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HER (Health, Economics, Relationships) Energy Unlocked
Parenting While Healing:Breaking the Cycle of Trauma with Amy Haydak Licensed Clinical Social Worker
00:27:10
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- [00:00]
A
Ever sat in the quiet after a hard parenting moment and thought, I didn't want it to go that way. You are not alone. So many parents find themselves replaying the moment, wondering why they reacted the way they did, feeling the weight of guilt and wishing they had handled things differently. The truth is, those moments don't make you a bad parent. They make you a human one. In this episode of her energy unlock, we're breaking down what's really happening beneath those reactions, the nervous system responses you didn't choose, the old patterns you didn't create, and the big emotions your child is still learning to navigate. We'll explore why these moments happen, why they feel so heavy afterwards, and most importantly, how to repair, reconnect, and move forward with calm and clarity. This conversation is here to remind you you're not failing. You're learning. And you don't have to do it alone. Today's guest brings both heart and deep professional expertise to the work she does. She has over a decade of experience as a licensed clinical social worker specializing in family systems, emot regulation, trauma informed care, and supporting parents and educators. She's worked in schools, community mental health and clinical settings, guiding individuals and families through some of the most challenging seasons. Now, as a mental wellness coach, she helps people navigate parenting, life transitions, emotional stress, and moments of disconnection. Through coaching workshops and practical tools, she empowers individuals, families and professionals to build emotional awareness, resilience, and meaningful connections. Welcome to the show. Amy Heydack. Amy, welcome to today's episode.
- [01:38]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [01:39]
A
I'm so excited to have you on because you bring such a level of expertise. But now, as we talked about this prior to hitting record, you have children yourself, so you're probably going through the emotions and having that lived experience. For our listeners who are new to you, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
- [01:58]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I like how you, you know, you said having kids now, it makes it a little different, right? You feel it, you go through it. The majority of my career I worked with children and families. I did in home therapy, all of it trauma based. And thought I was really good at my job. I mean, I was good, but I became a mom and it shifted everything. And I was like, okay, this is not how you really do it in real life. And the trauma components, the trauma connection, just very like it just was on fire, just lit up. Oh, gosh, we really need, there's a missing piece here. So majority of my career was there and then I had my first child and some things shifted. Identity shifts Priorities shifted. Then Covid happened, and that made everything really wonky. And then went back to work and then had another kid. And that made everything even more stressful, even more overwhelming. And the connection of trauma and parenting became even more clear. So I started a different path. I started a private practice, and I've been. I still have my practice open, and most. Most of my client base are parents, specifically mothers, trying to break that generational trauma cycle. And then I started the coaching business and still navigating what that looks like. But it all. It very much is focused on the breaking generational cycles and all of the components that come to it. It's just an accumulation of what I've experienced professionally in my career, what I'm still seeing in clients that I'm working with, but also my own personal experience as well. So I'm trying to make it very. Not trying. I have made it very comprehensive.
- [03:29]
A
My kids are 20, 18, and 17, and I'm now reliving what I was at that age and what I was going through. And I find a lot of people may feel that way, but when you're stepping into saying, hey, I need to speak to somebody to help me and to give me the tools to help navigate this, what type of clients, like, what kind of moments do they have where they're like, okay, I need to speak to somebody else about helping me with this?
- [03:54]
B
Yeah, you know, not all of them, but there are a lot of. A lot of women who come to me and. And men, men included. I have men clients too. And it's very similar in terms of how it shows up, actually. But they don't come to me for trauma. They come to me because life is overwhelming. Like a very generic, broad life is overwhelming. And after first couple sessions and. And just knowing my, you know, having my background in my profession, it's almost always linked to trauma. It's just whether you acknowledge that or not or have the memory of it, because a lot of times it gets very repressed and it shows up in our behavioral. Right. But after a few sessions, I bring in the psychoeducational trauma, and I'm a nerd for psycho education. I love teaching about the neuroscience, how the brain's developed and how we respond. I love all of that. On can talk for a very long time about all of that, and then I see them go, oh, okay, I'm not crazy. There's a reason I'm feeling this way. There's a reason I'm behaving this way. That makes sense. And yes, we still Have a lot of healing to do and a lot of deep diving to do, I think. But that education alone or that I see, I. I'm seen and I'm not judged, man. It just, it. I feel like I'm. I'm a virtual therapist, but I feel like I can see it lifted off of their shoulders sometimes. And it's such a great feeling to
- [05:02]
A
have action of the dots of saying, oh, that's why I'm feeling this way, or that's why I'm reacting in these parenting situations. Maybe, you know, it's learned behavior that. That's how my mom reacted, and so that's how I'm reacting. And good, good for the clients who are taking that step in not just repeating the cycle, but saying, hey, this needs to change. And it. And we're going to be the first generation that changes this. So what actually happening when parents are, are actually losing their cool?
