Worry and Anxiety: A Rebroadcast

This episode is pulled from the archives way back in September 2021. It is episode 56 and it aired shortly after finding out my son Levi’s brain tumor had returned. It was a season full of fear and uncertainty—and that’s exactly what I talk about here: worry and anxiety, and how they show up in our lives as special needs moms.

I share real examples from that time and explore:

• Why worry can feel like responsibility (but isn’t)
• How trying to control the uncontrollable drains us
• What it looks like to trust yourself, even in uncertainty

You’ll hear mindset shifts and questions to help you interrupt the worry spiral and reconnect with presence, peace, and choice—even when the stakes are high.

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

Transcript

1:14

Hello and welcome to the Special Needs Mom podcast. So glad you're here. This episode is gonna be sweet. It's gonna be simple. It's gonna be a good one. It's actually pulled from the archives way back when. Some of you have told me actually more than I would imagine that you go back and you start from the very beginning and start listening. And so you might have listened to this if you're new around here, but most likely. This is going to be a new episode for you. It's back from September 20th, 2021. And something to note is that, and I think I referenced it a little bit in the episode, but my son Levi, one of my four, was just rediagnosed with a brain tumor. He had had one 10 years prior and we had always known this was a possibility. It had just become our reality. And so you'll notice that the examples I use are very much related. It was very much what was on my mind. And also I think, you know, topics we're talking about today. Worry mostly worry a little bit anxiety, but mostly worry. I guess use it to recognize that I'm not talking about worrying if your kid gets into like the college they want to. It's also on my mind. My oldest son is gonna be a senior this year, so it's kind of the theme of the summer is getting ready for college applications. So I'm not talking about like sweet little things we worry about. You know, we're worrying as moms about, in many cases the life and death of our child. Yet, this all still applies. It's all still so critical that we as moms take a step back to look at the way we're operating, who we're being, how we're being, and we do the work that we have the opportunity to do. So before you listen to the episode, pause for a moment and just think about the things that you notice. You worry about, the things that maybe keep coming up in your mind, and just get a couple, maybe one or two in your mind as you listen to the episode so that you can think about perhaps any adjustments you might want to make. Okay. Well, with that, let's go into the episode. Enjoy.

