Managing Mom Rage: Understanding and Healing

In honor of our Summer Sabbath Challenge, we are taking time to invest in rest. To give us more space and time we are rebroadcasting previous episodes for June & July. Stick around! I am bringing back some really well received episodes that I know you'll enjoy!

This is a rebroadcast of Episode 131 that aired February 2023.

Do you find yourself blowing up at your kids? Losing your cool with your spouse? You are not alone. In this episode, I give you some ways to dig into this and get more curious about why you're acting this way.

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

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Transcript

Kara: 0:05

Hi, I'm Kara, life coach, wife, and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I 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 confidence that once felt so lacking. I created the special needs mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves feeling trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flair of possibility in your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are 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. I'm so glad you're here. All right. Well, at the time of the recording of this introduction, I should clarify, I'm still in the first few weeks of summer. Actually, today I'm just finishing my, second full week and I am settling in. And that's the good news here. This week I have one less child, which is both, easier and harder at the same time. He's my oldest son and he's up on an epic adventure in Tahoe. I am so happy that he has these opportunities in life and of course I miss him. So he's been out in the back country, unaccessible, for the last, four days, five days. And I got a text yesterday. Very exciting. Because we didn't even, I mean, we of course assumed everything's okay. Got a text and it said, what's up? No question mark. And my husband are like, of all the things he could say after we haven't heard from him for four days. What's up? I thought it was hilarious. so that's what's up over here. Okay. Let's see. One of the things that's really helping me, and I'm going to share it because I'm like, well, who knows who might also need a little like change up in the whole way that you're doing your day in the summer. my kids to some capacity are sleeping in mostly. And so I'm like, Ooh, this is very precious time that I can have for myself in the morning before they get up. And I've been getting out on a walk most days, not every day, because the way that my work schedule is, but it's been so amazing. So amazing for many reasons, being out in nature, having time alone. I've been listening to a lot of different podcasts, kind of around some ideas I have for pathway to peace and for creating community and kind of like what's next. I'm excited because I don't know what's happening yet, but I do know that wherever we go with it is going to be intended on building more community, more connection, more opportunities for coaching. And, if you have any ideas send them my way, but, it's exciting. It's kind of an exciting time that I'm using as I'm resting from. producing full episodes of the podcast and kind of putting my energy a little bit elsewhere. So that's what's been going on over here. And as I'm doing summer, definitely my biggest challenge is helping Levi occupy himself in a, I don't want to say meaningful and productive way, but, a way that. basically doesn't have, I'm just sitting on tech all day. you know, there's a reason he has a one on one aid at school and you know, I'm still figuring it out. I don't know that I'm going to like have it mastered. I don't think that that's this kind of thing, but I'm figuring out how to manage my own emotions, lack of patience, frustrations, et cetera, so that I can show up for him. Okay. And, as all of us are, I am still very much a work in progress as I navigate parenting a child that is not like the others. Okay. That's a little bit more about what's going on over here. Let's talk about today's topic. So you may recall that we're doing things a little differently this summer. We're doing what we're calling the summer series or the summer Sabbath series, which really means I'm taking a rest from producing full episodes. Bringing back some of the best of or fan favorites or whatever you want to call them, bringing them back to you. And this episode that I'm bringing you today was originally titled when you lose it on your spouse and kids. I kind of love that title and I really still love this episode. It's something, a topic that comes up over and over and over again. Many of you have no idea how angry you actually are. I think some areas you do, but most of you, my guess is that anger is not one of those emotions that you are super friendly with, as it is a welcome emotion in your emotional state. palette. Okay. So my clients are going to listen to this and smile. I can just picture them now thinking about how far they've come in their ability to identify and process their anger. Ooh, it's so amazing to watch. And so let's face it. There's a lot for us to be angry about as we navigate this. special needs mom journey. the thing I think that comes most to mind is dealing with all of the systems and the bureaucracy that we need to deal with in order to get our children what they need. So listen to this episode. And of course, in