Christian Parenting After Childhood Trauma in Columbus, Ohio
You promised yourself you would do things differently.
Maybe you grew up in a home where emotions were too much. Your parents were emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, harsh, critical, controlling, or simply overwhelmed by their own struggles. You dug deep inside (while pulling yourself up from your boot straps) and declared: “When I have children, it will be different.”
You may have spent years learning about gentle parenting, emotional regulation, attachment, boundaries, or healthy communication. You know all the things you don't want to repeat.
And then you became your mother.Knowing what to do and actually being able to do it are two very different things.
You hear your child's tone of voice and feel something boiling inside of you. Your child becomes upset with you, and you immediately need to fix it. You set a boundary and then replay the conversation over and over contemplating whether you were too harsh. You lose your patience and feel gut wrenching guilt afterwards.
Its also possible that you have become the exact opposite of the parent you had.
If your parent was emotionally detached, you became hyperaware of every emotion your child has. Your parent was controlling-and now you struggle to discipline.Your parent didn't listen, so you may feel overly responsible for making sure your child always feels heard.
These are all indications that you're parenting while carrying wounds from the way you were parented.
Those wounds can show up in places you never expected.
“I'm Terrified I'm Going to Become Like My Mother or Father.”
I hear this fear underneath a lot of conversations with women who are trying desperately to break unhealthy family patterns.There is a childhood belief underneath it that sounds something like: “I know better, so I should be able to do better.”
There can be an assumption that if you cognitively understand what healthy parenting looks like, implementing it should naturally follow.
Knowing something intellectually doesn't mean your nervous system has learned how to live it. You can know that yelling isn't helpful and still find yourself raging intensely. You can know that it's healthy for your child to have big emotions and still feel like your drowning when they do. You can know that boundaries are Christ-like and still feel like a monster when your child doesn't like the boundary. You can know that you want to respond instead of react and still have moments when you repeat the patterns of the past.
When all of this is added together, you become really hard on yourself. You expected it to be easier than this and are quickly discovering that parenting brings all the unhealed childhood wounds to the surface.
In the quiet late night thoughts, you might also notice the fear “What if my parents were struggling too?” rising to the surface.
You may begin to understand some of the struggles your parents had. You start to see that they too were overwhelmed, emotionally immature, wounded, or dealing with circumstances you didn't understand as a child.
That doesn't mean your childhood trauma wasn't real. You can have compassion for what your parents experienced without erasing what you experienced. Giving your parents grace does not require you to rewrite the facts of your childhood. Understanding is not the same thing as excusing.
Recognizing that your parents may have had their own generational hurts doesn't mean you have to carry those wounds into your parenting.
How Childhood Trauma Shows Up in Parenting
Childhood trauma doesn't just pop in as anger. It can show up in your:
Tone of voice
Facial expressions
Body posture
Discipline
Boundaries
Anxiety
Perfectionism
People-pleasing
Overprotectiveness
Emotional availability.
Sometimes it looks like giving in because you truly cannot stomach your child's disappointment. It looks like over exploding because you feel disrespected. It can come out through shutting down because your child's emotions feel like a system short circuits.
Sometimes it even looks like becoming a helicopter parent because you are determined that your child will never experience the pain you did. This is especially important because women often go to the opposite extreme of what they experienced.
If your parent was emotionally detached, you may become intensely emotionally involved. You may give your child enormous amounts of attention, reassurance, protection, and emotional support because you are unconsciously trying to give them what you needed.
These actions aren’t awful, but in trying to make sure our children don't experience our pain, we can accidentally prevent them from developing skills they need for their own lives. Children need support.
They also need opportunities to experience disappointment. They need to know that someone can be unhappy with them and the relationship can still be okay. They need to learn how to tolerate frustration. They need boundaries. They need to learn that emotions are important without learning that their feelings get to control others behaviors.
This is part of breaking generational patterns. It isn't simply doing the opposite of what your parents did. It is learning what your child actually needs and finding a balance in your approach.
What I Learned From My Own Parenting
I grew up in a household where my emotions were too much for my parents. In my home having feelings meant your were sent to your room. Because of that experience, I am especially motivated to talk about feelings with my children. I mean-I literally found a career path where I get to do this all day long.
I want my kids (and everyone I work with) to know that emotions aren't too much for me. I want them to know they can come to me. I want my kids to know that I am willing to sit with them in hard things. I also want them to know they can handle their own emotions solo too.
