious because it can threaten their child’s survival ultimately. The fact that in modern society it is deemed acceptable to plonk an iPad in front of a crying or screaming two-year-old and be done with it is actually indicative of a very low level of mental health and emotional capacity in today’s young adults. Helping parents get embodied and connected with themselves is essential across the board to stop the tide of labeling and medication of children. The origins need to be treated in the parents directly.

The basics of attuned attention

In practice, an available and responsive parent is just being there, feeling the child’s state and responding. Attuned attention or emotional empathy is the basis for regulation. For some parents who are always busy thinking or in their heads, or worrying, getting inside their own body and being this present with their child can be a wonderful revelation. And also very difficult to do consistently. It is the only true basis for relating to the child. (Fortunately it is a skill that can be learned by anyone – if you are interested in knowing more, please send me a message).

I teach the basics of attuned attention, emotional regulation in self and others, relating and becoming aware of your own patterns. I use techniques from somatic experiencing, craniosacral, ancestral clearing and my own empathetic sense of the inside of your body to help you connect on a deeper level. I notice immediately when you go into thinking and bring you back. I have spent 30 years investigating my own inner body connection and researching empathy, relationship and emotional regulation inside of my own direct experience, and with others. I have repeatedly witnessed how when a parent finds their own centre and learns to calm down and sense at will, issues like ADHD , tics, eczma, sleeping issues and tantrums are simply gone. It is quite astounding to me how the level of parental presence and body-connection is a direct indicator of their child’s overall health and emotional balance. And that this is not widely acknowledged in mainstream science or pyschotherapy. A small positive shift in the parent’s inner connection can have a huge immediate effect on the child.

Emotional Regulation can be non-verbal too

Emotional regulation is often about responding to feelings in a non-verbal way – through touch, tone of voice, look. For example, a mother soothes her screaming over-aroused baby by engaging her with a loud voice that mirrors the pitch and emotion, and then gently calms her expression, taking her down into a calmer state. Or she might relax a baby by rocking him, or tickle and laugh with a sad, disinterested baby who actually needs more stimulation. This monitoring and adjustment needs to be a continuous task for many, many months at the beginning of the infant’s life. Without it they cannot develop properly, physically or socially, and suffer later on.

Emotional Regulation is not always about soothing – sometimes a child needs more stimulation to be balanced

Getting or not getting attuned attention affects the growth and connections to the pre-frontal cortex, or social brain. In infancy and the toddler years, the part of the pre-frontal cortex involved in verbalising feelings may not develop adequately, and this part of the brain has been strongly implicated in depression. Without the social brain connections, the child and later adults suffers in lacking external connection too.

Problems with helping a child regulate

If parents cannot feel, name or regulate their own feelings, they will not be able to feel their baby, and so won’t respond to their needs for regulation. The baby will be left in chaos, without a clear sense of how to keep level, and maybe even thinking they shouldn’t have feelings, because they have been ignored.  In this case these early experiences may lead to a child assuming that there will not be others emotionally available to help notice and process feelings, or to help them get back to feeling ok. So, both regulating and labelling a baby’s feelings can be difficult for a parent whose own awareness of their states is impaired. And yet such family patterns of poor regulation need not be passed on to the next generation, because any adult can learn to provide attuned attention if they are willing. And if they practise consistently coming back to the body.

Similarly, if an adult is not able to feel their own strong emotions such as anger or frustration, they will tend to try to supress or avoid them in their children. Often they will lash out at the child when the child is angry because they can’t control their own response. In that case the child will probably try to hold back their feelings, in essence to protect the parent from their own feelings. This is completely inappropriate. The child then learns that they get no regulatory help, and will learn to suppress or switch off those feelings – which don’t go away.

If you are reading this and realizing all the things you have done “wrong” as a parent, please don’t be hard on yourself. The good news is that what it takes to put your errors right, is learning to give attuned attention. When adults go for therapy, this is what the therapist is doing in order to teach them to learn to regulate their own emotions, to remedy their own childhood neglect. As a parent, the sooner you start being with your kids in this way, the faster their potential will recover and develop. And everyone is able to learn, because it’s an innate human ability.

