This Is Anxiety When You Parent Kids With Disabilities

Anxiety.

Such a broad topic. Yet one many parents of children with disabilities, chronic conditions or parents of medically fragile children are intimately familiar with.

Dr. Liz Matheis, a clinical psychologist who specializes in anxiety — among other things — meets us right where we are as parent caretakers. She understands where our anxiety stems from, she affirms us, explains why we may be experiencing the anxiety we are having, and offers some practical solutions so we can better manage that anxiety.

This is an episode you don’t want to miss.

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Questions addressed in the show:

• What is the difference between stress and anxiety?
• What does anxiety look like? What can it look like?
• What’s normal and when does anxiety become a problem?
• What are skills to learn or strategies so I can manage my anxiety better?
• If I have anxiety, does that mean that I have to see a mental health counselor or take meds?
• Can my faith help with anxiety? It’s so frustrating to hear that I need to pray more and read my Bible.

Transcript of the show:

Ellen 0:26
Welcome to Episode 33 of the Unexceptional Moms Podcast. I am your host, Ellen Stumbo from ellenstumbo.com, and today we’re going to be talking all things anxiety. This is a topic that a lot of our listeners have been asking about, so we decided to go ahead and tackle this big topic. Now, I know that anxiety is so broad, so this episode is just a little bit different in that we actually went through questions that our listeners sent in, our patrons who had questions about anxiety got to send their questions and we went through those questions with Dr. Liz Matheis. So let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Liz — I actually met her when I was working at The Mighty and I loved collaborating with her, so I knew I wanted her to be the one to come and talk about anxiety. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, and she has her own practice that she does alongside her husband. Her private practice specializes in anxiety, ADHD, autism, learning disabilities and behavior management. She is also a mom of three kids. Her kids are 13, 10, and 6, and she says that her kids keep her on her toes but they also help her connect with parents who are going through similar developmental phases with their children. She is very familiar with the world of disability and she is very familiar with the world of anxiety, so we had a really great conversation. Unfortunately, Erin was not able to join us this time. But also, I want to share with you that Dr. Liz created some pretty amazing resources for all our listeners. She created an anxiety checklist for adults, and an anxiety checklist for kids. Anxiety self-care strategies for adults — this is also a handout — and also one on strategies for anxiety management for your child. So stay tuned until the end of the episode so I can tell you how you can get your hands on her handouts. Here’s the interview. Enjoy.

Ellen 2:34
Hi, Dr. Liz, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Liz 2:38
Thank you so much for having me.

Ellen 2:40
So we’re going to talk all things anxiety.

Dr. Liz 2:43
It’s a great topic.

Ellen 2:44
It’s a great topic and I am someone who was an anxious child and I became an anxious adult and then I had kids with disabilities and then my anxiety got on steroids.

Dr. Liz 2:58
I feel your pain. I was also an anxious child and anxious teen and anxious young adult, had children and I’m an anxious mom and I have anxious children. Yay!

Ellen 3:12
And I think sometimes it’s hard to recognize, at least for me, it was hard to recognize that it was anxiety and not just that I was too worried or I was too nervous, but actual anxiety.

Dr. Liz 3:28
Anxiety is not just worry about a one or two things. It’s anxiety about lots of things. If you have generalized anxiety, it’s specific to social situations. If you have social anxiety, there’s certain phobias, there’s a breakdown of lots of different anxiety disorders as per the DSM. And you know, we can all look them up and that’s grand, but bottom line is, it’s not just being a little worried. It really consumes you and is a part of your everyday functioning, it interferes, or it plays a very big role in how you interpret situations, how you perceive situations, how you relate them back to you and your experience and your sense of self. So it’s not just, you know, “I’m a little worried, or I’m stressed about this upcoming test.” It’s, “I’m worried about all tests and my grade and how this grade is going to impact my future.” And anxiety is pretty pervasive, I guess, to really sum it up. It’s pervasive worry. Sometimes it’s specific to a one thing or lots of things, but it interferes with functioning every day.

Ellen 4:39
And maybe that’s what’s good to point out, that it does interfere with functioning.

Dr. Liz 4:44
Right.

