four counterintuitive things to do when you're overwhelmed by your child's substance use or emotional challenges, with Brenda Zane

Host: Brenda Zane, brenda@brendazane.com
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Show Transcript:

Speaker: Brenda Zane

Welcome friends, I am back with a solo episode today because I had some things that I felt were really important to share with you. But I've also had so many incredible guests lately that I didn't want to pause getting their expertise to you. So this is the struggle when you have a podcast. So as you know, I spend so much of my time talking with and listening to parents. And over and over I recognize three common feelings, fear, complete overwhelm, and exhaustion. And it's not just a little bit of these things. It's like crippling levels of these feelings. And I can completely, completely relate because I felt the exact same things. And I know how debilitating it can be. And I also understand what it's like to try and go on living life, holding down a job taking care of other children, spouses, and partners and ex-spouses and ex-partners and parents who are aging, and everything that life requires when inside, you're experiencing this combination of it's kind of a confusing thing. It's this kind of crazy panicked anxiety and paralysis at the same time. Because your son or daughter is at risk, and you don't know how to best help them. 

So given all of that I spent some time noodling on this and really trying to boil it down to understand what were the things that helped me the most at the time when I was living the madness. And also, what have I learned in the past four years since my son's near-fatal overdose, that I wish I had known when we were in the really bad years, what I realized is that there are four fairly counterintuitive things that you can do, or at least work on doing, that might help you a lot in your day to day existence, if you live with a challenged child, so we'll get into them. 

The first is, ask, don't tell. So something we tend to do as parents when our kids are going off the rails is we tell them all the things that they're doing wrong and what they should be doing. Instead, we come at the problem from the perspective of you should stop XYZ, because it's bad for your health or it's getting you in a lot of trouble. You need to get your life together, be more responsible, act, your age, or whatever it is, that's our perceived solution for them. And of course, we probably do have a different perspective and we have more knowledge and we might have a clearer brain than them. And we also have the absolute best intentions in telling them these things because we love them to death. And all we want for them is to be healthy and happy and live a safe and productive life. 

So the counterintuitive thing to do as a parent is to ask and not tell. And I imagine you're probably thinking, Well, what am I going to ask them? I need to pound into their brain all the stuff they should be doing. So first, let's talk about why it is important to ask them questions. Think about the last time you went to the doctor, or in a situation where you needed some help. Let's just say it's the doctor for this scenario. So you show up at the doctor's office, and you've got three or four things, you know, that have maybe been accumulating during the last year of COVID, that just aren't quite feeling right inside. And you also have a big, swollen right leg, which is really painful, and your whole ankle and foot are swollen and blue. So the doctor looks at your leg and tells you what to do. Warm compresses elevation, no exercise on or not, she tells you a bunch of other stuff. But you can't really remember it all, because you're thinking about the three or four other quirky things that aren't quite feeling right inside. But she never asks how you're feeling other than the leg, which is obviously why you're at the doctor. 

So you leave her office and you go on with your day. And the other underlying problems are still there, because she didn't ask anything about those. And we can be like the doctor, we see the big obvious problem and focus all of our efforts on that without being curious about what else might be going on underneath. And this can be a lesson in patience and restraint, for sure that if you have a few moments with your son or daughter where they're not under the influence of any substances, and when you are in a good place mentally and physically. Try asking them some questions, with the caveat being that you need to be genuinely curious. You can't just throw these things out and not actually listen to them if and when they answer, which, by the way, might not be the first time you ask. So you might have to do this a few times. But here are some great questions that you can ask when the timing and the environment are right. Things like what's on your mind? What do you need most from me right now? What do you need most from the world right now? what's worrying you the most right now? What are you struggling with today? What are you looking forward to right now? What would you like to change about your life right now? Or another version of that? If life could be different in six months what would it look like? How have you been sleeping lately? What's taking up the most space in your head right now. 

Now, none of these questions are going to quote-unquote, solve your child struggles. But what they can do is start to reopen genuine communication between the two of you. And it shows them that you care that you're not just there to fix their big obvious problem. Also, the first time you use one of these questions with them, they might look at you strangely, especially if the communication between you has been mostly lecturing, and yelling, or complete silence. But chances are they'll share stuff with you that otherwise might stay locked inside their mind and their heart. This is especially true if you're fairly consistent in it. And if you truly listen, without judgment, or without providing a solution. So what happens if they do start talking? A great response to whatever they share is, thanks for telling me that that must be really hard, or that must be really great, or, wow, I didn't know that. I'm really glad you shared that with me. Or honestly, one of the best, best responses is, I didn't know that, tell me more. And then shut your mouth. And just let them decide if they're ready to open up more and don't provide a solution. Again, when you start this, they might not be open to talking. But if you do it, and when they do open up, you can affirm their thoughts and feelings. It'll go a really long way. And it also doesn't require you to solve anything. So that's number one, Ask Don't Tell. 