all the episodes, my encouragement to you is really just to kind of ponder and have it be something that inspires you to curiosity as you Observe your own self and hopefully you see some openings and opportunities to shift a little bit of how it's going for you as a default. So kind of as a default, we have a lot of things that were like, Ooh, I don't know if that's actually what we want. So really every episode is designed to really look at how you were showing up and create an opening to ask the question of how do I want to show up instead? All right. With that, I'm going to turn you loose to the episode. Enjoy. This is the episode that I was like, Ooh, like this is what I want to bring to my people. It's been a conversation. That's been very, how do we say happening all the time around me for my husband, for my clients, for myself. And I thought, you know what? Let's put some words to this. Let's normalize it. Let's really get some deeper understanding so that we collectively as mothers parenting children with disabilities and medical complexities can have an experience that we like. And specifically today, we're going to talk about why we lose it on our kids and husbands. We're going to start with a personal story that's going to segue into the main topic today. Some of you might've seen this on Instagram. I know not all of you follow me on Instagram. If you do. Yay. And if you don't, you can find me at the special needs mom podcast changed recently from my name used to be Kara Riska. I thought, you know what, let's get even more specific. And so I posted this in real time when I was experiencing it, I think a lot for the reason of there's these moments that we have as moms that is just so nice to not feel alone. And I think when I was posting this, I was like, Oh, my people are going to understand this so deeply. And so I'm going to set up the scene for you. A couple of weeks ago, my son had a neuropsych exam. I don't know how we got in the queue for this. I think it was because he had had recent neurosurgery. Not totally sure. I think it's kind of funny how random things are because I like have been begging for it for like three years. Anyhow, we were there. They prepared me to be there for five hours, bring snacks, bring stuff to do, obviously. And so I was very well prepared. I'm a, I'm a preparer. And what they did not prepare me for was the stack, specifically three evaluations that the provider, that the doctor wanted me to do during my time in waiting. Now I see logically how this makes sense for them, like, oh, we have a captive mom, let's just have her do the evaluations now. But what they failed to take into consideration Is the emotional load that these tests elicit, is that the right word? Like they kind of put this load on us. So what I cleverly did. And I want to share this one because I'm really proud of it because it is not something I could have done many years ago. It's taken me years to be able to realize that I have needs too. I do not just have to go along with whatever doctors say that I have a say. And so I want to share this because I am really celebrating this for myself and I want to be a spark of what areas in your life do you need to kind of say, pause, that doesn't work for us and maybe do some things a little bit differently. The doctor gave me these forms. I went to my car to, I was going to hang out in my car instead of the hospital all day because then I could just be maskless and I don't know, have some privacy, I guess. Plus, it's always cold in there. So I didn't want to be cold. So I was in my car and I was looking at this clipboard and thinking, Hmm. No, I don't want to do this. I do not want to do this one alone. And I don't want to do this without my husband's input. Like these are really important evaluations and I am not the only one that has input on my child. Therefore, I'm just going to politely say that I'm going to go ahead and mail these to you on Monday because I'm going to do them at home. And the provider was like, Oh, okay. She would really have rather me just follow the protocol. And she was cool about it. So long story short, I promised that I would mail them on Monday. As weekends go, we don't always do the things that we really should. Sometimes we do the things that we shouldn't. And so I did not do these evaluations until like late Sunday night with my husband and we like to go to bed early. So it was like we were starting these things at like 10 o'clock. So that was already Not a good setup, but we crammed them in, we got them done and we went to bed. And I knew while we were doing them that there was a load in doing these, like when you answer literally hundreds of questions, I mean, some of you will know exactly what I'm talking about. Some of you haven't gotten there yet, or some of you don't use these tests because your child's disabilities are totally different either way. The idea is that these evaluations ask question after question, like I said, hundreds. That had me become very aware in the areas that my son has gaps, you know, it's questions like, does your child hit people? Does your child lie? Does your child become upset easily? And my husband joked through this. It was funny at the time, but also it's crushing when we were answering like the highest rating for a series of questions in a row. He's like, man, this test is made for Levi. And I'm laughing