Ellen 4:46
So this is going to be a little bit of a different podcast just because we did get questions from listeners who are really interested about this topic and it’s the one people have been really excited to have someone, a professional like you, come and talk about. So one of the first questions that came in was, what is the difference between stress and anxiety? Which I think it’s a great question because for parents of kids with disabilities, we do live with a little bit extra stress because we have to fight schools, and insurance, and all these other things. So how would you differentiate between you’re experiencing severe or, you know, a big amount of stress, as opposed to you’re actually dealing with anxiety?

Dr. Liz 5:34
I think anxiety is the underlying source of a lot of stress. When you talk to someone who is not anxious, and I’d love to meet that person and really shake their hand, and when we do, we’re all going to extract their DNA and eat it or something, I’m not sure. But for a lot of people who are not necessarily anxious, they will have a stressor. They’ll get through the stress and then they experienced some relief. I think anxiety is like an underlying, you know, source of distress because of the perception that certain things that we can’t do them, that they’re going to be dangerous, that we’re worried about bad things happening. So if the average person starts at a level one, the anxious person starts at a level 15. And then when you add stressful situations, it escalates it to a very high level. The other thing I was just saying — this to a mom I was talking to this morning — is that when you’re anxious, your perception of life is that it’s something I have to be ready for. I have to prepare, or I have to know what’s coming my way and anxiety lies, it tells us a lot of lies. And so we interpret situations as being that much more stressful. So we know we started a 15 when your stress added a real stressor. And now it’s going up to very large numbers that I’d rather not quote, ya know, and it’s, it’s consuming, and physiologically, we also produce just a lot of that anxious response, that cortisol that we’re pumping through our system. You know, that perceived lion. Back in the cave days, the caveman days where you really had to shoot up all that cortisol or else you would have been eaten. Right, so now our lions are perceived lions, they’re implying that sometimes, that we create out of our own worries. And I’m not saying that we create them. Usually you have a history, something has happened that’s traumatic or you’ve had experiences in your life. You’ve heard about something in your life, or something has genuinely happened that causes you to be anxious and worried about your family members, whether it’s a child, your children with special needs, whether it’s a death in the family, whether it’s traumatic experiences, and the list can go on and on. But that experience, that physiological experience, also leads to just an immense amount of exhaustion.

Ellen 8:16
Right. And I think about parents of kids with disabilities or parents who have kids who are medically fragile, especially for those of us who start those days in a hospital, because maybe there’s concerns about our kids before there’s a diagnosis. I wonder how much that beginning and the anxiety, the real anxiety that that creates, how that carries into our parenting of that child because we’ve had to be worried. There were real concerns, and maybe we carry that into the future.

Dr. Liz 8:53
We absolutely carry that into the future. And we think, “Remember when I had a hunch and it was right? I have a hunch again, maybe I’m again, you know maybe there’s something more maybe there’s a brain tumor maybe there’s a this, maybe there was this diagnosis,” and so we may get very good at the what ifs and there could bes and the shoulds. But yeah, I don’t think that you have an experience, you let it go and then you know, you start magically on the clean slate. I think the anxious brain also is very good at remembering and remembering all the traumas and the surprises and the shocks.

Ellen 9:28
Yeah, so what does anxiety look like or what can it look like?

Dr. Liz 9:35
So if you’re looking at children, children don’t come in and say, “I’m feeling anxious.” Children show a lot of agitation, restlessness, tantrums, they cry, they want to avoid. When my daughter was going into kindergarten, she’s now in fifth grade, and even though I do this for a living, I didn’t recognize that what she was expressing was an immense amount of anxiety about this big transition and going into school. She was fine in preschool. She was a bit of a leader, she dressed however she wanted, she would wear ballerina tutus and whatever and no issue. We go to kindergarten, now she doesn’t want to wear this stuff, she doesn’t want to stand out. And what I was seeing as she was crying every morning, she didn’t want to do homework. She didn’t want to do activities. She had meltdowns about everything, you know, and things that were once enjoyable were no longer enjoyable to her. And I just was like thinking she needs more limits, she needs more consequences. And, you know, I couldn’t have been more wrong. And it’s really not one of my finest parenting moments, to have been so blind to the fact that she was really expressing anxiety. But as I said, kids don’t walk in and they’re like, they’re not wringing their hands and pacing and aware of having a heightened cortisol response, like they don’t say these things. So it’s up to us to know what that is. And I think when it comes to adolescence, it’s the worry, you know, the worry about stressing over the next test, or can I do well, I’m worried that I’m not going to do well on this test and then what that’s going to mean for me, you know, in middle school or high school or college. I remember being in a high school and thinking — I was so great at this — if I don’t do well on this one test, I will fail this class. If I fail this class, I will have a poor GPA. If I have a poor GPA, I will not get into a good college. I mean, this train could go on for days, but it ended up with I was going to be homeless. So yeah, right. And when I’m sitting here with you know, in my office talking to other adolescents, like this one grade is not going to shape your future, this one algebra one test grade does not have the ability to impact your future career, health, and wellness. And when you talk about it like that, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, because there are multiple grades.” So it’s really bringing it down. And looking at this one thing. So it’s, it’s ferocious.