It does mean that if your child is now three and you haven’t been soothing them or stimulating them when they are under par, there will be some extra work and catching up to do. You will have to pay them more attention for a while until their brain and nervous system has developed up to those of their playgroup peers. But it’s very possible at that age to make up a deficit, and much harder later on.

Conclusion

Giving your child empathy and helping them regulate their emotions is fundamental to their long-term mental, emotional and even physical development and health. Children simply need recognition of the psychological self – the thinking and feeling self. They need people willing to get on their wavelength, understanding how they are feeling, helping them express it, otherwise they can’t get a sense of themselves, or a sense of their own identity. Our sense of self is very dependent on this feedback from others. If there is little parental response at all, or it is negative, we can feel non-existent, invalidated and basically bad. It becomes harder to make sense of feelings without a framework of ongoing support and the sense of self becomes increasingly tenuous. And in practice this means that children need to relate to adults who respond to the actual present moment needs of the child, and not to their own idea, or an idea of what they think the child might need. They need adults who are really there. And they really can’t do it alone. So next time you wonder why your child can’t calm down, please move into action and give them the help they need.

How can HSPS and Empaths avoid picking up emotion and getting overwhelmed?

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Feel less emotion

Introduction

 

How can I feel less emotion from other people? This is a question I am asked so often I decided it was time to write down some of the common answers I give. It´s also something I used to ask myself repeatedly as I struggled with daily life living in Bali where sounds and smells and people, well really everything is just very alive and intense. Driving on a motorbike, traffic fumes, Gamelon and procession sounds, rubbish fires with plastic burning, food smells… How could I get through a day without feeling like I had been run over by a truck by lunchtime? This article is not about the why, but about the how of making this a less frequent occurrence, and what you can do when it happens to get out of it faster.

If you´re the non-sensitive partner of an HSP reading this…

¨How can HSPS and Empaths feel less emotion from their environment and stay more balanced and in touch with themselves?¨ is such a common question and source of despair for HSPs who get so easily overwhelmed. You may not relate to this yourself – but it is a real experience for others and also for children. It makes their lives miserable and often unbearable. Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) and Empaths can really suffer when they are around one or more very emotional or agitated people.  They also get drained when they visit heavy environments like graveyards or places where historical trauma such as war has happened. Even a chaotic or badly run office can make them sick. Since their nervous systems are very finely tuned, a small input feels much louder than it does to other people, and several inputs or pieces of information at once, like sound, smell, emotion, speech, music can literally crash the system. That means an HSP may feel overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious, confused, and more within seconds of walking into a space without knowing why.

1. Preparation

The key to feel less emotion from others and not get overwhelmed is in how you set up your day. You have to put yourself first and make sure you are strong and replenished from the outset! This means sleeping well, taking your time, and thinking ahead. Your main focus needs to be on keeping yourself feeling good all through the day. If you don´t spot the signs of overwhelm as they start up, you won´t be able to pull back. For example, if you know what your own triggers are – that means what you can handle and what you can´t – then you can plan ahead. It´s good to be realistic because the same things that will tend to spin you out won´t miraculously go away. If you can´t handle long periods without food you need to take snacks. If walking through a shopping mall is too intense remember your earplugs.

2. Daily rituals and support

HSPs often have vivid dreams, and it´s more important than you may think to collect yourself in the morning. If you find that some days you seem to ¨get out of the wrong side of bed¨, then consider making this 3-minute practice part of your daily habits.

When you wake up, get out of bed and straight onto the floor. If you are on the ground floor or can go downstairs to be closer to the physical earth even better. Lie on your back, bend your knees, and with your feet slightly apart, let your knees come together to touch. Breathe. And as you take long deep breaths, put your hands by your sides palm up. Allow your lower back to connect with the ground and breathe any heaviness, emotion, or discomfort out into the ground through your lower back. Continue until your feel relaxed and clear. You will find you already feel less emotion of your own which will help you not take on other people´s. This practice is more about allowing the earth to clear out your body rather than trying to do anything. As you breathe and surrender, the earth literally drains away and composts whatever energy is not yours. When you have finished you may want to set a one-word intention for the day, like flow, ease, joy, happiness, success, calm, etc. Or to say an affirmation like ¨I am sovereign, I am the only one on my energy field¨or ¨I am sovereign, nothing else gets in¨. Whatever you can believe and feels right for you will work.

