How to Deal With Guilt as a RAD Mom

Guilt is a common feeling we have as special needs moms. In this episode, Amy considers the stories we tell ourselves around guilt. She provides pratical insight on how to reframe our stories. 

May 4, 2021

Timestamps & Key Topics:

• 0:21-    Intro
• 1:02-    Inner Critic
• 3:01-    Defining Guilt
• 4:26-    Stories We Tell Ourselves
• 10:52-  Changing the Narrative
• 13:52-  Prayer
• 15:00-  Outro

Episode Links & Resources:

• Scripture mentioned: Psalm 103, 36:5-7, Isaiah 41:10, Ephesians 3:14-20  

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Transcript

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(0:21) Welcome to Take Heart where our goal is to give you hope, offer insight and encouragement so you can flourish and your journey as a special needs mom. Each week Sara, Amy Carrie will explore a theme, share inspiring stories, practical tips and encouragement you can use on your journey. Using our combined experience of over 30 years of parenting children with special needs, our prayer is that you ‘take heart’ and have the courage you need to embrace each day. Thank you for joining us today.

(1:02)  Hello, I'm Amy Brown, and this month we are talking about guilt. I could write many episodes about this topic. As a mom of six, I've had plenty of opportunities to feel guilty. All moms have guilt. This mom job is hard, and we want so much to do it well. Some of us are more prone to guilt than others. Some of us have a really loud inner critic. Recently I was on a walk with my husband, David, and I asked him this question. How loud is your inner critic? Do you hear your inner critic often? He had a complete puzzled look on his face and said this sentence to me, “What inner critic?” Okay. I kind of wish that I could live his life, but my inner critic is especially loud. I am my hardest critic and maybe you are too. You might have this idea that you're supposed to do it all and do it well. You're supposed to be a perfect mom. For a special needs mom and for any mom, this is impossible. Life will give us plenty of opportunities to mess up and feel guilty. I wish I can give you one quick tip that helps you never struggle with mom guilt again, but learning to understand and deal with guilt is not a one and done. It is a lifelong practice. I think guilt is all about expectations, the expectations we have for ourselves and the expectations others put on us. You may have a situation in life where you miss an appointment, or you lose it with a child, or you can't go to one child's game because you're in the hospital with a different child, and guilt rushes in. We feel like we don't live up to someone else's expectation, or the expectations we put on ourselves, which are often ridiculously high. We forget in those moments also to consider what God expects of us. God doesn't expect us to carry it all. He doesn't expect us to do it all. He expects us to come to him and leave it at his feet.

(3:03) Before we go any further, let me say this, I'm not talking about the normal guilt you feel when you do something wrong. You know you do something wrong, you feel guilty about it, and you ask forgiveness, and you move on. That is a normal part of our lives. I'm talking about a deeper and more toxic guilt. Most of my life when I was feeling mom guilt, I was actually feeling shame. Guilt is the feeling you get when you feel you've done something wrong. Shame is the feeling you get when you think you are what is wrong. Author Brene Brown says this, “I believe that there is a profound difference between shame and guilt. I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful. It's holding something we've done or failed to do up against our values, and feeling discomfort. But I define shame as an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” So often, the story we tell ourselves is not that I messed up, and I'm going to apologize and make it right and move on. I think most of the time, our inner critic sounds more like shame. The story we tell ourselves is I'm a bad mom. I can't get it right. I'm not enough and on and on. As special needs moms, I know we all have moments like this. All of us have moments that are hard, moments we remember with pain, and moments we remember with guilt. 

