Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to Start to Finish Motherhood, a podcast for those thinking or already single mothers by choice. Just looking for practical advice for navigating life's relationships. When you decide to have children on your own, it doesn't mean that you're completely alone. I'm Aisha Jenkins, and I'm partnering with you every step of your journey.
Okay, so, hi, everybody. I'm here today with a guest, and I will say that this is a conversation I've been wanting to have for a really long time, and I will put a trigger warning that we're going to be talking about different types of trauma and. Yeah, so let's get into it. So a big part of my own personal parenting journey has been recognizing my own childhood traumas and trying to minimize the impact that it could have on my children. And I've been working, doing this work for, like, years on myself. And I am currently living with the trauma of losing my parents at an early age to devastating circumstances. And I've been impacted by someone else's unaddressed trauma. And the way that manifests in me as an individual person is, is that I have minimal capacity for drama, and it does impact my parenting to some extent that I'm aware of it. And I have to be in the moment and stay in the moment with my kids and hold their hands through their own emotional spirals. And so I encountered my initial trauma at 13, and I have had intermittent relationships with therapy therapists and. And have found ways to cope and work through triggering moments. I feel I'm always going to be on this journey. And Asia came on my radar as I was working on another episode, and I came across your content, and I was just like, this is timely. It feels really serendipitous that this is something I've wanted to do, and I wanted to have this conversation with black individuals, Black women, who understand how you're trying to rewrite the narratives in your head and trying to stop the generational trauma and handing that down to my own kids, because I do really want my kids to grow up as free black children, not being negatively impacted by the trauma I am still and probably always will be working through. And so, Asia, I have you here today. So I'd like you to introduce yourself and then tell us in your own words what you do and how you got certified and on your journey.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Sure. My name is Aja Rutledge. I am a certified trauma recovery coach. And what brought me the journey, this short version. I grew up with a mother who looked to be Narcissistic And I was the oldest child, so I was made the scapegoat. And so from early on, a teenager, I was trying to figure out what's wrong with me? Why is this happening to me? Why doesn't my mother like me? What's the problem? So I've really been on this journey since I was, like, 18, 19 years old.
And then when I. About four years ago, right when Covid happened, actually, I had, like, a health issue, and I went to see a naturopath, and they gave me some stuff that just turned my life around. I literally became disabled, like, overnight. I had insomnia, I had chronic fatigue. I had no energy. I couldn't do anything. And it was just a lot. And. And I would go to the doctors, and they would say my tests were all normal, everything was normal, nothing was wrong. And so I had to learn how to heal myself. And nothing prepared me for what this situation was going to bring me to. And at the end of the day, it came down to my trauma. My trauma had hit a point where my body just could not take it anymore. And it got stuck basically, in the sympathetic state, which is where you're always activated. I had been activating my whole life, but not to that extent. And I had to learn a million things to bring it back down. I took myself through what I call a PhD in trauma and put it all together. And then when I finally felt that I had the capacity to start helping others and using it in a different way, I was literally just putting it there to process out loud. And when I started having the capacity and I realized, like, how much I was helping people just in the things that I was learning on my own and I was processing on my own, I was like, let me go ahead and get started. Certified in this, because I really love this. We don't know enough about trauma. We don't understand enough about trauma, especially as Black women. And it's really impacting our health and our quality of life. And so I feel like more Black women need to understand what is true wellness, what is trauma, really? And, like, how can we actually take back our lives to live the lives that we want to live? Because so much of us, we're living in these loops of things that we don't even realize is happening. So I went and got my certification, and here I am. I've been working ever since, and I love this work. I think it's so fascinating. And there's always so much to learn, and there's so many ways to help people, and people think they're just certain ways I'm just like this, I'm just this. And it's actually, you're not. It's a coping mechanism. And you just think it's your personality because it's been there since you were little. But like, when you start healing, you start to realize, I'm not shy. I'm literally not shy. You know what I mean? And so having these mind, like kind of mind blowing moments of oh my goodness, who I thought I was is not who I was. That was my trauma totally playing into things.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Yes. So thank you for sharing that background. Okay, so can we lay a foundation for the listeners as we start to go into this conversation?