The second counterintuitive thing that you can do is to look more at yourself and less at them. It is really easy when we have a child with pretty big serious issues, to spend all of our time and energy looking at them, trying to solve them. Find them the right help, befriending Google to find the right article or book or even podcast that will finally give us the right answer. We could literally get jobs with the FBI, for the skills that we develop at doing things like driving around town looking for them, or hacking into their social media accounts to figure out what friend is actually their dealer, or trying to install tracking apps on their phones when they're asleep. Trust me, I have done it all. 

My guess is that you've done at least one or two of these things. And just ask yourself has it made things better? Has it changed your relationship with your son or daughter for the better? Have they gotten closer to you and been more connected because of your activity, this is where you can do the counterintuitive thing, and stop focusing so much on them and look in the mirror. How are you to be with what is your son or daughter seen when they meet you in the kitchen or the driveway, or they see in a relatively put together self-aware and calm parent. What I found when I started looking at me was it was way more comfortable to focus on my son than on me, it was very uncomfortable to have to look at my own sense of self, my own fears and habits and my ways of responding. 

And one thing I figured out was that this experience of having a child with a life-threatening illness was going to require a lot of work on my part, not only the logistical work that goes into finding resources for them, and navigating the legal system, and all of those things, it was going to require me to learn a lot, and then apply that learning in my life. And it was all a lot less about him and weigh a lot more about me. So as you look at yourself, one of the questions to ask is, are you willing to do the hard work this requires? Are you willing to become more self-aware about your own actions, about the way you respond to your child, the ways that you might be contributing to their anxiety or their substance use? These are very hard questions to ask. But I will tell you that this experience will require you to grow in your own emotional and psychological maturity in ways that you probably didn't imagine. And that's actually one of the silver linings of having a child with substance use issues or emotional or behavioral issues is that you will become a more enlightened and empathic person. 

I'm going to put some resources in the show notes for this point because it really could and should be its own episode. But a few things to get you started on this would be to listen to Episode 22 of Hopestream that's with Krissy Pozatek, she wrote the book that everybody needs to read when you have a child who is in treatment or if you are considering treatment for your child. It is called The Parallel Process. I can't recommend it enough. So make sure to listen to Episode 22. Then also I would recommend taking a look at Dr. Brad Reedy's body of work. He is the co-founder of Evoke Therapy Programs. He is the author of a book that you may have heard about called The Journey of the Heroic Parent, and also another book called The Audacity To Be You. He's got a blog and a podcast, which is all incredible at really helping you learn how to do the work that you need to do on yourself if you have a child in the situation. And actually, even if your kids are perfect and amazing. His work is really, really good. 

So check out Dr. Brad Reedy, and then also it would not be an episode of Hopestream if I didn't mention Beyond Addiction, and the 20-Minute Parent Guide that goes with that book. Definite, definite must-reads, if you are struggling right now with a child. So you can listen to Episode Three with Carrie Wilkins, who is co-author of that book. But also just grab the book and the 20-minute parent guide. You can get all of those from, you know wherever you get your books, but also, if you just want the guide and don't want to have to buy it, you can download all the PDFs and everything is at www.the20minuteguide.com so you can get that.

But one thing that I will challenge you to do if this topic is causing you a little bit of discomfort, which is probably a sign that it's something that you need to work on. And that is for one week, bring your phone into the bathroom with you each morning, shut the door and set the timer for one minute. Then stand there and just look into the mirror for one minute at yourself without doing anything else. It sounds simple, but it's incredibly difficult to do. 

The reason I want to encourage you to do this though is that this is what your child sees not just for one minute each day, depending on obviously whether or not they live with you or near you, but this is the parent that you're presenting to your son or daughter. Do you see a calm, confident and caring mom or dad? Do you see anger and fear? Do you see empathy and compassion? Do you see defeat? I really do challenge you to do this one-minute mirror exercise for seven days straight. At the end of a week, write down in a journal or your computer or your phone or wherever you feel like is a safe place, write down what you see, and what you don't see. And don't hold back. Don't sugarcoat it so that it doesn't look so raw when it's out there in the world. 

