When you’re a special needs parent, it’s quite common to feel overwhelmed. If you did a keyword search in this blog, you’d find countless times I’ve used the word overwhelmed to describe how I’m feeling.

Being overwhelmed isn’t something that’s easy to deal with because of its very nature.

When I’m overwhelmed, I sorta feel like I’m being crushed under the weight of all that’s going on in my life. In that moment, I’m unable to carry the weight and no longer able to even process anything. It’s kinda like a computer bogging down because it’s doing too much at one time.

During these moments, it’s not uncommon to feel a sense of dread or dispair. It’s important that you not give into these feelings.

It’s hard for people to understand what it’s like to be a special needs parent if they aren’t one themselves. It’s even harder for people to understand what it’s like to feel so incredibly overwhelmed by all this responsibility, that we can cease functioning all together.

When people don’t understand what we’re going through as special needs parents, we can feel isolated and alone. That only serves to make things worse. It’s not anyone’s fault and I don’t mean to imply that it is. I’m simply trying to make a point and help people to avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve found myself falling into.

What I’ve found is that by forcing myself to focus on at least one positive thing each day, I can help keep myself afloat and not succumb to things like dispair. It’s not a perfect solution and it’s certainly not easy to do, but it does help me to maintain perspective.

At the end of the day, I try to look back on the previous hours of my life and find a victory. It doesn’t have to be a big victory or something earth shattering. It could be that my youngest wore clothes to school that day without too much trouble. Maybe it’s that the kids had a good day at school or they did their homework without a hassle. Perhaps we made it through the day without a catastrophic meltdown.

Those are all positive things but they’re sometimes not easy to latch onto because they’re drowned out by all that’s got you feeling overwhelmed in the first place.

Try to find one thing each day to put in the win column. It can help you stay afloat emotionally and feel a bit more positive.