The Special Needs Mom Podcast

What's Wrong with Me?

• Kara Ryska • Episode 270

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This week, I’m talking about a pattern I see often in caregiving—the heartbreaking habit of turning on ourselves when life feels too hard.

I share how our minds default to “something must be wrong with me,” and why the truth is simpler: hard things feel hard because they are hard.

Inside the episode:

  • The self-blame cycle so many of us fall into.
  • Three ways to shift: accepting reality, noticing comparison traps, and redefining strength.
  • Practical reframes, like asking “what’s hard here?” instead of “what’s wrong with me?”

I mentioned Episode 268: Nobody Else Has It This Hard. Go take a listen!

Lastly, I also share details about the Pathway to Peace Coaching Community, opening October 14th for five days. It's your safe space to be supported and seen. 


hello and welcome. To the Special Needs Mom podcast. I'm so glad you're here. And today we're gonna talk about a pattern that I see popping up kind of everywhere. oftentimes, you know, I experienced the very same thing that I noticed my client's experiencing, which is, you know, one of the, I guess we could call it a gift of experiencing this caregiving, special needs mom, medical mom life journey, is that I have that deep understanding of what we are going through, which, you know, does allow me to have that, built in context and understanding. But this is a topic I wanna bring up because I feel like it's a topic that. I guess the word coming to my mind is, is heartbreak To see moms that are courageously giving everything they have and Just the hard emotions that come with caregiving, such as shame and disappointment and discouragement and defeated and fear and frustration and embarrassment. Like there is so much hard, and I'm just talking about those feelings, right? Not necessarily even all the reasons why you might feel that way, but it's heartbreaking when moms are going through something so hard. And then I see this pattern emerge because as we're gonna, you know, go to, in a second, I'm gonna outline the common kind of circular pattern that we go through. But then I think you'll see, I want you to notice the heartbreak in it because rather than holding ourselves and supporting ourselves, essentially we're concluding something's wrong with us. And you can see why that would be heartbreaking. And maybe even as you listen, you'll be able to tap into the heartbreak that you experience and hopefully some relief when you can exhale and recognize, oh, this is what's happening for me, not that. So let's start with the pattern. So things happen hard, things happen. Those of you listening are going to be very well acquainted with very hard medical diagnosis and conditions to manage life critical in a lot of cases. And we have our friendly neighbor. The behavioral things that happened, I think it was last week, maybe, maybe two weeks prior I talked about, something without talking about the exact thing, but basically a behavioral event that was really hard. Is really hard still in the ways that it still is impacting my life. Okay? So there's hard behavioral things, and then we got the relational, we got all the relationships that we manage, perhaps our spouse or partner, and all the schools and the doctors and the nursing and care providers, and so many different relationships. And some of us are managing work outside of the home. Beyond caregiving, we're managing different aspects of careers. So in all of these areas, hard things happen and we often feel like we're not handling it. What all put in quotes well enough. Now it's only when we stand back and really start to analyze it that we notice this. And so that's why these conversations like this one you're having right now with me can be so valuable is because this is when we can kind of stand back and like, you know, scratch our head a little bit and say, Hey, wait a second. Maybe that doesn't make as much sense as I thought it did when it was just swirling around in my head. So these hard things happen. We feel like we're not handling it well enough, or maybe we just feel like we should be handling it differently. And we come to a conclusion or what I might call a default thought, some variation of it must be me, something must be wrong with me. And this makes sense when you stand back and understand our brains, the way our minds work. We're very prone to wanting to have understanding reasons why. And our brains want to make sense of pain, and when there's no clear reason why we're in such pain, then self blame or turning on ourselves saying something must be wrong with me feels like the most logical conclusion or like the only answer. Research actually shows that something called attribution theory says that people naturally try to assign causes to painful or confusing events. And in the absence of clear external causes, we often land on internal ones blaming ourselves. So I find it's so helpful to kind of stand back and look at the pattern. And again, to kind of scratch your heads and say, oh, oh, well isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting how there's actually a very predictable pattern, not