The Complexity of Receiving Help

Today I'm wrapping up our two-part series on receiving. Inspired by my own journey and the experiences of the moms I work with, I take you through a personal story of navigating the world of financial support for my son, Levi.

I share how, after years of advocacy, we finally received the help we needed—only to find myself struggling with an unexpected wave of guilt and disbelief when even more support came our way. I dive into the concept of our "inner thermostat" for receiving, as explained in The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and how our subconscious beliefs can keep us stuck in feeling undersupported.

We also take a closer look at common thought patterns that may be holding you back from accepting help, like feeling obligated to reciprocate or believing it’s too much effort to ask. Plus, I offer a few mindset shifts that can help you break free and receive the support you deserve.

If you've ever felt conflicted about getting the help you need, this episode is for you.

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

Speaker: 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.

1:14

Hello and welcome to the Special Needs Mom podcast. I'm glad you're here. This episode is where I am landing in the series that I started last week on receiving at the time I recorded last week's episode. I wasn't entirely certain how many episodes I wanted to dedicate to this topic because quite honestly. I could do many and I thought, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to overwhelm you with this one topic so we're landing on a series of two and like many episodes, this. theme, this concept, these ideas that I'm bringing to you are inspired by, by two things. It's pretty simple. I guess it's what everybody's inspired by. It's my own personal experience, but it's also the experience of the people that I get to work with, that I get to be around in my community. And so this is a very similar. Before we get into the episode, I actually want to tell you about our sponsor and that is cozy earth. Cozy earth is a company who I've grown to really adore and their mission is to create a sanctuary on your body and in your home. They have the cutest Valentine's Day print PJs. And I know it's like right around the corner if you're listening to this right when it came out, but rest assured, I think you can still treat yourself and find something that you love. If you're like, okay, I got to start with one thing. The one thing that I think you have to get is the Studio Joggers. They're perfect for the sport of caregiving. That's what I like to say. And thank you to cozy earth for sponsoring this episode and also for giving a promotional code that will give you 30 percent off. So if you use SNM podcast, that's special needs mom podcast SNM at checkout, you'll get that 40 percent off. Okay. Let's go back to the topic at hand. Overall, this is a story. of how powerful the skill of curiosity is, both as I highlight my own personal journey, but as we turn and to examine yours. The story highlights a concept that I want to start with, and that has everything to do with some of the barriers that we have to having what we want. I'm going to start with a quote from a book that I referenced back to quite often, actually, it's called The Big Leap, and the author is Gay Hendricks. So the quote is, each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, We will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old familiar zone where we feel secure. So moving on to the story that I want to share with you. I've talked probably a lot of bits and pieces of this last year of our own personal journey, but for the sake of painting a little bit more complete picture, I'm going to back up all the way to several years ago and even maybe before then. So if you're new to this, podcast. Levi is my son. He's my second oldest son of four children. He's currently 15. And 13 years ago, when he was two, he acquired all of his disabilities through having a brain tumor. And interestingly enough, even though He checked boxes in so many different disability categories and cancer experience categories. He didn't qualify for the majority of supports that are offered in the state of California. So in California, these are going to be things like Regional Center, Medi Cal, IHSS, etc. And if you're in a different state, obviously there's going to be different programs or in some cases not a lot of programs, but that's a whole other story. So, Long story short, like we lived for most of his life, without really any additional support. As I became more integrated with other caregiving moms, they urged me to apply for all of the services I mentioned above. Now mind you, I had been aware of these programs. I had called in years previous, looked into them and at face value. And so it was a long road for us to gain access to these programs because it included us having to essentially find better ways to to describe his disabilities. And that meant like actually assigning new diagnoses that helped him gain access to some of these programs. So we had, you know, denials, we had attorneys, we had, like I said, years. And so it was actually last year that we received our first wave of financial support through the programs of California, That Levi is a recipient of, of these benefits. And the first wave is what I'm going to call mini. So even though I. Articulated and advocated. What came to us was really not an acknowledgement of what he really needed. And as you know, some of these programs require you to be evaluated by somebody and maybe their opinion of what you need is different from what you think. And so, so the way it goes. And so we then. Went through more appeals and all of that stuff. And one of the things that I did choose to do along this process was hire an attorney versus do it on my own. Because