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So the first thing I would say, which is critical is so many people say I don't have trauma. Like, my life wasn't that bad. I didn't have any major things that happen. And that's the fallacy of what's going on in our society. We want people to believe it's these really big things. And you had to have these crazy incidences to say, I faced trauma. And those are a type of trauma. And those are what we would call big T trauma. Right. With a capital T. And then you have traumas. That is almost, think of it, the equivalent of somebody cutting your hands with a paper cut all over your hands every single day of your life. Right. And so what happens after five years of that, 10 years of that, 20 years of that? You start to move differently. You start to react to things differently, you start to interpret things differently. And so much trauma is developmental trauma. And it's not always like my parents did these things. Sometimes it's what they didn't do. Sometimes it's your parents neglected you. Sometimes it's your parents didn't allow you to have big emotions. Sometimes it's your parents told you to be quiet and just be seen and not heard. Right. The impacts of those are tremendous. So those are what we call little T trauma. And many times people with little T traumas, because that was their norm, because they only grew up in their household, they don't think it's trauma because they think this is normal. I'm okay, I'm functioning. But what they don't understand is how you could be functioning. They don't understand what the possibilities are. They don't understand what safety actually feels like. Right. And so they think this is normal. I'm good, there's not a problem. I don't know what you're talking about until you start digging into it and you're like, oh my goodness. Or you see how you're interacting with your kids and you're like, why am I reacting to them like this? Or you can't keep a relationship with a partner going well because it always hits a point where something is going on. And so these are the ways that it impacts us. And so that's the difference between big T trauma and little T trauma. And what I will say just to add on to that is, is if people have like, repercussions, big T traumas is like ptsd. And you can remember who you were before the event, you remember how you functioned before the event. And so then you have the event, and now you're like, this is different, I can't sleep. Things are different. Little T trauma, you have no memory of who you were before because there was no before. And so that is called cptsd. And you still accumulate, you still learn how to adjust, but you have no memory of who you were before because it's always been there. But that doesn't mean that's how you would always function if you were in a space of safety. And so healing from CBTSD is learning how to come back to yourself, learning how to feel a sense of safety and then showing up in that way. And who are you? Who presents that? And when I say safety, that's another thing where people get it mixed up is we think safety, like literally physically safety. Nobody's not coming in here to kill me or rape me or these kinds of things. But safety, there's a sense of safety that we have in the world, and there's a sense of safety that we have in our bodies. And many of us do not have a sense of safety in our bodies. And when you don't have a sense of safety in your bodies, things can feel chaotic. Things can feel, feel anxiousness or overwhelm or you just can't take another thing. I can't make another decision. I can't have another thing happen. You physically feel like you cannot take that on. But when you have a sense of safety in your body, you feel like you can take those things on. You feel a calm in your body. I. I'll never forget when I started coming out of fight or flight and I had no idea like you could feel like this. I had no idea the way I had been feeling for 40 something years was not how you're supposed to feel, right? And so you feel this calmness within yourself. You feel this, whatever comes my way, I can handle it. And so it's so critical to have a sense of safety within your body, because then that allows you to move into the world and start to see the world with a sense of safety, right? So many times we're seeing the world as dangerous because we don't even feel safe in our own bodies. And of course, the outside people harming us all, that's important too. But it's the sense of safety internally, the felt sense which is critical. Many times when we're operating from a place of trauma, our capacity is like this. So like you mentioned struggling with your kids, big emotions. So the minute the kids might have a big emotion, if your window capacity is like this, it spirals you. You get upset, you're yelling, you can't take it, right? All these kind of things. But when you have a expanded window of capacity, then that. Those feelings don't trigger you. Those feelings don't feel like overwhelming to you. It's okay. Now I can handle this because I have the space and the capacity to. To address whatever comes my way without it triggering me. And additionally, when you start to grow your window of capacity, or even we can think of it as resilience, right? When you start to grow those things, you have the ability to sense when you are hitting your limit. And so you won't just automatically respond in whatever way is natural to you, you're able to say, you know what?
