By the time that parents of adult kids with OCD find me, they are almost uniformly burned out. In this podcast episode, you'll find, first, a working definition of burnout. 2nd, the most common and most commonly overlooked cause of burnout. And 3rd, what one thing you can do today to break through burnout. So let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome to the free me from OCD podcast. If you or someone you love has OCD, you know that OCD can hold you hostage. OCD can get in the driver's seat of your life. Here, you'll find the information, tips, and tools to put you back in the driver's seat of your life. I'm doctor Vicki Rachner, your host.

I call on my experience as a mother of a son diagnosed with OCD when he was in college, physician, and life coach to help you evolve into the best and highest version of yourself. Let's dive into today's episode. Have you ever faced adversity and had a friend or a coach or a therapist say, you got this? You know that they have your back. More importantly, you know that you have your back.

Most people who arrive at the OCD haven don't say to themselves, you've got this. They're more likely to say, I don't got this. I'm running on fumes. I've tried so many things that haven't worked. I've trusted the wrong people.

I've tried interventions that made things worse rather than better for my child. I don't know where to turn and I melt down when I hit any little bump in the road like when I misplace my car keys. Some days, I don't know how I'm going to get out of bed, much less rise to the challenge of supporting someone with OCD. Many parents arriving in the community feel both helpless and hopeless. I've been there myself.

They are burned out. Now burnout means different things to different people. For this podcast, let's think about burnout as a lack of trust that you can face and bounce back from the challenges that come your way. You don't see the resources that you can access, the options you have, or trust in your ability to make the best choice for you and your family even when there are no right choices. People who thrive know that for every problem there is a solution.

In the process of facing stressful situations, they might discover it's hard work. They might need to educate themselves and get advice from experts. They may realize they were asking the wrong questions. In the end, they know and trust that they will make the best informed choices for themselves and their family members. They recognize that they have lived through every single adverse situation they face.

Alright, so what's the difference between a burned out parent and a thriving parent? Burnout is associated with a lack of emotional resilience. Your resilience varies from day to day. Some days you feel like a superhero ready to take on the world. There are other days in which you snap because somebody cut you off in traffic.

This is the last straw that sends you over the edge. Let's take a specific example that illustrates how and why parents of kids with OCD get on the path to burnout. Maxine, the mother of Josh, a 24 year old son with OCD, told me about a phone call with her mother that sent her over the edge. Maxine was explaining to her mother why Josh didn't attend the family birthday party. Maxine's mother said, the reason Josh isn't getting better is because of your parenting foolishness.

Just lay down the family law. Now Maxine knew from previous conversations that her mother thinks that OCD is a moral failing. Maxine told me, on my good days, I could have just hung up the phone and said, oh, well, that's just mom being mom, But it wasn't a good day for me. I wondered, what if mom's right? I slid into the rabbit hole of insecurity and fear.

I started second guessing myself at everything I had learned about OCD. Can you relate to this story? I'd like to show you why, as a parent of a child with OCD, you are at increased risk of burning out. Sometimes when you face adversity, whether it's an unpleasant interaction with a coworker, a new home expense, or your child's unmanaged OCD, you feel unsafe. When you're unsafe, the body activates the ancient fight, flight, freeze stress response.

You feel the surge of energy as your body prepares to evade death. The saber tooth tiger is chasing you after all. The stress response is designed for the situation in which right here, right now, you might die. Once you've outrun the saber tooth tiger and you're safe back in your cave, the body turns off the response. On the day of Maxine's phone call with her mother, her mother's words were like the saber toothed tiger.

They made her feel unsafe. Health challenges, financial stresses, and isolation can all trigger the stress response. Protecting our children is a strong driving biologic force. Reliving what happened in the past or imagine what could happen in the future can set off the response too. Many things about our kids OCD make us feel unsafe.