3. How to minimise taking on emotion during the day

High Sensitivity is partly to do with extending your senses out into the environment around you to feel and listen further afield than yourself. HSPs do this naturally, which is unfortunately why they may also pick up so much from other people. However, this is something that you can control to some extent. I call it pulling in your feelers. If you look around you where you are right now, you may be able to see fifty meters or so, out of a window, across a field or car park. Feel the objects at that distance. And then connect with your body and pull in those feelers like strings or tentacles until they are right close up to your body. You will find you can´t feel the distant objects anymore. However, you may be much more aware of your own body, emotion, and self. This is something that takes some practice initially, but with time you can do it at will. It´s like beaming yourself in or solidifying. When you pull your feelers in you become more solid and less perceptive. It will help you feel less emotion. Feeling and checking far outside of yourself can be a trauma response to check for danger, as well as an avoidance of feeling yourself. If you struggle with this it´s worth getting professional help to work through whatever is stopping you. The more you do this, especially before and after entering situations like shops, parties, restaurants, and groups of people, the less you will pick up and the less overwhelmed you will get.

4. What to do if you do get overwhelmed

Go somewhere quiet and alone immediately, even if it has to be the toilet where you are. Lie on the floor if you can (not recommended in the lavatory!) and do the morning grounding exercise to discharge whatever you have taken on. And just be quiet, and focus on breathing, feeling your feet, and any sensation you can locate inside your body.

If someone shouted at you are you took on emotion and are aware, you can gently tap your sternum with your right hand whilst saying ¨mine¨, then push your hand gently away palm out, as if saying stop, and say ¨not min¨. Keep repeating this – it´s an act of affirming what your essence feels like, whilst giving the emotion back to the other person. It can be really helpful to help you set a quick boundary in a difficult situation. You can also do it very quietly and subtly so nobody notices around you.

5. Daily Maintenance

 If you have some understanding about yourself as an HSP then you probably already build downtime into your day. For some people, this is five minutes every hour where they walk around, breathe and stretch. Others need to lie down in silence for twenty minutes in the afternoon. I suggest that at least half an hour in nature once a day will really help you as an HS person because nature calms, connects, clears your field and energises you physically through your feet and eyes. I don´t want to overwhelm you with options here, but eating clean food, drinking water regularly and nature are your key allies in feeling good. You may well have other practices that help you already – but please don´t forget the basics are invaluable.

Conclusion

If you are implementing these suggestions and they are still not working, there may be a number of things happening. Are you actually present in your own body? If not, none of the above will actually work, and that’s what you need to work on. If you are, then maybe ask yourself why you are so attached to letting in other people´s energy, and maybe do a deeper investigation of your own boundary issues from childhood. Did you have a dominating or controlling parent? Did you please others as a matter of survival? Do you have difficulty saying no to others? That may be your real issue and where you need to start… Or you may say you would like to feel less emotion from others, but you are actually attached to a stroy of suffering that you´re not yet willing to give up. Identities can be very insidious in their way of hooking us in… I will look at more advanced aspects of boundaries and empathy in a future article. In the meantime, happy practicing and may the force be with you!

The importance of diet in treating childhood “learning disorders”, ADHD, Asperger’s, Tourette’s and allergies.

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gut-brain connection

Introduction

I’ve always approached life from the perspective that if your mind is well, bodily health will follow. And this does seem to be true. But what about the epidemic of children with ADHD, Asperger’s, Tourette’s, allergies and learning disorders? Are they all mentally disturbed? That seems unlikely. There seems to be another important theme – a basic clean diet and functioning immune system are also essentials of bodily health. This is what recent research about the gut-brain connection has discovered.