This isn't going well. I need to take a break. This isn't. This is getting to be too much for me. I'm going to come back in 15 minutes. You're able to do that instead of just flying off the handle because you now know what it feels like to be in a window of capacity into what it feels like when you start to hit the limit of it. And you're like, okay, hold on, I got to come back for a minute. Give me a break. So make sense.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Yes, it makes sense. And so when I'm parenting, okay, so my, My, my capacity is not very small. And I don't think I go off the handle. I shut down, which I think further triggers the kids. Because I'm just like, okay, so I need you to calm down because I, I'm in the moment, and I'm like, okay, this, I know that this is a triggering situation for me, and I know what I'm supposed to do, and I'm just like, okay, so let's talk it through. And so my capacity is a matter of. We can talk about it for 10 minutes calmly, but then I need you to get your little self to a place where you're able to just calm down and think rationally. And if that doesn't happen quick enough, then I'm just like, I shut down. I'm just like, okay, so we're going to have to talk about this later. And I don't think that I do it as smoothly as they would like. And so that further triggers my daughter and she escalates further. And so, yeah, so capacity.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Everybody responds differently. Some people fly off the handle, some people shut down. Right. That comes from your attachment style and how you've maneuvered, but they're just two sides of the same coin. At the end of the day, it's still your capacity, and your capacity should allow you to not have to have them do anything.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Your capacity. You shouldn't have to say, okay after 10 minutes. I know you're not saying this, but have to say, okay, after 10 minutes, I need you to get together because I can't take it anymore. You should be able to sit however long it takes. And to be able to. Now, of course, everybody, it's a co relationship, you get to say, I can't say this too. But what I'm saying is you as the adult and if your capacity were regulated, you wouldn't feel like there's a point of, I need you to pull this back in now. Right. They will be able to feel the big feelings in whatever way, however ways they need it to. And then you can sit with that and hold it, and you won't feel dysregulated or whatever happens for you in that. And so you do have some capacity because you're not reacting immediately. But 10 minutes is still a smaller window.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Okay, so are there certain traumas that impact parenting more than others?
[00:13:47] Speaker B: No, I don't think it's like that. I think it's about a person. And everybody is different because everybody has a different story and everybody has different experience things. Right. Some people are more sensitive. Some people are the oldest child and we're treated like the parents. Some people were right? So everybody has a different combination of things. So it doesn't even matter what the type of traumas are, because you and I could experience. We could both be in the same plane crash and you could be okay, and I could be highly traumatized. So it's not about the trauma, it's about the person and where they're even starting with, where their capacity is, where they're starting from. Are they supported through that trauma? Do they have support through it? Or do they not have support through it? And it's the trauma is not the experience. The trauma is how you're supported through the experience, how your body is supported, how you're emotionally supported if you're not supported in that, if you are left to deal with these big things. And big is relative, right? Because for your kids, those big emotions are big to them. So if you're left to experience these big things by yourself and you don't have the ability to process through these and to understand it and make it make sense, that can become a trauma for you, no matter what the thing is.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: And so before you mention something about dysregulation. So for me, I call it when my daughter spirals, or I call it when I feel that I'm triggered. Can we talk about dysregulation and how the different ways it can manifest?
[00:15:28] Speaker B: What dysregulation is, is dysregulation of the nervous system. So what we're talking about is the nervous system. And I used to think of the nervous system as the engine of the car. Your body is the car, and the nervous system is the engine of the car. And your body is like the rest of the car. And so what happens is you can press on the gas without your car being in gear, and then you can be in neutral and not be present on anything. And the car can just roll, but the engine is doing absolutely nothing. So that would be like high dysregulation. Either you're highly activated fight or flight, or you're in freeze, you're not doing anything. And so that's disregulation. When you are not at a state where you can manage what is coming your way, when you can manage life in a way that, like, is calm, and calm doesn't mean you're always calm. You have to react to whatever life is giving you appropriately. And sometimes that means you're angry, and sometimes that means you want to punch a wall. And I don't mean literally punching a wall, but physically doing the action, sometimes those things are necessary. But what I'm saying is you can take what's coming and appropriately respond. And when you cannot take what's coming and you're not appropriately responding at that even level pace of what is appropriate for the moment, then that means at some point you're disregulating. And so however you respond, right? So you might go to high, really high, the engine revving really high, or you might go to neutral, where the engine is going absolutely nowhere and the car is just rolling on its own.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Okay, and so then what is the Normal state or does the normal state depend on the person? Like the normal state of your nervous system. You're not in flight, you're not in freeze mode. Then what is the normal state?
