Looking Back, Looking Forward
No matter how hard I try and how much I promise myself that I’m going to cut back and “just enjoy the holiday season,” it never happens. I’ve been an adult now (a parent now) for how many years, and I have yet to make that balance happen (and it seems to get more frenetic every year). In the last few weeks of December, I always feel like my life is completely out of control. I’m sure I’m not the only one out there who gets like this. I think everyone gets a little like this, especially women. And I’m not trying to be a martyr or disparage men by saying this, but let’s be real: women make the Christmas festivities happen. They make sure there are treats to bring to all the parties, they host their own parties, they take an inventory of all the wants and needs of everyone in the house and make up a list and shop and make sure all the gifts are bought (online or at traditional brick and mortar establishments) before the 25th. They organize the Christmas card (which sometimes requires finding a photographer and making sure everyone has decent clothes and that no one clashes). There’s always recitals and concerts to attend. That’s a lot of “extra.” That’s a lot of extra mental load.
So, in classic Sarah Beck form, I had a meltdown about 4 days before Christmas. Despite the fact that I finally figured out where to buy a legit hydroflask (I got duped online and bought a fake one–that’s an entire blog post for another day). Despite the fact that I had revised the first 5 chapters to “agent worthy status” before the break like I promised myself. Despite the fact that I had taken off everything work related so I could just focus on my family and enjoying the holidays. The meltdown happened. And yes, part of that is the extra stress and things of the Christmas season. But as December 25th has come and gone and I’ve had time to reflect and look back a the Christmas Crisis Season, I’ve realized that with our special family dynamic, we have special considerations and I don’t do a good job of remembering them and protecting my mental/emotional health. So as we finish this 2019 year and embark on the 2020 year, I’m going to try my best to stick to my special needs reality so I can be more present and intentional with my special needs reality. Because whether I like it or not, my kids learn how to handle stress the same way I handle stress and most of the time I’m not a great example.
So here are the things I’ve realized over the break that I need to remember and scale back on so I’m not living my life in Christmas Crisis mode for the entire year of 2020. There’s a lot about life you can’t control, but there’s some stuff you can control, and I need to be doing a better job of making better choices about the things I can control.
1) Realizing that we are a special needs family. I know this may sound weird, because you might think “how can you forget you have a child with autism?” but I do. Don’t get me wrong, I am ABSOLUTELY aware that J has autism. But I forget what that mental emotional load does to me over time. I love him, and we function pretty well, but life with him is definitely challenging and it takes a big mental-emotional toll on me. Not every day, but it accumulates and I have moments throughout the year where “I just can’t handle my life right now.” And that’s 100% on me. I take on extra things when “life’s good” thinking I can handle the same extra load that I think everyone else is taking on when I should just be enjoying the good moments and making sure I’m filling my cup again and save it for later instead of taking from and doing extra when “I’m handling life.” I need to be a better example at filling my cup and being happy with that. W will one day be a caretaker to J (and possibly to an elderly me and Steve) in some role or capacity. I can’t have her learning these bad habits of over extending yourself from me. J also needs to learn that he can fill his cup too. He has to work so hard every day with his challenges, but I sometimes forget he needs to fill his cup too.
2) We are working on finding better meds for J and that’s a whole roller coaster. For everyone. This kind of falls into the number 2 revelation. We’ve realized that the anti-anxiety medication J has been on since his was 5 is no longer working for him and we need to find something new. Before we realized the Zoloft wasn’t working anymore, we upped the dosage in November to the maximum threshold for him (which gave us a really challenging November). Now we’ve gone back to the old dose while integrating a blood pressure medication (to help calm his system down) which we introduced in December. So yeah, J might not have been melting down daily, but we had some really emotionally draining days over the last 2 months. A sort of “invisible” hard thing no one probably saw except for me, Steve, and J’s special ed teacher and para. So throw the Christmas Crisis in on top of that and well, yeah, maybe we should have scaled back the Christmas Crisis a little. It’s the daily strain that’s the hidden villain. And this is a back burner issue that’s going to be around for the next few months or more until we fully phase out of the old medication, find the right new medication, and then find the right dosage. All the more reason to be more cognizant of the “extra” I can choose (choose not) to take on.
3) Just because I can doesn’t mean I should (and if it’s not work or family related, I might just have to say no). This also ties into the last two points and another lesson I want to make sure my kids understand. This goes back to the cup and making sure it’s got something in it. And if mental/emotional resources are tight, then you just don’t take it on. That also might mean saying no to things in the work or family category too. Driving everyone around for everyone’s extra curriculars this last summer almost did me in. I’m saying no to that right now before we plan our summer.
4) Working from home is great, but not so great too. I love being able to work from home. I love the flexibility (the flexibility is absolutely necessary when you have a special needs kid. You never know when you have to drop everything and pick up someone from school or help mitigate a situation). But it’s a double-edged sword that comes with all sorts of baggage. It’s easy to let other people eat up your time thinking “I’ll just finish this off tonight or tomorrow night so I can help out in this way.” And it’s easy to feel guilty about not dropping things for other people because you want to protect your work time (because technically, you can finish it off tonight or tomorrow). I’m also looking for “bonus” time to get ahead in all the areas I feel I’m falling behind. Working late nights or weekends because I just want to get ahead on my projects. Shuffling the work schedule around like that too much can add a lot of stress. That’s something I also have to do a better job with in 2020.
5) I am ultimately my kids’ first role model on how I handle stress. My stress also affects their behaviour too. As our family fell into the post Christmas lull, and as we’ve had some days being cooped up because of the latest blizzard, I’ve really seen how my emotional regulation affects my kids’–especially J’s emotional regulation. When I’m more intentional (not reactive) in the way I respond, use a quieter voice when I’m frustrated, and I’ve noticed a big difference in J. He’s still stressed out about numbers and food, but when I talk in a calm voice with him, I hear a calm voice back. Just today we asked J to run a mile on the treadmill (the sidewalks still are buried in snow) and told him he could earn Wii time if he did. Initially, he had a meltdown over it (he kept saying “I can’t handle the numbers on the treadmill!”). Steve and I calmly walked away and told him it was his choice. 5 minutes later he came down in his workout clothes and announced calmly that he was going to do it. He ran that mile and was right on that Wii.
I think we adults can be big hypocrites sometimes. I know I can be. I tell J all the time that when he’s red he needs to “take a break from the stress until you get back to feeling green again,” or I ask him throughout the day to check in and figure out what colour he’s feeling and why. I push J to work hard but I never pile on stuff that’s going to make him feel like he’s drowning. And if he can’t handle the work load, we always scale back immediately. Why don’t I have that same compassion for myself as I do for my kids? Why, as adults, do we expect those crazy expectations of each other and then are surprised when we’re all of a sudden stressed out?
