3. Refocus: What is within my control?
☐ My attitude and effort
☐ How I speak to myself
☐ My actions today
☐ Whether I say yes or no to something
☐ The support I reach out for
☐ How I care for and look after myself
☐ Other: _______________________
4. One small step I will take today to help improve my mood:
This worksheet is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy principles. It can help reduce overwhelm by focusing your energy on what you can actually control, influence, or let go of.
You’re most likely overwhelmed, exhausted and carrying the invisible weight of how you were parented. And if you’re reading this, it most likely means that you want to be different for your children, and that’s where real change begins.
This is your gentle reminder: shouting is not a moral failing. It’s a signal from your nervous system saying, “I’m at capacity.”
Why You Shout (Even When You Don’t Want To)
Your nervous system goes into fight-or-flight mode. You’re not choosing to shout – most likely, you’re reacting.
Your brain shifts into survival mode, away from reasoning and connection (emotional rather than rational).
You may be repeating patterns modelled to you by your parents.
Reflection Prompt: What do I remember about how adults responded when I was loud, upset or angry?
Your Child Isn’t “Pushing Your Buttons”
Your child isn’t being difficult to annoy you. They behave like a child – they are a child – learning, testing and feeling.
Your children show you where your buttons are so you can begin healing them.
Reflection Prompt:
I will list all the behaviours that make me feel like I’m about to lose my cool. I will name them and then notice what they stir inside me. What exposed nerve are they prodding?
Build a “Press Pause Plan”
Build a plan that helps you stay regulated even (or especially) when your child isn’t.
Ideas for a “Press Pause Plan”:
“I feel angry. I need to press pause.”
Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4, exhale for 4 (Box Breathing)
Clench then release your fists – notice the tension release
Say: “I’m the adult. I can handle this.”
Step into the next room briefly, if safe to do so
Print your plan. Keep it accessible. Practice when you’re not activated.
Regulate Before You Educate
No one learns during a shouting match – not your child or you.
If your child is disregulated, they need co-regulation, not correction.
Discipline lands best when both of you are calm.
You don’t have to fix anything in the heat of the moment – come back to it later with clarity and kindness.
Scripts to Practise
Instead of:“Why do you always act like this?!” Try:“I’m feeling overwhelmed. I need a second.”
Instead of:“Right! That’s it. I’ve had enough!” Try:“This is hard right now. Let’s figure it out together.”
These shifts help you move from control to connection.
It’s Never Too Late to Change
The best parenting moment isn’t when you get it right. It’s when you repair.
I do not condone shouting at children. Research shows that repeated exposure to shouting can be psychologically damaging and may impact a child’s sense of safety, self-worth and emotional development. That said, no parent is perfect. Shouting does not make you a bad parent, but what matters most is your willingness to reflect on it, to repair and to change. You can interrupt the cycle – starting now – and build a calmer, more connected relationship with your child.
Remember: your home will be quiet and tidy quicker than you realise. Parenting is challenging and complex. Please talk to someone if you’re finding it difficult to keep cool. I know other parents will affirm whatever you feel. Learn how to remain calm, focused and in control of your reactions – it can be done.
Parents: Calm-Down Plan
Calm-Down: Plan for Parents Worksheet
This printable worksheet supports parents who want to reduce shouting and respond calmly to their children even during difficult moments.
Step 1: Know Your Triggers
What behaviours or situations usually push your buttons?
Defiance
Tantrums
Repetition (asking the same thing repeatedly)
Whining
Mess / chaos
Public behaviour
Other: ________________________
Step 2: Recognise What You Feel
Before you react, can you name what’s happening inside you? What do feel?
Frustration
Embarrassment
Powerlessness
Guilt
Tension
Anger
Overwhelm
Other: ________________________
Step 3: Press Pause
When you’re close to snapping, give yourself a moment – a micro-pause – to remember:
This moment will pass.
My child is learning. Learning from me.
I am shaping our future relationship.
My child won’t stay small forever. One day, they’ll remember how I responded to their hardest moments.
I am doing my best – I am in control of this.