My desire to be emotionally available can become too much emotional involvement if I don’t keep that in mind and allow that to also influence my approach. My children don't always need me to process everything with them immediately. Sometimes they need space. That realization led us to create something in our family that we call a “10-minute break.”
If one of my kids needs to be alone to sort through emotions, they can have that space. They can step away as we set a timer, and then we come back together to talk about what happened.
That boundary has helped me create the space they might request without re-experiencing that space as emotional abandonment.
Breaking generational patterns isn't about becoming a perfect parent. It's about becoming a more aware parent.
When “Doing Everything Differently” Isn't Enough
I once worked with a woman who was incredibly excited to become a mama. She was boldly determined to do things differently.
Her relationship with her biological mother had ended years earlier, so she didn't have someone she could easily turn to for parenting guidance. She knew what she wanted parenting to look like. The problem was that she didn't have a roadmap for how to get there.
I met her when she had her second child and was beyond overwhelmed.
She clearly saw the patterns she had desperately wanted to avoid were starting to appear in her own home.
This was a painful realization she tried to avoid for a while. She was doing everything in her power to take a different route, yet found herself using some of the same hurtful phrases and actions that she despised so greatly. Without a roadmap, she kept finding herself walking down some of the same paths.
In counseling, we were able to identify where those patterns were beginning to take over. We also explored what happened internally when her child expressed dissatisfaction with her parenting, which was a significant shift into interrupting that pattern for her. Instead of simply looking at the child's behavior, we began looking at what was happening inside of her.
That allowed her to start responding differently, one small step at a time. We made tiny steps towards improvement that eventually created a new pathway. A generational shift.
Breaking Generational Patterns Is More Than a Spiritual Concept
As Christian women, we sometimes talk about breaking generational curses or generational patterns primarily as a spiritual issue. I fully believe there is a spiritual component to how we understand our family history. We miss something important when we only look at it spiritually.
We also have to look at our actual behavior. This includes how we speak with people, the tone of voice we communicate in, how we react when someone is disappointed with us, who we allow into our lives, and how we set (or don't set) boundaries when needed.
These are the places where patterns become visible. Breaking generational patterns isn't just praying that the pattern disappears. We have to be open to the the Holy Spirit revealing truth in your life and then becoming willing to practice a different response-a different action.
Is This a Parenting Problem—or a Trauma Trigger?
If you’re wondering whether this behavior your child is exhibiting is just a trigger for you, or a typical part of raising kids- you’re wise in sitting with this curiosity. It might just be that your child is having a difficult moment. Perhaps your child is angry, talking back a bit, or disappointed because they said no. These are typical parenting situations, regardless of your upbringing or personal struggles.
It’s still important to examine if your emotional response to it may be connected to something much older. A trauma trigger can make a present-day parenting situation feel much bigger than it actually is. That's why in counseling, we can begin by identifying the trigger and calling it what it is.
Then we can map out:
What happened?
What did you feel?
What did you believe in that moment?
What did you want to do?
What did you learn to do as a child?
How do you want to respond as a parent in that moment?
We aren't here to demand that you completely change your parenting overnight. The goal is to respond with one small new response. This can look like responding with a different sentence, one new boundary, or pausing before responding.
One opportunity to recognize, “This feeling is familiar, but I am not back there anymore.” Over time, the small new choices can create a new pathway.
People-Pleasing Can Keep You Stuck
People-pleasing and parenting can become especially complicated after childhood trauma.
You may find yourself thinking:
“Maybe I was too hard on them.”
“I should just let it go.”
“I don't want them to be upset with me.”
“I don't want them to feel the way I felt growing up.”
Children don't need parents who keep them happy. They need parents who can tolerate their unhappiness while still providing love, safety, structure, and boundaries. If your child learns that someone else's emotions always determine what happens next, they aren't learning emotional responsibility (and neither are you.)
People-pleasing can keep you stuck in the patterns you're trying to escape.
Sometimes the healthiest thing you can say is “No”.
Your child's disappointment does not mean you have damaged them. Their frustration does not mean you are a bad parent. Their unhappiness with you does not mean you have failed. The goal is to be emotionally sensitive with healthy boundaries.
Christian Counseling and Parenting After Trauma
Christian counseling gives us a framework for the healing process. We can work through trauma and honor the nervous system while also talking incorporating grace. We can talk about healthy boundaries and model these off of how Jesus enacted them. We can learn and implement emotional regulation while also considering Holy Spirit discernment. We can pray through forgiveness without pretending that what happened didn't matter.
