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Amy Julia Becker: 00:06
Are you exhausted, anxious, burned out from caregiving? Do you find yourself resenting your spouse or keeping score in your marriage over who does the most? I’m Amy Julia Becker, and this is Take the Next Step, a podcast for families experiencing disability. We’re part of the Hope Heels Network, bringing you weekly encouragement and practical next steps to help your family thrive. We want you to know that your family matters, your child matters, and we need you among us. I’m joined today by therapist Monica DiCristina, author of Your Pain Has a Name, a therapist’s invitation to understanding your story and sorting out who you are from what hurts. We’re talking today about how to help parents of children with disabilities recognize the signs of chronic stress, understand how that stress can affect marriage and family life, and discover practical, small, manageable, meaningful ways to respond differently, even when the circumstances themselves don’t change. Here’s my conversation with Monica DiCristina. Monica, thank you so much for being here today. It’s so great to see you. It’s good to see you too. I’m excited to hang out with you and talk. I know. Um, so we got to hang out a little bit this summer at Hope Heels Camp. Some of our listeners are familiar with Hope Heels Camp, and you were there as a volunteer, but you also brought um into that space just your expertise as someone who’s both a writer and a speaker, but also a um, you know, person who does counseling for a living with families, um, but mostly with individuals and with couples, like with uh for marriage purposes. So I wanted to follow up with you um specifically for the sake of this podcast, serving parents and caregivers of children with disabilities, um, because we talked about the fact that many marriages come under strain and stress in general. That’s generally true in our society, and has been true probably for all of time, but it’s particularly true, or perhaps it’s true in particular ways when the family system um and a marriage is experiencing children uh with disabilities. And so we wanted to talk just about chronic stress and the ways in which couple couples um might navigate that chronic stress. So thank you so much just for being here to talk about all these things. And I wondered if we could start just by naming like what is chronic stress? What are we talking about when we even use that term?
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 02:36
It’s a it’s a great question. And here’s the best analogy I’ve ever heard, okay? Is that if if I were to ask you to carry a pack of water bottles to my car, you would do it and it would, it would cost you something, right? But if I were to ask you to hold your hand out this entire conversation and hold one bottle of water, your arm would start to like really fatigue. But if I were to ask you for this whole conversation to hold the entire pack of water bottles, your arms would fatigue even more. And so we bring that not just to a physical point, which some caregivers are, you know, facing, but to an emotional point, right? It’s that there are acute stressors that everyone will face. But the difference with chronic stress is you cannot put it down. It is, it is the fatigue of long-standing holding things. It’s unceasing, it’s unchanging. And I think that it’s physical, it’s emotional, it’s also social. It can be isolating. So I think that’s kind of how I that picture for me helps me, you know, encapsulate chronic stress. You can’t put it down.
Amy Julia Becker: 03:45
Yeah, I appreciate that picture so much. Um, and I wonder if there are telltale signs on that emotional, maybe even on the physical level, um, that might indicate to someone that they are experiencing chronic stress. Like, is there anything I don’t know if because sometimes when you live with something for so long, it’s so normalized that you might not even be able to be aware of that.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 04:10
Yeah. And I think that that’s I’m so glad you said that. I think that’s such an important thing to name. I think that we um, you know, just like when you’re in a room, you you you forget how hot or cold it is until you step outside, right? It’s very much like that in our lives. But I think some of the telltale signs are a really obvious one, is exhaustion and fatigue. Some of the less obvious ones are irritability, anxiety, even like a low-grade depression. One of the things I really run into often with people with chronic stress is burnout. And burnout is something that we typically use in vocational settings. You know, someone’s burned out on this job. But I think it’s really useful when you’re burned out from, you know, just your emotional life. And burnout, when it comes into my office, it sometimes sounds like, I just can’t get things done like I used to. I cannot get to the emails from the school. I just don’t have enough energy to unload the dishwasher. I just, I, I used to care so much about so many different things. And I just, I don’t have the energy to care about this many people and this many things anymore. You know, there’s there’s there can even be a compassion fatigue. There’s there’s a sense that you are just giving and giving and giving, and you no longer have a surplus. So that’s that those are some signs that I see. And of course, it’s different for everybody, as we both know.