Pause Thought Prompts:
“What do I want them to remember about me in this moment?”
“Is this an emergency or just uncomfortable?”
“How can I bring calm instead of chaos?”
Step 4: Choose a Calming Strategy
Pick one or two to practise when tension rises:
Box Breathing (In 4, hold 4, out 4, hold 4)
5-4-3-2-1 Grounding: Name 5 things you see, 4 feel, 3 hear, 2 smell, 1 taste
Hand on Heart: Say “I’m here. I can do this.”
Step outside or change rooms for 60 seconds
Splash cool water on face or wrists.
Hum or sigh on your exhale on the longest exhale you can give
Shake out hands or sway side to side
Use a grounding phrase:
“I can handle this.”
“I’m an adult.
Write your own calming phrase: ______________________
_____________________________
Step 5: Plan What to Say Instead of Shouting
Create one or two go-to sentences that can help you stay regulated:
“I’m feeling overwhelmed. I need to press pause.”
“This is difficult. Let’s try again together.”
Your own suggestion: _____________________________
Step 6: After the Moment Has Passed
Use this space to reflect:
What worked well? _______________________________________
What might I do differently next time? __________________________
This isn’t about being a perfect parent (because they don’t exist)! This is about being present and practising a new way, over and over. I believe that you’ll get there! (eventually) You are not failing. You are learning.
The cycle of anxiety often follows this loop: Trigger → Unhelpful Thought → Physical Sensation → Behaviour → Short-Term Relief → Reinforcement
1. What was the trigger? (What started the anxiety?)
________________________________________
2. What thought(s) went through my mind?
________________________________________
________________________________________
3. What did I feel in my body?
Heart racing
Shaky
Sweating
Tight chest / clenched jaw
Stomach upset
Other: ____________
4. What did I do to cope? (Behaviour)
Avoided the situation
Sought reassurance
Overprepared
Distracted myself
Cancelled plans
Other: ____________
5. What was the outcome?
________________________________________
6. Where could I break the cycle next time?
________________________________________
________________________________________
This worksheet is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) principles that help individuals understand and interrupt unhelpful patterns linked to anxiety.
This tool is based on evidence from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which helps people notice and respond to the links between thoughts, emotions and behaviours.
Self-Soothing Toolkit: Calm Yourself When Life Feels Too Much
1. What Helps Me Feel Calm When I’m Upset?
Soft textures (blankets, jumpers, etc.)
Warm tea or a hot water bottle
Nature sounds or calming music
Smelling something grounding (lavender, citrus)
Hugging a pet
Writing or doodling
Breathing exercises
Going outside
Telling someone how I feel
2. Which Senses Help Me Most?
Sight (lighting, colours, visual calm)
Touch (pressure, movement, softness)
Sound (music, quiet, white noise)
Smell (oils, candles, natural scents)
Taste (tea, chewing gum, something grounding)
3. My Personal Soothing List
________________________________________
________________________________________
________________________________________
4. Emergency Toolkit – For Tough Days
I can remind myself: ____________________________
I can do this calming action: ______________________
I can call or message: ___________________________
I will NOT: ____________________________________
“The goal is not to avoid feeling overwhelmed but to notice, press pause and care for yourself in a kind and gentle way.”
Understanding Attachment Styles: A Key to Self-Discovery (2)
Google has made access to information astonishingly easy. While not all of the information is accurate or from reputable sources, it’s evident that we live in a world with knowledge at our fingertips – literally. In my experience, there’s recently been a surge of interest in attachment styles and how they shape romantic relationships. It’s tempting to trace everything back to our parents and assign blame for who we are today. However, at some point, we must take responsibility for our own growth, learning how to understand and manage our reactions.
Attachment styles are a cornerstone of psychology, offering valuable insights into how we connect and relate to others. Rooted in early childhood experiences with our caregivers, these patterns shape our adult relationships, influencing how we approach intimacy, handle conflict, and express our wants/needs/desires.
Understanding our attachment style can be a transformative step towards greater self-awareness and personal growth.
What Are Attachment Styles?
