Overwhelmed Caregiver Quotes

what happens when a baby doesn’t get those positive, nurturing responses? Say, if a mom is on her own with no help, or depressed, or in a violent relationship? She may really want to be a loving, responsive parent, but is that possible under those circumstances? Dr. Perry: This is one of the central problems in our society; we have too many parents caring for children with inadequate supports. The result is what you would expect. An overwhelmed, exhausted, dysregulated parent will have a hard time regulating a child consistently and predictably. This can impact the child in two really important ways. First, it affects the development of the child’s stress-response systems (see Figure 3). If the hungry, cold, scared infant is inconsistently responded to—and regulated—by the overwhelmed caregiver, this creates an inconsistent, prolonged, and unpredictable activation of the child’s stress-response systems. The result is a sensitization of these important systems.

Recognizing the power of relationships and relational cues is essential to effective therapeutic work and, indeed, to effective parenting, caregiving, teaching and just about any other human endeavor. This would turn out to be a major challenge as we started working with the Davidian children. Because, as I soon discovered, the CPS workers, law enforcement officers and mental health workers involved in trying to help the children were all overwhelmed, stressed out and in a state of alarm themselves.

In one sense the cause of suicide is simple: overwhelming pain. This overwhelming pain, however, is the aggregate of thousands of pains. Any hurt that we have ever suffered, if it remains consciously or unconsciously lodged within us, can contribute to suicide. This may range from being an incest victim 50 years ago, to losing a job 10 years ago, to having a car battery stolen yesterday. The pains come from everywhere: ill-health, family, peers, school, work, community, caregivers. For each suicide there was a finite point at which this aggregate became too much. Although "The straw that broke the back," is frequently an accurate metaphor, no one pain is ever the cause of suicide. Suicidal pain is decomposable into thousands of pains, and nearly all of these pains are decomposable into painful constituents. Sexual abuse, job loss, and personal theft each have numerous painful constituents. The search for the single cause is a fundamentally wrongheaded approach to the understanding and prevention of suicide. It is inaccurate to say simply that pain causes suicide, since a level of pain that is lethal for one person may not be lethal for someone with greater resources. Similarly, deficiency in resources cannot be regarded as the cause of suicide, since two people may have equal resources and unequal pain. Our resources may also come from everywhere; even such trivial distractions as going to a movie can contribute to coping with suicidal pain.

A person can also develop avoidant behaviors without making the direct connection to a traumatic cue from the past. This is often true when the abuse or trauma took place within the context of early caregiving relationships. If a child was abused in the context of an intimate relationship (by a parent, for example), they will find intimacy-emotional and physical closeness-threatening. They will often long to be connected but find themselves anxious, confused, or overwhelmed when they get close to someone. They will avoid intimacy in a relationship; if intimacy can’t be avoided, they will sabotage or undermine the relationship. This is one of the most common but least appreciated effects of developmental trauma.

Central to any understanding of stress, health and disease is the concept of adaptiveness. Adaptiveness is the capacity to respond to external stressors without rigidity, with flexibility and creativity, without excessive anxiety and without being overwhelmed by emotion. People who are not adaptive may seem to function well as long as nothing is disturbing them, but they will react with various levels of frustration and helplessness when confronted by loss or by difficulty. They will blame themselves or blame others. A person’s adaptiveness depends very much on the degree of differentiation and adaptiveness of previous generations in his family and also on what external stressors may have acted on the family. The Great Depression, for example, was a difficult time for millions of people. The multigenerational history of particular families enabled some to adapt and cope, while other families, facing the same economic scarcities, were psychologically devastated. “Highly adaptive people and families, on the average, have fewer physical illnesses, and those illnesses that do occur tend to be mild to moderate in severity,” writes Dr. Michael Kerr. Since one important variable in the development of physical illness is the degree of adaptiveness of an individual, and since the degree of adaptiveness is determined by the multigenerational emotional process, physical illness, like emotional illness, is a symptom of a relationship process that extends beyond the boundaries of the individual “patient.” Physical illness, in other words, is a disorder of the family emotional system [which includes] present and past generations. Children who become their parents’ caregivers are prepared for a lifetime of repression. And these roles children are assigned have to do with the parents’ own unmet childhood needs — and so on down the generations. “Children do not need to be beaten to be compromised,” researchers at McGill University have pointed out. Inappropriate symbiosis between parent and child is the source of much pathology.