I knew that I was at this place of, I'm not going to call it burnout, but like, The emotional stress that it takes for me to navigate these things, and I think for any of us, but in my case, I could tell I was at a place where it just was really weighing on me. And so I chose to hire an attorney, honestly, for emotional support. And so that I wasn't doing it alone. And yes, for efficiency, because Obviously, my attorney knows a lot more about all of the programs than I do. So here's where the story gets really good. In December of last year, after many, many, many ups and downs, we got what we'll call the mega award. So essentially, we had been advocating for something very specific. And we were finally awarded that thing. And it was incredible and it felt sufficient and it felt like, yay. Like they finally see what we've been trying to express in terms of what the, the need of my son is of our family. So it blew my mind. It's life changing in terms of the ongoing support it's going to mean for us in being able to provide for Levi and his needs. So it felt good. It felt right. I, you know, standing before a judge articulating, the everyday experience and then having them decide in agreement, I think also felt validating. I think that was an aspect I didn't expect, but, I certainly appreciate. So here's the twist in the meantime. My attorney had suggested that I put Levi's name on a waiting list for an entirely different program that was not even on my radar. I didn't even, I still don't really totally know what it is, but she said, put his name. I think he'll qualify. And so like a good client, I made the call. I filled out the form and I put it behind me. So also in December. We got a call back from that agency or that organization. And they let me know that Levi did indeed qualify and they wanted to do an intake and things can proceeded from there. I follow their lead, answer the questions. And I really had very few expectations because honestly, I still don't totally understand a lot about this program. So when they came back with. essentially an offer of the support they could offer. I was just blown away. I can picture exactly where I was when I got the text from the social worker. And she informed me that after the evaluation that they can offer Levi essentially what I'm classifying another mega award. And so not using numbers cause I think that would be kind of weird, but I want to articulate that What we started out is what I'm calling mini for minuscule. Like basically it was like. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't going to significantly impact our lives. So that was the first award we advocated and we got what I'm calling the mega award, something that significantly impacts our life. And I was thrilled. And I remember what I said earlier, I said, I felt sufficient. I felt like that mega award was what, we had expected based on what the program could offer, would offer. Even thought of asking or wanting for more after that. So when this other mega award, so it's actually almost equal to the first mega award, not quite equal. It's not as much, but it's a significant amount of support. When that came in, like I had, it just was so far out of the scope of what I anticipated or expected, or even acknowledged that we needed. So, there was disbelief. There is awe. There is definitely a lot of uncertainty because I'm like, I'm going to believe it when I see it. But the reason I'm telling you this story is that I think this is a really interesting case study, if you will, because I had gotten comfortable with the idea of that first mega award. Like I said earlier, like I was like, that's kind of what I grew to understand based on the program that was going to be a good fit for Levi. But this other program, like I was so far outside of the set of beliefs that I started to develop based on all of the other information I knew. And so because of that, getting this additional out of my expectation support for Levi, my brains is. Kind of like, whoa, this is too much. It's beyond what we need. It's not fair that we would get so much and other states don't give moms like me anything. So there's this like wonky, like all sorts of complex thoughts and feelings swirling inside of me. because of this potential new funding for Levi. Now it's so interesting, right? That something so good can be so complex. So we're going to pause the story, pause my personal story to bring us back to the concept that I introduced. With the quote that I shared by Gay Hendricks, I'm going to read the quote again. Here it is. Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old familiar zone where we feel secure. And for our community, I might customize the quote in this way. Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much we believe we are worthy of receiving and having and how much we have to struggle as a special needs mom. When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back down into the old familiar zone where we feel secure. And undersupported, hear this, what is familiar oftentimes to us is being undersupported. under known, under connected, under funded, et cetera. So I want you to almost think about there's like this, invisible line that we just don't cross. And when we approach this greater level, Or even when we approach not being under supported, we have this subconscious tendency to do something or to not do something, keep us essentially back where we are, to keep us in the zone of familiarity, or in other words, just what we know. And if you find yourself often experiencing something, so maybe feeling under supported, maybe feeling alone, feeling under known, that's kind of my translation. So I could like, you know. Keep the cadence of the words under known, under connected, under funded. If you find yourself in any of those places, then moving beyond that. is likely and actually predictably