By Ruth Feather, Business Administrator – Higher Education Progression Partnership
Neuroscience and the Impact of Stress on Families
It was a very disparate group of people who came to the parent and carer network’s first research based event on 5th December but I think this added to the experience because everyone was able to relate to the content on a different personal level. It connected to academic interests as much as a wide range of personal experiences. The main thing we all had in common was being parents but as I listened to Sally Pearse talk about adverse childhood experiences and the way we as adults handle stress being related to what we learnt as a child, I began to realise that this was just as relevant to me as a carer. This session has given me a deeper understanding of the root causes of my husband’s anxiety and caused me to question my approach to dealing with it.
We talked about our basic primal and instinctive reactions to stressful stimuli and I realised that my first urge is to protect others, to try to mask my emotions and remain outwardly calm so as not to pass on my fear and anxiety to my husband and children. I’m not saying I necessarily succeed but that is my first instinct. Sally told us that it can be positive for us as adults to show distress, we are modelling to our children that it is ok to be sad, it is how we deal with it that matters. In so doing we validate their stress and acknowledge that it is real. As the slogan to a popular mental health charity campaign says “It’s ok to not be ok“.
I was also uncomfortably familiar with the problem of always needing to rush to find solutions. In the short term we need to show empathy above all. To be there for that person, child or adult who needs your help. Rushing to fix things means we can invalidate the person’s experience by seeming to say that it doesn’t matter, it can be sorted. I am frequently guilty of this. All we want to do is make things better, make the problem go away. Sometimes we need to stand back and acknowledge the problem without immediately trying to fix it and that can be very hard.
However, on the subject of fixing things….the biggest thing I took away from this session is hope. We learn that “no one who has suffered significant adversity or many adverse childhood experiences is irreparably damaged, though we need to acknowledge the impact of trauma.” Sally’s message is that no one is beyond help and negative neuropathways can be changed.
This feels relevant to all aspects of my life, as a parent as well as at work. Thank you for writing such an interesting piece!
Thank you for sharing this Ruth. I found the event really interesting and it’s made me reconsider how I deal with my toddler’s tantrums, I quite often find myself thinking about the findings that Sally talked about.