just happening for me, but happening for the I'm gonna say the vast majority of us it, it may be too lofty to say all of us. I'm a little tempted to say that, but I will say that I think our common experience is to have this. Cycle of blaming ourselves. So given this pattern, I want to look at aspects, three different angles and essentially opportunities to take different paths. And the first one is read it in acceptance. I will say, and it is recognizing and accepting that it is hard. Because it is hard, and I love how like stupidly simple that is, but I don't think we often actually stand back and really recognize how hard this is. Like we are living it, so we're not like watching it on tv. We are living it. And so. It's a different vantage point than we normally take, but this is your opportunity to stand back for a second and to look at what's going on and to make a conclusion that it is hard because it is hard. So this is a normalization. This is accepting that struggling in a hard circumstance doesn't mean you're weak. Like the normal quote unquote experience, in a hard circumstance is to have a hard time, is to struggle, is to like not feel well as in, not feel like yourself, not feel happy, not feel light and easy. So, very expected now that we're talking about it, right? A very simple, like, not super life critical example is, and I know I'm not the only one struggling with this, that's why I I share this example is, you know, I'm in my mid forties and. We are being, educated to say, you're supposed to be weightlifting, you're supposed to be doing resistance training, which I'm onboard. I'm like, yes, that sounds like a great idea. And yet I'm struggling to find a routine or a system or basically I'm not resistance training regularly. There's every once in a while I find a way to do it, but it's not maybe going the way that I would like it to go now. The inner voice in me could quite easily Russell up a pretty convincing story. Have my inner voice start to tell me what's wrong with you. Why can't you, everybody else can figure out how to do this. It's not that hard. Right. You could see how intellectually I can understand how this is something that is, a possibility for other people to do, but yet I'm struggling to do it. So logical conclusion something must be wrong with me. So that's a kind of a lighthearted instance where we can see this pattern coming up. So again, the reframe here or the opportunity is to recognize this is hard because it's hard. Not because I'm failing, not because I'm lazy, not because I'm weak, not because I'm unorganized, just because it's hard. Okay? Now the next angle we're gonna look at is the comparison trap. I know comparison is something that we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we heard of that. I promise I'm not doing it. But you know what we are because again, we are story making machines. We use comparison as a way of figuring out if we are. Doing things right according to the others around us, and not necessarily just to be right, but it's our human nature to wanna fit in and to be accepted by our other village mates. So recognizing, okay, we're probably not gonna altogether stop ourselves from comparing, but let's use this skill For us and not against us. And notice when comparison is guiding us down a a pathway, that's just not very helpful. So we're gonna look at people and very commonly assume that they are handling things better. Which I think is kind, but we make assumptions that other people are doing things better or handling it in a way that we are not in a way that kind of negatively frames us. So it distorts our reality. Like a silly example could be you see another mom at the hospital and maybe she is smiling, maybe she's walking, like she's not carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. What you don't see is the tears. She cried in the bathroom 10 minutes earlier. So you have this quick little snapshot that gives you enough information to make a story that she is handling it better than you are. And so where I would suggest to go from the comparison trap is to use your struggle as proof that you're human, kind of even going back to the first point human. And that when humans experience hard things, they are hard. So really just notice if you are giving yourself space For that humanity versus if you are using it of proof of your own weakness or insufficiency. Okay. Third, opportunity. It's redefining your strength. So most of us don't realize the expectations we have for ourself, and a lot of us would define strength. As being unaffected and shaken or never asking for help. But the trick here is that we don't often kind of fully own that. Like we would maybe say, oh, no, no, I believe in asking for help. I'm all for it. Yet we don't ask for help. So while in some levels, some parts of us do believe that ha asking for help is a sign of strength or strong, or, something that you're open to on another level or a part of you also believes that you should be able to do it by yourself. You should be able to do it on your own. And that one, while it's a little bit kind of more tucked away, usually is going to be the thought that. Dictates your actions and your thoughts. So this