going to be uncomfortable for you. That's why I'm telling you this story of my own personal journey is that moving from this, this very familiar place in terms of my experience with Levi from either being supported or under supported to going to like sufficiently or even like, I don't know there's, if there's such thing as over supported, but let's just go with that for the sake of this conversation. Like it's, it's blowing my mind in a good way, but like still blowing my mind. So obviously we do not want to get stuck. We don't want to get stuck in the under supported, under connected, under funded. category. And that's why I do what I do. Coaching is a lot of things, but at its heart, it's a tool to create awareness. And so why do I care about awareness? With awareness, we can try new things. We can experiment. We can ask ourselves to do something just a little bit differently. And sure enough, then we expand our capacity. We experience a breakthrough and a new way of being a new way of existing. So in other words, also we go through the discomfort of something new and we expand our capacity. In other words, our inner thermostat setting goes to a higher temperature so we can receive more that we want and we don't kind of repel it because it's outside of our comfort zone or our familiarity zone. You picking up what I'm putting down? You'll notice that you have repeating thoughts, okay? So back to the kind of this awareness tool, you'll notice you have repeating thoughts. This is the awareness tool I'm talking about. The skill is taking these thoughts and questioning them. So remember early in this episode, I talked about the skill of curiosity, the gift of curiosity, the practice of curiosity. So it's taking these thoughts and questioning. It's analyzing them. It's creating an opening or an interest even of trying out new ones. So there's a lot of different ways you can work once you distinguish these thoughts and we're going to kind of look at some actual examples later in this episode, but I think it's almost fun to look at them almost like a, a puzzle. You know, sometimes you start with the edge pieces, sometimes you start with the middle ones or a little random one here or there, but working back and forth and literally relating to it as a puzzle, I think is a good way of looking at it. In other words, it's not a neat and tidy process. Kind of going back to my personal story. So I left off and I was sharing some of those thoughts that I identified that were swarming, in this moment that I had this really good news and so on. Right. Like it wasn't just in that moment, but I kept noticing them and wanted actually a clue. To also indicate that I, because of, you know, because I geek out on this stuff, right, and so, and I've built a skill of being able to kind of be a little bit more reflective, and so I also noticed that I wasn't telling anybody about this other means of support that was coming in, because I had my own thoughts of what are they going to think? And all these other conflicting thoughts. And so, I don't know if I would go as far as to say it felt like shame, but let's use that word because I think it's like the most understood experience. And shame is often a feeling that keeps us quiet and has us Like, shrink back and, you know, like, have secrets. And so, if I were to let this story play out and let it lay as is, can you only imagine if I had to carry that shame and the secret of this wonderful thing? It would take the wonderful thing and you could see how it would, kind of move you back down into that familiar level of under supported or under, even under grateful. I Because if I'm, if I'm having to kind of deal with all these icky feelings, along with the wonderful feelings of having what we need for Levi, that's not good. Right? Okay. in worst cases, I think that if left unchecked, I might find a way to reject or ignore, or in other words, like repel. The additional support because of the narrative that was running in my mind, we don't deserve it. Other people need it more. Like, can you see how that would make it almost, almost impossible to really capture all the support that is available. Stepping back away from my personal example, my personal story, and I want to go to some places that you might find yourself to hopefully help create some more awareness. Transcribed We're going to look at two distinct, I'm going to call them thinking patterns because there's kind of some common areas of pitfall that I find when I'm talking to a mom about receiving or support. So we're going to look at those. And the idea here is that I want you to check in and say, Hey, do I relate with that? If you relate with it, just use it as a curiosity tool. And how would you customize it to feel even more accurate for you? And then just notice when you notice that coming up, and I'm going to suggest some options here in terms of kind of how to revise it, revise your thinking, revise your belief system to work for you a little bit better. So the first area. I want you to consider like, maybe you have a big life event coming up. Maybe you're moving or maybe you're having another child or maybe your child's going in for a medical procedure, et cetera, et cetera. And so we're going to look at this in the context of asking for. And receiving help, like, so picture like a meal train. People say, Hey, how can we help? What commonly comes up is many things, but one of them is kind of the group of thoughts that say, I need to reciprocate. So if they give me something, I need to give them something. Or like it might be, I will owe them something. If I take something from them, then I'll have to give them back. I'll be like indebted to them. Or maybe it feels like, or sounds like for you in your head, they'll expect something back in return. Like I'll have to write them a thank you note or something like that. And so you can