Kara: 3:32

It's so good to be with you again. Today we're gonna talk about. Anxiety and worry. Originally, I was just going to talk about worrying, but I felt like anxiety is so close, cousin. I just feel like worry and anxiety, it's like fish without water. So I added them together and interestingly enough, I don't know if you've all. Heard the news, that we have in our family as far as the, the medical updates around my son's needs. But to bring you into it, we learned that my son, Levi, has another brain tumor, and so we have upcoming surgery and kind of just a lot of uncertainty when it comes to. The future of his care. A lot of, a lot of good options and a path forward, but just the nature of the beast is of life in general is there's a lot of un uncertainty and these uncertainties feel a little bit more scary than others. So interestingly enough, like I mentioned, I had this topic pre-planned prior to this news, but I thought so fitting. For right now and for me, preparing this episode for you was very helpful for me, so thank you. Let's talk a little bit about what is anxiety and worry, and we're gonna go in the episode a little bit more about kind of how you experience it. But let's start with giving, actually, I want you read two quotes from one of my favorite authors, gay Hendrix, that help frame the conversation around this. Episode on worry and anxiety, so I'm gonna read them. The first one is, and I paraphrase it, a i, I added a little bit to have it applied to us. So worrying is usually a sign that we're upper limiting, or I modified this to say, or keeping ourselves in a safe and familiar place. It is usually not a sign that we're thinking about something useful. The crucial sign that we're worrying unnecessarily is when we're worrying about something we have no control over. And then the second quote that I pulled for you about worry from Gay is. Worry is definitely an addiction. In fact, worrying is like playing a slot machine in a gambling casino. Occasionally the worrier will hit the jackpot and be rewarded for something that actually happens. If you worry long enough about the stock market crashing, you'll eventually hit the jackpot because from time to time it's always going to crash. So these two quotes are really helpful as we continue this conversation, and I'll probably reference back to them. And let's start also by defining worry. What do I mean by worry? It can be both a verb and a noun. And from the verb standpoint, it's to give way to anxiety or unease to allow one's mind to dwell on difficulty or troubles and noun or the state of being. It's a state of anxiety or uncertainty over actual or potential problems. And then I think we have to also define anxiety. And I thought, it's interesting how in both of the definitions they include each of the other word. So anxiety as a noun is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. And if you kind of click back and listen to those both again, what you would notice is that the word uncertain or uncertainty occurs in both. Now, let's go back to the quotes that I read Gay talks about. The crucial sign that we're worrying unnecessarily is when we're worrying about something We have no control over AKA. Uncertainty. It's not necessarily, those are not mutually exclusive. Something that's uncertain we may have control over, but very often in a special needs mom category, we're worrying about something we don't have control over. So I did a quick brainstorm on. What I think many special needs moms worry about, and this is what I came up with, and you can add your own along so your husband or other caretakers messing up or not doing the care of your child the same way that you would do it. We worry about the future of our children. This is a big one. We worry about what others think of you and your child. We worry that people are judging us. We worry that we're not doing enough. We worry that something bad is going to happen to our child, especially as a result of our lack of vigilance or making the wrong decision. We worry about something going awry in our child's body overnight while they're sleeping. We worry about never being free of caring for this child. We worry about our children being bullied, and I added this one, especially in light of our current circumstances, we worry about the result of the surgery. In my case, it's brain surgery, but for you it might be another type. I want you to reflect on how you experience the feeling of worry. So worry can be an actual feeling or it can be an action. It's one of those things that we can feel, but we can also act worried if you had to choose the part of your body where you experienced worry. Anxiety, let's use them synonymously. Think of the area that you spend the most time worrying where it feels for you. And I think what comes up most readily for me is the idea of anxiety. The feeling of anxiety in my body typically feels like a difficulty in breathing tight chest or just a, a lot of energy in my chest that doesn't feel pleasant. It's definitely not energizing and it also causes, a sense of insecurity or instability. This is how I experience anxiety. Okay. So what did you feel, where do you feel like you experience the feeling of worry and anxiety the most? Because worry and anxiety are both a feeling in action. There's this feedback loop relationship when you feel worried you're gonna go do things or not do things that then you use as more fuel to have more thoughts and feelings and more actions, and then so on. An example of this is, I'm gonna use myself as an example. The neutral circumstance is that my child has a new diagnosis, a brain tumor. My thought is this is bad. This means more