about it because like it really did kind of feel like that. It was like, Oh my gosh, like they've got them figured out. And they weren't, I mean, it was evaluation to see how he is, but regardless, it was a very confronting emotional experience. And in the moment we just wanted to get it done. It wasn't the moment that we were going to process that. So we went to bed, we went to sleep. I don't think I slept good that night, if I do recall. And so I wake up the next day, go to the gym. I try to go to the gym on Monday mornings. Which means that my kids kind of have to be a little bit on their own on Monday morning to get ready for school this particular Monday morning. My kids were not on their own. Levi did his classic silent disobedience where he just kind of sits there. So it kind of goes undetected for a bit. And then you're like, can you please get up? Move your body, please. I'm begging you. And my daughter, who's five, Was also doing five year old types behaviors where she wasn't doing what she was. being asked to do either. So we had, you know, a little bit of a cluster of events going on. So a little bit of a tired mommy, a little bit of rush, little kids not acting exactly how they should. And the biggest piece of all, which was this piece of emotional hangover, I'm going to call it from the night before. I'll spare the details. Let's just say I wasn't the best version of myself. What I can picture is I probably was snappy. I yelled, I got firm. You know, nobody was having fun in our house that morning, and most specifically, I was not having fun. My guess is we got in the car, I calmed myself down, I told the kids, hey, blah, blah, blah. Actually, I think even the next day we like made some new charts, like visual cue charts so that we can kind of do a little bit better in terms of knowing what to do and when. I mentioned earlier, was really, really clear, is that My emotions were out of control. I didn't lose it on my kids because they weren't getting ready when they should have. I didn't lose it on my kids because they weren't being perfectly obedient. I lost it on my kids because I was in a place where I was physically tired. I was emotionally tired and then I was just a little bit more agitated. And so therefore, when my kids weren't perfect, I was not able to control myself anymore. Now I'm clearly not condoning this. That's why we're talking about this today and really understanding deeply why do we lose it on our husbands and our kids? So I would actually say for me, my kids are most likely the victims of me losing it. And when I say losing it, what I mean is, you know, maybe it's yelling, maybe it's stomping away, maybe it's shutting a door, maybe it's, I've done this before, where you like, you know, serve your child food, but you kind of like throw it at them a little bit, like, you know, not like throwing the food at them, but You know, you make it clear when you're setting that plate down that you're a little bit pissed. I'm not proud of that moment, but the reason we do this is not because we're horrible people. It's not because we're total jerks. It's not because there's something wrong with us and is not because there's something wrong with our children. It is a variety of reasons and we're going to look at three of them today. So why do we lose it? The first reason that I have summarized is that we haven't redeemed our stories. So what do I mean by this? We all have stories. We all have narratives. We all have the ways that we have interpreted the world. This became so interesting to look at, even because a client last week was sharing with me that she was losing it on her kids regularly, and she totally recognized that it was uncalled for. She would look at the fear in her daughter's eyes when she would yell at her and just feel. awful. And she hated this thing. And what's interesting, I think it's important to point out is that this mom is not someone who you would suspect is a raging mom all the time. She's definitely someone that comes across cool, calm, collected, opposite of somebody that you would think would be losing it on their kids. She's sweet and bubbly, brilliant. I mean, can you tell I love her? I think it's important to just recognize this because I think we actually have a lot of shame when like we look like we're pretty well functioning moms, but yet we have this thing that we do at our house that like we kind of be really embarrassed if anybody ever witnessed. And I also think that we all have little narratives around what it means to be an angry person or to be angry. And it's not yet socially acceptable. to be angry and to be a woman. Anyhow, I wanted to bring her up because she shared with me that she had actually done some extensive story work. we started with story work together and then she even went outside of what we did and she went even further and really redeemed her story. She looked so deeply into, again, some of the things in her life and she rewrote it. And she really, this is called redeeming your story and it's transformational work. And, and like I mentioned, that is part of what we, what we do in Pathway to Peace. But what she shared with me was so amazing is that since October, she has been able to completely manage her emotions without losing it on her kids. And for her, when she was telling me, there was just this relief in recognizing that she gained control over this