Fear & Control

May 8, 2023

by Matt Lantz

Sometimes parenting just seems so freaking hard. It is not for the faint of heart. And parenting kids from hard places is definitely not for the faint of heart. I am thankful for other voices to help speak and mentor into these hard places, because on our own we would be lost. One of the best professional trainings I ever attended was a week in Texas with the late Karyn Purvis, learning TBRI (trust based relational intervention). The essence of the training is that “relationship based trauma can only be healed through relationships.” Essentially, when we have been hurt in the context of relationships, we need relationships to heal us again, to help us trust the world, and to rewire our brains toward healing. I have since devoted much of my clinical work toward helping families post-adoption, or in the midst of fostering to implement TBRI because I believe in its healing work to the core of my being.

After fostering for a year previously, and now bringing home our adopted child for 6 months, I will flat out tell you, as with many things in life, this is much harder to live out to than to teach. My mind immediately moves to fear so much of the time, as does the mind of my beautiful adopted daughter.

I wonder what if she keeps having such attention seeking behavior? What if all hell breaks loose once she is in middle school? What if everyone is always walking on eggshells? Will I ever be able to correct her without her flipping out? What about when the iphone comes into play? Snapchat? Boys?

Matt with daughter Estephanie Matt with daughter Estephanie

As soon as fear creeps in for me, my immediate response is control. Much of my life has operated on this paradigm really– the more anxiety I have, the more I try to control my world around me. It actually seems to work quite well, until it doesn’t…

I would often find myself getting internally frustrated with families I was working with when they would talk about all the ways they would try to control their kids, or when they would talk about just reverting to “old school ways of parenting,” because TBRI was just too hard or just not working. Yet, I get it. I want to be patient, loving and kind, but also want to assert my dominance as their dad (spoiler alert: it does not work well with kids who have trauma, or really any kids for that matter).

I have tried to live by the quote from Abraham Lincoln, “force is all conquering, yet short lived.” We can try to force the people we love to mold themselves into our hopes and expectations for them. To conform them to acting into the ways we desire. Yet, at the end of the day, so many of us need to work through our own demons and struggles at our own pace. If we are fortunate, we will have someone who loves us unconditionally along the way, and to help us learn we can slowly begin to trust those people who have deemed themselves trustworthy.

This is harder work than I even imagined, and will likely only get harder. I still believe it’s worth every second of it. As trauma expert Bruce Perry says, “Trauma changes the framework of how we see the world.” Of course, we all encounter different levels of trauma; none get out of this life unscathed from some level of trauma. So, whether you are in the midst of ongoing trauma right now, healing from trauma, or caring for others who have gone through trauma, know that you are not alone. Know that God sees you, will carry you through, and that further levels of shalom and wholeness in your heart, and family, are always possible.

Psalm 107:9 “For He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things.”