Dr. Robyn Koslowitz

because your brain was primed to do it that way that that's literally how your brain your neural circuitry around parenting was formed so you're fighting the circuitry that's in there because your brain doesn't want to work hard it doesn't want to say instead of this i want to do that your brain's like do this what would that do do that that's easy copy paste our brains very often function on a copy paste system like sometimes we even call that a social skill you want people to be able to read the room

Right.

There is a good aspect to that.

There's an adaptive aspect to that.

But it's when your brain does not even realize that.

Wait a minute.

No, we're going to have to put in the mental energy to not do, you know, WWDD.

Right.

What would dad do and do something else instead?

That is much harder.

I'm impressed that you did it because like that you realized to do it and that it must have been a lot of work.

I think people who haven't parented don't realize just how hard that is.

It's what we call harsh discipline.

And what you did was so incredible, right?

Because one of the things trauma does is it takes away our ability to envision a future self.

So you had to build your ability to envision a future self.

You had to build your ability to say, what do I want him to remember of his parenting when he's an adult?

And you had to retrofit it and figure it out backwards because you didn't have a model of it.

That takes an incredible amount of work because our brain doesn't want to do it.

Our brain is like, what's wrong with the old system?