Why You Feel So Powerless

This episode is an oldie, but a goodie. We explore how hard it is to remove our identity from the actions and behaviors of our children, how it isn't a reflection of our parenting and how we can give away our power to the opinions of others. I invite you to look within yourself and ask some uncomfortable questions to find a place of acceptance and relief. 

**In an effort to honor my personal needs and the needs of my family, I am re-airing an episode I recorded a few years ago. You know, sometimes life just demands more of us and I want to honor that and not over burden myself.**

Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
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Website: https://www.kararyska.com/

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Transcript

You are listening to the Special Needs Mom podcast. This is Kara, your host, and I am so glad you're here. Before we get into this episode, I want you to know that Pathway to Peace, which is a group coaching program, is currently available to join. This program is built on three main pillars. 

First, coaching. It's a real powerhouse. It's what I do. It's what I love. Second, community. And if you've been around for a little bit more than a minute, you know how I feel about community and the power that it has to heal and change your life. And lastly, I have a library of content filled with resources, with modules, with lessons. We go way deeper than I can go in on the podcast. And these are available to you in a way that you can consume them in your busy life. 

This program would be a good fit for you if you've stabilized past the point of initial diagnosis and find yourself spinning a little bit more than you'd like to and overwhelmed. And you can't imagine how, given all the things in your life, you can have any sort of peace ever again. Through the program, you will gain the gift of acceptance. You will do the work to recover your spark. You'll leave the program with the tools and the confidence that you have what you need to have joy and peace part of your life once again. 

So it's time to change it up. I know you've been saying yes to everybody, especially serving with all your heart and everything you have to your child. Now it's time to say yes to you. Find the link in the show notes to get more information and for next steps. 

Hi, I'm Kara Ryska, life coach, wife, and the mother of four incredible and unique kids. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I completely lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible, and the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. Fast forward past many years of surviving and not at all thriving, and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and grace that once felt so completely lacking. 

I started the Special Needs Mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves up against what feels impossible. My intention is to spark the flair of possibility in your own lives and rekindle the dreams that you hold impossible now. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you're a mom who feels anxious, alone, or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome. Hello, and welcome to the Special Needs Mom Podcast. 

Some of you might be enjoying summer already, or not enjoying summer already. Some of you might still be in school, which is our situation. We generally get out a little later than most people around us, which has some pros and some cons. But today I want to give you a quick little life update and then talk to you a little bit about the episode today. 

So first off, as I reflected and kind of prepared for this episode, I was like, you know what? There's a lot of good going on. There's a lot of stability. And yet also, like it's a very busy time of year. At the time I'm recording this, it's the end of May. It's my daughter's birthday. You know, all the school things are happening. And you know, I'm really feeling the impact of having four kids. It's turning out to be a lot of work. Of course, it's on top of all of the things that we have for Levi regularly. And it seems like, you know, his specialist appointments seem to come in waves and we are kind of in the middle of one of those waves again. So doing that, let's call it this last couple months, I've been really focused on my personal restoration. 

For those of you that have been around for a while, you know, I've talked here and there about this year, this past year, and a year and a couple months and long story short, Levi was on a steady decline for a lot of reasons. And it took a lot of energy to turn it around. And I'm very thankful to say that in a lot of ways, we have changed the trajectory. But that still comes with a lot of effort. And as you all know, you know, you close one door with these children and you open three more. So that's very much our experience. So if I look back at this last year, it was really a slow build for myself, I should say slow emptying of myself, a slow depletion of myself. I think it got to a point where I was feeling the impacts of that. My anxiety was a lot harder to manage than normal, so I needed to make a shift and I did. And so what that looks like for me is I have been putting a lot more energy into doing the things that I need to do to care for myself. 

Good news is I'm feeling so much better. I'm grounded once again. I feel more and more like myself, like I have the capacity to do my life in a way that feels good to me. So, yay, those are good things. And as a result, this podcast has taken a back seat. I've chosen to use the time slot that I normally use to create this podcast for other things. So, I'm going to use the power of choice and I'm going to choose to use a resource I have to make my life easier today. So I'm going to use one of those amazing episodes that I recorded years ago, like three and a half years ago. And it's a good one. It's a simple one. It's pretty short, actually, but it actually has profound concepts in it. And I look back at the name of the original podcast, I was like, that's a terrible name. I've gotten maybe better at naming these. I think I might call it, Why You Feel So Powerless. 

You're going to not want to miss this one because a lot of us hit up against things that definitely have us feel powerless. And because this podcast, this episode was recorded, actually back in December 2020, you're going to hear me make references to COVID that were clearly very applicable then, but, you know, thankfully, are a thing of the past now, you know, to some degree. What's interesting is, so I listened to this episode real quick before I selected it. And, I mean, we've had a lot of life since then. And as I reflected, I was like, oh, my gosh, this was before we found a treatment for many of Levi's behavioral challenges. And so I'm talking about things that, thank goodness, we have gained a lot of ground on. And I can't even imagine still being where we were back then. 