Pioneered by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, attachment theory identifies four primary attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant. These styles are shaped by the responsiveness and consistency of caregiving in childhood. Click on the links to read more about the four attachment styles.
Anxious Attachment: Inconsistent caregiving can lead to this style, where adults crave closeness but fear rejection, often resulting in insecurity or over-dependence.
Avoidant Attachment: Emotionally distant caregiving may foster this style, where individuals value independence but struggle with vulnerability and trust.
Fearful-Avoidant Attachment: Often linked to trauma or neglect, this style combines anxious and avoidant traits. Adults with this style may desire connection yet fear intimacy, creating a push-pull relationship dynamic.
Secure Attachment: This develops from reliable and loving caregiving. Adults with this style often trust easily, communicate openly and balance intimacy with independence.
Why Understanding Attachment Styles Matters
Our attachment style significantly shapes our emotions, behaviours and dynamics within our relationships. Recognising the influence of attachment can lead to profound changes in how we relate to others and ourselves.
Cultivate Self-Awareness: Understand how our past experiences influence our current relationships.
Improve Communication: Learn to identify and express our needs clearly and explicitly.
Develop Healthier Relationships: Address limiting behaviours and build trust.
Foster Personal Growth: Break cycles of insecurity or avoidance that hold us back.
Even small insights can make a difference to us and our relationships. For instance, understanding the spotlight effect, which is the tendency to overestimate how much others notice or judge our actions, can help alleviate insecurities tied to attachment anxiety. There’s a post about the spotlight effect here.
Can Attachment Styles Change?
The lovely news is that attachment styles are not fixed. We can move towards a secure attachment style with effort, intention, and the right tools. We are not cast in stone. It won’t happen overnight, but change is possible. Therapy is one of the most effective pathways for unpacking unresolved emotions and building healthier relational patterns. Mindfulness practices, such as meditation and journaling, can enhance emotional regulation, helping to manage our responses in challenging situations. Building secure connections with supportive, trustworthy people can provide a model for healthier relationships. Regular self-reflection is also essential – examining our relational behaviours and beliefs allows us to identify what needs to change. However, insight alone isn’t enough; action is key. Awareness without effort is a missed opportunity for growth.
Practical Tips for Moving Toward Secure Attachment
Self-awareness and consistent effort can guide you toward healthier connections. Reflect on how your early experiences influenced your relationships today. Practice open and honest communication with loved ones, challenging negative thought patterns and replacing them with balanced perspectives. Learn to set and respect boundaries, ensuring that your and others’ needs are harmonised. Seek professional guidance if unresolved trauma or recurring issues continue to affect your relationships.
Surround yourself with emotionally available and supportive individuals who model the connections you want to foster. Finally, prioritise self-care to maintain emotional stability—including activities like regular exercise, adequate sleep, or hobbies that bring you joy and peace.
No Labels, Just Awareness!
Understanding your attachment style is not about labelling yourself or labelling others. It’s about recognising patterns and taking actionable steps toward forming healthier connections. With awareness and intention, you can transform how you relate to others and, more importantly, how you relate to yourself.
Further Reading
For those keen to explore further into attachment styles, here are some resources to explore:
Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
The Attachment Theory Workbook by Annie Chen
Hold Me Tight by Dr Sue Johnson
Becoming Attached by Robert Karen
Each offers tools and insights for understanding attachment and fostering personal growth.
For more on related topics, check out the blog post here.
Take the First Step Today
You may reflect on your attachment style and consider how it has shaped your current and past connections and relationships. Personal growth and introspection is a lifelong journey. Every little step towards self-knowledge counts as progress in life. By embracing your awareness of self, introspection and taking intentional actions, you can create (and improve) relationships so they are healthier, more fulfilling, and grounded in trust and connection.
www.carolinecrotty.ie
Attachment Intro
Attachment Intro (1)
As many know, I work with adolescents and adults, offering in-person and online therapy (I prefer to work online only with adults). My work fills me with a profound sense of purpose and gratitude. I am fortunate to have a career that brings me joy instead of the Sunday night dread many describe. I’ll always be indebted to my friend JQ, who encouraged me to pursue the counselling and psychotherapy course that led me here.