Amy Julia Becker: 05:37
Yeah, that’s really helpful. And I’m curious because what we’re talking about here, that’s is an individual, right, who might be experiencing chronic stress. And now I want to bring it into that dynamic of how that operates within a marriage. And obviously, not every parent who is listening or caregiver who’s listening to this podcast is in a marriage. Um, and that brings its own chronic stress if you are um a single parent or a sole caregiver. But um I want to just hone in on the idea of chronic stress in that marriage relationship. What effect would that have? And how does that dynamic play out?
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 06:12
Mm-hmm. That’s a great question. And, you know, marriages, um, let’s see how to put this, they take impact. You know, I don’t know, in high school, I built like a balsa wood bridge, and we would, and we tried to see how much weight it would hold. I think this was like in science class, like a really thin wood, and you’d stack up how much weight can this bridge hold? And this is an analogy I often give to my couples. It’s that your marriage is like a bridge, you know, and there’s weight that we’re putting on top of the bridge. And sometimes, you know, you go into a marriage and you’re not prepared for the weight that is going to be put on this bridge, right? So we have to short up. But it’s just first recognizing that your marriage is carrying the weight of what you guys are doing together, who you’re caring for. In this episode, we’re talking about chronic stress, right? And and some of the ways that that manifests or can in a marriage is one is resentment. Now, resentment is, you know, we all feel resentment. Resentment is um my favorite definition is giving past your limits. But here’s the problem if you are in a time of chronic stress where things are not changing, this it may be your new normal. You may be required to get past the limits that you had before. That may be your resting state. And so it’s really important to normalize that and recognize okay, how do we titrate this idea of resentment for our chronic stress for our new normal? Um, another thing is um scorekeeping. You know, when we are in a little bit burned out, when we are exhausted, you know, it’s really natural for us to become a little bit more tit for tat, a little bit more, hey, um, I got up last night. You know, you didn’t get up last night, right? Those are those are pretty typical things that can impact marriage.
Amy Julia Becker: 08:00
So if we’re kind of aware that we are in a situation of chronic stress, um, and I’m thinking about like the this might be true, you know, for any couple with like a young baby who is colicky, right? Who’s who’s waking up a lot. But I’m thinking also about like my friends who have middle schoolers who have some sort of disability diagnosis, who are literally up every night and it’s been 12 years, which is different than when it’s been 12 weeks or even 12 months, right? As far as, and I like just all these kind of visuals you’re giving us of the bridge, of the um, you know, water bottles, et cetera. And so what do you see in terms of how people typically cope with that type of stress? We’ll maybe talk about kind of the unhealthy, if typical, ways we cope about it, and then talk about some ways that we can, you know, we’re starting, we’ve talked about kind of identifying the chronic stress, which seems like the first thing, like, oh, this is not going well. But now let’s talk about the coping that we do naturally, but then also maybe how we could do that in a more productive way.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 09:10
Yeah, absolutely. And before I go into that, I just I appreciate you saying the cumulative nature over years, like that’s one thing that I for sure see all the time with individuals and couples is the cumulative nature of something, it absolutely intensifies it. It changes it, right? Whether if it’s three months versus three years, you know, the exhaustion you feel is going to be different. And we can’t, we just can’t compare the two, right? We have to validate and honor that they’re different. Um, but you know, I like to think of and and I teach couples this, um, that relationships, all relationships, my my marriage included, everyone’s has these certain cycles and these certain patterns that we get into. And listeners, you know, who um are married can probably identify, oh yeah, we always fight about X, Y, or Z, or oh yeah, when this happens, then this happens, right? We all have a certain pattern, right? And what I find with couples, whether I meet them because they’re coming in because they’re in stress, or I’ve been working with them for a while and someone gets a diagnosis or the stress increases, is that your pattern and your cycle gets activated, you know, it becomes even um more intense, you know? And and and I’m gonna talk about the specific copings, but why that’s important is because sometimes when we’re in stress, we become the enemy, right, to each other.