Ellen 12:19
It is. And I know for me personally, oftentimes it’s irrational, right? You talked about kids being agitated. For me, anxiety sometimes manifests as anger, and I just get angry with everybody. And when I stop to think about it, I don’t know why I’m angry.

Dr. Liz 12:42
Because you’re scared. Because you have an idea in your head about something and that made you scared. And so there’s two ways you can go when you feel scared. You can shut down and cry, or you get angry. And I think over time, we’ve learned that anger is a very powerful emotion that makes people stop, listen, and sometimes go away. So someone is putting a big demand.

Ellen 13:08
Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t make me feel good about myself. Then I feel like I yelled at my kids, I didn’t need to yell at my kids. I yelled at my husband and he was just asking me a question, right? And I’m just like, “Stop bothering me. Don’t you see I’m busy?” You know, whatever my response is. I mean, that’s one way. Also, for me personally, I have irrational thoughts. Like you, I go to the worst case scenario about all things and I have a child with a physical disability. And even last night, I was thinking we have a split home, a split foyer. So there’s not a lot of stairs, but there’s some stairs, which are not super accessible for someone with a physical disability. And I’m sitting there thinking, “What if she falls down?” And I can stop thinking about this image of her falling down the stairs and getting very hurt. And she’s not in the stairs, she’s sleeping, she’s in her room! But I can’t let go of that thought, because it’s a reality, sometimes she falls.

Dr. Liz 14:15
I mean, you’re talking about those obsessive loops that we can sometimes get into. And I hear that, I hear it, I feel it. I know exactly what you’re talking about. And it just becomes this… repeating it again and again. And that anxious brain is very good at those loops, playing the same scenario over and over and over again, until either, one, you’re exhausted, or two, you come up with a viable solution that feels like, “Okay, that’s good. If I do this, then you know, I’ve handled that situation.” But it’s very, very common to get into these loops and that’s when it’s helpful to stop and really talk to someone else and even to just write it down in a journal. I’m a big fan of writing it down in a journal. What are you thinking? Write it all down. Because sometimes when you write it down, you can see how irrational it is. You know, when I wrote down that my one algebra grade was going to lead to homelessness, I was able to look through and be like, “That’s pretty rational.” So

Ellen 15:20
When I ask parents of kids with disabilities what is one of their biggest fears, for a lot of us, it’s what happens to my kids when I’m gone. So for me, if I have a headache, I think I have a brain tumor. If I have a stomach ache, I have stomach cancer. If my neck is hurting, maybe I’m going to get an aneurysm or a stroke. And I go to the worst case scenario.

Dr. Liz 15:54
And I think it’s helpful to really, again, as much as you can, either speak it out or write it. Because when you write it, or can see it, or speak it to someone else, you do realize it is irrational, and what are the chances that this headache is a brain tumor and that I’m going to die today? You know, and it’s a lot of rationalization a lot of positive self-talk, you know, in those moments where you’re like, “I can’t, I can’t do it.” All right, as moms of kids with special needs, especially our to do list is pretty long, and being able to say, “Okay, what is the thing? What are the things that I’m trying to get done? Is this a realistic list?” You know, and are these realistic expectations? And learning to do this… it’s hard, it’s learning to be kind and to be compassionate with yourself the same way you are with everyone else.