My work is a privilege. Each day, I am invited into people’s inner worlds as they navigate challenges, uncover strengths, and make sense of their lives. However, I never claim to be an expert on anyone else’s life – or an expert in any sense. I’m not a medic or a guru. My role is to listen, ask reasoned questions and help people untangle the complexities of their minds and experiences. In truth, I learn as much from my clients as they (hopefully) learn from me. Each session offers new insights – sometimes factual, other times fascinating.
Family Dynamics and Their Impact
Family dynamics frequently emerge as a central theme in therapy. Many of my clients have experienced adoption, foster care, or the ripple effects of intergenerational trauma. Others grapple with strained or unconventional family relationships that profoundly shape their emotional responses and worldviews. While family connections can be messy and challenging, they also hold immense potential for healing and growth. When repairing family ties isn’t possible, forming new, meaningful bonds with friends can provide the same sense of support and connection.
A Growing Interest in Attachment Styles
Recently, many of my clients have shown a keen interest in attachment styles. They’ve explored online resources to better understand their relationships and how childhood experiences have shaped their approaches to intimacy, trust and conflict. Some feel stuck in patterns of pursuing closeness while simultaneously pushing partners away, a dynamic that can leave them feeling confused and frustrated, which is why they end up in a room with me – to try to make sense of it all.
Relationships, while deeply rewarding, can be complex and sometimes overwhelming. For individuals who haven’t experienced consistent love or reassurance during childhood, forming healthy attachments as an adult can feel daunting. There are various attachment types. This is not a new discovery and has been exmined by John Bowlby in the 1950s and Mary Ainsworth built on Bowlby’s theories with the “Strange Situation” experiments conducted in the 1970s. Mary Main and others in the 1980s further refined attachment theory by introducing disorganised attachment, expanding its application to include adult attachment and the intergenerational transmission of attachment styles. So, there is much to know. It’s not exactly new, but as humans, we like to know the ‘why’!
I’ve written about four attachment styles in general here. This is where therapy provides a safe and objective space to explore these patterns, improve communication, and work toward meaningful change.
Understanding Attachment Styles
Attachment styles provide a framework for understanding our relational patterns. Secure attachment, often seen as the ideal, is characterised by honesty, emotional closeness, and balanced interdependence.
Secure attachment is formed in early childhood through consistent, emotionally available caregiving. When caregivers respond reliably to a child’s needs, provide comfort, and encourage exploration, the child develops a sense of safety and trust. This foundation fosters emotional regulation, resilience and the ability to form healthy, balanced relationships later in life. Secure attachment emerges from predictable, supportive interactions that teach the child they are valued and their needs will be met. Individuals with secure attachment thrive in relationships while maintaining independence. They regulate emotions effectively, sustain self-confidence and support their partners’ growth. It’s no wonder so many aspire to cultivate this style.
Fearful-avoidant attachment often stems from early experiences of trauma, abuse, or neglect, where caregivers are both a source of comfort and fear. This creates an internal conflict about seeking connection. Without consistent emotional safety, the child grows up with patterns of fear, mistrust, and push-pull dynamics in relationships.
In adulthood, this attachment style is paradoxical. People crave intimacy but simultaneously fear and distrust it, creating cycles of closeness and withdrawal: “I need you… Now you’re too much… I need space… Wait, I want you again.” These cycles make it challenging to establish stability and trust in relationships.
Anxious attachment often begins in childhood when caregiving is inconsistent. A child may experience love and attention at times but be ignored or dismissed at other times. This unpredictability fosters insecurity, making the child hyperaware of relationships and deeply fearful of abandonment – a pattern that often persists into adulthood.
Adults with anxious attachment frequently fear rejection and seek constant reassurance. They may struggle with self-worth and rely on their partners for validation, often becoming preoccupied with their partner’s emotions or behaviours. This hypervigilance can create cycles of insecurity and strain in relationships, even though their deep capacity for connection is a strength.