piece of her. By actually going further into it. I think that's so interesting by really looking at it and redeeming her story. If we don't redeem our stories, then we'll end up repeating our default story over and over again. And most of us want anything but that. Because I'm guessing that most of us also had moms that did not know how to manage their emotions and also lost it on us and probably our fathers. This is just a really good example of a mom leaning into the work you to, to have a very different experience of life than she would have if she had not. Okay, another reason why we lose it. Look, let's look at number two. We have no idea how to be healthy in anger. We have no idea how to feel the depths of sadness that we have. If there was a class on feeling our emotions in all the grades, and actually I see this happening in my kids schools, which I love. It was absent from my upbringing. And so my guess is for most of you, especially, it's not even a guess. I talked to y'all and I know this is true, that we're completely lost when it comes to feeling these, what we could call big or strong emotions. And like I mentioned earlier, nobody wants to be an angry person, you know, kind of in air quotes. And anger is a lot like sadness in our culture where it's okay to be angry or sad for like a little bit, but then you're kind of expected to get over it. You're kind of supposed to go back to like happy. And especially, I want to point this out, especially if you grew up in what's called the church, like meaning if you grew up in a Christian upbringing, it's very likely that you have a really confusing relationship with anger, especially. That's probably a different episode that we can dive into that, but I think it's really important to mention back to our story work is that not only you have an inability in terms of you just don't know how to do this, you likely also have a complex story about what it means that you do or don't feel a certain way. And interestingly enough, there really aren't models that we see out in society of people doing this. Well, of people being sad very well, I know I am very intentional on sometimes publicly displaying some of my anger or sadness, and I probably do this to a much smaller capacity than that. Maybe I would even like, but what I noticed, and I think even sometimes what makes me resist doing it is the comments I get in response where it feels like people are trying to fix the experience I'm having. And even when I'm really, really clear saying, Hey, I'm sharing this just because I want to feel this together versus alone. The comments I get back indicate to me that it feels very uncomfortable for people to witness it. So I think for a lot of reasons, we just don't see people modeling healthy responses to big emotions or helpful expressions of emotions. Turning towards sadness again, I think that sadness to the depths that we have sadness in our lives, this never ending level of sadness as we parent children that just are dealing with it. Unimaginable things, these children of ours, and the sadness and the depths. I mean, man, it can get so overwhelming. It can feel like a deep pit that is never ending. So for us, that feels like, Ooh, we can't go there. We might get stuck. We're not going to go there. And so we stuff and we avoid and we kind of just look the other way. And I want you to picture this. You get news after news of your child's diagnosis, you don't process it, you stuff it, you kind of move on to try to address each need as they come. You might even, you know, look on the bright side or find the silver lining like many people are trained to do in life. That's the socially acceptable thing to do. So again, we're stuffing and we're avoiding. And the picture I want to give you for what this is actually like is it's like you are I'm Holding a beach ball that's covered with Vaseline underwater when you're stuffing. So you holding it down is like you trying to suppress this slippery, buoyant body that's trying to surface. And so you're really having to shift, And adjust to keep this thing down. One, I want you to notice how much energy that actually takes that we do not acknowledge. So if you're constantly feeling tired, exhausted, this is a huge indicator that you might be spending a lot of energy on something like this. Not to say that you might not be tired anyhow from all the other demands of life, but it is a really, really good place to look. So it's only a matter of time till this ball comes bursting out of the water and maybe hitting you in the face, maybe hitting somebody else in the face. Really, it's not predictable on how this ball is going to come up, but it is predictable that it's going to come up because you can only hold it for so long. And that is just like our emotions. We can stuff them down for a bit, and that is actually what happens when we're in seasons of crisis. We definitely need to stuff them. That's part of our survival strategy. I don't want you to say, Oh my gosh, it's so wrong that I did this and kind of make a new story about that. No, just come where you are now and recognize if that there's this habit or this pattern of stuffing or this. inability to know how to unstuff. Because when we've stuffed something for so long, it takes a little bit of work to get it going. I don't want to make it mean like, oh my gosh, you can't do it. It's hard. But I just want