[00:17:22] Speaker B: So it's called parasympathetic. It's called a parasympathetic state. And it's just a state where your body is in a place where it can heal, it can take what's coming. Your systems are operating in a way that they're supposed to operate because another part of trauma is. What people don't understand is it literally impacts your systems. Different things happen to your physiology when you go into fight or flight, when you go into freeze. And they're not operating at the way that we should be operating. They operate how we operate, when we're under a threat or when we're in danger. And that's different because you don't necessarily need to be worried about digesting when you're under a threat because you're not gonna sit there and eat, you're gonna run. And so it changes what your body is doing because it's responding accordingly to what is happening. So when you are calm, when you're in parasympathetic, your body is in the ideal state it's supposed to be in. We can also call it the healing state. It's when your body has the capacity to take in new information. Your body has the capacity to function in the ways it's supposed to. You can digest well, your heart is beating well. There's no palpitations or stuff like that, right? You don't feel this weird anxious energy all the time, right? You feel calm and. And you can function. And like I said, it's not about always staying calm, but it's about being able to respond according to what is going on. So then if somebody starts banging on my house and they're trying to bust in my house, me as a regulated person will be able to come to alert, oh, my God, what is going on? And I can think properly about what needs to be happening. That doesn't mean I'm going to sit on my bed calmly, like, why is people banging on my door? I'm going to go into this movement and I'm going to do things, but that is appropriate according to what is happening. And I can think through it and I'm not in panic and I'm not just operating out of, like muscle memory. I'm operating out of some thought and I'm clear enough to understand what's going on. So that in that situation that is still regulated. So I'm not operating out of my past or my triggers or my coping mechanisms. I'm clearly seeing what's happening, and I'm clearly responding in a way that is appropriate to that.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Okay. And so I know I have feelings when I'm dysregulated. I can feel it, right? I could feel. Yeah. And it's either the flight or if I have more time and I still can't process it, is the. The shutdown response. What are some. What are some techniques or some mechanisms for addressing yourself when you start to see the signs of dysregulation?
[00:19:55] Speaker B: What I would say is I think you are one of the people who can feel it. And I think most of our society cannot even feel it. So when you say I can feel it, they don't know what you're talking about. One of the problems with our society is we have been taught from little. Like, if you think of all the things we have been taught to disconnect from our bodies, we have been taught to intellectualize everything. It's basically like we've been taught that, like, the body is just a holder of the head. And even as little, like you said, even when you're little, it's okay, I need you to bring those emotions down. You need to stop that. That doesn't mean that little baby's body was ready to bring those emotions down. But we're telling the child, you need to stop that. We need to get it together. We have things to do. And even, like, when we get into school, it's. If little kids are moving too much or what have you, it's a problem. Those kids are problems. They need to go over here. They should be sitting. But that's what the body needs. And so we ignore the needs of the body. And what happens is we get older and we don't know what our body feels like. We don't understand. Our body is literally telling us what is going on every day, all day. Our body is giving us sensations. It's giving us information. Our body is responding appropriately. But because we are so disconnected from the body, we don't even feel these things anymore. We don't even recognize that our stomach is tense and it feels like bubbles. And we don't recognize that your heart just got hot and it feels like a ball, a tense ball. We don't recognize these things anymore. So because of that, many people don't even know when they're getting dysregulated. They don't have a clue. And so one of the things I say is you have to start with slowing down.