Amy Julia Becker: 10:33
Yeah.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 10:33
Um, um, but it what’s helpful to say about a pattern or cycle, I’ll even, you know, if I draw it for clients, I’ll put it out to the side of them, be like, this is this is our enemy. We’re tackling the cycle, we’re not tackling each other, we’re a team, right? And we can write that down. Tackle the cycle, not each other. Right, exactly. And but you know, we’ve all been there, right? We all know that when you’re in stress, it’s easy to tackle each other, which brings me to our typical four coping that I see, you know, and everyone has a different way. This is from a model that I’m trained in that I really love called restoration therapy. But typically, four ways that we deal with stress and pain are blame, shame, control, and escape. Right. And and so if it’d be helpful, we can talk about them or you can ask questions.
Amy Julia Becker: 11:21
Um, why don’t you just run us through what those might look like, all four of them?
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 11:25
Okay, all four. So blame, and you know, we all do one of these majorly. Some of us do all of them. Okay. Blame, blame is when, you know, something happens and you need to blame someone, right? Like you stub your toe and you’re yelling at your kids that they left their shoes out, even though you didn’t stub your toe on the shoe, right? Yeah. You are you you tend to be critical when you’re in stress. You know, you’re you get mad at somebody, right? How can’t believe they did that. Even if what they did is not completely related to your stress, right? Now, shame, it’s if blame goes outwards, shame goes inward. This is where I’m bad. I’m a failure. You know, when things are hard, maybe I just didn’t do enough. Maybe there’s some other, some other mom could figure this out. Right. And then control is one that you know we all probably see often, which is I have a difficult feeling internally, so I’m gonna try to control my environment externally, including my spouse, um, in order to make myself feel better, right? We we try to control everything and everyone around us. And then escape, which is sometimes called chaos, these are our numbing behaviors. These are, you know, um, from scrolling to eating food to numb to using substances like alcohol to shopping, you know, the list goes on and on. And most, you know, most listeners will be familiar with either their own list or just popular lists of how people can go into escape and and numbing behaviors. So those are four.
Amy Julia Becker: 12:57
So if you’re aware of either one or all of what you just named, um yeah, when clients come in and they you kind of identify that these are the ways you’re using to cope, and that is having some sort of negative effect on your relationship. Like, what are other what are alternatives? What do we do? Yeah, it’s a great question.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 13:16
You know, and and I what I first do is I normalize it, which I’d want to do on this podcast too. Like, you know, like I I’ll I’ll often say, like, I’m a blamer. Like that’s my go-to. You know, I, you know, we all have something we go to normally. There’s no, we don’t need to be ashamed about that. We just need to, you know, I feel like name it and be aware of it. But you know, if blame is, you know, you did something wrong, someone has to pay, someone has to be the villain is often it. Yeah. You know, uh what can help with that is practicing. Now, this might seem obvious, but practicing things can be really hard, and it doesn’t mean someone did something wrong. That, that, you know, practicing that I’m this is our family is in a really hard season, and it doesn’t mean that my husband is a failure because he forgot the milk. Like we’re just having a hard day. This is hard, you know, and and and really expanding your capacity for naming and living in that discomfort of the season without having somebody who has to be the bad guy, right? The shame, you know, shame is is is much more personal. It’s, you know, and this is where a lot of people will have to do their own personal work, but it’s where we’re recognizing just like with blame, somebody doesn’t have to be blame. You don’t have to be bad just because things are hard. Now I see this all the time with moms who are working so hard in any situation to take care of their kids. If one of their kids is struggling, the first instinct is, how did I fail them? Now, of course, there are just ways that we can always grow, but but that automatic going to shame, you know, what how we would replace that is, you know, is really a, I think can be, if applicable, a biblical understanding of your identity, right? Right. And understanding that you’re not actually powerful enough, right? In a in a in a humble way, you’re not powerful enough to have such a big impact.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 15:09