A personal story

Sometimes the body doesn’t function well because of what gets put into it, and then it needs extra attention. I was recently reminded of a time when I was extremely sick myself, and the doctors didn’t know what to do. Having done a CAT scan, ECGs, numerous blood tests and other studies, they pronounced my inability to lift my head off my pillow or cut a loaf of bread “psychological” and said they couldn’t help me. I was still unable to think, couldn’t digest anything and was so tired and weak I could hardly make it to the bathroom. My will was strong as iron but I felt as if I was disintegrating physically. I had searing pains in my head and back and could hardly string a sentence together – I kept telling the doctors my brain felt poisoned.

As it turned out later, this was probably true. I actually had candida through my digestive system following several courses of antibiotics for typhoid, as well as mercury poisoning from 8 vaccines which I had had within a two-week period to prepare for travel abroad – a fact which the doctors did not find significant. Sitting in the doctor’s surgery clutching my belly and my head I tried to explain that it was a problem with my gut and my head. The fact that I collapsed into bed the day of the second lot of vaccinations seemed to pass by unheeded. I was sent home. Fortunately, I had a dream about a book that lead me to an elimination diet. Within three weeks of wheat, dairy and sugar-free diet, I was back in the gym. I was astounded. It was a long time before I was fully better, and a long struggle with the Candida in my whole gut for which I had to take two three-month courses of the antifungal Nystatin – prescribed by a homeopathic doctor. A short while later my mind cleared. However, I did get better from a situation in which several had hinted I might die. It wasn’t until years later that I found craniosacral therapy, which helped release the tensions in my head that had caused so much pain. It took me over ten years to get back to normal. It must be even worse for young children who have these kind of symptoms and can’t develop. The science validating my sense of the gut-brain connection didn’t become public until ten years later, but even now that we have this crucial information, it seems that it is still being overlooked by many.

So what about the sick children?

The issues that have prompted me to share this experience are that more and more children that are brought to me extremely sick are not being treated on any kind of dietary level, and I puzzled as to why not. When I was ill I only had my own experience of my body to go on, but in 2014 we have hard evidence from stool and gut flora tests on large groups of children. Dr. Natasha Campbell-Bride states that

“The mixture of toxicity in each child or adult can be quite individual and different. But what they all have in common is gut dysbiosis. The toxicity, which is produced by the abnormal microbial mass in these people, establishes a link between the gut and the brain. That is why I have grouped these disorders together and gave them a name: the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAP Syndrome). The GAPS children and adults can present with symptoms of autism, ADHD, ADD, OCD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, schizophrenia, depression, sleep disorders, allergies, asthma and eczema in any possible combination. These are the patients who fall in the gap in our medical knowledge. Any child or adult with a learning disability, neurological or psychiatric problems should be thoroughly examined for gut dysbiosis. Re-establishing normal gut flora and treating the digestive system of the patient has to be the number one treatment for these disorders, before considering any other treatments with drugs or otherwise.”

There is a wealth of information available about Gut and Psychology Syndrome – GAPS – a term coined by Dr Campbell-McBride to describe what i was trying to talk to doctors about twenty years ago, which happens when the balance of healthy and unhealthy bacteria in the gastro-intestinal tract get out of balance. This can be due to taking several courses of antibiotics, which disturb the gut flora and allow unhealthy bacteria to proliferate. There are other factors like the birth process, the mother’s gut flora during pregnancy, vaccinations and then how much sugar and additives a child eats daily that can all lead in the same direction. Children living at the current time face further hazards because the amount of chemical pollution in the air, in food and water increase daily. If their body’s ability to detoxify is compromised, as described below, then they really struggle with the extra modern environmental load.

What goes wrong in the gut?

The corrective diet is based on the theory that many disorders, including autism and ADHD, are caused by imbalance in the microflora or probiotics of the digetsive tract.   ?When the balance of the gut is disturbed, overgrowth of microbes creates inflammation and immune dysregulation.  This situation is similar to a sprained ankle.  There is swelling that puts pressure on all the cells in the area.  Swelling in the digestive tract allows material from the digestive tract to escape.  This is often described as “leaky gut”.   Harmful or undesirable microbes can also migrate to the small intestine where they compete for nutrients and disrupt digestion by damaging enzymes needed to break down food (like GLUTEN, CASEIN, SOY AND CORN).? ? Carbohydrates, that are not completely digested, stay in the digestive tract and become “food” for unhealthy microbes.  As the microbes digest the leftover carbohydrates, the fermentation damages the digestive tract.