I also had no idea at the time I recorded this that 2021 would bring tumor recurrence. Levi's tumors recurred in the fall of 2000. I mean, we found out about them in the fall of 2021. And so I was blissfully unaware of what would come. And it's interesting because I really only had, you know, his first treatment to kind of look back on and we were kind of living, living our life, doing the things. And so a lot has happened since then. We've lived a lot of life since this episode was recorded. But good news is it's just as applicable today as it was back then. So with that, hope you're enjoying your summer and enjoy this episode. 

It's really good to be with you again. I had a really, really good time coming up with this episode for you. And today we're going to talk about something I mentioned in my first, my very first episode. So if you've listened to the whole way through, this might be familiar. If not, I think you're really going to love this episode and the concept I'm teaching in it. So we're talking today about being responsible for teaching your child, but not being responsible for making them learn. This has been something where I've been saying this here and there, it just kind of comes up in language. 

And as I've been sharing this concept with moms, just like in my own life, that it was life changing, they're experiencing the same thing. Do you remember back before when you were a new parent, like how you thought it would be? I remember reading a book about sleep schedule and feeding schedules, and I decided that I was for sure going to be implementing that system. Well, about five days into having this newborn gnawing at my nipple, I threw out every book and every piece of advice that I'd ever received, and I very clearly just said, I'm just going to do whatever I want. And for me, that was actually listening to my own instinct, but I think it's very funny and after that it went much better. 

But obviously being a mom wasn't all that I expected to be especially because I had done a fair amount of studying and trying to figure out how to do this thing the very best. It was way, way harder than I ever thought it would be in my mind. I had an idea of of how things should go. We all do. This is super normal for us as humans. We come up with predictions. We're prediction-making machines. This is how our brain works in order to keep us alive. 

We're constantly taking in information based on what we see, based on what we hear, based on the different sensations we have in our bodies, based on things that happened to us in the past. And we're constantly making predictions that then have us feel a certain way. It's our way of our brain communicating to our body what it wants us to do, because we always make these actions or the actions we take always preceded by a feeling. feel a strong ability or when we feel like our predictions are very well founded, when it feels like a strong prediction that's like almost as good as happening. And that's why when we're doing anything new, we often feel unsafe. It's because we don't have a lot of data to make this prediction on. 

So let's go back to being a new parent. You've never done this before, but because you've done a lot of other things successfully, you figure out how you think things should be. And then you go get to work on creating this little being. And part of this is coming up with values. These values are going to be the thing that kind of steers your teaching of this child. You're going to teach him wrong from right. You're going to teach her what you think is healthy. And of course, it's different for every family, my guess is that you have kind of a set of moral, moral values that you call your own. 

In our family, the we try to be caring, honest, trustworthy, we typically don't like to cuss as a family, we don't like to name call, we don't steal, we don't harm other people's property. I mean, this is just the basic stuff, right? I mean, I'm sure I can go on and come up with a beautiful value statement. But in general, we try to be healthy. We treat our bodies as vessels and we nourish them with food and exercise. And this is just a quick snapshot of things that are important to myself and my husband, who specialize to raise our children. 

So whatever values you have, you obviously perceive them as important for many reasons. But one of them is that we also, we believe that these values allow us to be safe and to remain part of our social tribe. It's likely that if you examine the communities that you feel closest to, that you're going to have a similar set of values to them. Think about your church or school community, for instance, or even just among your extended family. When we fall outside of these social norms, we perceive that as very dangerous. 

So why am I telling you all this? Because this comes into play when our children's behavior or actions doesn't align with our own values. We start to freak out.  And a lot of times when we freak out, we start to get really controlling. We don't think we're controlling, though. We think we're just teaching them better. And when that control or when we exercise kind of everything that we have doesn't work, it makes us feel even more out of control because now we have nothing else to lean on. We have given it all. 

And here's the truth. You can show up in a way as a parent that is pristine. That is perfect. That is model level of what would be considered parenting at its finest. And your child still may not learn, and your child still may not do what is right. Here's the fallacy. We operate in a way that says, if I'm a good parent, my child will learn and do what is right. And of course, when I say right, I mean, whatever it is that you've decided is your value. So we know this fallacy is not actually how it works. We know this because we model eating our vegetables, and we all know that our kids don't always eat their vegetables. They still might refuse. And to varying degrees, we're okay with this. 

In my house, my husband and I have a little joke about how many different meals for kids are consistent of carbs and cheese, you know, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, quesadilla. It's basically like the two main food groups of my younger children.  I mean, I'm joking about this. It's not ideal. I get that. But it's also something that I'm thinking, they're going to be okay. They're going to be okay. Because eventually, they're going to start to eat vegetables. And I've just decided it's not my biggest problem. 