We worry about a number of things, including the impact of OCD on your child's daily life. OCD can affect their performance at school, their social lives, and even performing activities like eating and sleeping and bathing. Parents worry about the stigma associated with OCD. They know that their child might be stigmatized or misunderstood by others. 3rd, they're worried about the effect of OCD on the family.

OCD is a family condition. Parents may worry about the impact of OCD on the other children and on the family as a whole. They might worry about the long term implications of OCD. Will their children be able to live independently, to hold down a job, to fall in love and raise a family? And last, they might worry about the effectiveness of treatment.

Is there in fact hope for my child even though I've tried so many things in the past that haven't worked? It's no small wonder that as a parent of a child with OCD, your brain regularly turns on your stress response. Now the stress response has its place. We wouldn't wanna get rid of it even if we could. The problem is that the stress response is often turned on when life and death is not on the line.

It's like a false fire alarm. Sometimes we don't even know it's on, and sometimes it's left on for so long that it just feels like a normal day. The unchecked stress response and the way in which an individual manages the stress response is the most common contributing factor in the creation of burnout. It's also the most commonly overlooked. When your stress response is turned on, you don't think I've got it, when you're trying to save your life.

You're thinking, I could die, and I don't want to. To help you understand the relationship between the stress response and burnout, Let's talk about a different kind of burning, a forest fire. Most forest fires begin with lightning strikes. Now about 40,000,000 lightning strike hit the ground in the United States each year. And in most cases, lightning does no damage.

Think of an adverse event in your life as a lightning strike. Most days, they don't do any harm. You let a snarky comment roll right past you and just go on with your day. Under the right conditions, stressful events, like Maxine's mother's critical words, spark the stress response. This is like the lightning strike that causes a spark that ignites a small pile of dry leaves.

Certain conditions make this spark more likely. Are you already tired, hungry, feeling disconnected with others? These are all circumstances that can erode your emotional resilience. This is like the forest being dry and filled with leaves and kindling. Now if you were in the forest standing right there and witness this small fire, you could stomp it out with your feet.

Similarly, if you witness your stress response, you can calm your body. People who are burned out don't always know when their stress response is on and don't think to extinguish it. When my son was a toddler, he did not hear his body's hunger signal. I could tell he was hungry when he got irritable and started snapping. I would just put a bowl of grapes in front of him.

He would eat them and then return to himself. In a similar way, many people are disconnected from their bodies, and they do not realize when the stress response is on. You might be living with your stress response stuck in the on position and not even know it. It just feels like a normal day. This can be exhausting.

I know a man who came back from war with PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. Even though he was in the United States and no longer on the battlefield, certain noises or smells could trigger him. Suddenly, he was back in Iraq and his life was on the line. He got a service dog to help him and the service dog made a huge difference. He felt safe with the service dog.

However, after about a year, he needed to retire his service dog because the dog became burned out. A previous drama makes you more vulnerable for the stress response to kick in. While PTSD is a dramatic example, it can occur on a smaller scale. Let's say you weren't invited to a birthday party when you were a child. You were devastated.

Your parents trying to shame you into getting over your sadness. Come on. It's only a birthday party. There are real problems in the world. Grandpa has cancer.

Then you grow up and have your own kids. Maybe your child comes home and tells you he's not invited to a birthday party. Your childhood trauma gets reactivated and suddenly it's like you're 6 years old again, feeling alone and rejected. Now what happens when the stress response goes unchecked? That's like the forest fire spreading and doing major damage.

Forest conditions like wind and heat determine how quickly the fires spread. 2 things that follow the stress response make things worse. 1st, people react when the stress response is turned on. They spring into knee jerk impulsive action. This usually makes things worse and not better.

2nd, people with burnout tend to judge themselves for reacting as they do. When am I ever gonna learn? The tendency to react and judge are like the wind and the heat that cause the fires to take off and do significant damage. They are also completely avoidable. Here are 4 simple words that can minimize the collateral damage when the stress response is turned on.