is really where we are reframing and just noticing that strength actually is showing up messy, asking for help, asking for help, letting yourself feel, and that if you're struggling to do those things, then. It's just an opportunity to observe, to observe where you're getting stuck, to meet yourself there with kindness, curiosity, and compassion, and to kind of go into some of the tools and practical shifts I'm going to share with you in a moment. And so I'm gonna give you three alternative options for where you find yourself. And what you might invite yourself into, and you might wanna write things, things down. They're very, it's like short, but I feel like the kind of thing that I wouldn't expect you just to remember.'cause I mean, I know how many things you have in your head. There's not enough paper to get all of that out, right? No. Okay. So instead of What's wrong with me? Or rather than saying it, maybe instead of when you notice yourself thinking. Or wondering what's wrong with me? Guide yourself toward asking yourself the question, what's hard in this situation? And you can see how that question's going to guide you down some compassion, probably even allowing yourself to feel the impact of the hardness. And it's fundamentally a very different conversation that you're having with yourself, like I want you to imagine the difference of how heavy it feels to walk around, wondering what's wrong with me all day long as you're trying to cope with all the things that you're coping with, as opposed to walking around all day long, asking yourself. And answering what's hard about this situation, and I almost just picture this opportunity to meet yourself over and over and over again in again, love, compassion, curiosity, tenderness. And thus, I think I, back to what I was sharing earlier, back to the heartbreak. This I think is where I was trying to articulate the heartbreak. This accusation of what's wrong with me when I already know the weight that we are carrying as special needs moms to then layer this on top. That's heartbreaking. It's like adding suffering onto what's already really, really hard. And that's where I think guiding us into a fundamentally different conversation with ourselves. Like what's hard about this situation? To me guides us away from attacking ourselves and into having self-compassion. Okay, let's look at two more. You might find yourself thinking some variation of, why can't I handle this? Or maybe it's, why can't I handle this better? And a question I would suggest. To replace that or to guide yourself toward is what support do I need right now? Sit with that one for a second.'cause you are a first answer might be like, I have no idea, Kara. That's most of your first answers. But you have more wisdom and more knowledge than you sometimes realize, and so allow yourself to sit with it just for a moment. To see what you find. And then the last one we'll go over is, instead of, I shouldn't feel this way, ask, what would I say to a friend who felt this way? And when you're experiencing this, you might not say, feel this way. Fill in the blank. I shouldn't feel this guilt. I shouldn't feel this embarrassment. I shouldn't feel this anger. I shouldn't feel this resentment. I shouldn't feel this disgust. Any variation? Ask yourself, what would I say to a friend who felt this way? And there is a variation I wanna give you on this one so you can choose your own adventure. And the alternative to this is what if it's okay to feel and then fill in the blank and whatever the feeling is, what if it's to feel whatever the feeling is. And this is just a way of inviting yourself to the. Openness to feeling how you actually feel, because a lot of us are like, Ooh, if only people knew how I felt, then that leads us down to a whole other trail. But also sometimes it's so scary to feel how we actually feel that inviting ourselves into kind of a tiptoe into the waters of that feeling. A great gateway to that is what, If it's okay to feel. This way. Okay, now as we wrap up, I wanna leave you with three things, hard things feel hard because they're hard. Nothing is wrong with you. You are not broken. You are an incredible, resilient human. And it feels fitting to share right before we end this episode that. I am opening the Pathway to Peace Coaching Community in the middle of October. It opens October 14th. It's only going to be open for five days, in which case you can sign up and join the community. This is the community for you if you're craving a safe space where you don't have to carry these thoughts alone. Where you're literally surrounded by moms that are like nodding their heads with you saying, I feel exactly like you do, and you want more, more as in like you want to kind of reclaim the experience that you dreamed of in being a mom and being a woman, and being a wife and being a career person. And you do not have to carry all of this alone. And so I encourage you to check out the Pathway to Peace Community Information is available to either sign up for the wait list or sign up on the show notes. I encourage you just to come check it out. All right, well, we're gonna leave you there. I hope to see you over there and We'll see you on the next episode.