- [05:29]
B
Well, their nervous system is activated. So if we're coming at it from a trauma perspective, something has threatened, threatened them. And a lot of times it's connected to trauma without us really even noticing it. Because I think a lot of parents or people in general think of trauma as physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, things like that, which absolutely it is. It can be more subtle than that, though. It can be just passed down generationally about how we respond to certain things. How love was given. Is it that I had to be productive, I had to perform to be loved? It doesn't have to be like this overt abusive scenario. Emotional abuse, you know, impacts our brain development and impacts the way we survive certain moments and then we become adults. And it's like, I'm a perfectionist. That's just who I am. I like to make sure people are happy. That's just who I am. No, that's a survival mechanism and it's a trauma response. So. And I see parents who have, you know, their kids are having some sort of emotional reaction, a meltdown over whatever the case is, and then they're like, whoa, gosh, like I'm going to yell or I feel like hitting, or I'm having this big reaction. What's going on with me now that could be linked to, I was never allowed to respond like that because if I did, this is what would happen. Or I never did that because I always wanted to make sure mom and dad were happy. Why are you doing that? So I think those, that what we call triggers, those nervous system activation pieces don't have to be these very obvious moments or these very obvious threats. It could simply be a baby crying. It could be your child not listening. But when our brain observes it as a threat and we're not able to think logically about it because now our nervous system is kind of on fire, then we're going to respond from a place of. Of survival.
- [07:10]
A
Really important, because I know now my kids are adults or the older two are and the choices they make. I feel like sometimes I'm like, oh, my God, is this going to be a direct correlation to my parenting? It's having that inner reflection saying, okay, well, what are my family values and goals and do I want them ultimately to be happy? That has to align with sometimes generational comments. I would say in the South Asian community of what expectations should be, that's what breaking. Yeah, you're right that I'm just having aha moments myself. If you can see me, I'm like, oh, that's fine. But I. I want to be transparent that I'm. I have never parented kids this age, so I don't. I don't have a guidebook. And the way I was parented was much different given the family circumstances. That's why these conversations are really important to have so that you can align yourself and think about the things that you are doing and how you are responding. What are some early signs of kind of emotional dysregulation?
- [08:06]
B
I like to teach, like a scaling, right? I don't know. I don't know how many people in general, because this is the. Just the culture of how busy we live life. I don't think we actually notice that we are dysregulated until we're much higher on the scale. So if you think of a scale, like 1 to 10, you know, have. Where. Where's your threshold of okay, I'm. I'm neutral, I'm good. This is okay. I'm starting to get triggered. And then I'm so triggered, like, my skills won't work or I'm going to explode kind of a space. But it's different for everybody. It could be a physical pain. It could be, you know, my heart's racing, I'm feeling anxiety. Where is it showing up in my body? It could be a headache. It could be spiraling thoughts. It could shut down. Right. It could be the exact opposite of reacting with yelling. It could just be, I'm frozen. I can't exist anymore. Like, I can't speak anymore. When it gets that level, we've missed, like that cutoff. So I really like to teach those micro moments of check in Intentional throughout the day, where you're practicing your skills and doing a body scan, making sure your wellness needs, as basic as they are, are getting met when you're in that 0 to 5. Because if you're continuously checking in with yourself and practicing your skills. 30 seconds here and there. It doesn't have to be this big miraculous thing, continuously doing that check in. You're going to notice. But, yeah, I'm starting to rise now. We need to do more. If we're intentionally choosing to do different, then we need to actually take care of ourselves. Um, but we don't notice it until we're at that 7 or that 8. And then we're like, I just need a minute. I'm just trying to breathe. I need a space. Right. And we're freaking out because we've waited too long. And then we take it out on our children as. As if it's their fault and their tiny little developing brains and their big feelings. Right. We're the ones that need to model that and teach them. But a lot of times they get the blame because they're the ones creating. Creating this, you know, dysregulated environment, which is not what's really happening.
