Parenting, Neurodivergence, and Complex PTSD: A spicy blend - not for the faint of heart.
My child and I arrive at the appointed time (!) to the YMCA for a playdate with one of my besties and her daughter.I’ve already connected with my friend today, though virtually. For the last two months, I’ve been waking up at 6:30 AM most weekdays for yoga and meditation via Zoom. I don’t lead the practice - I queue one up on an app and share my screen. Knowing that someone’s expecting me to open the Zoom room at 6:30 keeps me more accountable than trying to do it alone.
Our kids are 2 months apart; my buddy and I were pregnant at the same time. Suffice it to say we did not adore pregnancy. What I did “enjoy” through this period was having a friend to whom I could complain ad nauseum - and vice versa.
As our kids near the age of three, we continue to lean on each other. In these and any other tough periods of life, there’s nothing like having someone who’s going through it (or clearly remembers going through it) in your corner.
I’ve been fairly desperate to bring this kind of rhythm back into my life for the last three years - ever since I got pregnant and my life turned upside down. Slowly, slowly, I’m gaining traction with the rhythms and rituals that used to be the pillars of my wellbeing. It is a blessed relief - I wasn’t convinced this was ever going to happen.
The morning started great - Goldie slept in until nearly 9, giving me two whole hours to myself before our day together began.¹ I made oatmeal for both of us and enjoyed it with three beverages: coffee, an herbal tea blend², and a green smoothie. And as I headed to the universal bathroom in the Y play area, I thought to myself: Our Lady of Perpetual Urination. Parenting can be dehydrating - it’s important to keep my fluids up.
The kids play well together, and my friend and I have a chance to catch up. I notice myself on-edge, sensing my body’s freeze response. There’s no externally “valid” reason for this. Aside from a relatively mild and typical meltdown, Goldie’s been very pleasant to care for this morning. It’s a big deal; the other day, after trying to get her diaper and pants on for 30 minutes, I gave up. There was no light at the end of the tunnel; I stuffed her into her diaper, and put her in the car seat “nude dude,” as she says.
So there we are, chatting and watching our kids, and I can feel it settling in - the familiar weight of trauma that’s overlaid much of my time as an expectant and active mother. It manifests as a heavy, negative headspace with anxious hypervigilance. The overall sensation is one of having a vacuum hose attached to my solar plexus, sucking out my vitality. I know it sounds dramatic; I am a dramatic person. It feels dramatic. Dramatically unpleasant!
Not for the first (or likely the last) time, I confess my current state to my friend. I tell her I know the setting is safe and there’s nothing to worry about, but that doesn’t stop me from hunching my shoulders and bracing against --- against what, exactly? Against the other shoe that my nervous system is accustomed to expecting, whether it’s really coming or not.
When Goldie was little - around 3-6 months - she became colicky, and I started to fall apart - mind, body and spirit. Unless she was actively being rocked or breastfeeding, she had a tendency to cry and scream much of the time. To this day, she has incredible core strength from those lung workouts. Holding and rocking her helped; the boob helped; but having her need my body in this way - especially because it was so often paired with crying - was overstimulating to the point of massive burnout.
I experience audio sensitivity. If someone’s talking to me while the TV is on, I have to turn the TV off or I’ll either snap angrily or spend a lot of energy regulating my reaction to the sound. Loud noises are painful for me. Until Goldie started crying all the time, it wasn’t a huge deal - not something I usually considered except when listening to live music. When Goldie was about 18 months old, I realized I’m on the autism spectrum, and a great many points in my life came together to form a big, comprehensive constellation.
As with many neurodivergent people these days, making this discovery was a huge and helpful revelation. Diving into the limited research on autistic mothers (not mothers of autistic kids - there’s a lot on them), I saw myself and I felt more comfortable - less freakish, more understandable. Even though I’ve done a lot of healing, hearing her cry still sets my nerves on edge. While I don’t have panic attacks when she cries anymore, I can get dissociative if it goes on for more than a minute.
