Breaking the Cycle: Healthy Parenting Tips for PTSD Survivors

If you are a parent that struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, you may worry that your own mental health challenges may pass on to your children. If you are interested in breaking the cycle, you need to be aware of how your symptoms, triggers, and coping mechanisms will affect your children. Here are some healthy parenting tips for PTSD survivors, to help maintain your children’s healthy relationships with you, and the children, teachers, and others who shape their futures.

PTSD Survivors Face Special Challenges as Parents

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a difficult mental health diagnosis for anyone to deal with. PTSD survivors struggle to manage their symptoms and triggers for years after their traumatic experiences. These symptoms may include:

• Flashbacks
• Nightmares
• Intrusive thoughts
• Memory issues
• Decreased self-worth
• “Out-of-body” experiences or dissociative events
• Mood dysregulation
• Feelings of guilt or worry
• Hypervigilance
• Increased startle experiences
• Problems sleeping
• Numbness
• Alcohol or controlled substance dependency
• Anxiety
• Recklessness
• Aggression

Much has been made, in recent years, about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), including child abuse, bullying, violence, and loss, and how they affect your life over time. But if you are a parent with PTSD, you also face another challenge, needing to manage your own symptoms without negatively affecting your children, spouse, or co-parent. 

The stress that comes with PTSD can decrease the enjoyment you receive from parenting, and make it harder to co-parent with your spouse or child’s parent. Aggression, recklessness, and numbness can all negatively affect your ability to be a good parent and to collaborate with your children’s care providers to do what is best for them. 

How a Parent’s PTSD Can Affect Children

When a parent’s mental health challenges pass on to children, it is called “intergenerational trauma.” The traumatic events most prone to this kind of transference include:

• Physical abuse 
• Emotional abuse 
• Domestic violence (as a witness or a survivor)
• Child abuse and neglect during childhood
• Caregiver substance dependence
• Caregivers with untreated mental illness
• Housing or caregiving disruptions

Because these ACEs directly impact the way you grew up and experienced your own childhood, they can affect and impair your ability to raise your own children. For example, if you experienced childhood neglect, you may experience triggering symptoms when your child cries or asks for care you did not receive. 

If you experience PTSD symptoms it can create uncertainty for your children. They may be unable to understand when or why your triggers occur. Your children may feel helpless to make you happy or “fix” what is wrong with you or may feel lonely or ignored when you have to prioritize your own mental health over your child’s needs. The children of PTSD survivors may struggle with concentration, including completing their schoolwork as they experience their own stress. Avoiding PTSD triggers may disconnect parents from children’s formative events. Children with PTSD parents may also have problems with relationships with caregivers and others. 

Parenting Tips for Breaking the Cycle of PTSD

If not carefully controlled, a parent’s PTSD can cause your children distress and behavioral changes. However, there are things you can do to minimize the risk.

Practice Mindfulness About Your Own Emotions

If you want to break the cycle of PTSD, you will need to be aware of when your emotions and behaviors are not your own. Engaging in self-reflection and mindfulness can help you maintain objective distance from your symptoms, making it easier to be aware when they are occurring. Understanding when you are acting in response to your PTSD symptoms can make it easier to shield your children from those symptoms and their adverse effects. 

Express Proportional Relations

Being aware of your PTSD symptoms is not enough. You also need to regulate yourself. You should work to ensure your reactions are proportionate to the situation as it truly exists, rather than in response to the intrusive thoughts and feelings related to your past traumatic events. Exaggerated responses – including screaming, criticizing, worrying, or aggressive behaviors – likely mean that your PTSD has been triggered and you need to step away to shield your children from the chance of intergenerational trauma.

Make Self-Care a High-Priority Habit

Parents living with PTSD need to find ways to manage their own stress. Self-care and maintaining a healthy home environment can reduce the frequency of triggers. Identifying, learning, and practicing healthy coping mechanisms for your own symptoms and emotions can go a long way to protecting your children from living in a stressful, chaotic, or traumatic home environment.

Establish Household Routines to Combat Uncertainty

PTSD negatively affects the children of survivors in part because it makes their homes unstable and their ability to predict their parents’ behavior uncertain. You can provide more stability for your children by providing stability, routine, and predictability in everyday routines. Predictable bedtimes, mealtimes, disciplinary choices, and time with parents can give your children a structure to rely on, even when you are struggling with PTSD symptoms.

Communicate with Children in Age-Appropriate Ways

Your children need to know they are not to blame for the symptoms you are experiencing. You should communicate what PTSD is and how you feel when it happens in age-appropriate ways. Avoid sharing scary or graphic details, but be willing to answer their questions and explain what you are doing to improve your mental health and “get better.” 

Rely on Support and Therapeutic Assistance

If you are struggling with PTSD symptoms, it is important to remember that you don’t have to do it alone. Parenting with PTSD sometimes means relying on your support networks, including co-parents, extended family, trusted friends, and other caregivers to step in when you have to step away to prioritize your mental health. Working with an experienced psychotherapist can help you reduce the frequency and severity of your symptoms and improve your ability to cope with your experiences and your parenting ability. 

David Stanislaw is a psychotherapist with over 30 years of experience. He helps adults, teens and children with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. Contact David Stanislaw to get help today.