And that is kryptonite in our society. But our bodies are not made for the pace that our society tells us we should be going at. Our nervous system has not moved to go along with that. Our nervous system is still, I'm back over here where we supposed to rest and we supposed to chill, right? And so we are going too fast. And anytime we're moving in this just constant rapid next thing, that just creates dysregulation because that's just not the pace we're supposed to be going at. And so one of the things I tell people is just start with slowing down. And sometimes you can do that many different ways. And this goes to also starting to feel the sensations of your body. For some people, it has to be as basic as maybe when they're at work or maybe after work, they can lay on their bed or sit in their chairs and just for five minutes, literally don't do anything and just see what you feel. Just see what you feel happening in your body, right? Because things are happening. And don't give it a story. Don't say, oh, what does that mean? Oh, is something wrong? Oh, no, there's. It's normal just to feel different sensations. And so starting to reconnect with just what does that feel like? And then the other thing is there are so many times constantly that our body is telling us something and we know it and we ignore it and we, we push it off. So it's a common thing to be like, I'm hungry, but I'm doing this report. So I'm just going to keep pushing through. I got to get this report done. And you totally ignore that you're hungry or having to go to the bathroom. You totally ignore, I have to go to the bathroom. You totally ignore, I'm tired. And so starting to just stop and actually respond to those things. Stop pushing them off, stop ignoring them. Because the thing about healing trauma, it's not mind work, it's body work. It's the mind and the body are connected. But if you don't get the body work, you're not going to heal the trauma because it's body work. Your body holds on to everything. Your body knows what's going on. You have to address everything the body and that. You have to start by realizing the body is a thing and honoring it and being able to say, okay, I have to pee, I'm going to go pee. And starting to. Those are like the simplest places people can start because you can't just jump to, this is what I do when I'm dysregulated, when people don't even know they're dysregulated because they're ignoring that they have to go to the bathroom every day, Right? And so just starting there, it sounds so simple. It sounds so small. But I promise you, when I started doing this, even knowing it, I'd still be like, oh, I could wait 15 minutes, and then I would have to be like, no, get up now and just go. And so it's a practice.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Okay? So I'm a parent. I carry both of my children. And I know that there's this concept of generational trauma. And at the top of the episode, you mentioned specifically for black women, that there is this mind body connection that transcends who you are currently to those of your ancestors. So can we talk a little bit about that?
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my jam. It's super fascinating. So when you consider that when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, you were in your grandmother's body too, right? Because you were an egg in your mother's body as your mother was embryo or in your grandmother's body. And so if you think about whatever your grandmother was going through when she was pregnant, so whatever happened that caused stress and her stress hormones were going crazy, whatever happened when she was happy and those hormones were going all over the place, any of that type of stuff, it all goes into her uterus, and that goes into the baby, and then that goes into the cells of the baby, which would be you, Right? And so when you consider those things, you have to understand how trauma just passes down. Right? And they're starting to do a lot of studies on it. Unfortunately, they don't do studies on black people. They do studies on other people. And so there's been different things, like studying the Holocaust family members of Holocaust survivors and seeing how different traumas, that ways their grandparents played things out, grandkids were doing, but they weren't in the Holocaust or Nazi camps. And so seeing those things. And there's another book called It Didn't Start with You, where they tracked different people and seeing how a grandchild might act out this scenario and have no idea why. They have no recollection. Nobody told them this story. And finally, when they do family history, they realize their grandfather had this experience, and this is literally what they're playing out. And I can even give you a personal example. I've started to do a lot of family intergenerational healing work. And I was doing something called family constellations. And I said, I want to understand why I struggle with joy so much. Even after all the trauma work I've done, I feel like joy, for me is fleeting. Like, I can't hold on to it. Like, why is it so hard for me to sit with joy and experience joy? And what I found out was my grandfather was like a joy killer, like, he killed everybody's joy. I didn't know these stories. I told my mother what the experience I had, and then she starts telling these stories, and she said they went. They would go to the pool when they were little, and what do kids want to do at the pool? They want to jump in. They want to play. They want to. And she said he would line them up and tell them, okay, now swim laps. And so they couldn't have any fun. It was like, you got to do this. And there were so many things that he would just take the fun out of it. And it felt like this, oh, we got to go do this thing where it's supposed to be a fun experience, and it's not. And so I'm sitting here thinking this joy thing is my problem, and it's actually a generational problem, right? Because my mother was a kid when that happened. And imagine how a kid feels when all you want to do is go jump in the pool, but now you got to stand at the pool and wait for everybody and do laps when the whistle blows, right? That's nuts. And so those emotions, things are happening in a child's body. Things are