The Struggle

How can I make this better? What do I do? What do I say? What don’t I say? I can’t believe I yelled at them? What is wrong with me? Is this my fault? I can’t stand this disorder. Everything I’m doing is wrong. Why isn’t the treatment helping? What else can I do? Where do I turn? They hate me no matter what I do. I can’t win. I don’t know who I am anymore.

Does any of this sound familiar? I’m a mom of a daughter who suffers with mental health challenges. She was recently diagnosed with the eating disorder, Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), but that diagnosis came after a long struggle with depression, anxiety, chronic undiagnosed stomach pains, amongst other things.

For over four years now I’ve felt like I’ve been on a rollercoaster. I tell you this now with her permission. She doesn’t hold shame around these challenges, but she does know the importance of having advocates and getting help. She does know that the people around her need support too.

She didn’t get to where she is on her own. I’ve done the best I could, but I’m not perfect…no one is. Some of the things I did to try to protect her from some things, my protection turned into a codependent relationship that wasn’t always healthy. I’ve had to do a lot of work on myself in order to better serve her.

I didn’t go into parenting with blinders on about the potential for these kinds of challenges, because I had them… but somehow I thought with enough education, attention, and conscious parenting, I would know what do when and if these challenges arose. I thought because I made it safe for my kids to always talk to me, they wouldn’t have to suffer like I did…my heart hurts with these thoughts.

Having Self-Care Tools

As many of you know, I have over thirty years experience in the arena of self-help for myself, and many years under my belt in the therapeutic process. My BA is in with a focus in human development. I’m also a certified Life Coach and master practitioner of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT/ Tapping). I’m not telling you any of this to brag. These are just the tools I had or gained before and during my daughter’s mental health started going downhill in 2020. Even with all these tools, I felt like I had none.

No matter what experience I had, the helplessness of not being able to make the pain go away was like a boulder on my chest. Some days, I may have looked like I had it all together. Other days, I probably looked exactly like I felt.

Using Self-Care Tools

When I began using them, I finally recognized how vital the gift of these tools truly are when going through this. I started being able to actually help, not only her, but myself. When I was calm and grounded, her and my relationship would be better. She would feel safe even when she felt like she wasn’t feeling stable.

When I felt grounded, stable, and safe in who I was as a person and as a parent, I projected that to her. That’s when we were and are the most productive team. I’m not perfect, when I’m not using my tools, I know it—and so does she.

Taking care of ourselves while our loved ones are going through mental health crises isn’t selfish. It’s putting our oxygen mask on first so we can better care for them. We can’t give from an empty tank, because then all we are giving out is toxic fumes that won’t serve anyone. This has been said a million times and in a million different ways. The first time I heard the oxygen mask analogy was over 20 years ago in an Al-Anon 12-step meeting.

I’m so grateful for my years in Al-Anon, because once I made the connection that it doesn’t have to be alcohol a loved one is struggling with, those tools are the same whether it’s addiction, an eating disorder, personality disorder, mental health disorder, or what. We have to take care of ourselves or we don’t have the capacity to be there to support our loved ones.

Why Self-Care is Important

When we don’t take care of ourselves we can freeze, take things personally, become passive-aggressive towards others, become aggressive towards others, self-abuse, and/or abuse others verbally, emotionally, and/or psychologically. We may become martyrs, doormats, you name it. When we lack self-care, we lack personal boundaries. We lack protection of our energy fields. This is a vicious cycle and ofter a toxic family pattern passed down from generation to generation. The more we work on breaking the patterns, the healthier our future generations will be.

None of this is easy. I had a village of support around me and there were a lot of times I felt completely alone. My Al-Anon sponsor used to say to me, “When you are feeling like you are trapped in a box, the directions to get out of the box are outside the box.” It means we have to be able to step outside the chaos to find our way out. Brilliant, right?! That means removing ourselves from the chaos with tools like EFT, meditation, exercise, floating, swimming, walking in nature, butterfly tapping, EMDR, mindfulness practices, the list goes on. There is no one right way. It’s about finding the right way for ourselves.

This journey was a big reminder to me of how important it is to take care of myself, and it also showed me how I want to help others in the process. Showing people strategies to step outside the box and find the peaceful calm in the center of the chaos is something I have the tools to do.

The bonus is that when I start practicing these tools more, I experience the results more too. I’m not a do what I say, not what I do person. I know I need to be using these tools for my self-care. When I do that, I’m the example of it. If someone, like my daughter, wants to emanate my energy, she will start using the same tools. If she or anyone else is more comfortable in the chaos, they won’t want to be around me when I’m grounded and centered…and that’s okay too.

But…we can’t change anyone else. We can’t force them to do what we think is best for them. We all have to decide for ourselves how much peace and how much chaos we want to live in. The only thing we can do is be the example of one or the other.

The great thing about self-care is it’s like having a protective bubble around our personal energy fields. When we are able to empower ourselves without taking other’s actions personally, we are in the zone. When the people we love are struggling with mental health issues, they will say and do things to feed the disease, disorder, and/or addiction. Those damning stories in their minds need chaos to survive.

The people they are closest too will be the main targets. The person they trust most not to leave will get the brunt of their pain. That’s why it’s so important to do the work to ground and center ourselves. I like to imagine anyone saying or doing harmful things simply looking at themselves in a mirror. That’s who they are really trying to hurt with their words and actions, because people in a healthy mindset (which is a moment to moment thing) don’t do, say, or think things to intentionally hurt themselves or others.

We can feed their mental health challenges by reacting to their words, actions, and reactions, or we can feed their mental wellness by being conscious in our words, actions, and responses. When my daughter starts verbally attacking me, and I react, I’m feeding what is often called the monster. If I take a beat and walk away until I can respond in a conscious way, I’m feeding her with love that she doesn’t have for herself in that moment.

The point is though, if I’m not in a healthy mindset, I won’t be conscious and present enough to help her through the dark times. Mental health challenges aren’t a quick and easy fix. They take work on everyone’s parts to navigate them.

Hope for Caretakers

I know this journey can be overwhelming at times, but you are NOT alone. Reach out for support. There are so many different options to help us through these challenging times, but you have to understand that your self-care isn’t just worth it, it’s essential. It doesn’t have to take long. There are lots of little tricks to do through the day no matter what your day looks like.

This is why I decided to start making some videos to help. The first one is out now on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fromalovingplace. I will also start doing self-care sessions for caretakers starting soon. You can email me at rachael@fromalovingplace.com if you are interested. If there is a problem contacting me, let me know in a comment below.

Extra Support

I know that the costs of getting help can be very expensive. These sessions won’t be. I will be using EFT/ Tapping along with other nervous system calming methods to help caretakers re-center and ground themselves. The session may only need to be 15 minutes ($22.50), just enough time to do a few rounds a tapping on a specific challenge or a quick breathing exercise. The sessions will be recorded so that the person can use them again and again. I will even be able to make you specific videos for individuals and/or families without ever doing more than email exchange.

Here’s the first video to give you an idea of what EFT/ Tapping looks like. Try it, and if it works for you or you want to make sure you don’t miss other helpful techniques, subscribe to the YouTube channel.

With Love and Gratitude,

Rachael Wolff