Then think about what you need to work on in yourself so that in a month when you repeat the same one-minute mirror gaze, you might see some changes that move you in a positive direction. This, my friends, is really hard stuff. This is the kind of thing you have to be able to do, though, if you're going to fare well through this experience with your child. And you're gonna come out the other end with such amazing self-awareness and empathy, that you'll find it was totally worth it in the end. But it is hard. 

The third counterintuitive thing that you can do is give it away, don't hold it close. I feel really fortunate that I was raised in a family who has a very strong faith, I had no idea how important my faith was going to be until life hit me upside the head with the challenge of having a child with such big, scary and life-threatening challenges. My faith was always there. And I think like a lot of people during your life, you have times where you feel more connected to your higher power, and times when you feel more distant and separate. So when things got really bad with my son, I had what I believe was an advantage, because I never felt that it was entirely on my shoulders. I knew I wasn't alone from the standpoint that there was someone or something bigger than anything on the earth, who was on my team. 

And regardless of whether you have a faith or belief in a higher power, what you probably have felt at times, is that there is nothing that you and your human body can do to change what's going on. You're doing all the things, you know, you've made every decision you can imagine you've spent every penny you had, and even pennies that you don't, you've hired and consulted with every expert that exists. And your child is still doing things that put their own life at risk. This is the point at which I think it's a good idea to reconnect or start exploring what a higher power looks like to you. Again, for me, I think I had an advantage because I already had God on my team. And so all I had to do was draw near and put even more faith in that relationship. But for you, it may be something completely foreign, this idea of handing over your child's situation and saying I need you to take this. This is bigger than anything I can handle on my own. 

And I'm not going to get preachy about any specific religion or denomination because that's really not my place or responsibility. But what I will say is that I cannot imagine how I would have survived without a strong faith that someone else was in control, ultimately, that I was not the one responsible for creating the miracle that is sometimes required to help our kids. At night, the only way I could sleep was to hand that shift over to God and know that my son was being protected while I slept. But I also want to be clear that just because you have faith in a higher power doesn't mean that things are suddenly going to get better, or that they're even going to end up in a happy place. I know too many families with incredibly strong faiths and their sons and daughters have died from their substance use. So this isn't a fairy tale maker kind of thing. This is a foundational element that can allow you to navigate this experience in a healthier and stronger way. So while it feels like this is the time to hold on tight and keep your child and all the struggles that go along with their issues as close as possible. I would encourage you to try the counterintuitive thing and explore handing it over to a higher power.

The last thing I'll share on this concept of doing what might not sound right is to zoom out, not in, you probably know the saying I can't see the forest for the trees. It's an expression that we use when someone is too involved in the details of a problem, to look at the solution as a whole. And when your kid is doing crazy things, and putting themselves at risk, or in dangerous situations, it's so easy to put our zoom lens on and dial into the details, because we're afraid of the consequences of what they're doing. And we want to change things and fix things quickly. I was thinking about this analogy. Recently, I did a photoshoot and the photographer showed up with all these different lenses. And there were shots where she would run over to her bag and say, Oh, I want to use this lens, because it'll give us this perspective. Or she'd go grab a different one and say she wanted to get a really wide look for the next shot. I think we also need to do this. Otherwise, we get a skewed view of what is going on. 

And this is true, whether your child is actively using or if they're in treatment right now, it's also super, super important if they are coming home, or if they're now living in a transitional setting, or even if they're in recovery. When we're constantly zoomed in and don't take time to back up and put on the wide-angle lens, a couple of things can happen. One is that we tend to see the same thing over and over and we miss the nuances of change. We can also miss opportunities for ourselves and for our kids that are just outside the peripheral of the lens that we're looking through. And we also might be circling around the wrong issue because it's the only one that we can see in our zoomed-in perspective. 

I really want to emphasize how important this is because I know how easy it is to stay zoomed in. And if you're a perfectionist type or type-A person. And I know many of you and I know that you are, your focus is probably pretty tight because you're applying so much critical thinking and so much effort to change the situation. So you might be saying, okay, great Brenda, I would love to hop on a plane and go away and get away from this and get perspective but that is not even a remote possibility right now, you know, there's COVID, and I can't leave my son or daughter at home, because who knows what might happen, if I did. So here are some just simple but great ways to get perspective to widen your lens without moving to Bali or anything fun and crazy like that. 