Those words are how human of me. Let's now Maxine doesn't have any more control over her body stress response than your child does with their obsessive thoughts. They're just there. It's just your brain doing what brains do. However, the sooner you witness what's happening in your brain and body and put out the flame, the better.

Why is this so important? Well, an adverse situation is a problem that needs a solution. Do you remember talking about the brain as a 3 story house? Upstairs, there's the thinking brain. On the ground floor is the feeling brain.

When you are in the stress response, you are in the basement with a fully activated reptile brain. This is the part of the brain you see in action when kids have a temper tantrum. You need to calm them down before you bestow your parenting lessons. The solutions that you seek for overcoming adversity are upstairs in the thinking brain. To get there, you must first calm your reptile brains.

Now there are ways of calming the body. You can do it through body work like deep breathing. There's an entire field of somatic medicine that can help you manage your body with intention. You can also use your thoughts to interrupt the cycle. You can put your hand over your heart and say out loud, I am safe.

Ideally, you wake up to your stress response as quickly as possible. So be aware that unrecognized, unmanaged stress responses may be contributing to your burnout. The best way to break through burnout is to understand when and why your body goes into the stress response. The earlier you can calm your body, the better. Then notice when you react rather than respond.

Further, notice when you judge yourself for the stress response and reacting. Then remember the phrase, oh, how human of me. Let's replay Maxine's phone call. Maybe Maxine prepares for the call with her mother by reminding herself, okay. Every time I speak with my mother, she says hurtful things that reflect her ignorance of OCD.

When she does that, I usually get angry and want to attack her. If that happens this time, I'm just gonna take a deep breath and not fight back. Then Maxine picks up the phone. Her mother makes the jab at Maxine's parenting. And even though Maxine knows it's coming, she feels the awakening of her mother bear within and the reflexive urge to defend her young against threats.

She feels her heart racing and notices that her body initiated the survival response. Instead of lashing out at her mother as she usually does in these circumstances, she says, mom, gotta go. She hangs up the phone and says to herself, oh, how human of me. I heard my mother's words and witnessed my mother bear within awakening instinctively wanting to defend my young against threats. Now she is responding to the source of stress instead of reacting.

Instead of judging herself, she gets curious about what just happened. Why is it that it's so upsetting to me that my mother doesn't understand OCD and criticizes my parenting? Does it have to do with OCD? Does it have to do with her child's future? Does it have to do maybe with an unhealed trauma from Maxine's childhood?

Maxine specifically remembers when her beloved hamster died. And her parents said, well, it's just a hamster. Come on, let's go out and buy you another one. They weren't there to understand and offer comfort when she was mourning. So to summarize, we've talked about the most commonly overlooked contributing factor to burnout, an unrecognized unmanaged stress response.

You are in a better position to avoid or breakthrough burnout when you understand what triggers the fight fight freeze response for you. Recognize when you're there, react rather than respond, and get curious instead of judging yourself. You can interrupt the cycle at any moment by simply witnessing your thoughts and feelings and physiologic changes and treating yourself with compassion with the phrase, how human of me. How human of me to think that life and death is on the line when my child doesn't do the ERP homework. As an exercise for this week, I invite you to simply pay attention.

What happens to you when your body turns on the stress response? What's your normal reaction? When you find yourself in the stress response or reacting or judging, try a variation of how human of me. Have your own back as you take the important first step to dismantling burnout. Well, would you like more guidance about breaking through burnout?

I'm about to deliver a masterclass, the burnout breakthrough. You'll take away insights about how you respond to adversity. You'll get specific exercise to figure out what your triggers are and how you know you're in the stress response. You'll get specific ideas you can use to extinguish the flame of your stress response. You'll get alternative to reacting and judging.

You'll have access to live coaching and you'll join a community of participants. I will leave the link below so that you can do more. Thanks again for stopping by and educating yourself about how you can be a force for healing when your child is learning to manage OCD. Again, a link to learn more about the burnout breakthrough is below. We'd love to have you join us.