- [09:50]
A
I think as a mom, I probably took out my frustrations on my kids because XYZ was happening also in my life, and they were helpless in those situations because, you know, the other adult maybe I was upset with, I didn't have the ability to communicate that. This is what I'm gonna also add, sleep. If you're not sleep, like, that could be also something. You're not sleeping at night. And when you think about it, it's the 18 hours you're awake. You know, where is your mind going? How anxious are you feeling? And how that's going to affect your sleep and your ability to just be
- [10:22]
B
calm when you're not sleeping, it exacerbates all mental health symptoms.
- [10:26]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's with new moms. Right. They say it takes a village to raise children. And now we're kind of in this society of singular family life. And so support systems aren't there. And so that's why being aware of what that new mom is going through, she's also feeling hormonal changes too. Right. And is responsible for our whole human.
- [10:48]
B
And also even for those of us who do have villages, sometimes we have trouble asking for help, even though we really need it, and then we don't ask for help. And then we become resentful that we're doing it all ourselves. And it's this big cycle, right? And, and that, you know, it's always rooted somewhere. And I love being able, you know, unpeel those layers and help women understand, like, what's the reason for the behavior to begin with. And when they understand the reason for it, then we can make a change. And that's a pretty cool process too.
- [11:16]
A
Let's get into the brain, I guess, of when somebody's having a meltdown. And meltdowns can happen at any age. I've seen adults have meltdowns too. And so what's actually happening in the child's brain when there's an actual meltdown happening?
- [11:31]
B
So there's a difference between, in my opinion, between a tantrum and a meltdown. Right. So a tantrum is more of a behavioral thing and they may look similar. So that's why I want to distinguish the two. A tantrum might be like the kid wants the cookie and they're, you know, having a fit, whatever that looks like, because they're not getting the cookie. If you give them that cookie, they're gonna stop immediately. They're 100% in control of that behavior. The reason they're doing it is because they're not getting what they want. A meltdown is more so when we're having. When a child is having a big feeling and it becomes too overwhelming in their bodies to know what to do with it. I teach my children, my, I have a six and a three year old, so I teach my six year old these skills all the time. She's also still six, extremely empathetic and wise beyond her years, in my opinion. So I think sometimes it's hard for me to be like, well, you just use your skills like it's hard. She's still six, right? She's still six. Yeah, she's still six. Her brain is still six years old. Regardless of how, you know, how well she speaks. So what's happening for her is she's, she's triggered by something. Something is in her brain and the amygdala is saying, this is a threat, this is a threat. And it could be something as simple as she colored outside of the lines in a picture. She wanted to be perfect. It could be something simple like that. But her reaction, because it's a threat and it's not right, is big. So that amygdala we talked about, right, Our amygdala and our prefrontal cortex are the two things that we're really going to work with here. The prefrontal cortex would be the calm, logical response. I Can try again or let me figure out how to make this mistake better. But our amygdala gets that information a lot faster, about three seconds faster than our prefrontal cortex does. So the amygdala is our fear center. It's the fight or flight response. And that is what is activated when that threat, a baby crying, coloring outside of the lines, having a bad day at school and holding it together all day, and then coming home where it's safe. And I can have a feeling that's on fire, that. That's siren, it's lighting up. So the prefrontal cortex, logical, it's not aligning. So we as parents, we've worked all day, and now our kid is coming at us, having a meltdown. And, you know, then we have our re. And then it exacerbates from there. But ultimately, what that child needs is to say, you know, someone who's steady and calm, most likely quiet, because they're not logical. They can't hear what you're saying. Especially if it's coming out as a lecture. Especially if it's coming out as a. Just calm down, stop crying. There's nothing to cry about. Which I feel like is a very typical script that parents say. Because for us as parents, depending on how we were raised, it's hard for us to know what to do with that feeling because we didn't have. We couldn't have those feelings. Or maybe they were shamed or maybe they were punished, whatever the case was. Right? So there's so much happening in that moment. Ultimately, the brain and the body cannot calm down if that child is not feeling safe. So it's our job, regardless of our opinion of how they're reacting or what they're reacting about, it's our job as parents to co regulate, which means we have to regulate first to help them feel safe enough to regulate.