feel. Things are going on, and then I'm just an egg in her body while all this is happening, right? And so then I come and I'm born, and I don't even know all this happened. I don't know all this is going on. And I struggle to experience and hold joy. And so it is very real. The other thing I'll say is that there's a science now called epigenetics. And so we used to think that if your grandmother had high blood pressure, you were just going to have high blood pressure. And so what epigenetics has come to understand is that it's almost think of it like a light switch. So think of your genes, have a light switch off and on, and so you might carry the light switch, but it doesn't mean it's automatically going to get flipped on for you. Now, a lot of families have trauma histories and don't even realize they replay some of the same scenarios over and over again. So when you're replaying these Same scenarios, it's going to be a flip on. But when you come to an awareness and you realize, oh, my family has this history of domestic violence, for example, I'm not going to do that anymore. I got in that and I'm leaving and I'm learning, right? Then you can flip it back off. You can flip it back off. What you learn how you eat the emotions, you change your emotions, all that kind of stuff. But it's possible to flip these things back off. And so it's not just the automatic stroke runs in the history you have. You're going to have a stroke, right? And so you have agency to be able to decide do you want to continue this? And you have to become aware, right? Do you want to continue this or do you want to do something different and start flipping the switch off. So for me, one of the things I'm always thinking about, I'm constantly like, we flipping switches. Today we are flipping switches off every day, all day, right? That's a visualization I have in my head and that's what keeps me going. Whether it's hard or difficult or I don't feel like it, or my family thinks I'm nuts because I'm doing so different from what they do. And so, no, I'm not going to have those switches flipped on for me. I don't want those anymore.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: No, I love that. I love that for a number of reasons. I'm a biologist, so scientists by education, so genetics was my jam. I can geek out about it. But also as a single mother by choice, that means that I use the Dr. Fertility clinic to create my family, but my youngest is donor egg. And so in the single mother by choice community, there are people who use donor egg, donor embryo, they adopt. And across there will be some people who will make comments like, oh my gosh, your child looks just like you. And people are trying to make these logical connections. Even I grew up in a blended family and people would be like, oh my gosh, you all look alike.
And so we look at each other, the older siblings, and we just chuckle because it's just we're step siblings. But having had a child from donor egg, one of my concerns and currently navigating it now is one, you tell them their story, but also being able to explain how similarities did get passed down. So I love the analogy of a switch. I love the analogy of the system that embryo grew into. Whether the egg originated with you or the embryo originated with you, it is all being impacted by the system of fluids, the system of Hormones that they're bathed for those 40, 40 weeks, whether. And then that environment that you're in. Because some people, when they adopt, if they adopt infants, they can nurse the child. And so understanding that genetics, genes, the flipping on and off of switches is complex and what ends up being passed down. So once you said the switch, I was just thinking through, I was like, there are certain things my kids are just not going to get because I haven't experienced it in my adulthood. So they hopefully. I'm diluting what got passed down as trauma from my maternal line, but it comforts me to understand that there are switches that are being turned off out of. I'm going to intentionally break this cycle. And there are switches that are being turned on through love. I'm passing these things down to you, this warmth, this comfort, because that's where I was in my life. And hopefully that's what you were bathed in. So thank you for that.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah, you're welcome. I want to add on that, though, everything you said is valid and also something I'm experiencing my own life with my own child is traumas can skip.
Right. So like your mother could deal with something, you don't deal with it, and it could show up in your kid.
Yeah, right. And so because traumas can skip and because you might have no experience with this thing, so you don't even know to be on guard for this thing. I think it's imperative to teach our children about not trauma per se, but trauma in a way of what you're saying, understanding the switches, understanding yourself, being self aware. Because there are ways that trauma can show up in your kids. They did not show up in you, and nothing you do is going to switch that flip off that they have to do it. And so they have to be aware enough and want to do the work enough to say, oh, I see where this came from. I understand this thing and I don't want to continue because it's not enough love. It's not love that's lacking that's going to switch it off and on. It's the environment, it's the beliefs, it's the internal emotions and what I call them cocktails. What Cocktails of neurons and neurotransmitters and things that starts to trigger in your body. And so they. We can't do anything about that thing. We can support them, but they have to be the ones to do that work. And I'm actually having an experience right now with my son. And if they don't want to do the work, it's going to keep playing out in them. And then the other thing I would say to that is one of the things I tell parents all the time. People talk about love. My mother used to tell me she loved me all the time. I did not feel like she loved me at all. And so love is not really it because people don't know how to. How you might love me might not be how I need to be loved and therefore I don't feel loved. And so what I think is critical is nervous system regulation for all parents.