imagine that's going to cause a lot of feelings. Maybe it's anxiety. Maybe it's Inadequacy or an obligation. So very predictably when we feel obligation, I'm thinking that we're going to probably avoid asking for that help or we're going to immediately like plan the payback, like, how can I basically give them something to make us equal again? It might even have you like start to resent people that want to help you. It's going to be different for everybody. So again, This is just to help create some awareness and how you build from here is going to be very unique or very individual, I should say. But one place to start could be to really start to revise what you believe about receiving help. So if you're starting from the place of, I need to reciprocate, maybe you start to When you notice yourself thinking that you start to build a belief and start guiding your brain to think about how people help because they care, not because they expect something in return. And you might be like, yeah, Kara, I believe that good, right? So sometimes we have a belief about something, but then we have another kind of conflicting belief. So like you might have this belief of I need to reciprocate, but at the same time you're like, yeah, no people help because they care. And so sometimes even just creating awareness that you have both and then choosing to focus on one over the other is sufficient for you to start building like the solidity of the belief that you have so that you can have a different experience. Cause he, can you imagine if you strongly believe if you're like this, I'm a solid, this is a hundred percent true that people help because they care, not because they expect something in return. Can you imagine? How much help you would ask for. Can you even imagine feeling like you had to give them something back? No, you can't because you're like, no, because people help because they care. They, they don't expect anything in return. You see how solid that can feel? And how that would change the feelings that you have associated to receiving help. Like maybe it would be grateful, humble, something like that. Okay, so that's one area. Moving on to another area that is super common and It is something along the lines of, it's not worth the effort to ask for help. Now, the caveat I want to give here is that your feelings are valid. And if you have been in, I'm thinking of one of my clients in particular who has a lot of nursing needs. And I don't want to devalidate. Like this is hard. What this job entails, a caregiving mom experience, special needs mom experience. It is not an easy job. And to feel like it's a lot of work. I don't want to devalidate that. And so I want to be careful here that this, what I'm looking at here is very specifically to be used for helping see where you get stuck, not to devalidate your feelings. Okay, so very important detail there. So if you find yourself kind of wondering why you don't have more help You might also learn or when I'm saying this, you might be like, yeah, I actually, I can relate to this. It's not worth the effort to ask. And you might have a hundred reasons or data points to prove that as true. I mean, obviously if that's what you're relating to, it feels very true to you. And so you might feel discouraged or just even like, stuck. And from those two combinations, this combination of this like belief and this feeling, it's very predictable that what you would do is stay stuck and overwhelm. You might be isolated. Your brain might filter out potential solutions because it filters it out through Nope, more work. So that might be an area that you choose to lean into a little bit and actually start to break down. Like, is that really absolutely true? Am I certain that it's not worth the effort to ask? And you might say, no, actually, I want to try again. So one place to look, just one, is instead of staying, it's not worth the effort to ask, you might say, a no does not define my worth. Just means I can explore other options. So this is particularly related to asking for something specific, and that might help you get over, like, The like, well, what if they say no place that we can often get stuck? So these are just two quick examples and I really could go on and on about all the different aspects of this And I'm not going to, because I think you doing the work is going to be very personal and unique to you. And so my hope today is to kind of ignite the curiosity, the exploration for you to start to uncover some of this stuff for yourselves. And. As I wrap up this episode, yes, I have a community, it's called Pathway to Peace Coaching Community, and it's where we do this work and you're invited. So if that's of interest to you, then please come check it out. Or if you're just not at that place, keep listening to the podcast and when you're driving around and when you're doing all the things, just bring a little bit of curiosity to your experience and consider that that might be enough for where you're at. Okay, and Lastly, as I wrap up, I want to, I just really want to share my gratitude for all the community of people, of moms, there's like two dads, but so mostly moms that have helped me learn and just, you know, like the story I shared is like, if it weren't for the mom saying, give it a go, Kara. You got to try and sharing their wisdom and encouragement with me. We wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here having this problem of figuring out how to accept all the support available to me. And I am glad I have this problem. Let me put it that way. And so it's just with so much gratitude that I have been able to kind of face this problem, if you will. And it's my mission to see families, to see moms, to see you luxuriously supported in all the areas of your life, because you are absolutely worthy, right?. Lots of love to you. And with that, we'll see you on the next episode.