If your child is oversensitive, or undersensitive, to stimulation, things like ‘scratchy’ clothes and too much light or noise can make her uncomfortable, anxious, distracted, or overwhelmed. That can lead to meltdowns for no reason that’s apparent to you or other caregivers.”1 A

There are a number of good reasons that certain people learn to withdraw attention from certain aspects of emotional experience. Often, it is learned as a survival tactic during childhood, especially when the pain of everyday life overwhelms one’s capacity to cope. So, if one’s early home life is characterized by broken attachments to primary caregivers, sexual or physical abuse, domestic violence, or even just the lack of parental attunement and validation of the child’s feelings and needs, then the result may be that one learns to retreat from themselves.

In his best-selling 1928 parenting guide, Psychological Care of Infant and Child, Watson holds forth on how to raise a child “who loses himself in work and play, who quickly learns to overcome the small difficulties in his environment . . . and who finally enters manhood so bulwarked with stable work and emotional habits that no adversity can quite overwhelm him.” Here’s Watson’s advice: “Never hug and kiss them. Never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning. Give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinarily good job of a difficult task.” Watson further recommends letting children cope with problems on their own “almost from the moment of birth,” rotating different caregivers to prevent unhealthy attachment to any one adult, and otherwise avoiding the coddling affection that prevents a child from “conquering the world.

Early July 2012 In one of Andy’s responses, my ex-lover wrote, Young, That sounds great! I look forward to co-writing the fourth book of A Harem Boy Saga with you. This will provide us time to map out the outline of our joint project during the course of our correspondence. As much as I’d love to work with you on this project, I want to be sure that Walter is okay with us going into this venture together. I have no desire to upset your loving relationship and certainly have no wish to be an unwelcome intruder into your lives. Let me know if he agrees. When I was in hospital recovering from my nervous breakdown, I met Jack, a 24-year-old nursing student. He cared for me during my recovery. We dated for several months before his transfer to a hospice in a different city. I did not have the courage to tell Toby that Jack and I were dating. I was afraid Toby would threaten suicide again, until the fateful evening when he discovered Jack and me making out in my flat. My caregiver and I had proceeded to my lodgings after a scrumptious dinner one evening. After several glasses of wine while watching television, Jack leaned his head against my shoulder. His dreamy, doe-like eyes looked adoringly at me, reminding me of your beautiful Asian eyes staring at me during our intimate moments together. Our kisses soon led to lingering sensual foreplay. Before long, our clothes were scattered all over. Jack went on his knees, eagerly caressing my growing hardness and wrapping his luscious lips around me under my briefs. Easing down my underwear, he went to work. His sweetness stirred my longing for you. Closing my eyes to savor his warm fallation, I reclined against the comfortable sofa and enjoyed the pleasurable sensation showered upon my erection. He engulfed my pulsating manhood, suckling away as if to satisfy his hunger. It was similar to the way you used to relish my hardness for hours on end. Like you, he pleasured me with deep, devotional worship; I was overwhelmed by his sexual imperativeness, wanting his warmth to wash over my entirety. His expert titillation did wonders for my soul, causing me to spasm involuntarily. He devoured my length as if deprived of nourishment while I nurtured my feed into Jack’s bobbing head, pressing him against my quivering palpitations.

First, it affects the development of the child’s stress-response systems (see Figure 3). If the hungry, cold, scared infant is inconsistently responded to—and regulated—by the overwhelmed caregiver, this creates an inconsistent, prolonged, and unpredictable activation of the child’s stress-response systems. The result is a sensitization of these important systems.

2.3 On the same wavelength: how our emotional brain is shaped by human relationships. Excerpts from the interview with Daniela F. Sieff (2012) In the beginning of this conversation Schore and Sieff discussed the now accepted proposition that our earliest relationships structure our emotional brain in ways that have long-lasting consequences for our emotional well-being. If we are nurtured by our caregivers, our right brain develops in such a way as to allow us to become comfortable with own emotions and to respond to our social environment healthily. We can deeply experience joy and its associated sensations as well as access coping mechanisms (regulatory strategies) that help us through the stressful moments of life. This implicit self-knowledge is at the root of the feeling of security. However, if we grow up in an environment that does not nurture our burgeoning emotional self, then the development of the emotional brain can be compromised. As a consequence, we might not to be able to learn how to regulate our emotions in a healthy fashion, and could too frequently be easily overwhelmed by them. Being emotionally overloaded for extensive periods of time can cause not only long-enduring states of stress, but also chronic dissociation from our true emotions and needs in order to prevent overwhelming emotions from reaching consciousness. If we have to revert to dissociation often enough, what initially began as a defense mechanism that has become engrained in our neurological circuits becomes part of our character.