Right.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 15:10
Shame can make you think you’re bigger and more powerful and more destructive than you are, when really you’re just one piece of the puzzle of this whole family trying to figure this out. Right. And then control, you know, what I like to help clients do is to when you’re in controlling behaviors, what are you trying to feel? You know, like if I’m trying to control everybody in my family, make them do everything just right, what am I trying to feel? You know, maybe it’s um safe, maybe it’s peaceful, maybe it’s a break, you know, identifying that what do you want to feel and then making that an inside job because we all know when we’re not in an emotional state that we can’t control the environment, right? We all know that. And another great thing for for marriages is is recognizing, you know, if you if you are in a marriage, there are two adults here. You know, this can this can again really obvious stuff, but when we’re stressed, we forget. We think like some of us were raised really to be completely hyper-independent and we’re not used to having someone else to lean on, right? Um, and then control then the escape and chaos. It’s learning to titrate your feelings enough. Like I’m gonna just allow myself to feel a little bit of this so I don’t have to completely escape. Or I’m gonna practice some way, which is another episode, some way to calm my nervous system so that I can stay in this conversation and not totally escape. One that is really simple that I’ll tell clients is don’t talk about this face to face, talk about it on a walk. You know, because if if this is if this is a hot topic and you typically want to escape and numb, that by that, you know, walking down the street or even just sitting outside can regulate your nervous system. That can help you kind of interrupt that tendency to I’ve got to go to a numbing behavior. So those are some of the go-tos.
Amy Julia Becker: 17:07
Those are great. And I’m I’m thinking about just myself in some of these um longer periods of chronic stress in our marriage, um, and also just my observations of other people, that one of the almost um, I don’t know, there there are acute stressors that often you can, if you kind of get outside of the situation, look in and say, Oh, we can change that. Here’s how we’re gonna change it.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 17:33
Yeah.
Amy Julia Becker: 17:33
But then, you know, again, as you know, when you experience a diagnosis or a chronic health condition, um, there are experiences where it’s like, no, no, the the stress part, like the chronic part of that is not gonna change. And so it is simply a matter of kind of learning how to handle that stress and how to do that together rather than either seeing myself as like an isolated entity who’s supposed to be carrying or fixing this, right? Um, or all alone. But but I’m curious like what changes might come if your circumstances are not changing, right? Like how how can things actually get better if your circumstances are not changing?
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 18:18
Yeah, it’s such a great question. And I think it highlights how so much of our therapeutic advice wrongly focuses on trying to empower people with simple solutions to change circumstances, and that’s why it’s that’s why it fails so many of us that are in chronic situations, right? Because those things we can’t change the circumstances. So here’s what I would say, and now I I hear me out because it’s gonna sound a little too positive at first, but let me tell you the research behind it. Okay. What I would say in a marriage, and you’re in chronic stress, and the circumstances are not changeable right now, is to prioritize your connection above all else. And and and here’s here’s why. There’s research that I don’t know if you know Sue Johnson is, she’s um started emotionally focused couples therapy, which was a big, you know, revolutionary couples therapy movement. But she cites this research in one of her books where um a spouse, and I believe in the research, if I remember correctly, it was the female, um, was hooked up to some um electric shocks, which sounds awful, right? And and so they would they would test her bodily response with a little shock, right? Tolerable, obviously, um, when she was alone. And then they would um measure her bodily response with the little shock when she was holding the hand of a partner she felt safe with. And the difference was pretty dramatic.