to say sometimes it takes a little bit of intention and to feel like you're doing it wrong, because you've really never intentionally practiced this work. So we have this ball is bouncing up. And it's just a really good picture of why we explode on people. And so the third reason of why we explode or why we lose it on our kids and husband is because we don't acknowledge these basic emotions and therefore we can't possibly manage them. In number two, I'm pointing out that we really don't know how to feel these. And because we don't know how to feel these emotions, we can't effectively manage this emotional load that we carry. And what do I mean by emotional load? These are all the emotions that you feel. Good, bad, neutral, all through the day, through the week, months, years. These are big and small things. And so everything in your life contributes to this emotional load. Calls from the doctor, comments from your husband, insurance issues, milestones, met celebrations, milestones, not met vacation, vacation, planning, planning, house improvements. There's emotions that we experience associated to all of these gosh, IEP management, man, that was a. heavy emotional load for me last week. And I felt it. I will tell you, I really felt the load of that consistent throughout the week. We should also mention that your cycle and your hormonal balance also significantly affects Thanks. Your ability to manage your emotional load. So the picture that I want you to picture for, for this part is, so those is once you recognize, okay, like I now recognize I have big emotions. I have emotions. They're all loading up and it's. like the Japanese garden kind of fountain. I think it's called a rocking water fountain. I looked it up. And so there's this drip or this flow of water that's going into a rocking piece of bamboo. And after a specific amount of water fills up the bamboo, it tips and it empties itself out. It kind of reaches its tipping point. Oh, look at that. And it shifts the equilibrium and again, it releases all the water until it fills back up again. And while we don't really ever get to emotionally empty everything's, the picture is useful I think because if you're losing it on your kid. or your husband. What it means is that your fountain, if you will, is filling up and it's overflowing. And that is why you have the experience of feeling out of control because it is like the beach ball. It's only a matter of time till it's going to come and surface. And so the work here is actually to intentionally empty, or I think a better word is to intentionally manage so that your emotional load doesn't spill on to other people. I think a good word for this here is actually releasing the valve. So if you consider that your emotional load is building up pressure, managing your emotional load is releasing the valve or allowing it to flow through in an effective way so that you don't, again, explode. Since we've looked at these reasons why we explode, I want to shift and I want to leave you with some other options. We're going to learn what we can do with this information. So firstly, I want you to recognize how full you are. And this is a skill. So learning to be able to check in with your body is the skill here. And for most of us, this is not something we learned to do up until now. The idea here is your body never lies. We feel 100 percent of our feelings in our body. And as you get to know yourself, you're going to be amazed at how much information your body is giving you all of the time. You're going to start to really appreciate when your body is telling you, I'm not okay. That's how we get to learn more about ourselves is recognizing how we respond to something. Kind of a quick segue, a story I didn't plan on sharing, but I think it's really important. Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I were doing some planning for some house projects, some things that we're really excited about. We're finally at the point where we're like, you know, There's never going to be a good time to like fix our house, like our life's going by. And I'm like, I want to actually enjoy my house. And so we're going to do a couple of projects. And so we were planning them and we're excited and it was really fun to envision. And I noticed at the end, I was like really stressed out noticeably. I. broke down some of the reasons why with my husband just kind of breaking down why I think I responded in that way. But I thought it was so interesting for me to be able to notice immediately that I had a very physical response to this To this afternoon of planning and when it gave me access to is being able to really understand how to meet myself in kindness and how to support myself and really how to change my relationship with what was happening. I won't go into the details now, but it was so interesting. And so our bodies, when we learn to tune into what they're saying to us, it is just so helpful because then we know how to take care of ourselves. We learn to identify what we need. So in this case, in this example, I was able to check in with my husband and to share this load of, wow, this is how I am processing this information. And it turns out it makes me super anxious to think about spending money on my house. Just to share that with him and to recognize I probably will need to do a lot of work along the way so that I can actually enjoy this process and