Ellen 16:45
Which is harder to do with ourselves.

Dr. Liz 16:50
Yeah. Very hard, very hard. I’m very understanding and forgiving of everybody else. When it comes to myself. It’s, it’s hard.

Ellen 16:56
Well, it’s the same as taking care of ourselves, right? We put our kids first and we will go to any therapy, will go to any specialists. But when it comes to us, it’s always the bottom. We’re always at the bottom of that care.

Dr. Liz 17:11
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s when we need to make ourselves more of a priority. It doesn’t mean you’re going to go and get a massage every day. But maybe you do incorporate a spa or massage every month, or some downtime where you’re sitting for an hour. You know, just maybe putting zero demands on yourself. But that self-care is really important because without it then we’re good for nothing. We’re, you know, if we can’t, if we’re burnt out, we can’t help anybody else.

Ellen 17:40
So let me ask you about something that I just thought right now. So this is not part of the original questions that people sent. But I often say that my outside reflects what I’m feeling on the inside. So if you walk into my home and you look around, you can say, Ellen’s in a good place or not in a good place. Right? And which is why I actually have a system of routines that, just when a crisis comes, we have a plan, we know what we’re supposed to do. But that doesn’t mean that everything is going well all the time. And I feel like that also reflects perhaps, my level of anxiety, if I’m very anxious, you’re going to see it. And sometimes I’m not even aware of it. But is that something that you see? Or am I making this up?

Dr. Liz 18:35
Oh, absolutely not. If you’re experiencing it, it’s real. And it’s valid. You know, I think that’s another thing we ask ourselves a lot as moms and you know, as moms who have kids with special needs is like, is this normal? Is this making too big of a deal? You know, other people have it worse. But I think it’s learning to understand this is stressful. Today is a stressful day for me. And I’m going to go through my routine but I’m also going to maybe lessen my to do list, or I am going to give myself a little extra time to, you know, at the end of the night, I’m going to give myself an extra little bit of time to decompress. Or maybe during the day, I’ll stop and have a cup of tea and stop for 30 minutes so I can decompress. I can regroup, and kind of think about what else it is that I need to get done. What’s realistic, what’s visionary and won’t happen today? You know, because I think we also hold ourselves to very high standards that we have to be all these things to all these people and we have to get these things done. I should. There’s a lot of shifts in our vocabulary, and in our thinking. And yeah, I think the other piece that I know for me personally, is when my environment around me gets scattered, it overwhelms me even more. I need to have things kind of cleared away or in their space because — and I don’t know how valid the research is — but some research has been put out there saying that having too much visual input is overstimulating and it can increase our anxiety. So it’s more to look at, it’s more to process. So I believe that I do too. Yeah, I totally do. Because I know when I walk into my kitchen and there’s stuff all over the place, I’m like, this is too much for me to process.

Ellen 20:21
What is a normal experience of anxiety? What does the average person may experience and when do you know that your anxiety has become a problem?

Dr. Liz 20:33
So to answer your first question, I don’t know what normal anxiety is, I don’t know. Because I think everybody has such a unique experience of it. And I don’t generally say like, this is the standard. I don’t know what the standard is. I just know that high anxiety exists in my life. And I know that we treat a lot of people with anxiety. You know that it’s a problem when you can’t function, when your child can’t function, your child can’t go to school or you can’t do your job or you can’t sleep, or you’re having a hard time, you know, relating to other people. When it begins to interfere with your ability to function, that’s when you know that the level of anxiety is now at a very high level, and something has to change.

Ellen 21:26
It was several years ago, when one of our kids was going through a really difficult time. And as you know, trauma affects everybody in the family. So if you have a child with a high level of anxiety, it’s possible that as a parent, you’re going to have a high level of anxiety. And there was a period of time that I was having anxiety attacks every night and I just couldn’t sleep, or I would fall asleep and I would wake up with certainty that I was going to die in that moment. Because that’s where my anxiety would go, and then I couldn’t fall back asleep and I was tired. Like you said, I wasn’t functioning. I was so angry all the time. There were so many feelings that I couldn’t even focus on one because I was feeling so much. And I remember waking up one morning telling my husband, “I need help. I can’t keep going like this, something needs to change. So I am going to go see my doctor.” And thankfully, he was very supportive. And it was a humbling experience for me because I felt like I should be able to handle it on my own. And it was the first time that I’ve recognized that. I mean, I did know that I was someone with anxiety, but I recognized I needed to get this official diagnosis and I needed to get help, whatever that help was going to look like. And it was a turning point because like you said, I couldn’t function.