Children are especially dependent on their parents and caregivers to provide the stability and unconditional love that will help them establish a core of resiliency and a sense of self-efficacy to draw upon when faced with adversity later in life. Childhood events that can lead to PTSD and serious difficulties in regulating emotions, and are often linked in research to cutting, certainly include the most abject forms of abuse—physical, sexual, and emotional. But a child's emotional response system—which is controlled by the still developing brain, the sympathetic nervous system, and stress hormones—can be thrown off-kilter by a wide range of painful experiences, whether they are the result of intentionally abusive acts or purely accidental circumstances. Confusing and overwhelming feelings experienced as a result of adoption or abandonment, natural disasters (such as hurricanes or earthquakes,) deaths in the family, serious illness or disability, or witnessing or being the victim of an accident or violent crime can result in symptoms of posttraumatic stress. These kinds of taxing and traumatic events, as well as other societal stressors—from school bullying to identity struggles to perfectionism to body-image issues and the eating disorders often associated with them—have been linked to cutting in various populations.

Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.

The possibility of Brad coming home became ever more real as April turned to May. As tired as we all were of the hospital, his care needs were overwhelming. He was still visually impaired and his tarsorrhaphy, which required a good two hours of hands-on care per day, was still in place. He was on intravenous nutrition for ten hours a day. He couldn't walk, shower, use the toilet, or dress independently, much less prepare food for himself. His hands shook with tremors from neuropathy. I was shocked to learn what kinds of care I was expected to administer, just as I had been the year before when Brad went home on IV antibiotics.

Where does such forsaking of the self come from? “Type C,” Lydia Temoshok pointed out, “is not a personality, but rather a behavior pattern that can be modified.”[10] I completely agree with her view. Precisely because no one is born with such traits ingrained, we can unlearn them. That’s a pathway toward healing—not an easy road by any means, and one we will take up later in detail. But first, let’s see if we can trace the origins of these patterns. A recurring theme—maybe the core theme—in every talk or workshop I give is the inescapable tension, and for most of us an eventual clash, between two essential needs: attachment and authenticity. This clash is ground zero for the most widespread form of trauma in our society: namely, the “small-t” trauma expressed in a disconnection from the self even in the absence of abuse or overwhelming threat. Attachment, as defined by my colleague and previous co-author, the psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld, is the drive for closeness—proximity to others, in not only the physical but the emotional sense as well. Its primary purpose is to facilitate either caretaking or being taken care of. For mammals and even birds, it is indispensable for life. For the human infant especially—at birth among the most immature, dependent, and helpless animals, and remaining that way for by far the longest period of time—the need for attachment is mandatory. Without reliable adults moved to take care of us, and without our impulse to be close to these caregivers, we simply could not survive—not for a day. As we’ll see in the next chapter, we each arrive in the world “expecting” attachment, just as our lungs expect oxygen. Hardwired into our brains, our drive for attachment is mediated by vast and complex neural circuits governing and promoting behaviors designed to keep us close to those without whom we cannot live. For many people, these attachment circuits powerfully override the ones that grant us rationality, objective decision-making, or conscious will—a fact that explains much about our behavior across multiple realms. In infancy our dependence is an obligatory and long-haul proposition. Everything from crying to cuteness—two unignorable cues babies transmit—is an inbuilt behavior tailored by Nature to keep our caregivers giving and caring. But the need for attachment does not expire once we’re out of diapers: it continues to motivate us throughout our lifespan. As we saw in chapter 3, unsatisfactory attachments can wreak havoc even with adult physiology. What distinguishes our earliest attachment relationships—and, crucially, the coping styles we develop to maintain them—is that they form the template for how we approach all our significant relationships, long after we have grown out of the do-or-die phase. We carry them into interactions with spouses, partners, employers, friends, colleagues: into all aspects of our personal, professional, social, and even political lives.