not turn it into something that's not cool, which I don't want. I want to actually enjoy the experience of getting to invest in my house. And so the thing I want to also put in here and in terms of learning to recognize is what can be really, really helpful is to. Rewind the tape when we do lose it, because guess what, you're probably going to have more moments than you wish to acknowledge of times where you, you wish you showed up differently. And this is where we get to rewind the tape. We get to get curious about what happened. What happened for you? What was the thing that had you explode? Using the example I shared earlier in this episode about me on that Monday where I got in the car and I was trying to calm down, I was already aware during that time that I needed to go process the sadness for me was what it was of that evaluation experience. I needed to go process that. And for me, there's a variety of ways I do that. I'm not going to go into those in this episode. I think that the skills of doing this are best learned in group and community. So that's why I include them as part of Pathway to Peace. But if you are like, Kara, I need something, reach out to me and I will support you. That is my promise to you. I will support you through. What you want to get through in terms of processing your emotion. I want to move on to the second option I want you to consider. And it's learning how to empty your reserve. So this kind of goes to what I was just mentioning in terms of learning how to pour your fountain out. Learning how to tend to yourself. And I think they complicate this. A lot. So I know that this term self care has like a real eye rolly relationship, especially in this community, because it's like, I don't have time to do that. And I get it. And I think also self care is very often associated to doing something. Like a bath or pedicure or whatever, I'm not saying that's not caring for yourself. I'm just saying that it's not that complicated. Tending to yourself looks as simple as pausing, maybe putting your hand on your heart and just acknowledging how you feel, giving yourself some space. To actually feel whatever it is is coming up, maybe even just putting words to what you're experiencing. And like I said, I'm not going to go into all of the how to's in terms of how to really process your emotion and how to tend to yourself. But I do want to leave you with the number one most important place to start and the thing that will lead you through everything. And that is starting with kindness and compassion. If we don't bring in kindness and compassion to this work, then likely you're going to experience judgment and judgment is the killer of all things kind. Judgment is going to leave you feeling more stuck. Judgment is going to leave you feeling condemned for these moments that you don't show up as the mom you want to be. Judgment is going to have you feel shame. Judgment will have you stay silent so that nobody knows that you're having this experience. This is your invitation to come into the light that starts with kindness and compassion. And I want you to consider that this kindness and compassion starts with yourself, but it doesn't end with yourself. I think when you get to step into community, whether that community is your family, whether that community. Is your friends, whether that's a bigger group, you get to actually experience connection through this type of compassion and sharing your story and having people witness your story and hold you in a way that there is no judgment. It's just allowing you to be where you are. And there is something so beautiful and so powerful and actually transformative about that. And we're going to leave this episode, we're going to wrap it up right here. And like I mentioned. This is not the episode where we're going to go into the how to's of processing all this emotion. I just really wanted to understand and give words to why you're losing it on your kids and your husband. Like what's happening that has you losing control all of the time? It is my promise to you, like I mentioned earlier, if you want support in that area, reach out to me. I have so many ways that I can help you and it'll just make it so that I can help you specifically with what you need and with what you want by you reaching out to me individually. And it's been a while since I've asked for a huge favor. I am. Really hoping that you will take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast. This really only applies to you if you listen to Apple or Spotify. So if you don't, then perhaps find a friend's iPhone and rate and review the podcast on that. But. It really helps other moms find this podcast. And I don't know if any of y'all know this, but I self fund this podcast. So what that means is I actually pay to make this podcast. And it's the effort that I love to do. But what would really be helpful to me so I can continue to Deliver these episodes is if you would consider again, rating and reviewing, and then even sharing this episode or any of your favorite episodes, either on Instagram or even just individually with friends. That is how we support our community by sharing the resources that we have found that we find to be most helpful. And if you don't know how to rate and review, Google it. You guys are smart. You guys know how to figure these things out. All right. We'll see you on the next episode.