problems. I wanna be clear that I have no idea what it means. All I know that it means is he have to have surgeon, has to have surgery. I have no idea. From a certainty standpoint, if he's gonna be a hundred percent fine, okay, that's a possibility. If he's going to be a hundred percent okay afterwards, that's a hundred percent possible. Or if he's going to have a long list of new diagnoses afterwards, it's also possible, right? So this is an uncertain situation. Okay? So I feel anxious. That's a feeling that I have when I think this is bad, this means more problems. And so then when I am in this anxious state, I'm going to go find, like my attempt is to go find certainty. And so this looks like posting in a Facebook group, getting other people's opinions, trying to research the possibilities, what can happen with the surgery that he has, receive mixed answers, and really kind of conclude this is bad. Okay. So from those actions then I think I use it as evidence to think my son could end up with more problems. So then how do I feel? I feel worried. I worry about the future. I think what if? And then I could have a long list of what ifs. I think more and more about the problems, and I try and I try to find peace in the answers. And remember what I just said, the answers are, it's a hundred percent possible. It could be super easy and it's a hundred percent possible that it could be full of problems. So there's really no piece in those answers. The piece is how I'm going to think about the possibility, and so you can see how. If we maintain this state of being, this worry and anxiety, we can spin ourselves deeper and deeper into worry and anxiety. It's almost like it's, what is it, like a torn, a hurricane, right? It's like the, the or a fire in my area. We do fires where it's like. They start to be self-propelled and like create their own climate. And so I think worry and anxiety are very much like this. If we start going down the worry and anxiety trail, it really never ends. And so I wanna highlight some ways that you may act when you are worried, when you're feeling worry, so that you can notice and actually put some words to what you're doing and what you're feeling. In service of creating some awareness. Okay, so this is what I see myself and other moms do when they are worried over research, try to find answers from the spirit of fixing or healing. Now, I wanna make sure I point out, I'm gonna probably point it out again just to make sure you don't miss the point here. None of these actions in and of themselves are bad or right or wrong. And neither of them are, they're not good either. They don't mean anything. They're just things that you do and you can decide if you like them or not. And also, I'm gonna mention it later, but the being that you bring to it, if you're coming from a place of worry and doing these things, you're going to produce a different result than if you're coming from a. Different place maybe from a place of curiosity. So if you're looking for answers on the internet from a place of curiosity versus a from a place of worry, whatever you find, you're going to look through a different lens, right? Consider that how you're feeling when you go about doing these things is going to flavor how you interpret the answer. It's almost as if you have worry. Puts on a green pair of lenses, glasses that you're looking at, the answers on the computer with and curiosity puts on. Let's use rose colored intentionally. Rose colored glasses, where you see things a little bit differently, and maybe I shouldn't use rose'cause it doesn't necessarily even mean better, but you're going to see and interpret things differently. Okay, so again, let's go back. What do you act like when you're feeling worried? Well, you may over research, try to find answers to fix. You're gonna find a lot of different ways that you try to control. You're gonna not allow other people to help. You're going to think, I am the only one that can do this properly. You are going to try many different variations of try to control the uncontrollable, which then will probably also create opportunities for you to be really, really tired. Because when, so when we're, when we're trying to control the uncontrollable, what happens is that our brain continues to spin to try to answer a question that is unanswerable. It's trying to find your, what your brain's doing when it's spinning and trying to control the uncontrollable. Uncontrollable is, it's looking for a way that it can predict what's gonna happen. That's what makes our brain feel like, yeah, we got this. And when it doesn't have enough data to accurately predict, it makes up stuff based on what happened in the past or based what on what, what it can see as possible. And usually I. It's not necessarily right and usually it is going to predict a more exaggerated, scary thing that could happen than what really will happen. So I want you use the, let's use the example I shared last week of the MRI and result. So my son has annual scans. MRI scans to see if he does have a recurrent brain tumor. So the, from the time that he has the scan to, when we normally get the results of a clean scan, it's anywhere from 3, 2, 3, 4 days. It's varied, obviously. And so preparing for the scan, doing the scan, the thought would come up into my mind, oh my gosh, what if he has a brain tumor? Another one. I would acknowledge it like, okay, that is a possibility, but I was able to effectively release it and to allow myself not to focus on that thought. Why? Because I'm able to recognize I have zero control over if he does or he doesn't, all they can do is scan. All we can do is wait. And does that make waiting easy? Not