Dr. Liz 22:57
And that’s when you know something needs to change. You know, whether it’s medication, whether it’s therapy, whether it’s changing routines or changing the amount of time that you’re caring for your children. You know, getting extra help, taking breaks each day, something has to change. Because I think also this idea that I should be able to do it on my own you, when you’re a strong person, you’ve gotten through a lot. And so you think, well, if I can help my children and I can help others, why the heck can’t I help myself? Because we’re not wired to do that. You know, sometimes we can, but sometimes we can’t. And we also come from, I think, our generation, I’m thinking of like my mother’s generation, nobody talked about mental health. My mother’s primary way of processing emotions was physiologically, so she had a lot of aches and pains and she had more aches and pains when she’s upset, or she was sad or anxious or whatever about stuff. And so we come from that generation of, well, nobody talks about mental health. Fortunately you know, we’re raising a generation now where that is very much a part of our conversation, we talk about our feelings, we talk about how we’re feeling distressed and we problem solve as opposed to, you know, I got a lot of guilt, just get over it. Just work through it. Just stop it. Stop being anxious.

Ellen 24:23
That’s really not how that works.

Dr. Liz 24:26
Okay, I’m gonna go turn off that switch now. Right away. It does not work that way. So I think there’s a lot of components you know, when you are a strong willed human being who’s been at you’ve been able to get through a lot you feel like well, I should be able to do this on my own and, and listen, there’s no prize at the end. You’re not going to get a certificate, or a trophy that says, you know, you didn’t get help and you didn’t take the rest that you needed and you didn’t modify your expectations. So look at this, you get a trophy, like even if there is a trophy, which I don’t know who’s giving this trophy. But even if there is a trophy, do we really want it?

Ellen 25:06
Right. And I think it’s humbling. I remember talking to a counselor one time, and we were talking about anxiety issues and just what was happening in life, what I was going through, and she said, you’re used to being the person who helps others, but right now you are needy. And I looked at her and I said, “I don’t like that. I don’t like the word. I don’t want to be needy.” And he said, “I don’t think anybody wants to be needy, but I think it will be good for you to recognize that you are needy right now. And because you need to focus on you. You need to stop focusing on other people as well and kind of make yourself a priority because you’re needy.” And I still don’t like the concept of being needy because of what we have probably made it right in our culture and society, but recognizing that I was needy was freeing for me, in a way, because it gave me permission to say, “Okay, what do I need to do them to take care of me?”

Dr. Liz 26:08
Yeah, being needy has a negative connotation. It means that, when you think about it, it suggests that you’re weak, and you can’t. And there’s nothing wrong with having moments where you can’t, and that you are weak, because we’re not meant to, as caretakers, have this abundance of energy and it’s just not normal. It doesn’t exist, you know, even back, you know, the whole concept of it takes a village. Right? It takes a village to raise children, and we’re raising children now, without a village and we’re doing it very much on our own and our lives are much more complicated. As moms we’re working, we have careers that we want and should have, but we’re also having that much more demand, we’re much more involved. And yet we’re still doing it alone. And generations past, they didn’t do it alone. You know, when a mom was overwhelmed, she gave her children to another mom or a bunch of other moms, they took a break. They had ach other.

Ellen 27:28
Yeah, honestly, that’s part of why we moved back to Minnesota, because my family’s here. And I thought, you know, I want my kids to grow up close to grandparents and to their aunts, but also to have that little bit more support, and I’m Mexican, so it’s a different culture, but absolutely. The support that I have from my family, it’s not something that I necessarily see other people having. And it’s something that I didn’t necessarily have before.

Dr. Liz 27:57
Family support, social support, is very, very important. We’re not meant to live in these, like individual isolated little circles, you know, our circles are supposed to overlap. Right? Our communities are supposed to overlap.