(4:26) My question to you today is to think about those moments, and what story are you telling yourself? We often tell ourselves stories in different ways. We let other people's opinions of us tell the story, or we don't tell ourselves the whole story. Several years ago, I was sitting near a group of moms. One mom was telling the group about a child who was bullying her daughter in gymnastics class. She went on to tell the group about the terrible behavior this child exhibited. She finished up by proclaiming, “I never see the mom. Obviously that mom doesn't care, and that is why the child acts this way.” That non-caring mom. Me. That out of control child. Mine. Talk about wanting the earth to open up and swallow me. Nothing sends me into a mom guilt shame spiral more quickly than my child's behavior and subsequent judgment of me. Now, before we get all up in arms about this woman's insensitive comments, let me say this. Some of the story she was telling was true. My child was bullied. Yes, I was never at gymnastics. But that was not the entire story. I wasn't at the class, because when you're a mom of six, you delegate. I didn't pick her up; someone else did. The reason my child was behaving the way she was, she had a hidden disability. She has reactive attachment disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome. Yes, I did care very much, and was doing the best I could to help my child. The point of this story is not to make you feel sorry for me. The point is this. Are you like that lady at gymnastics? When you experience a moment of mom guilt and shame, are you telling yourself the whole story? Are you looking at what happened in a less than gracious light? Are you only seeing the parts where you were less than and not the whole situation? Another way we tell our story, when it comes to mom guilt is from the wrong perspective. We tell ourselves a story that's not always kind and gracious. One of the things I struggle the most with when it comes to guilt, is guilt about my other children. I think it is really common for special needs moms to feel this, we worry about all the time we spend with our child with special needs. We wonder how this will impact our other children. Most of the time, our home has been chaotic. With our daughter's behavior, I would have to stop what I was doing to deal with it. I have six kids, there was no way I can meet all their needs. That didn't stop me from trying and feeling guilty about it. Several years ago, our daughter was in a residential treatment center, and our family traveled to visit her and take part in a family therapy weekend. We were there with other parents and participated in something called family sculpting. Family sculpting is a form of therapy. It's kind of hard to explain, but here's how I'm going to explain it. It's a form of therapy that expresses your perspective on the family unit. It's like setting a stage. Each member of the family is asked to recreate a scene and how you see yourself in the family and how you see your family. So each member sets the stage for example. Let's say that you feel like your husband is distant. So you may set your husband far away from you. Let's say that you have a really judgmental mother-in-law. This is all in the context of dealing with what's going on at your home at the time. So you may set a person far away with a pointing judgmental finger at you. It's like freeze tag, everybody freezes in a spot. You're the person who sets those people around you. If he feels particularly close to one child, you may put that child next to you. After the stage is set, there's no word spoken, the therapist then asks questions. Now, if this sounds really vulnerable and scary to do in front of a group of people, trust me it is. Our family was the last to go. Throughout the day, I watched other families do it,  and it was painful and eye opening. I felt like I was standing on some kind of holy ground to look into their families and see what they were experiencing  with their children with attachment disorders. When our turn came, we each set the stage for our family. It was interesting and helpful to see how each one of us saw the situation. My son Evan took his turn, Evan is my third child, and he was 14 at the time. I was so proud of him for being willing to do this. I mean, I didn’t want to do this. What 14 year old boy wants to do this? He was closest in age to our daughter. He often was the target of her behavior. When he set his stage, Evan put himself far away from me. I had tried so hard, especially with Evan, to be close and make sure he was okay in the midst of all the chaos in our home. I tried to spend time with him and do what I could to help him. From his perspective, I was far away. Here's the deal. That was Evan’s perspective. That was his honest and brave attempt to explain what it was like for him to live in our home. As you can imagine, shame and guilt rushed in. all I could think about was how much I’d failed him. Instead of taking it at face value, I started in on the shame and guilt. I told myself, I should have tried harder. I should have learned more about attachment disorder, so I could help her get better. I should have loved better. Meaning my children's issues would be better, if I would have done better. I told this story from my own skewed and less than gracious perspective. I examine those painful moments with a magnifying glass. I enlarged all the places where I thought I'd failed. Moms, this kind of reflection is not life giving, it only leads you further down the hole of shame and guilt. I want you to think about the story you're telling yourself? Are you telling yourself the story from a wrong perspective, like I did? I just looked at my own perspective and not Evans. Are you only telling yourself half the story? Are you letting somebody else tell your story? 

(10:52) How can we change that narrative? How can we learn to look at the experiences in our life, where we feel guilt and shame, with more love and kindness towards ourselves? So what do we do? Well, I have three practices that I try to practice when my inner critic is loud. The first one is: practice retelling your story. Think back to a difficult moment, a moment when you held yourself in judgment and guilt and do these three steps. Number one, this is what happened. Number two, this is the story I told myself. Number three, this is the truth. Let me give you an example. Number one, this is what happened: we had to send our daughter to a residential treatment center. Number two, the story I was telling myself was that I had failed as a mom. Number three, the truth of the matter is, she needed more help than we could give her. In making this very painful and difficult decision, I was doing what was best for my child and our family. This practice helps you reframe your narrative. It gives you critical awareness of what's actually happening in this situation. The next step is to remember who God says you are. You are His child. He loves and rejoices over you. In Psalm 103 it says, “So great is his love for us. Like a father has compassion on his children. So the Lord has compassion on us,” In Psalm 36, “Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like a mighty mountain. Your justice, like the ocean depths. You care for your people, O Lord. How precious is your unfailing love. We can find shelter in the shadow of his wings.” So remember who God says you are, you are his beloved child. Number three: remember who God says he is, and this is the most important one. It should be first. He never leaves us or forsakes us. He is always with us, walking beside us. He doesn't want us to carry all this guilt and shame. It says in Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” God asks us to bring all to him: all of our life, the big things, the little things, the things we feel guilty about. Bring them all to him and ask him to help you rewrite your story with grace and love. Author Brene Brown says, “The most powerful stories are the ones we tell ourselves., and these are often fiction.” So the next time you feel guilt and shame, how can you reframe your narrative and give yourself grace? 

(13:52) I would like to pray a prayer out of Ephesians 3 over you. 

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

(15:00) Thank you so much for joining us this week on Take Heart. If you love our podcast, could you do us a favor and leave a review on whatever platform you're using to listen? You can follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to share your story with us, follow the links in the show notes. We love hearing from our listeners. Join us next Tuesday when Carrie shares her thoughts on guilt.