Heal your own nervous system. Do your own nervous system work? Because the thing about nervous systems, it's almost like when dogs can hear other things that we can't hear. That's how nervous systems are. So we can be sitting in a room, acting all calm, being, saying the right words, Hey, I just went, let's talk about this. But our nervous system could be going crazy and the kid's nervous system is responding to our nervous system. Not that we're sitting in this room saying, hey, let's talk about this. Because I used to do that. I did that for 10 years and I'm still like, what is the problem? And I realized my nervous system is nuts. I learned all the things, but I never addressed my nervous system. And that is what my child's nervous system is responding to, not me doing the things. So learning how to really heal your nervous system and then attuning with your child. So attuning, consider like mirroring. So if they are sad and upset, you don't be like, you know what, you just need to get over that. That's not attunement. If they're sad and upset, it's, man, it looks like you're really bothered by this. Can you help me understand why you're so upset? Because when you are upset and somebody comes to you and is like, dude, if you don't just work it out and get over it, you don't feel seen, you don't feel accepted, you don't feel like you belong.
And so being able to feel like this person sees me, this person, they might not understand, they might not have the right words, but they see me because they're mirroring what I am experiencing, what I'm showing. And being able to do those things can really start a child on the right path and help them to then be able to have an awareness to their own feelings around emotions and nervous system regulation. And this even goes into if you can't attune with your child, they get into relationships where people don't attune to them. And they think it's normal, right? And that becomes dangerous sometimes even just teaching. This is what normal is. This is what normal feels like. And so that automatically starts the safety thing. Because when you get into spaces with people who they're not safe, they're not tuning, they might not have the words, but they know inside something ain't right about this. I'm not sticking around. And so that's. I think those are some really key things to teach, especially if you want your children to be able to switch their flippers, flip their switches off, because it's going to be their work. And that's something I've really had to come to terms is we're all put here for a reason. And my son has his own journey, despite what I wish didn't happen or don't, don't want him to have to go through whatever he's here for his own journey. And there's some things I can't do anything about but teach him and prepare for him. But he still has to take the banner and say, I'm willing to do this.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Thank you for that. When we were planning this episode, you said something about dysregulation and attracting people who are dysregulated. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because that's one of the things that through my times working with therapists is the question that I am still trying to process is I attract certain types of dysregulated people. Once you realize that you stepped in this situation that nobody intended for you to be in, and how do you disengage from that in a way that doesn't you. In a situation of harm, we can't control other people.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Sometimes that's not up to us, right? We can only do what we can do and do it the safest way we know how to do it. But something I used to believe, you attract people who are dysregulated too. Or I used to say I attract narcissists. So I always attract narcissists.
What I've come to learn is that you don't attract these people. These people come to everybody. What you don't do is cut them off at the beginning when they start showing these weird little things. And so that is just a matter of developing your own internal sense of safety, of self, love of awareness. And so you can, if you struggle to set boundaries and say things like, no, I don't like that.