The effects of gut imbalance

According to Dr Campbell-McBride,

“The most common pathogenic microbes shown to overgrow in the digestive systems of children and adults with neuro-psychiatric conditions are yeasts, particularly Candida species. Yeasts ferment dietary carbohydrates with production of alcohol and its by-product acetaldehyde. Let us see what does a constant exposure to alcohol and acetaldehyde do to the body.

  • Liver damage with reduced ability to detoxify drugs, pollutants and other toxins.
  • Pancreas degeneration with reduced ability to produce pancreatic enzymes, which would impair digestion.
  • Reduced ability of the stomach wall to produce stomach acid.
  • Damage to immune system.
  • Brain damage with lack of self-control, impaired co-ordination, impaired speech development, aggression, mental retardation, loss of memory and stupor.
  • Peripheral nerve damage with altered senses and muscle weakness.
  • Direct muscle tissue damage with altered ability to contract and relax and muscle weakness.
  • Nutritional deficiencies from damaging effect on digestion and absorption of most vitamins, minerals and amino acids.
  • Deficiencies in B and A vitamins are particularly common.
  • Alcohol has an ability to enhance toxicity of most common drugs, pollutants and other toxins.
  • Alteration of metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and lipids in the body.
  • Inability of the liver to dispose of old neurotransmitters, hormones and other by-products of normal metabolism. As a result these substances accumulate in the body, causing behavioural abnormalities and many other problems.

Thats quite a list. Acetaldehyde is considered to be the most toxic of alcohol by-products. It is the chemical, which gives us the feeling of hangover. Anybody who experienced a hangover would tell you how dreadful he or she felt. Children, who acquire abnormal gut flora with a lot of yeast from the start, may never know any other feeling. Acetaldehyde has a large variety of toxic influences on the body. One of the most devastating influences of this chemical is its ability to alter the structure of proteins. Acetaldehyde – altered proteins are thought to be responsible for many autoimmune reactions. Children and adults with neuro-psychiatric problems are commonly found to have antibodies against their own tissues.”

That is one long and wide-reaching list of sysmptoms. Isn’t it asstounding that many of the symptoms that children with learning disorders experience, such as foggy brain, not being able to think or speak, inability to concentrate, co-ordinate their movement, involuntary muscle movements are all symptoms of digestive dysfunction and consequent central nervous sytem breakdown? When we look at the link between digestion and the brain function it becomes clear that in this whole spectrum of childhood symptoms, tackling diet can be a very useful start to improving bodily health and reducing symptoms. If substances are blocking and affecting nerve fucntioning int he brain, then those substances need to be removed urgently.

How can we tell if a child may have gut issues?

Even without medical tests, there are obvious physical symptoms like bloating, stomach-ache and frequent farting. Tiredness, lethargy, emotional swings, black circles under the eyes, and rough or lumpy facial skin are also common. From a simple practical perspecitve, when I look at a child I can sense immediately if they have internal disconnects. They don’t respond as fast, often have a foggy look around their eyes, move clumsily and just don’t seem all there.

Yesterday I was in the park with my sister’s son and his friend. I commented that the other boy seemed in quite a state, and she said he had recently had another lot of vaccinations and had been quite out of sorts since. She could see what I was describing – in her words “yes even I can see that broad as daylight”. These children need help and they need the adults around them to notice that there is a problem.

When children are diagnosed with a condition like Tourette’s which is said to be “untreatable” (not the case in my personal experience), the first place to look would be diet and gut health. Once gut health is restored and the immune system has been boosted symptoms are likely to imrpove. It just makes sense. Even if you doubt the science, it is worth following these procedures and taking the improvements in your child’s health as evidence that you are doing the right thing.

