It Starts with Me

How self-care ruined my life is a long story and the results may feel a little unbelievable to some. For you to understand what I mean, you need to see the mess that used to be my life. But rather than go deeply into my story, I'll give you the broad strokes. Whether your story is harder or easier or just completely different, I really do believe self-care can ruin your life as well.

Years ago, I didn't know what to do. I found myself so often saying: "I can't do this. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix this." So many times that I am pretty sure I permanently affected my thinking in some negative way. The way I got to this point was through adoption. We went from two of us to five in two months and I found myself the mom of three scared, traumatized, angry little boys. There was a lot of adorable and loving and exciting in there, but these weren't the traits that brought me to the "I don't know what to do" so I'll focus on the hard parts for now.

There were the normal struggles of two in diapers, nap times, childhood sickness and car seats, but in addition to those things we had some children who were severely reactive and neglected. This meant secondary trauma for us as our life turned upside down. Food was traumatic. Sleep was frightening. Hurrying was triggering. New people were threatening. New places were scary. Extreme routines and consistency were needed. It felt like everything set my little ones off. This fear they had was displayed in the most difficult of behaviors. I wasn't really trauma trained. They didn't have a diagnosis. Therapists didn't know what to do. Two of them really couldn't talk much to articulate what was going on. I tried everything I read and everything I could think of and I saw very little changes except in myself. I became angry, guilt-ridden, sad, full of grief, isolated, confused, sick and anxious.

 I became as reactive as my children as I tried to grasp at some form of control. Wanting to see a semblance of "normal" and family. Wanting to sleep. Wanting to have friends. Wanting to enjoy a shred of being a mom. Wanting to feel some joy. I didn't want to swallowed by my emotions. I didn't want to be the type of parent I was being. I didn't want to feel so afraid. I wanted more. But I stood in the middle of the shambles and just kept repeating "I don't know what to do." 

And then, slowly the story took a turn. I realized I couldn't change them. I couldn't fix them. I was responsible to raise them and love them and keep them safe but I needed to stop trying to control them and get control of myself. And if I could control myself, no matter what their needs were, no matter what they did, I would know what to do, because I would start with me. I didn't like what my life looked like and I was ready to ruin what was our normal. I didn't yet know what self-care really had to do with it, but knew that the first thing I would do was start with me, which now I can share with you, is rule #1 in self care and the first step to changing your circumstances: start with yourself.