The Difference Between Dissociated Parenting and Present Parenting

I bet most parents can relate: the pressure to remain "regulated" is extreme. If you're a mother, you likely carry specific cultural burdens that tell you moms should always be calm, nurturing, patient, and warm.

Then come the unavoidable moments of rage or over-stimulation, and you spiral into shame. "Don't you dare let these feelings out onto them," you tell yourself, swallowing your feelings, checking out of your body, and shifting into auto-pilot.

We don't want to mess up our kids, so doesn’t remaining calm keep us together as a co-regulating, connected, and healthy family system? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

While the risks of being explosive and reactive are obvious to most of us, there are also serious and implicit risks to shutting ourselves down and disassociating to "remain calm" for our kids. Parenting on auto-pilot is uncomfortable for children because they are wired to want to know what’s going on with us. They also see us through their mirror neurons, unconsciously learning that feelings should be suppressed instead of expressed, which is not what most of us want to model in our guidance.

Dissociation is also deeply uncomfortable for parents both in the short and long term. We may successfully swallow our feelings and show up calmly for our kids that day, but it comes at the cost of suppressing our feelings—critically important nervous system messengers—which inevitably come out in ways that further disconnect us. It’s a vicious and unsustainable cycle.

Present parenting means radically accepting that we will mess up. We will snap, be harsh, and say the wrong things. We will lose our patience and sometimes stray from our peaceful parenting values. What this acceptance gives us is the freedom to be authentic! It allows us the flexibility to be ourselves while striving to be better. It gives us the permission to be less than perfect and the compassion to apologize for our mistakes.

It shows our children that we are connected to our own humanity and that we welcome theirs.