The first is to get yourself a therapist, and one who is experienced with families who have kids with the same issues that yours does. a therapist who works in that field will have 1000s, literally 1,000s of hours of perspective on your situation. And they also have resources that you might not know about. You can also take a timeout from being the parent of a kid with a life-threatening illness - temporarily. So for a few hours, get yourself into a place or a setting where you can just be you. You're not a mom, you're not a dad, you are just the original, you do something that you used to do prior to all of this craziness hitting your life. This is just an hour or two it is not days or weeks. But lock it into your calendar, literally book it with yourself. And don't let anything move it. The only rule that you can apply here is that you are not allowed to read a book or listen to a podcast or talk with a friend about your child's situation. Those are off-limits. So this time that you're listening to my podcast does not count for your timeout. 

Another thing that's great to do is to listen to a podcast or read a book or watch a show about a topic that you didn't even know existed. Sometimes we need to intentionally place our brains in a new setting to override the patterns that have been created by our narrow lens focus. I recently listened to a podcast about the origins of Italian comic strips. I know, totally random and who knew? I mean, I guess I knew that there were comics in Italian, but I didn't know where they came from or anything about the history of them. So it's just good to stretch the brain and let it run wild on something that is not at all related to your kid’s challenges. 

The next thing that I really highly recommend, if you are trying to widen your lens is to do something creative. This kind of goes along with the previous point of taking a timeout. But it is specifically the act of lighting up the right side of your brain. And this is the side of your brain that's responsible for feelings visualization, imagination, intuition, rhythm, holistic thinking, daydreaming, in essence, is your artistic side. And by the way, when is the last time you just sat in daydreamed? Right? This side is important to stimulate, because my guess is you're spending a lot of time in the left hemisphere of your brain right now, making phone calls to treatment programs, or thinking about whether your child even needs a treatment program, creating spreadsheets of your finances to see what you can afford, sitting on hold with your insurance company trying to figure out what is in and out of network, all the things. So your analytical, linear, logical kind of factual side is on overdrive. And letting that take a backseat for a bit of time each day is super important. 

And if you're normally left-brain dominant, this is even more important for you. If you're not sure where to start, start with something small, like an adult coloring book, or just find some great music that lit you up at one point in life and get in the car and just drive and blast it. You don't have to even have anywhere specific to go just start driving around. You could also volunteer for something or do something kind for someone else. This can help just broaden your perspective when it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. And this in itself kind of feels counterintuitive, doing something for others when you're in a really low place yourself. But trust me on this one, it is life-changing. And even if you just go hand out food at a food bank for an hour or two, you will leave with a completely different perspective on life and feeling better than when you walked in the door. 

You might also just try to get yourself into a new physical space, you know, get out on the water, or on the side of a mountain or just go to a park that you've never been to before. Try to experience something that you've never done and be fully present while you're there. So turn off your phone, pick up your head, truly soak it in. And this could just be for 30 minutes, it doesn't have to take a long time or be far from home, it just needs to be new and different. And all of these things will help with widening the lens on the solutions that you might not be seeing while you're zoomed in so tight into problem-solving mode. They will also as a side benefit, just help dial down your sympathetic nervous system and start to move you out of that fight or flight mode so that you can think more clearly. 

So quick review of the four counterintuitive things you can do. 

• One: ask, don't tell 

• Two: look more at yourself and less at your son or daughter

• Three: let go versus hold on

• Four: zoom out, not in

So Trust me, I know these things can feel strange to think about doing. And if that's the case, that's fine. Just pick one to start with. There's no rule that says you have to do all the things all of the time. So start with what feels right to you. And there's usually something that kind of gnaws at your insides that will tell you where to start, you probably know, be sure to go to the show notes for this episode at BrendaZane.com/podcast. When you land there, you will either see the episode if you're listening in real-time, or you might need to scroll down, then just tap on it. And you will find a full transcript of the entire show and all the resource links that are there. So I hope this is helpful. I would love to get your feedback and your thoughts, you can do that at the show notes at the very bottom of the transcript page. You can leave comments there. Or you can also leave a rating and review in your podcast player which is always very, very helpful.

It does help other parents find the podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and thanks for caring so deeply about yourself for opening up your mind and your heart to learning how you can be there to help your child. You're amazing. You're doing the best that you know how. And I will meet you right back here next week.

Also, if you want to get on my email list, so you can get the email every Wednesday that I send out just as a way to support you and what you're going through you can go to Brendazane.com/email and just drop your email there and I'll send you a short kind of one-pager email on Wednesdays, and I would love to be able to do that for you.