necessarily, but at least I'm not spending my energy trying to control the outcome of something I don't have control over, which would be the result of his MRI. And I'll go into this at the end, but what I do is I trust that if and when I receive the news that I'll be able to handle it again. Did it make it feel good when I got the news? Heck no. But like I trusted, I've got what it takes, and when I don't, I'm gonna call on my army behind me. I don't have to do it on my own. I don't have to rely on my own strength. Right? So these are things that I use to relinquish, is that the right word? The worry and to choose other options. Okay. Other things you might do is, I think I mentioned this spin in thoughts. And then they, then you're like, why am I so overwhelmed all the time? Well, it's likely because you're trying to solve unanswerable questions. You might not sleep because you're consumed with these thoughts. And something else that happens is often is that you get mad at other people because they're not doing what you think they should. Like worrying like you are. This comes up a lot in complaints that moms have about their spouses or the, the fathers of their children that because you're worrying and you feel like that's the, like that's what you do. You may not even think it's the better thing to do. It's just what you do, and then you watch your spouse. Not worry. It feels like they're not jumping on your train, they're not coming along with you, and you want them to be with you. You feel like they're not supporting you, and so notice if you're upset that your spouse is not doing what you think they should be doing in terms of worrying and research and controlling, consider that this is an. This is likely fueled because you think it's right what you're doing based on your worrying. What do you think? Think in quotes you are accomplishing by worrying. So oftentimes in coaching we look at some things we're doing and we recognize them as like not valuable and not helpful. But then we kind of ask ourselves like, well, what is the payoff? Like, why do I continue to do that even though I know that it's not helpful? There's always a payoff in everything that we do, and so my guess is that you think. That through worrying. It's you being thorough. It's being responsible, and it's like being the ultimate provider. And you may not have these conscious thoughts, but if you look at your actions that you take from worry, I think you're gonna be like, yeah, I'm supposed to be like that. Like that's how I have to be. If I don't be that way, then enter Scary thing happening here. Okay, so again, you have a sense of state, a safety, you have a sense of safety because you won't be caught off guard or surprised by anything. Again, you're trying to get to a place of certainty, which I wanna go back to the definitions, which inherently doesn't exist because the nature of the thing is uncertain. We can even just use like tomorrow as this, as the thing we can be worried about tomorrow. And then we realize we actually have no control over tomorrow in many ways. Right. We can have, I mean, I think we all know that now, having gone through COVID and so this is a, like what we'll, we'll look at the end of this episode is we're gonna look at presence where you are as a way to counteract the desire to worry. And lastly, what do you think you're trying to do? You might not be aware of it, but I think you are trying to control the uncontrollable in worrying. So when do we want to worry? If we go back to the quote from, from Gay Hendricks earlier, this is also from him when to worry would be when you have control and that you can do something about. The circumstance, you can do something to actually impact or change the circumstance. That's when to worry. An example I think he uses, which I think is a great example, is if you're, if you've left your house, you're driving down this, this street and you think, oh shoot, did I leave the kettle on the oven or the stove? I guess. So, and then you, you would say, yeah, you would wanna worry about that because you could take action, be like, call the home. You could check and see if your spouse could turn it off, or you could turn around and go check. You could take action. That actually would solve. The quote unquote problem of the kettle being on the oven. Now, it does get tricky with special needs moms because I think a lot of times we think if we manage the medications perfectly, if we are really vigilant, then we will be able to prevent our child from being harmed. And so it can be tricky to distinguish the difference between when you're doing it from worrying and control. Reverse is when you're doing it from a place of care and responsibility, and we may not fully flesh that out in this episode. So my suggestion is if you have questions about that, reach out and I'll support you.'cause I think it is a critical, critical piece in how you apply this work. Okay, so what does worrying make impossible for you? It's gonna be different for everybody, but my assertion is that probably makes any form of peace pretty tricky. It probably makes being present in the moment more difficult and really enjoying any, any part of life. And kind of back to what I was just saying, it's so important to recognize the difference between. What I would call being responsible, or another way of looking at this is being at cause, being the force causing your life to happen or versus being controlling. And your actions might be similar. You might still choose to sleep next to your child to monitor them throughout the night, but it's gonna feel different from you if you're doing it from. A place of responsibility versus control or