Amy Julia Becker: 19:46
Yeah.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 19:46
That her body responded in less stress to the pain of the shock when she was holding the hand of a partner she felt safe with.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 19:56
Yeah.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 19:57
And and you know, we are, I believe, we are wired for connection. And sometimes when our circumstances don’t change, we’re such a solution-focused society, we forget that we also have this other balm, which is connection. And so prioritizing that connection. Now, a lot of people listening may think, well, when in the world are we gonna connect? Yeah. How in the world would we do that? You know, I mean, the first thing is recognizing that it can be as simple as holding each other’s hands. Now, I’m not saying I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t prescribe this to a couple who is in a deep conflict, just hold hands, but I would say it is a bomb, much more than we think that oxytocin that is released when we hug one another is pretty powerful. And then I would, you know, one of the therapy um slogans that I like is is slice it thinner, you know, make it really, really small. And and connections may your only connection may be we have coffee in the morning together. That may be it. But what I would not want anyone to underestimate, having done this work for almost two decades, is how powerful that moment of connection with. Sometimes the connection is we meet on Sunday night, and I’ve seen this help so many couples, and we talk about the week. Then suddenly the person carrying the mental load by herself often is the female. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not is not alone. Even if the labor division doesn’t change, the mental load changes, right? And is and then something as small as we, you know, we’re gonna watch a nostalgic movie that was, you know, one of the first things we watched when we were dating. You know, these are these they you you’re not leaving the house, they don’t cost money, they don’t require child care, right? They’re they’re small and actionable, but they really promote this idea that when we have someone’s hand to hold, we feel so much better, even if our circumstances don’t change.
Amy Julia Becker: 21:47
I really love that. And um, I want to just kind of hone in on as we always do at the end of this podcast, just some of the um guidance you’ve given us as far as uh someone who’s listening and knows that they’re in a Chronic stress situation in their family and and therefore in their marriage, um, and wants to be taking one next step, right? Um, not fixing everything right now, but taking one next step. And on some level, I would say that like that that final uh point you made in terms of hey, what how I wrote it down? Let’s see. Um prioritize your connection beyond all else. That if there’s nothing else that anyone takes away, I think it’s that. But perhaps before that comes the noticing the chronic stress, which sometimes we want to not even notice it because we think it can’t change. Um and it can’t, and maybe it can’t, and that still doesn’t mean that you can’t have experience some change within it. So it seems like noticing the stress and noticing your reactions to that, I really appreciate that blame, shame, control, escape, looking for other ways to react instead. Um, but then within that, um, naming the problem, especially with your spouse, so that you both know this is what’s going on, and then prioritizing that connection, you gave us a couple options, whether that’s hand holding or watching a movie or um a weekly check-in or even just like the daily coffee. I really appreciate that. Um, is there anything else you would add just for um a you know, parent, a spouse, um someone in a marriage experiencing chronic stress, as far as like if you have to start, start here.
Monica DiCristina, LPC: 23:24
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, just like our society prioritizes solutions, I think it prioritizes big things as the solution. And I think it’s really understandable, especially when you’re in chronic stress, to to think a big solution is the only thing that will help, right? And and oftentimes that’s what people it give you, and it’s not helpful, right? And so the only thing I would add is the small, small, small things that prioritizing that connection, the identifying, oh gosh, I’m sorry. I’m I think I’m a blamer. I just blamed you for our hard day, right? Just recognizing those tendencies and prioritizing that connection may feel small, but as someone who’s in the change business, quote unquote, every every change is very, very small. It’s a tiny step and then another tiny step.
Amy Julia Becker: 24:12
Thank you so much. That is just really, really gentle, kind, and applicable wisdom, I’m sure, for so many of us. Um, really appreciate it. And I do hope that we will have an opportunity to talk again, um, especially about some of those kind of um, you know, how to calm our nervous systems down. Uh so we’ll do that at another time. But um, for now, I just want to say thank you for um the work that you do and what you’ve shared with us here today. Absolutely, it was such a pleasure. Thank you for listening. If this episode was helpful, please share it with another parent or caregiver who might need to hear it. Take the next step as a resource from the Hope Heels Network, a collective of thought leaders offering honest and hopeful wisdom to help people flourish in the good and hard parts of their stories. To learn more about the work of Hope Heels, visit Hopeheels.com. I want to thank Jake Hansen for editing this episode and Amber Beery, my director of content, for producing the show. Thank you, our listeners, for being here. I hope you leave this time with encouragement to start with delight, connect to community, and take the next small step toward a good future for your family.