Ellen 28:16
Right? And unfortunately not everybody has that. So one of the questions that came in was, “If I have anxiety, does that mean that I have to see a mental health counselor or take meds?” And the reason I bring it up is because my husband and I joke about that a counselor is a friend that you pay, your paid friend, and my husband is a mental health counselor, so he gets to sit with people and listen to people and help people and he loves his job and he is so good, but he can’t be my counselor, because he is my husband. But I know for me, personally, when I got to the point of saying, “I can’t manage this on my own, and I need to go see my doctor,” I did talk about medication. And I have done intensive counseling sessions where you do a lot of counseling in a couple of weeks because you just need that space to talk to someone and to process what’s happening and what’s going on. So I’m a big fan of that and having those supports for me, that made a difference. But is that a reality for everyone? Or would you say, if you have anxiety, it does mean that you have to see a mental health counselor or take meds?

Dr. Liz 29:33
I don’t believe in those absolutes at all. I think every single case is very individual. Right? For some people meds are absolutely necessary because they’re at a state where their anxiety is so high, that therapy can’t even work. They can’t even hear what therapy is, what it entails. So sometimes taking that medication, physiologically coming down so that you can receive the therapy. I don’t believe in therapy without the medication, or excuse me, medication without the therapy, just taking medication on its own. Yes, it will reduce the physiological response, but you still haven’t processed the sources of your anxiety. Again, it’s such an individual experience, so it’s not like, if anxiety, then medication, if anxiety, medication and therapy, like it doesn’t work for me that way. It’s a very individual, it depends on how much, how distressed you are and how much that anxiety is impacting negative, negatively impacting your ability to function.

Ellen 30:41
And also with the understanding that even if someone needs those things, it doesn’t mean that they need them forever.

Dr. Liz 30:49
No, no, not at all. You know, I always say if I’m working with someone, I don’t bring them in to work with them forever and ever, because then that suggests that I’m not doing my job, right? The goal is to help you to find symptom relief. And I have a couple of people who stay in the practice because they want to, you know, and we just spread out the frequency in which we meet. So we’re not meeting weekly, we’re meeting bi weekly or every three weeks, and they come less and less frequently as they feel less and less anxious.

Ellen 31:24
So for someone who is not to the point where maybe they need that immediate help with medication or with counseling, what are skills that they can learn or strategies so that they can manage their anxiety better?

Dr. Liz 31:42
So I’m a big fan of exercising, exercising because we pump so much cortisol in our bodies when you’re anxious. You need to have an outlet and you need to pump the endorphins to counteract cortisol. Otherwise you start to experience illness, you start to experience that fatigue, gastric distress, you’re not sleeping, and there’s a phase of what I call, “you’re tired, but wired.” So I feel like exercise is a really big, important part, getting enough sleep, taking enough downtime each day, because I think, and I’m in New Jersey, so I don’t know if this is the case where you are as well. But in New Jersey, our motto is, let’s see how fast you can get from point A to point B, right? And we’re just going, going, going all the time, let’s see how much we can squeeze in, you know, and it’s like it becomes this race. And I see it happening with our kids too. We’ve over scheduled them, they know too much, they have access to too much. And we don’t have enough downtime. And we’re not meant as humans to do this. You know, we’re kind of like rushing, I don’t know where the heck we’re going. We’re all going to burn out. So making sure that you build in time to recoup, maybe if it’s not once a day, then at least once a week, once every couple of days depending on your temperament. Like I know my daughter, she needs a lot of downtime. So she can’t be over scheduled. I can go for a long time. But once a week, I need to sit down and either take a nap, or I need to do something leisurely. Whether it’s, you know, catching up on “Grey’s Anatomy” with my son, you know, that kind of a thing that after I feel rested, even though I haven’t slept per se. And the other thing that I know is very important is sleep. Finding a regular sleep schedule, going to sleep at the same time every night and waking up the same time every day. It’s just self-care. And being compassionate and understanding that if today is a rough day, you’re not going to get through that big to do list. That’s okay. So not coming down on yourself when you don’t get a chance to do it all. And as moms that have children with special needs, we’re so good at bashing ourselves at the end of the day. I didn’t get to do that. If I had done this instead of this, if I hadn’t taken a break… you needed a break, take a break. Whatever it is you wait, it can wait till the next day, if it has a time crunch, see if someone else can do it for you.