- [14:23]
A
I've heard somewhere, and I can't recall the exact year where your prefrontal cortex is fully. Because they say you shouldn't make life decisions until that has been fully developed. And now I understand why. I think it's mid-20s.
- [14:37]
B
26.
- [14:37]
A
26.
- [14:38]
B
26, yeah.
- [14:40]
A
Wow. Okay. And then, so if a child is going through this meltdown and your natural reaction is there's nothing to cry about or you're stressed out. What. How do you approach that situation?
- [14:52]
B
Quietly.
- [14:53]
A
Hmm.
- [14:53]
B
Very quietly. Um, this. And this is very, very hard. If you haven't done the inner work yet, you want to teach a lesson and you want to set the boundari and the expectations and you know, afterwards and, you know, and before that is like an ongoing. I'll get to that in a second. But that's an ongoing thing. But in that moment, the quieter you are, the more steady and present you are. So a lot of parents, especially when they're dysregulated, they move very swiftly through the house, or their, their footsteps are harder or they're slamming door, but those things create an unsafe environment. I mean, you know, when people are like, no, it's not an unsafe house, but emotionally unsafe, right? So there's a child having some big feelings. Maybe he's like, they're like, get away. I don't want you near me. Stay present in the room. And that's really hard sometimes when you're hearing what you're hearing, right? Stay present. Especially when they're younger, when they're teenagers, you know, sometimes that might be a different space. But if you. I say, like, I let my daughter, I say borrow my calm. I'm calm. I know you're having big feelings right now. Mommy's calm. And it's really hard because I'm really trying so hard to stay calm because I really want to react as well, because it's so hard to hear and it's so hard to feel her feelings at the same time. But I've done the wrong way multiple times. And I've also done the way that works best for our family. And each time when I'm calmer, and this is also. A lot of the clients have attempted this as well and feel the same way when I'm calmer and still and quiet and hold her. She likes to be held. My son is questionable sometimes in terms of, like, how to physically respond to him. It calms down the meltdown so much faster. It's still uncomfortable while it's happening, but it calms it down so much faster. And then you have a conversation when the prefrontal cortex is online. Now I can hear what's happening, what was going on. I was upset because I was thinking about X, Y and Z. That's why I was upset because I was really hungry. And you're like, are you really kidding me right now? Go get a granola bar. Right? And sometimes it's these, these minor things, but it's just the idea of being intentional about practicing your emotional regulation skills and doing those check ins when you know before you need it. So that way it works. It's the same thing with teaching your children how to communicate, with setting those boundaries and limitations. Hey, the next time this happens, what could we do. Let's practice it. You want to practice that in the calm because it will never work when it's on fire if we're not consistently practicing it and reinforcing it when things are calm.
- [17:15]
A
That's, that's really interesting because. So my kids played hockey growing up and one of the things every hockey manager told us is that whenever you have any complaints about the coaching or the game, you have to wait 24 hours before you send that email out. And the reason is, is so that your nervous system is back to being regulated versus sending off a nasty email in a heightened state. Wait the 24 hours and then have that calmness and maybe you'll look at the situation a little differently. I also added to that learning that, that any major life decision that I always wait 24 hours. Marketers hate me because I'm like, I can't decide on this. I need 24 hours before I sign this contract. They're like, what do you mean? I go, this is just, I need this. This is a rule I have for myself and my family. 24 hours. I come back to it and if the offer is not there, then it's not meant to be because I, I want to make sure I'm calm. Can kids self regulate without us?