But in situations that we think are a little bit more threatening, which back to remember, we talked about when we think we're going to be socially excommunicated from our tribe because of our children's not aligning with the values, we start to lose patience with our child's not learning. So if we believe, for instance, that stealing, cussing, hitting and yelling are not okay, and we would say that our tribe, our people, our community would also say the same thing, when our children exhibit these behaviors, we quickly feel that something is really not okay. 

This is where letting go of this responsibility that we have is critical. And what I mean by letting go of the responsibility is recognizing that you can show up as an amazing parent and the child still may not do what you're asking them to do. It actually has no reflection on you. We think it does. And we think, wow, because we're an amazing parent, our children are going to have these amazing manners. And sometimes that does happen. And it's like, really surprising and kind of amazing. When you do, you see your kids doing things that you've tried to teach them. You're like, wow, this is amazing. I know for me, when my kids order food at restaurants, I am kind of blown away now. I'm like, wow, they're like looking into the waitress, waitress server and the eyes and they're like, not like hiding behind my legs. Like this is this feels like a major win for some reason. 

So now we know that we can be a wonderful parent, and our children may not align. And that's okay. Avoiding the impacts is often what is driving you. So we think that what's going to happen when our children doesn't fall in line is that we're afraid of people's judgments. We're afraid of what people will think of us. We're afraid of what people may say about us. We're afraid that people might think we're a really bad parent because our children is having this behavior. And that's okay. Just acknowledge what I want you to recognize. It's totally okay for you to acknowledge what's happening for you. That you're feeling insecure because you're afraid of judgment that you're feeling threatened because of your children's child's behavior. 

We feel powerless when we think that this acceptance  the feeling safe or even filling in control of our own lives comes from outside of us. 

So from the examples I've given we think it comes from other people thinking we're a good parent or not judging us for what our children are doing, we think that that's what makes us feel safe and in control. We think our children have to act okay for us to be okay. So we falsely attribute these feelings of security and safety and control from coming from these circumstances. But what it actually comes from is what we believe to be true about these circumstances. Do you hear that? It's so slightly different. I really don't want you to miss this. 

What a lot of us do is we look at the circumstance or the situation and we think that that is what is causing us to feel a certain way. But what it actually is is how we think about the circumstance. Let me give you an example. When my child, when I was dropping him off for school, this is a long time ago now because of COVID and all that, my child's still not in school, but he got upset. And he tried to smash me in the driver's door, like he tried to close it on me. And a mom was walking by and I remember thinking, Oh my gosh, this must not look good. So I could think that I have to feel embarrassed because my child was closing me in the door or I could think it was because my child was closing me in the door that I felt embarrassed but it actually was me thinking my child should not be closing me in the door that had me feel embarrassed. Or even maybe the thought was, what is this mom going to think of me when she sees my child treating me like this? And it's so easy for me to feel embarrassed. And so you see how it wasn't the actual act of my child closing me in the door, but it was actually how I was thinking about it. So that's very slight distinguishment, but it's really important. 

And so like I mentioned, my child happens to be one who steals and cusses and hits and breaks things and closes me in the door. And early in my mom years, I felt responsible for this. I would feel so powerless, I'd get calls from the school and I would just be so confused at what I was supposed to do. Because I clearly couldn't stop it. Everything I was trying was not working. It was horrible. And that's when I learned to separate how I show up in the world from how my child shows up. I am responsible for being the mom who I want to be. I can fully do this no matter what, and that feels so good for me. I'm responsible and able to be the mom who loves her child unconditionally, who will never stop teaching and advocating and forgiving, and I'm responsible not for what my child learns. He may never stop stealing. He may never stop closing me in the door. He also may never tell the truth. That's okay. I will experience the social consequences of all of those things with him. 

And when I say that's okay, it's not necessarily giving permission, but like, Oh, that's okay. We can all just do whatever we want. There's no consequences. No, it's accepting the consequences and saying, Okay, like, yeah, and not everybody is going to respond in ways that we would like when those things happen. And we can't control that. And so we actually get to acknowledge the impact of our choices. There is just so much power in letting go of trying to control him and recognizing I can control myself. Knowing this and accepting it may not instantaneously make you feel better. I want to give you a warning on that. You may have a lot of unpleasant feelings to process between where you are now and where you want to be. And that's totally okay too. 

And that's all I have for you guys today. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I thoroughly, like I said, enjoyed creating it for you. And I know it was maybe a little bit therapeutic for myself as I process some of the times of my life before I had some of the tools that I have. And I'll see you in the next episode. 

One more thing before we officially officially wrap up this show. Sometimes when I'm listening to podcasts, I have the experience of wanting more. I'm listening at the very end thinking I sure wish that episode didn't end. I invite you if you feel in any way the same way, I invite you to the Special Needs Mom podcast community, which is a free group that I host on Facebook, where we as a community of fellow moms who listen to this podcast and are experiencing life in similar shoes, get to talk to one another, get to share stories, get to actually interact. I hope you'll consider joining. 

See you over there.