Ellen 34:13
I’m really glad that you say that because I feel like sometimes we do need permission for someone to say it’s okay for you to take care of you.

Dr. Liz 34:24
It is okay.

Ellen
Especially if you’re really stressed out to say, “Tomorrow, we’re not going anywhere and I’m canceling all the therapies and I’m canceling all the appointments.” Now, of course, if it’s something very important and medically necessary, that’s separate, but if it’s just for therapies or appointments or even a class, if it’s like a dance class or something, it’s okay to say, “We’re not going to do anything tomorrow. We’re just going to be home and wear pajamas all day.”

Dr. Liz 34:57
Good job. Those are my favorite and I have three children. I have a 13-year-old son, a 10-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. And my 6-year-old son, if he could he would live in his pajamas, and he’s been that way from day one. Now he comes home, he takes off his clothes and puts his pajamas almost right away.

Ellen 35:17
That’s me.

Dr. Liz 35:18
I’m like, you’re a definitely my kid. Because if I could, I’d been pajamas all day. Just to me Saturdays, and, you know, I try not to schedule really any activities because I feel like Saturday is my sacred day. Like, that’s the day I sit in my pajamas and I stay in them for a really long time. And then around noon, if I’m up to it, I’m going to maybe brush my teeth.

Ellen 35:46
I like that plan. Actually my oldest daughter told me the other day and we were at Target and I said, “Oh, look at those pajamas.” She was like, “Mom, more pajamas. How many pajamas do you need?” I said the softer they are the better, and I don’t have this one pair of pajamas… but we didn’t get them. So here’s another question that came in, and it’s kind of the piece of faith and anxiety. So somebody’s asking that when they talk about anxiety they’re told to pray more and read your Bible, and they were saying it’s so frustrating. And as a side note, when I go to speak a different places and I recently went to speak to Fargo, North Dakota to a special needs moms retreat, I had someone messaged me ahead of time and she said, “What are you going to talk about? Because if you’re going to tell me to pray more, and read my Bible, I’m not coming because I’m tired of that message.” And then this came through as a question as well. So maybe addressing that piece of how, for people who have faith, how does that piece fit into the larger conversation of anxiety.

Dr. Liz 37:03
I think faith is an important part of it if it’s an important part of your life, you should absolutely use it. Use it for your sense of foundation, for your sense of peace, but I don’t think it’s an anxiety remedy. You know, when I go to church and I listened to the service, I love that I’m just there doing that, doing one thing, I’m not multitasking, I’m listening to words that I feel like are nourishing my soul. And it’s like a nice form of meditation. But it’s very hard to say, I think it’s unfair to say to people, if you’re anxious, you need to pray more. You need to write, read the Bible more, you need to go to church more. I think, you know, those are all good coping resources, but I think you need to really understand the source of your anxiety, that it won’t make it go away. I think it’s a nice resource to use to manage anxiety, but I think that would be an unfair statement. And I grew up in a born again, Christian home, so I understand, I see religion taken to the extreme. When I was younger, my father was diagnosed with cancer and, you know, thank God my father didn’t suspend medical treatment, but the idea was, we need to pray more, we need to go to church more, we need to have more Bible studies, and I appreciate and respect that, but I think we also have other sources of support. So I you know, and I think it also, from what I’ve heard, and experienced myself is that, you know, this idea that if you’re anxious that you’re not a strong enough believer, you’re not doing something right, which can be very shameful, can bring a lot of shame, and that’s something I grew up with. You know, the fact that my father ultimately passed from cancer and for years — I didn’t realize this until later on in my own therapy — was that this idea that I didn’t believe hard enough, and didn’t pray enough, there was something that I didn’t meet well enough in terms of faith, and there’s an immense amount of shame and guilt. And that, you know, I had to let that go. I had to let that go. And so I absolutely respect religion and spirituality, and it’s very much an active part of my life and my children’s lives, but I think it would be unfair to say, well, then you need to do more, because it then suggests that you’re not doing more, that there’s an internal or inherent sense of weakness. And I don’t think that’s right.