- [18:14]
B
Only if we teach them. They don't come out of the womb knowing how to self soothe. And I mean babies develop things to self soothe. Some of them do anyway. But ultimately children, they live, learn. There was always this old poem, my mom, I don't even know, it's an old newspaper. I can't, I have to ask her where it came from. But it was a, a poem or written thing that said children live what they learn. And it is so just, it's very true because they observe an environment, they absorb what's happening and they live that even if it's. We can lecture and teach with our words all we want, but if we're not showing, then it won't happen.
- [18:46]
A
Emotional regulation, I think that is one thing. The school system I feel has had more intent. And the reason being is I remember going into one of my kids classes and they had a chart of how you're feeling and it was like green, yellow and red and the teacher saying, oh, are you feeling yellow right now? Okay, so what do we need to do to regulate ourselves? That chart needs to be with us on our home screen.
- [19:08]
B
I don't care how old you are. That is, that is something. Those check ins are so important. And that's, I think I shared with you like, let's think of a traffic light. That's the same thing. That threshold, okay, that orange space, that yellow light is our, that's our threshold. So let's make sure we stay below it. But yeah, that's awesome. I think that needs to be. I think you're right that it's bringing. It's coming into schools a lot more. I still don't think it's enough though. I think it needs to be. I, you know, IQ versus eq, I know which one I prefer. I mean, they're both great, but if you are so dysregulated and struggle with your own feelings so much, your IQ doesn't make a difference at that point.
- [19:47]
A
We'll defend the parents. I'm born in 1979. We were not taught any of these tools. And any of this information is just based on either your environment or your self discovery and your own wanting to learn and be better and showing up. One of the common things I get from parents about therapy when I say, hey, you know, you should go to therapy, you know, or I can't help you with this information, people find, they trust me with a lot of personal details for some reason, which is great. I'm offering that safe space, but I also don't have the tools to help you. And so I really encourage therapy because it gives you that safe space to take a deeper dive. And one of the things is, while, you know, everybody's talking about mental health, it wasn't a thing back in our day. And I'm like, yeah, but how many people in our generation struggle? They still struggle. People who aren't mentally helping themselves, they can fall through the cracks and go through that because that generational regulation or deregulation that still exists, whether or not you use the tools to get through it. And if you're listening to today's podcast, you are taking the first step and being more aware. Because at the end of the day, I feel as parents, we just want to be the best parents. And sometimes that takes doing the inner work yourself, which can be very hard. But you know what? You got to do it. You got to do it.
- [21:02]
B
I do trauma work. People like, I don't want to. It's going to bring up too much. It's going to hurt. I don't want to do this. I share something that I would share with, with children when I was doing trauma work with them is the idea of, let's pretend you're riding on your bike. Mom and dad said, don't go out, don't Ride your b. You need to stay home. You went out anyway, right? And you get in a bad accident. You get a gnarly, like, gash on your leg. So you have some options. First option, you go home. You tell mom and dad. They're mad that you went out. You get that lecture. You have to go to the hospital. They clean it. It hurts. Ouch. This sucks, right? Mom and dad are still mad. They stitch it. You know, you go through the whole healing process. Ultimately, it hurts. I don't like it. Right? So on and so forth. And then like, a week later, it's itching, it's uncomfortable, but it's not as bad. And then you get your stitches out, and then you look down and you're like, oh, yeah, I remember that day. But you no longer feel the pain. You don't do anything about it. Your leg gets amputated, right? We go from zero to a hundred pretty quickly. Um, but I like using that metaphor. I think adults get that a little bit more than children do, to be honest, because it's going to hurt worse and be more uncomfortable before it gets better. However, it's a very short period of time that that peeing process may show up. For some people, it doesn't show up at all, to be honest. If you. If you get the right trauma therapist. I think I've had very, very minimal clients give me feedback of, like, this is this. You know, this was a very unbearable place. It's always been a healing place. Slightly uncomfortable, but always a healing outcome. But I think it's just that stigma or that fear, the anticipatory anxiety of what happens if I actually talk about this. But people get so surprised afterwards. They say things. I was like, well, how'd you feel saying that? They're like, you can feel them. You could see them breathing. You're like, that was actually really nice where they came in scared to death.
- [22:44]
A
I used to watch Growing Pains growing up, and Dr. Seaver, he put you on the leather couch, and you sat there and you talked, and he was too busy trying to figure out what was for dinner. So you're like, oh, is that what therapy is? But I think also modeling to your children that speaking to a professional is a good idea. And they're. And normalizing that and saying, well, I'm going through therapy right now. I'm trying my best, and I'm trying to show up better. I think kids also have a capacity of compassion. And if. If you're real with them, especially as they're older and saying, hey, this Is my first time doing this too. I don't know all the right answers, but I'm trying my best. I think kids kind of see that and go, okay, well, at least they're putting an effort in and continuing the conversation. So what's the concept of reparenting?
- [23:26]
B
That can be a little different for everybody. But the idea is, and I'll give you just kind of like an example of an exercise that I've given a client, think of a childhood version of you that has been through her. Whatever your trauma is, whatever your hurt is, find a picture of, let's say you're six. Find a picture of six year old. You put that picture on the fridge, put it somewhere where you see it often. And as you want to react to your child, your child is having some big feelings, not listening. Whatever the case is, before you respond, look at your 6 year old self and respond in the same way to your child, that six year old you needed to be responded to. And that's going to be a shift.
- [24:02]
A
That's so powerful. Wow.
- [24:04]
B
Yeah.
- [24:04]
A
Yeah. You know, I always end the conversation with what's one piece of advice? I'm gonna say print out a picture of yourself at whatever age your kids are and have it on the fridge and see what response in those moments. Because you're right, we can have all these tools and knowledge and ability and oh, Cam, you know, I went to therapy and I was told X, Y, Z. But having that visual representation of yourself and how you wanted somebody to show up for you, that is so, so powerful. So if you're, listen, I think that is such a worthwhile activity to do. It's gonna take you five minutes from your phone. Even if it's a picture of a picture, you know, print that out and put it on your fridge or wherever these meltdowns happen in your family, print it out. And that really will give you a moment of reflection too. And what you needed at that time versus what you got. Because that's what, as we as parents do, is we just repeat what we got. But what did we actually need? That's why I'm a firm believer of having moments of talking to therapists, whatever it is, to heal yourself and heal your relationship. Wow, that was so powerful. I'm getting emotional, Amy. You know, there's. I've had quite a few aha moments and that's why I enjoyed these conversations because I think the big takeaway for me is also learning what trauma is. We all. I know I've automatically associated it with physical trauma or sexual trauma or whatever that is. But trauma can also be emotional and it could be very heavy hitting and overbearing. I just want to thank everybody for listening today. Amy, thank you so much for being on today's episode of Her Energy Unlocked. If people want to find you and continue the conversation, what is the best way to get ahold of you?
- [25:40]
B
My website is very easy. It's amyhadak Coaching. Com. It's a pretty simple website to navigate. There's a contact page, there's free discovery calls, free cycle breaker calls. Call them whatever you want, right? It's a free zoom call just to chat. It can sound very similar to this. It can go a little bit deeper, whatever it is that they need. But I do offer those free calls throughout the month. But there's a tab that says Coaching Calls. That's the best way to get a hold of me.
- [26:05]
A
And I will put all of Amy's information in the show notes. Just remember, parenting will never be perfect, but it will always be an opportunity to grow. Today's conversation with Amy reminds us that the hard moments aren't signs of failure. They're invitations to understand ourselves and our kids on a deeper level. If something in this episode gave you relief, clarity, or even just one tiny shift, hold onto it. Those small shifts add up to a completely different way of parenting and thinking. Thank you for being a parent who cares enough to learn and try again. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you subscribe and continue the conversation over on Instagram or TikTok at her energy Unlocked podcast. I cannot wait to hear from you, Amy. Thank you so much for this amazing and powerful conversation. I am leaving with so many ideas and just things I need to unlock now and journal and process and talk and share with my own kids. So until next time, remember, your energy is yours to reclaim, your story is yours to rewrite, and your next chapter is waiting and I will see you in the next next episode. Bye for now.