If symptoms don’t improve significantly, it is worth doing a general bodily detox for heavy metals. Again, you can google this online. It just involves taking certain supplements. If the body’s ability to detox is severely impaired, this may get it going again. Isn’t that a bit extreme? I hear you wonder. Yes, it does seem unlikely and shocking that a child as young as 8 or 9 years of age should need to detox their body. However the effects of vaccines, mercury fillings and heavy metals ingested form food can be extremely strong in some children, and the mercury that lodges in the brain really seems to impair cognitive function. I have no evidence for this other than the experiments I have done on myself, and my observations from watching what happens to people’s ability to think, their bodily ability to detox and their general levels of energy and well-being when they do a mercury detox. But isn’t that enough?

We are what we eat –  literally – and I think that the modern generation of western children sadly demonstrate that what is being eaten is sub-standard and a least partly toxic. Processed foods are not foods – they are mainly preservatives and additives – ie toxins. You only have to look at the figures for ADHD, Asperger’s, Autism and so on and realize how rapidly they have increased in the last decade to begin to wonder. Can it really just be that busy working parents are neglecting their children? It’s not likely to be the only factor. All these conditions seem to affect the central nervous system, in ways like those described by the effect of GAPS.

So if you have a child, or are yourself suffering from excessive tiredness, foggy thinking, inability to concentrate, low level depression, bloated stomach and gas, and difficutly digesting then take a look on the internet and inform yourself about a basic wheat, dairy and sugar free diet. It is also helpful to get a Candida test done, so that you know the extent of candida overgrowth in your gut. If so, you need to treat it as its very unlikely to die off completely just through diet. Supplement the diet with a good probiotic, omega 3s from a non-mercury contaminated source, and and grapefruit seed extract or another natural antimicrobial. If you or your child have cognitive issues, you also need to include all the B vitamins, especially vitamin B3, B6 and B12 (methylcoblamin), vitamin C, E and selenium to boost the immune system, MSM or alpha lipoic acid to get the detoxification process going again. These are the basics things to look at, but you will need to look up your own information. You may also need more specialist information on doing liver or kidney cleanses, but they are all available online, as well as from a variety of alternative health practitioners. Don’t listen to people who say it doesn’t help, because it does, it can really make all the difference in most cases, and can even safe your life.

Some useful websites for the basic information are:

Basic info on the gut-brain connection to get you motivated

http://tariganter.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/anti-fungal-treatment-for-candida-and-intestinal-yeast-overgrowth/ – useful information on natural antifungals and nystatin protocol

If you are overwhelmed by this information or don´t know where to start, please contact me for a session. I can refer you to other practitioners who work specifically with alternative medications and test protocols.

Thank you for reading.
You are welcome to share this article but please give credit to the author.
All rights reserved, © Mira Watson 25th May 2014

Craniosacral Therapy & Resolving trauma and PTSD in children

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Introduction

This article outlines the difference between resolving trauma and PTSD, (which is ongoing). IT details common symptoms, as well as the physiological and emotional effects of PTSD.  It also looks at how craniosacral therapy and Somatic Experiencing can address the physiological and emotional symptoms of PTSD and assist in restoring the child to normal life.

What is trauma?

Ordinary trauma may involve a threat to physical life, or to psychological survival. The world that was taken for granted may be shattered. The nervous system becomes overwhelmed and shuts down. Following the trauma, children may initially show agitated or confused behavior.  They also may show intense fear, helplessness, anger, sadness, horror or denial. These are normal reactions. Normally the physical reactions that kick in as a result of the fear will die down within a few hours. Sometimes the stress may take up to a year to dissipate. Small apparently unrelated daily events can trigger a puzzling emotional response that seems unrelated to current events – this is trauma. The body is remembering what happened and trying to find a way for the trapped or dissociated energy from the previous traumatic event to move and reintegrate. That is what resolving trauma is about.

How is PTSD different?

But for some people, if resolving trauma doesnt happen, it never goes away. A child or adolescent who experiences a catastrophic event may develop ongoing difficulties known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD in children and adolescents occurs as a result of a child’s exposure to one or more traumatic events that were life-threatening or perceived to be likely to cause serious injury to self or others. In addition, the child must have responded with intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Traumatic events can take many forms, including physical or sexual assaults, natural disasters, traumatic death of a loved one, or emotional abuse or neglect.

Symptoms of PTSD

Children with PTSD avoid situations or places that remind them of the trauma. Children who experience repeated trauma may develop a kind of emotional numbing to deaden or block the pain and trauma. This is called dissociation. They may also become less responsive emotionally, depressed, withdrawn, and more detached from their feelings.

