Power Struggle Behaviors

Children with birth trauma or conception trauma are often hyper sensitive and engage in power struggles. They pull you into the “Power Fear Triangle.” The key is understanding the origins of this power struggle, helping them to regulate sensations, and getting off the power fear triangle.

We go from Victim to Persecutor to Rescuer and it goes round and round. This stable emotional drama will not give up. Learn the skills to disengage and reframe emotions in order to “get off the triangle!”

I am confident you are a good enough parent. But, children with birth trauma or conception trauma can engage in constant power triangles with themselves and with you. They can refuse to enjoy life, be controlling, anxious, hyper-sensitive, or exhausting to be around. Their experience of birth was loaded with danger and they don’t “know” it. Nothing soothes that sense of danger without professional intervention. When their stress increases, these children act out.

Does your child…

• Push you away
• Try to control you or others
• Have unusual demands or sensitivities
• Ignore your limits
• Need your attention all the time

What’s really going on in Difficult Child Behavior?

The Hidden Story Behind Difficult Behavior is often the story of Birth Trauma

Children with Birth Trauma fear no one will protect them, or hear them, just like at their birth

Birth Trauma influences Behavior

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Children create power struggles in an attempt to be more powerful than what they fear, or to repeat their birth story. Children with Birth Trauma fear no one will protect them or listen to them, just like at their birth. If your child was taken away from your protective arms, induced, conceived in-vitro, born c-section, rescued by suction, or experienced pain medications given to mother at birth, they will have an internalized fear and reactive behavior. They will act out this story in play and social settings.

They are testing you to see if you are strong enough to help them, but it is a test that never ends.

Children re-create this power struggle until you can help them release the fear and shock held in their primitive brain or cellular memory. Birth and stressful conception experiences imprint an infant’s cells and brain. Infants remember and carry this fear into childhood until it is addressed.

. . .

Children are trying to tell their story, do you know how to listen?

A child can engage in “sneaky power.” This manipulative and secretive need for power looks like “bad behavior” which brings negative attention from parents. This creates the power fear triangle, and reinforces negative identity beliefs established at birth. Beliefs such as “I’m unsafe, unloveable, or need to control others in order to be safe” appear in children with birth or post-birth trauma.

We Can Help Children and Their Parents

As a parent, here are four things you can do to get off the power fear triangle:

1. When upset, stop in your tracks and breathe
2. Know that their behavior is a test and don’t take it personally
3. Slow down your thought process and re-orient to your own body, thoughts, and immediate surroundings
4. Learn to identify and get off the “Power Fear Triangle” in a controlled supportive environment

Getting off the Power Fear Triangle

In our practice we’ve rescued families and had success in reducing drama, getting to the roots of distress, and changing behavior. Our treatment methods include:

1. Identifying destructive beliefs
2. Bringing your child’s deep-seated fears to the surface: “ I am unloveable, unsafe, you will leave me, I must protect myself, and control others”
3. Helping your child’s brain regulate sensation and respond normally
4. Helping your child feel safe and powerful in their body
5. Finding the strengths hidden within difficult behaviors
6. Identifying sneaky fear-based power and turning it into useful power
7. Acknowledge your child’s emotions and link those emotions to their early fear and need for protection.

We do this protocol in a structured environment that develops the special skills you need as the parent of an adopted child.

Commitment of at least 3 sessions; evaluated as progess is assessed.

• At least one parent must attend every session
• One hour skype or phone progress evaluation (every 2 months)
• Parents must send 1 simple email progress note between sessions
• Parents must be open to feedback and supportive suggestions
• Parents must read educational materials provided around shock and trauma