Forgiveness is not pretending the past didn't hurt. It isn't saying that what happened was acceptable. It doesn't mean you have to restore access to someone who continues to be unsafe and hasn’t done their real, honest, raw work in therapy.
I see forgiveness as releasing that person from the burden of their transgressions and allowing Jesus to be the one who settles the debt rather than your grudge or anger to do so. Forgiveness doesn’t erase the pain or make what happened okay. It can free you from carrying the burden of making someone pay for the ways they hurt you. Grace doesn’t mean giving them permission to hurt you again. You can forgive someone and still have boundaries.
One of the hardest parts of healing is learning to give yourself the grace you’ve spent years giving to everyone else.
My Children Deserve Better Than Me
I have heard versions of this from mothers who are devastated by the ways they have reacted.
“I've screwed up my kids.”
“They deserve better than me.”
“What if I've already done too much damage?”
If that sounds like you, I want you to also make room for this: change begins today.
I tell my own children this, and I tell my clients this “Out of all the mamas in the whole world, God picked you for this child. And out of all the children in the whole world, God picked them for your home.”
That doesn't mean you're going to parent perfectly. It means you don't have to. Your child doesn't need a perfect mother. They need a mother who is willing to grow, apologize, admit faults, offer repair, and look at her own wounds instead of making her children responsible for them.
Your kids need a mom who is willing to learn and ask for help. They need a parent who is willing to repair, offer humility, and show emotional safety.
Your family history does not have to determine your family's future.
You Can Create a Different Pathway
If you recognize yourself in this article, I want you to know that healing from your childhood is possible to create a different pathway. You don't have to become a perfect parent. You don't have to erase everything that happened in your childhood or figure out how to do this alone.
In Christian counseling with me, we can create a nonjudgmental, open space where we look at what is actually happening underneath your parenting struggles. We can identify the triggers that keep pulling you toward familiar patterns as we explore how your younger self learned to respond to difficult situations. Then we work toward helping that younger version of you move toward maturity so she doesn't continue to trigger the same patterns in your present-day relationships. Together, we will practice new ways of responding through small, manageable steps.
This can include giving yourself grace too. You can acknowledge where you've made mistakes without deciding that you're a terrible mother. You can have compassion for your parents without excusing what happened. You can forgive and set boundaries without becoming unloving.
You can parent differently even if you weren't given a healthy example to follow. Your childhood may have shaped you, but it does not have to write the rest of your story.
Ready to Start Healing?
If you're a woman in Columbus, Dublin, Worthington, Westerville, or the surrounding Ohio area who recognizes that your childhood wounds are affecting the way you parent today, counseling can give you a place to slow down, understand what's happening, and begin creating a different pathway so that your children don’t have to be the ones healing from you.
I offer a free 20-minute consultation so we can talk about what you're experiencing, what you're hoping to change, and whether working together may be a good fit.
Healing your childhood wounds isn't just about understanding what happened to you.
Ultimately, this work is about becoming the woman—and the mother—God created you to be.
Additional Services
Healing rarely stays contained to one area of life. Childhood trauma can affect the way you parent, communicate, relate to others, set boundaries, experience anxiety, and understand yourself.
In addition to Christian counseling for women healing from childhood trauma and parenting-related struggles, I also provide the following support:
Christian Counseling
If you’re a Christian and want Christ to remain at the center of your healing, Christian counseling creates space to address emotional and relational struggles while also incorporating God, Scripture, prayer, grace, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
EMDR Therapy
EMDR can help you process unresolved traumatic experiences and the beliefs that became attached to them. It can be especially helpful when you understand something intellectually but still find yourself reacting as though the past is happening in the present.
Ministry Stress & Burnout
Women in ministry often carry unique emotional and relational pressures. Counseling can provide a place to process ministry stress, burnout, church hurt, expectations, and the weight of caring for others while learning how to care for yourself.
Anxiety & Emotional Regulation
When your nervous system has learned to stay on alert, everyday situations can feel overwhelming. Counseling can help you understand your responses, identify triggers, and develop healthier ways of responding to stress and difficult emotions.
God is not finished with your story, and there is still room for healing, hope, and something new. You may not be able to change what happened to you, but you can begin to understand how it has shaped you—and with the right support, begin to move forward in a healthier, more grounded way. Healing takes courage, but you don’t have to walk through it alone. If you’re in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, South Carolina, or Florida, I would love the opportunity to walk alongside you and share in your healing journey.