Avoidant Attachment: The Struggle with Vulnerability
Avoidant attachment can develop when caregivers are emotionally distant or dismissive. Children suppress their emotions and build self-reliance to protect themselves from rejection or unmet needs. This pattern often translates into an aversion to vulnerability in adulthood. Adults with avoidant attachment strongly emphasise independence, often at the expense of emotional intimacy. While they may desire connection, their fear of dependence or being hurt leads them to create emotional distance. This self-protective behaviour can leave partners feeling neglected or unloved, even when care exists.
The Path to Change
While attachment styles often originate in childhood, they are not fixed. Individuals can move toward a secure attachment style with awareness, effort, and support. Therapy offers a safe environment to explore and challenge these patterns, helping people navigate relationships with greater confidence and emotional resilience.
www.carolinecrotty.ie
Conflict Resolution
How to Prevent Arguments at Home: Practical Tips for Calmer Conversations
Arguments at home can be draining and unproductive. Learn practical ways to prevent conflict, improve communication, and build understanding with loved ones.
Tips on what to do (particularly in our homes) to avoid arguments
While we are in contact with others, we will have differences of opinion. We might simply want to explain our point of view but sometimes those conversations, where we voice our opinions, turn into disagreements which can then progress into arguments. Arguments are often laden with personal insults, raised voices and verbal attacks and, instead of sorting out a difficulty, arguments add to it.
People ask how to move past or get over arguments and, in my experience, it would be best if we never argued because neither party feels good after an argument.
It is a fact of life that we will disagree with others at certain points in our lives but how we air that disagreement is key. There is no need for a verbal assault when we do not agree with someone especially about simple things like what to have for dinner or what programme to watch on tv. In fact there is never any need for a verbal assault.
When disagreements lead to conflict, it is time to examine how to improve our communication skills. Do not get caught up in the heat of the moment, remain calm and relaxed because your thinking will remain clear. If a discussion is beginning to turn into an argument, do not let it become personal.
Keep blame out of the conversation by learning to use “I Statements” which have a profoundly positive impact on all our communication because they instantly remove blame (or verbal finger pointing).
The I Statement format is “I feel X when Y because Z”.
Instead of saying “You drive me crazy because you never listen to me or what I am trying to tell you”, try “I feel frustrated when I am not heard because what I have to say is important to me.”
“You never clean up after yourself and I’ve spent the day tidying. You never lift a finger, you are so inconsiderate.” or “I feel disappointed there’s dirty ware in the sink because I spent a long time tidying and I am delighted when I have help in the kitchen” – see the difference? You are changing from accusatory to making a statement about how you feel about the situation.
If you think your conversation is getting emotional or heated, simply take time out. It is vital to explain, ahead of time, that the new course of action in your household is that you are removing yourself until you are relaxed. Explain that you are not ignoring the topic or the person because silence can be abusive. Later that day or when the time is right, sort out the difficulty and resolve differences of opinion through conversation. You can explain rather than express (rather than bang doors or go silent, simply chat).
Another point worthy of note is when we are desperately trying to get our point or opinion across, we actually forget to listen and hear what is being said. Before you respond to someone, you could try restating what has been said using your own words. This is called ‘reflective listening’ and is regularly used in therapy to demonstrate what a person is saying is being heard. Reflect back what you are hearing and then calmly share your opinion. When you use this technique, you and your family member will each reflect ideas, back and forth and you will feel understood and heard, even if you disagree.
Finding common ground and a resolution is important. We know disagreements take place and if you cannot agree, try to work towards finding the best resolution for you both – it is not enough to say – “…because I said so” instead ask “how can we compromise on this?”
Ask yourself whether any type of argument is really worth the hassle? It takes two to argue but only one to stop. Remember to always ask yourself “Will this matter in five years’ time?”
Ask yourself if you are trying to prove or demonstrate that you are right about something. If you are right, then invariably, someone else is wrong. Why is it important to you to prove that someone else wrong? Find a way to let it go.
Need support with relationship communication? I offer one-to-one therapy sessions in Cork and online. If you’d like help navigating conflict, managing anxiety, or improving communication at home, feel free to contact me:
