THOUGHTS MOMS, PARENTING TEENS, AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I CAN'T STOP WORRYING ABOUT MY BIG KID” | EP. 254
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Have you ever had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from. Because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
Have you ever noticed how often your kids just enter your mind? You'll be going about your day, working, driving, or talking to someone, and out of nowhere, a thought just comes in your mind. Something they said, or something they're dealing with. Maybe just something you're not quite sure about.
And it's often not just a passing thought you have. It lingers. You try to move on.
You try to redirect your attention, keep yourself busy. Maybe you tell yourself, they're fine. Everything's okay.
But a few minutes later, your mind returns to the thought. Again and again. It's like there's this constant loop running in your mind all day long, just thinking about them, worrying about them.
And you can feel it in your body, that hum of uneasiness. And in the midst of this worry, you start doing these little things to try to make it go away. You try to problem-solve something they mentioned.
You go to chat GPT to ask for advice. You think through what you should say or do the next time you talk to them. You imagine different scenarios, hoping they'll be okay, but also worrying, what if they're not? It's like our brains are constantly churning in an endless cycle that you can't seem to interrupt.
And the longer this goes on, at some point you have the thought, why can't I stop worrying about my kids? This is one of the most common experiences I hear from moms in this stage of motherhood, where our kids are more independent, growing up and starting to live their own lives. Yet somehow they're still living in our minds all day long. And look, we know, or at least we're starting to realize, that we don't have control.
But if we're honest, there's a part of us that keeps trying to find it. And when you really start to notice this, it shows up in so many small ways throughout your day. Sometimes it's just that your mood feels a little tied to theirs.
Like if they seem off or stressed or overwhelmed, you feel it too. And when they seem okay, you can feel yourself relax. Or maybe you notice how hard it is to settle into your own day-to-day routine.
You're doing the things that you need to do, your work or taking care of your responsibilities. But there's a big part of your mind that keeps going back to them, wondering, how are they really doing? Are they being honest about what they're struggling with? What if it's worse than I think it is? And of course, you feel that familiar urge to do something with your worry. So you check in with them.
You offer advice. Maybe you try to fix something that they didn't actually ask you to fix. And maybe one of the hardest parts is you tell yourself to stop.
You try to let it go and remind yourself, they need to handle this on their own. But your brain just keeps coming back to it anyway. And that's the part that can feel the most frustrating.
Because it starts to feel like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I stop thinking about this? And that's really the question worth exploring. Not just that we're worrying, but why it feels so hard to stop. So let's talk about what's actually happening here.
Because I want to invite you to consider that the fact that your mind does this does not mean that there's something wrong with you. The truth is, your brain has been wired over decades to respond to your child as a priority. From the moment they were born, your nervous system learned, this child's safety matters.
And this didn't just happen logically or intellectually. Your body actually learned this. Think about when your baby cried.
You felt it in your body. When something was off, you could just sense it. You could feel it.
When they were struggling, your whole nervous system activated to respond. You didn't have to think about it. It was just immediate and instinctive.
Honestly, it was protective. And that wiring doesn't just turn off because they get older. So now when something feels off with your big kid, even if they're 18 or 20 or 30 years old living on their own, your nervous system still reacts the same way.
It is instinctively trying to protect your child. So just consider that this automatic cycle of worrying we can fall into with our kids starts with an instinct, this nervous system response. And it's kicked off because this is what your brain has been trained to do.
This is actually decades of conditioning. And so, of course, it's hard to just let it go. In fact, you could even think about it this way.
Your nervous system isn't wired to let it go. It's actually wired to stay alert. But the truth is, nothing has gone wrong here either.
Your brain is simply doing exactly what it's learned to do, to love and protect your child. But here's where it gets tricky because the worry doesn't just come from your nervous system being activated. It gets reinforced by something else.
And this is so subtle that most of us don't even realize it's happening. When your brain keeps bringing your child into your thoughts, when it keeps looping on a situation or something that's concerning you, there's this underlying pull to do something with that, to figure it out, to fix it, or to get some kind of resolution, even if that resolution is just feeling like you've thought it through enough. And what's really happening here is that your brain begins to believe that if you just think about it enough, and somehow find the right way to navigate it, that you might be able to control what happens.
In other words, the worry feels productive, like it's helping. But if you really step back and look at it, most of the time, the thinking and the worrying isn't actually changing anything. The worry doesn't solve anything, and it doesn't prevent anything, and it's certainly not giving you real control.
It's just creating the feeling of control. And that feeling can be really compelling, because the alternative is much harder. The alternative is sitting in the reality that you don't actually know how things are going to turn out.
And on top of that, that you can't step in and fix things the way that you used to. And that feeling of not being able to do anything is incredibly uncomfortable. You feel helpless.
So your brain does the only thing that it can think to do. It keeps worrying. Because that actually somehow feels better than doing nothing.
So just consider that the worry isn't just about your child. It's also about trying to escape that feeling of not being in control. Let me give you an example from my own life.
Just recently, my son, who's at college, ran out of insulin pumps. And these amazing devices help him manage his type 1 diabetes by automatically giving him the right amount of insulin throughout the day. In fact, they've gotten so advanced that they automatically adjust how much insulin they give in direct response to his current blood glucose.
So these pumps are literally lifesavers. They keep my son's blood sugar from going too high or too low. And both of these outcomes are really scary.
But somehow, he ran out of insulin pumps. And I imagine it's because his room is so much a mess that he wasn't keeping track of his supplies. So he only realized he was out when he had to change his pod and had to ransack his room to find the very last one at the bottom of some backpack.
It was the only one he had left. And these pods last for three days, assuming they don't malfunction or fall off. And of course, this kid's a rugby player.
So they get pulled off early quite frequently. So my son calls when he realizes he's out of pods. And luckily, we have some here at home.
So I run to FedEx and I overnight a box to him. $125 later, I'm thinking I've solved the problem. As long as the pod he has on lasts for 24 hours, he'll be fine.
Well, FedEx overnight delivery to Vermont is apparently not at all reliable. What was supposed to be delivered on a Friday at noon was now arriving on Monday at noon. And of course, this last pod got ripped off in rugby practice on Friday.
So thank God for technology and backup plans because we knew what to do. He just had to go back to giving himself insulin manually through injections. We gave him the instructions and then we had to wait until Monday.
There was really nothing more I could do. But I could feel my brain want to keep churning through worst case scenarios. What if my son goes low while he's sleeping and he doesn't wake up? What if we gave him the wrong dose or the wrong insulin ratios? What if he uses the wrong kind of insulin? Because there are two types that both do very different things.
Over the course of that long weekend, my mind kept going there. I kept opening the app that shows me his blood sugar. There was one night when I was going to bed and I noticed his glucose readings were spotty.
So I texted him to be sure he changed his continuous glucose monitor. It felt like we had to keep hold of that lifeline. At least then I'd be able to see how he was doing, even if I wasn't right there with him.
And my friend, I could feel the worry in my whole body, but there was nothing I could do. I'm six hours away. I can't double check the doses he's giving himself.
And yet my brain just kept wanting to go back to it, thinking about him, running through scenarios. I even considered just getting in the car and driving insulin pods up to him. A 12-hour round trip seemed like a better alternative than sitting in the discomfort of not being in control.
And behind all of this worry was just this really raw feeling of not being able to protect my son, really of having to trust that he could handle this on his own. And so on the one hand, my worry was making me feel like I was doing something to help. But the truth is my worry wasn't actually helping him.
It was simply my brain's way of trying to help me feel less helpless. And I think this is what's happening for so many of us. There are these moments where something comes up with our kids and we're pulled into it, mentally and emotionally, and we start thinking about it, trying to work it out, imagining different outcomes, wanting to check in and fix or help, not because we're doing anything wrong, but because it feels so hard to just sit there and not do anything.
Just consider how often it feels like our emotional state is tied to theirs, to our kids' safety and their well-being. When they're okay, we feel okay. But when they're not okay, we don't.
So often we need them to feel better so we can feel better. Essentially, our sense of peace and our ability to relax becomes dependent on something outside of us. In this case, our child's experience.
And if this resonates, it's not something you're doing wrong. This is actually something you've been trained to do. For years, it was your job to respond to your kids' needs and step in when something wasn't right.
So of course your brain still wants to do that. But now your peace is getting tied to something you can't actually control. And that's why this feels so exhausting, because you're constantly trying to feel okay.
But that emotional stability is dependent on something that's always changing. Your big kids' moods, and their choices, their circumstances. And the truth is, you will never feel consistently at peace if your peace depends on your child being okay all the time.
So the question becomes, if this is what our brain is doing, what do we do with that? And here's something to really consider. This is not about trying to stop worrying. Because if you've ever tried to do that, you already know that that doesn't work.
You can't just tell your brain, don't think about this, stop worrying. It just doesn't work. So instead of trying to shut down the worry, the work is to start changing how you relate to it.
It's learning how to notice what's happening without immediately getting pulled into it. So the next time your mind goes there, instead of following it down that rabbit hole of worry, try to just pause for a moment and recognize what's happening. First, there's the reaction in your body, that tightening, that drop in your stomach, that surge of urgency or unease.
This is your nervous system. It's that fight or flight, automatic physical response to danger. And it's being triggered by that part of your brain that's been trained to react when something feels off with your child.
But then almost immediately after that come the thoughts. What if something goes wrong? Should I be doing something to fix this? How is this all going to turn out? And those thoughts, those questions that our mind fill in the blanks and answer, they amplify the fear and the worry. In fact, these thoughts give your brain something to do with that nervous system response.
Because it's uncomfortable. Your brain doesn't want to sit in that discomfort. It just wants to solve for it, to make it go away.
So instead of just feeling that initial reaction, that physical response, you get pulled into the thought loop of worry. And all of this happens so quickly you can feel hard to differentiate these two experiences. But when you give yourself a little space to notice this, you can begin to see them as separate parts.
Oh, there's that reaction in my body. And now here comes the thoughts about it. And even that small shift, just noticing, gives you a little room to see it more clearly.
There's a physical reaction, and then a story about that reaction. And that's not at all to say that there isn't something to worry about. I mean, in my situation with my son, my fears weren't made up.
He was managing his diabetes without his usual system. The insulin dose we gave him was an educated guess. The math involved in dosing to cover what he eats is mind-blowingly complicated.
And it's also something he hasn't had to do really ever in his life on his own. And on top of that, he's a college kid doing the typical bonehead things that college kids do. The risks I was thinking about were real.
Of course my nervous system was triggered. My son was in danger. And of course my brain was constantly working to try to find solutions, ways to watch out for them, to keep me vigilant.
All of that makes perfect sense. But what I was able to see when I gave myself space, was that there was a difference between the reality of the situation and everything my mind was adding on top of it. The reality was, my son was handling it.
He had a plan. He knew what to do. And he also knows what's at stake.
But where my mind wanted to go was to all of the what-ifs, the assumptions about how my son wouldn't know how to do the right thing, the fear that we'd given him the wrong information, or that his body would somehow react badly. My mind desperately wanted to create certainty and control in a situation where I didn't have control and couldn't know how it was going to turn out. Was it possible that something could go wrong? Yes, absolutely.
Was my worrying preventing that outcome? Nope, not at all. And in fact, if I had responded to my instinct to get in the car and drive up to Vermont, I would have robbed my son of the chance to learn how to manage his diabetes when he doesn't have all the tools. It's actually a critical life skill that he now has.
And the truth is, even with all of the safety equipment he has, something could go wrong. I do not have control. And yet when I live in the fear of all of those terrible worst-case scenarios, it's as if I'm living in that experience even when everything's okay.
And I think this is what so many of us are doing as moms. We're not just living our lives. We're living all of the possible versions of what could go wrong in our kids' lives over and over again in our minds.
And my friend, it's exhausting. And it's not because we care too much. It's because we've been taught to fix and protect for so long.
We don't know how to stop when we no longer have control. This stage of motherhood requires a new approach. And this is the work I do with my clients inside Mom 2.0. This work helps you understand what's happening in your mind and your body.
So instead of getting pulled into the spiral of overthinking and worst-case scenarios, you learn how to feel the worry without it taking over your whole life. The truth is, you can love your big kid deeply without feeling like you're constantly bracing for something to go wrong. Because in this messy and uncertain stage of motherhood, I don't think the goal is really to eliminate worry.
But you can change your relationship to it so that you can feel more confident in deciding when to step in and when to let go. And also so you can begin to trust that what you've done is enough and allow your child the space to become capable in their own life. The truth is, peace doesn't come from controlling every outcome, but instead from trusting yourself and how you show up to your life no matter what comes.
So my friend, if you've ever found yourself thinking, I can't stop worrying about my kids, I want you to know there's nothing wrong with you. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And your brain is trying to protect something that matters more to you than anything else in the world.
But just imagine being able to see the difference between what's happening and everything your mind is doing in response to it. Peace does not come from knowing your child will be okay. It comes from knowing that you can be okay even when you don't know.
Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