Ellen 39:42
And I think it’s fair to say that the religious world still has a lot to understand about mental illness. And it has a lot to understand about the messages we communicate because I think you’re right, you have someone who is hearing those messages and they think nobody could be praying more than me. For this not to be an issue, nobody could be believing more than me that this could possibly go away. And it doesn’t. So for all the things that we could wrestle with, am I not a strong believer? I’m not, am I doing something wrong? And that’s why it’s so important to say, No, you’re not doing anything wrong. And like you said, you can use your beliefs and your trust in God if that’s part of your life to manage it, maybe to find a little bit of peace, but that doesn’t mean that maybe you don’t need to go and see a counselor or that you don’t need to be doing things that are going to make your anxiety better. And really to understand that anxiety if you do have clinical anxiety. It’s not going to go away. It’s going to be part of your life.

Dr. Liz 40:54
Right. And I feel like if you have the predisposition for it, if you are an anxious person, you absolutely can lower your anxiety, you can find more compassionate ways to interpret situations in compassionate ways to treat yourself and the messages, we give ourselves a lot of messages, you know, and you can find more compassion for yourself. That’s not to say that there aren’t going to be times where anxiety is going to heightened again, once you understand what’s triggering your anxiety, the thoughts and emotions you have behind it, and finding ways to cope. I think, you know, you move forward, understanding that this is a moment of high anxiety, because it’s being triggered by something very real or imagined. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have to be real. And that it will eventually come down, but it’s something you’re going to experience and it’s going to be a part of your life.

Ellen 42:00
Before we go, I know that there’s a parent who’s really struggling with anxiety right now listening to this. So what is a message that you would have for that anxious mom or anxious dad who has kids with disabilities? What would you want them to keep in mind?

Dr. Liz 42:17
I think it’s important to acknowledge and respect that you’re anxious, that some of your anxieties are real. Some of them are based on your own fears and worries and that as parents, we have a lot of them. You know, that basket of worries for a parent and especially a parent of children with special needs is, it’s big, it’s real, and it’s okay. And really, I encourage you that if you are truly struggling to find support, it’s okay to find support, whether it’s in the form of a group, if it’s in the form of individual therapy, whether it’s in the form of medication, really process the sources of your anxiety because bringing awareness is key to them. And a lot of it has to do with our own parenting and our own messages that we internalize as children and now we’re bringing to the table. And I think a lot of the times, you know, thinking about those irrational ideas is that, especially when it comes to faith is that you did something as a parent that was sinful or wrong or bad, and therefore you’ve been punished with a child with special needs. And that’s a very powerful message.

Ellen 43:29
It’s not even biblical.

Dr. Liz 43:32
It’s not, but unfortunately, a lot of people go there, again, because faith is this thing that you can’t see. So it’s very easy to go to someone and say add more faith, more prayer, more belief, more this, more that. And I feel that, you know, again, I grew up with this, so this is very, very real for me, you know, and then believing that our God is not a punishing God and not a mean God. He doesn’t bring these things to us because we did something wrong. I think we have to understand that, process it, make sense of it and learn how to incorporate it into our life. That it’s okay to have bad days. It’s okay. If you need help. It’s okay if you need to shut down for a day or two days or a week. Okay? It’s really, practice that self-forgiveness, that flexibility and that compassion that we are so willing to give to everybody else now directed towards yourself.

Ellen 44:35
Yep, self-compassion.

Ellen 44:38
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Dr. Liz.

Dr. Liz 44:42
Yes, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Ellen 44:46
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Dr. Liz Matheis as much as I did. And like I mentioned before, she created four different handouts. She created the anxiety checklist for adults, the anxiety checklist for kids, self-care strategies for adults, and strategies for anxiety management for your child. So how can you get your hands on these four great resources? Well, you get those by becoming a patron or a supporter. How do you do that? You can go to ellenstumbo.com and click on the supporters tab, or you can go directly to Patreon, patreon.com/ellenstumbo. So all the patrons of the podcast and my website, you get all these perks and one of the biggest perks is that you get a resource to accompany every single podcast. My goal is to create and offer you resources that are going to be helpful to you as you parent kids with disabilities. So head on over to the website to become a supporter. And you can also visit Dr. Liz Matheis on her website, psychedconsult.com. Have a great week.

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