Children with PTSD may also show the following symptoms:

•               having frequent memories of the event, or in young children,  play                   in which  some or all of the trauma is repeated over and over

•                having upsetting and frightening dreams

•                acting or feeling like the experience is happening again

•                worry about dying at an early age

•                losing interest in activities

•                having physical symptoms such as headaches and stomachaches

•                showing more sudden and extreme emotional reactions

•                having problems falling or staying asleep

•                showing irritability or angry outbursts

•                 having problems concentrating

•                acting younger than their age (for example, clingy or whiny                              behavior, thumb sucking)

•                showing increased alertness to the environment

The symptoms of PTSD may last from several months to many years. They seem to occur more often in children who already have a history of poor emotional regulation from the parents, and poor attachment security. This will affect their ability to make sense of the trauma and to draw comfort from others.

Why early treatment of trauma is important

Once the trauma has occurred, however, early intervention is essential.  Support from parents, school, and peers is important.  Emphasis needs to be placed upon establishing a feeling of safety.  Psychotherapy (individual, group, or family) that allows the child to speak, draw, play, or write about the event is helpful. Craniosacral therapy or  or http://mirawatson.com/somatic-experiencing/g (which can be given online if in-person sessions are not possible) can help release the trauma from the nervous system in a series of cycles, and build up the capacity to feel sensation, and feel safe in the body again. With time the emotional energy and memories of the experience can be fully integrated and normal life can resume. Resolving trauma can be gentle and undramatic. It´s not at all about reliving the original trauma.

Craniosacral or Somatic Experiencing (SE) treatment can help reconnect the child with emotions that have been stored in the body, can slowly release symptoms such as headaches and stomachaches, improve the normal appetite for life and stabilize the emotions. Because craniosacral and SE are such a gentle therapies, and practitioners tend to be extremely sensitive and finely tuned, this can be one of the few ways to reach a severely traumatised and very frightened, speechless child and help them regain contact with here and now reality.

The sooner the child is treated the easier and faster the recovery is on the whole and prevents further chemical imbalance in the body and brain changes. Once post-traumatic stress symptoms emerge, PTSD leads to neuro-physiological correlates that impact brain function in developing children and adolescents. Resolving trauma before it gets to that stage if possible is strongly advisable!

Severe emotional trauma has widespread effects on children’s development. These effects include undermining children’s sense of security in a reasonable and safe world in which they can grow and explore, as well as causing a child to not believe that their parents can protect them from harm. The premature destruction of these beliefs can have profound negative consequences on development. In addition, a child with such experiences may spend most of their time worrying about whether they will survive at all, rather than actually living.

How Craniosacral can work directly on the effects of trauma in the brain

Craniosacral therapy can address the unconscious memories of trauma that are stored in the amygdala – the most primitive part –  of the brain. This is especially important for very small children since before age 3 their prefrontal cortex has not yet developed and they can only process trauma amygdala, rather than over-riding this with the orbitofrontal cortex, which has not yet fully developed. In addition, verbalizing activities of the left prefrontal cortex are important for making sense of traumatic memories. Being able to talk about and name shocking experiences helps come to terms with them. However, this is not helpful for small children…

The hippocampus, whose functioning in memory is negatively affected by trauma, is also required for processing feelings normally. Without these functions, a child may get flashback states when a traumatic memory is relived because it has not been fully processed. Fortunately, craniosacral therapy is sensitive enough to be able to detect separate areas of brain function or under-activity and by listening to what is going on, allow the system to re-establish an integrated working connection. It is also one of the few therapies able to work with the stubborn and inaccessible amygdala. This may take some time, especially with severe trauma, however, the progress is often visible from the first session on, as soon as contact is made with the child’s core and soul, and a basic sense of safety and grounding in the body is established once again. Sometimes children can wait years for this to happen, and to an anxious parent; it may seem almost like a miracle when it does. Previous states are then quickly forgotten as life resumes again.

© Mira Watson. Please feel free to share the text but always give due credit to the author.

 
 

 

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