Then when, for example, a guy does something you don't like and you struggle to say it and he sees that you struggle to say it. Then he says, oh, I can keep doing stuff. And so the reason I say self love and things like that is because you have to get to a place where you love yourself more than maybe the possibility of losing this guy. Because that's a lot of things that comes in, right? Maybe they'll get mad, maybe they won't stick around. Maybe they. Who cares if they won't, right? And so being able to do that, because that's what those people are looking at. If you don't block them at the start, they're like, oh, cool, I keep doing this. So these people come to everybody. But there's people who are in a, they have a secure attachment style. And those are the people who are like, yeah, no, I'm not doing that, you can leave or no, I'm not going to do this thing. And they don't like it and they try it again and the person says, I don't know why you're still trying this. I'm out. They don't play, they don't rationalize. Maybe he didn't mean it like that. Or maybe, maybe that weird thing she said, maybe she was just having a bad day, right? They don't rationalize. The thing they say that doesn't feel good to me. And I'm not sticking around for people who do these things or say these kind of things, right? And that's the difference between people. So it's not just your nervous system is attracting these people, is that your nervous system sits in a space of safety or unsafety and the unsafety feels familiar. And so it's not shocking enough for you to be like, what was that? I'm about to go, I'm not sticking around for this, right? Where when you get into a space of a secure nervous system and you have this self awareness and this self love, it doesn't feel good. It feels like what just happened here. I don't like this. And you're out because you're not even trying to see what else this could be, right? And then like I said, when it comes to like harm, like people being harmful, we can't control the people. We can only do it as safe as we can do it. And take your own precautions because people.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: Are out here peopling, people are crazy. I definitely feel that we could just go on. I know that we barely scratched the surface. It's because I have questions. Like I wrote down secure attachment style. So I'm gonna get off this call And I'm gonna be doing some googling. So thank you for sharing that.
If you have this internal calm, you recognize when there are ripples and whether those. And at the sign of those ripples or the moment when you should exit. Right? Because I have had those ripples where I'm just like, yeah, this person's an asshole. And it's just. But people are people.
I usually say, we're people. I'm let them people. And then. And so I think at my big age of almost 50, I should know that by the time you get to the point where you're feeling like you want to say people are people, that for me, that is my opportunity to exit and I should just be on my merry way.
So definitely still very much a work in progress. And I feel like I will be on this journey for my entire life. And then in terms of how we can support our kids is to just make sure that they stay in tune with what they're feeling and validating their emotions without judgment. So we talk about tricky people. When we are talking to kids about stranger danger and other things that don't feel right. I know my children will struggle with, I want to be liked. Like, they don't like me. And I try to tell them, how do you feel when you're with good friends? How do you feel when you're with mommy? How do you feel when that person said that or did that? Are there any other techniques or resources that you would recommend? And then how can my listeners find you to have deeper conversations with you with regards to trauma? Once they recognize that you're on your own, get your help? Um, so where can they find you?
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Yeah, people can find me. My website is Asia ajarutledge.com so that's pretty easy. It's just my name, Asia rutledge.com and I actually have a free guide called finding your calm. And they can access that at bitly and bit ly arc dash calm. So A, Asia R. Lake Rutledge C Lake coaching dash the word calm. And from there it's a guide. And so it has a lot of start and stop. So what it is like what to start doing and what to stop doing to get your nervous system to a regulated space. What I want to say is this is not quick fix stuff. This is intentional, consistent work, especially when healing your nervous system is slow work. That is a key part of it. And so this isn't. Well, I'm doing this in a week and I'll be good. It's a journey like you said, I consider this like a lifestyle. So it is a journey. But yeah, people can find me on my website or they can get the guide and then the guide will give them lots of information and then they'll be on my email list. And so I'll keep reaching out every week with tips and information.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Thank you. Your aura is such a calming aura. And so you were, like, looking at people and are they walking their truth? It feels like it. It sounds like it. Even from the top of the episode, as you were talking, I could feel myself calm leaning into the conversation and just the things you said that were resonating because you have these checkers in your head and it's just, this is the thing I'm expecting to hear. And as I'm hearing it, I'm like, yes, that rings true. And that rings true. So thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me. When you're in the podcasting space, it's always interesting how you're meeting people and who's connecting you to people, and it just feels serendipitous. So thank you. This conversation, it feels like it has opened up like you. You've unlocked a new level in the video game. And so thank you so much.
[00:46:36] Speaker B: You're so welcome. Thank you for having.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Start to Finish Motherhood with Aisha. If you want to keep the conversation going, follow Start to Finish Motherhood on Instagram or email me at aishastarttofinishmotherhood.com if you love this episode, please share it with anyone who's thinking of becoming a single mother by choice. Anyone who's already parenting as a single mother by choice and just looking for advice on navigating it all. Or a friend or family member who's looking to support someone else's single mother by choice journey. Until next time. Bye now.