fear. And you get to look at those, like you get to look at how you're choosing and who you're being when you're choosing, and you're gonna know if it feels like it's something that you've chosen and that you decide to do over and over again. You like your reasons for doing it. Then that's likely coming from a place of, of responsibility or or from at cause. But if you're doing it from another place, from worry, you're gonna feel more powerless. You're gonna feel trapped, and you're gonna feel like you can never do enough. Sometimes, like I said, it's difficult to distinguish because it's gonna look similar from the outside looking in. Like if someone's watching you, they may not be able to tell the difference. You'll be able to tell the difference because the internal experience you're having inside, the peace, the presence, the not feeling stuck, that's what's gonna shift. What are your other options? Okay, so let's look at what are your other options when it comes to, okay. If you don't wanna worry. If you're not liking how this is going, the worry and anxiety, then what? The first one, I mentioned it, I kind of referenced it earlier, but I would suggest that trusting that you'll be enough, when you'll be enough, when something happens that you need to do something different. You'll know what you need to do at the time that it needs to be done, and that takes trust. Trusting that you will have what it takes and no amount of answers will give you peace if you're trying to do these things to get, like, to get them from a place where they can't get be given. Another thing you can do is notice when you are worrying and get curious. What are you specifically worried about? I think firstly, ask yourself, is there something that you can do to change or make the situation better? Okay, watch for control here. Like this is where you have to really kind of watch yourself. If you decide or if it occurs that you have no ability to control this, then give yourself some other options. Ask yourself a powerful question. Be like, what else can I do besides worry? Maybe you ask yourself, what is it that I really want or need here? My guess is that you want some form of certainty or calm or peace. And that can't be found in the answers of your child's medical or future diagnosis. I experienced this recently when we were actually looking forward to telling our children that my son had a brain tumor. I was really grappling with like, okay, I want it. I'm gonna tell them, obviously. And there was a little bit of a gap between the time that I knew and we told our children and I knew that I wanted to give them some certainty. I wanted to not just be like here and explode their little lives, but I knew that I couldn't give them certainty based on what was gonna happen with his health. I, I, I just don't have that to give. And so what I was able to do is realize that what I could be certain of is that we would all be here for each other. That we would get the support that we needed and that no matter what happened, none of us would be alone. I felt like, okay, I can be certain that I will do whatever it takes and I can, I have the power to do that. I have the agency to make sure that we're to, like, we not maybe physically are together, but they are given what they need in terms of support and care. And so for me, that's where I find my peace'cause it's just not available. I can't ask something of the future that it's just not able to give. Okay. So lastly, and I again kind of referenced it earlier, one of your other options is to be present now, allow everything to be okay just as it is. Stop trying to fix the problem in an effort to find the land of being. Okay. I was just talking to a, an amazing mom this morning. I think what, what I helped her realize is that there's not this place we get to go where everything's gonna be okay. We're like the blows stop coming and magically everything is gonna be all better likely. If we look at what's happened and we kind of predict the future, like they're gonna keep coming. So I realize that this part can be a very high gradient, but I'm asking a lot of you guys because the things that you're facing in many cases are life threatening or life critical to your child. And so hear me when I say I don't say this like flippantly or like I don't get the gravity of it'cause I'm right there with you. But it is possible to be present even with the reality that your child may be harmed or may die, and that part of being able to be present is accepting and not resisting that reality. Worrying doesn't do anything to change that reality. Whether we like it or not, ladies, that's the reality that we've been given. And so don't let it rob you of being able to be close and present and connected and enjoy your child now just as they are with the same conditions that they have today. Not knowing if they're going to change or not. Okay. Well, I think that is going to conclude. This conversation, but I'm, I'm willing to promise that there's gonna be more conversations coming up. In the future of this podcast on the topic. So what I would love actually is if you felt like, oh, there's like a part that you, you kind of get, you feel stuck at, you feel like, how dare she say that? I would love to hear from you so that I can continue to support I. You right where you need it. I'll record an episode for you. Some of my clients, I'm like, Hey, I recorded a podcast episode for you and it's so fun to be able to really like direct the conversations we're having here based on real conversations. So don't be stranger. Go ahead and reach out. We'll see you next week on the Special Needs Mom podcast. Until then, go stop worrying ladies. Okay.