A lot of people on the autism spectrum - especially women - also live with Complex PTSD, or developmental trauma. Our society makes growing up neurodivergent traumatic for a lot of people. As a kid, my emotions overwhelmed me. When I was young, I would get home after masking all day at school and settle into long, screamy meltdowns. My recollection of these meltdowns brings to mind the no-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel feeling I referred to earlier when I put nude dude Goldie in the car. They were intense and scary - because I was intense and scared of my feelings.
Unlike a lot of people living with CPTSD, I didn’t suffer at the hands of the people who raised me. My parents are fantastic people. I know they had their moments, but I remember them as being generally very attuned and patient with me, even in my rageful glory. Even still, I internalized a lot of shame and a deeply-held belief that something was very wrong with me. I was qualitatively different from my peers, and this was not a good thing.
Sometime during Goldie’s first year, I realized that when she cried, not only was it sensorily overwhelming to me, but the crying was activating a part of me - my young child self - that was profoundly hurting. The desire to escape from my crying baby and her need for me was devastating. While I hadn’t had many specific expectations of parenting, no mother comes into this gig thinking, “It’s no big deal if being alone with my child gives me panic attacks. The last thing I want to do is be near my baby? No problem.”
Mom shame in the US is well-documented. For most moms, it’s there even when things are going pretty well. For me, there was a lot of shame and horror at being trapped in what felt like a nightmare when I “should” be grateful that my child was (aside from the screaming) healthy and I had a supportive partner, enough financial resources to meet our needs, and strong friend and family support.
Things have consistently gotten easier over time. Like I mentioned, Goldie’s nearly 3 now. While the “terrible twos” are well upon us, and I still often feel overwhelmed by parenting,³ I am in love with my bright, funny, fierce little friend. The rewards are coming faster, and this is good for my hypervigilance. For example, she spontaneously kissed my hand six times throughout the other day, can make her way down the stairs solo, doesn’t make a mess when eating, and called me upstairs during naptime (interrupting me writing this) to let me know she needed the potty -- and she used it! HELL YEAH.
Nevertheless, I have days when, even though I’m doing all the things (and it’s literally my job to share my enormous catalogue of self-care rituals with healers and changemakers), my mental health is out of my control. And that kicks the wheel of a vicious cycle: I suddenly feel worse, in spite of my best intentions. I feel powerlessness and horror; I remember this feeling. The somatic flashbacks from the last few years kick up, and my headspace is no good for me or anyone near me. The cycle usually stops when I am able to get my kiddo to daycare and put myself down for a 4-hour midday nap. That always helps, and I am grateful every day to have the flexibility in my life to meet my needs this way.
I’m sharing this because I know what it’s like to search the internet for people who know what I’m talking about. I want to feel like I’m in good company when I’m struggling. My hope is that if you relate to my experience, you realize that you’re not alone.
I write openly about my life because so many people I’m close with or have coached experience this cross-section of CPTSD and neurodivergence, and parenting with this combo can be a doozy. We need each other.
As a trauma-informed mental health professional, I am a believer in diagnoses/labels to the extent that they guide healing-centered interventions. The more we understand how factors like trauma and neurodivergence interplay, the better prepared we can be to meet ourselves and each other with an abundance of grace and care when the going gets rough.
If you’re looking for 1:1 support around parenting, CPTSD, and/or navigating neurodivergence, I’m here for you.
A few other resources if this resonated with you:
RAINN’s (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) hotline: call or chat online
While I haven’t yet read the book Parenting With PTSD, just knowing it’s out there helps me. If you’re someone who suffered from abuse or neglect as a child and are now a parent, you might find it helpful. Or, if you prefer a lighter touch or listening to Podcasts, you can listen to this one with Dawn Daum, one of the co-authors of the book.
Another book I haven’t read (am I losing credibility at this point or nah?) and that you might find helpful (again, even knowing the title is helpful to me) is Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun. It’s about how parenting in the US has changed over the last 50 years, and is likely to validate your parenting struggles.
I hesitate to even write this, knowing it could inspire deep envy from other parents of young children.
Peppermint, lavender, and nettles (the co-op has been out of rose petals for months 🙁 - I suffer!).
This is common for a lot of parents trying to do this thing under patriarchal capitalism -- and especially so for the neurodivergent parents I know.
