Three Signs of Caregiver Stress
Caregiver stress appears to be a fixture of caregiving.
It shows up physically, psychologically, and spiritually. But our reactions to situations are purely personal. Not everyone will respond the same way to the same stressors, which leads me to believe that stress has more to do with us than with our situations.
Science tells us that stress occurs when we desire something or want to fix or change or remove something not in our control, whether we actively face the situation or replay the event in our minds or repeatedly imagine a future outcome.
We fail to see what's going on in front of us, the reality of the situation. Instead, we project our personal, subjective perceptions on the situation. Not getting the result we want can lead to anger, frustration, suffering, and depression.
We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are." Anais Nin
As a caregiver, it appears we're more vulnerable to feeling stress because we want desires to help, heal, fix, or reverse the health of the person in our care. In a situation that requires acceptance, surrender, love, and prayer, we attempt to impose our will, our self-righteous desire, attitudes, and beliefs and then deny the effect those actions have on our physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.
We set expectations for what we want to happen and when we want it to happen, how we want friends, family, and even how we want the person in our care to respond to us. We believe that this caregiving exercise is an interruption in our lives as if the universe makes mistakes. We hold the person in our care at arm's length, afraid to wholeheartedly love the changes we see taking place. We think we can think our way out of the pain we feel.
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. Lao Tzu
Let's start with the situations I faced as a caregiver; watching my wife change as Alzheimer's moved through her brain; taking on the household functions she could no longer perform; losing the intimacy we had; dropping all plans; frustrating doctor conversations; aggravating talks with insurance companies; budgeting, and paying for aides and a memory care facility; seeing caregiving as an interruption in my life; unfulfilling conversations with family and friends because they didn't understand what I was going through.
All of these situations and the feelings that arose seemed part and parcel of the job of caregiving and seemed to be legitimate sources of stress. And it put me into a downward spiral to the point that the only resolution I could imagine was that my wife would die quickly and spare me from being a caregiver.
The truth was my wife was dying. No one survives Alzheimer's. So, I had a choice. Do what I saw others do, push against the reality in front of me, fight to get my way, relish a woe-is-me attitude or acutely, objectively and lovingly see, really see how I could bring love back into my life, how to embrace my wife, deepen my love for her, embrace caregiving, understand how to love myself, find contentment with myself and do what I was here to do for myself.
We have met the enemy, and he is us. Pogo
Did the situation cause my reaction, or did my reaction cause a stress response?
And if I was the problem, what did I have to change? As it turned out, I had a lot to change. And as you know, change isn't easy.
But I changed because not doing anything had become too painful. I began by understanding my reactions to becoming a caregiver to understanding the messages my feelings were conveying. So, I surrendered to my senses, felt them all, and learned from them. The feelings and thoughts that arose were just reflections of me alone. There was no one to blame.
When I dared to embrace my feelings and discovered they wouldn't kill me, I began to connect with my subtle heart. Connecting with this subtle heart is connected to Consciousness, God, and the Self with a capital S.
I changed how I felt about myself, how I saw what was happening in front of me, how I approached caregiving, and how I approached my wife. I began to see what was happening in front of me from a different perspective to view reality differently. I stopped all the imaginings of possible future scenarios.
I dropped old ideas, beliefs, and attitudes. I recognized what could be changed and what couldn't and stopped focusing on what couldn't be changed.
None of this was easy to accomplish. It took time. And persistence. And commitment.
And, I realized that I seemed to be missing from the picture. The more I did for my wife, the less I did for myself. I came to see that I was equally important in this caregiving journey. And in fact, I had to care for myself first. I had to care for the whole of myself, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
But I realized that I was only caring for my physical well-being. I didn't understand what my feelings were telling me or how to address them or connect with a more profound truth about myself. When I did, everything changed. Everything changed.
I embraced caregiving and didn't treat it as a detour in my life.
I stopped thinking that I was in charge and recognized a higher power. I stopped suffering. I stopped feeling victimized. I realized I wasn't missing out on life. I felt sad, but I could live with that.
I realized that my wife had her journey on this planet in this lifetime. I surrendered to the life the universe presented.
I had found a way to drop the fears and doubts I harbored, the expectations I had, the history we had between us, and we seemed to meet on another plane of existence.
Though I was sad to see what my wife was going through, I found happiness and contentment. And I could bring that to her every day. Though the disease had taken her ability to move, talk, and care for herself, she still recognized me, and when our eyes met, we were happy together.
I found the greatest joy in my life sitting across from my wife, in her room, on the second floor of a memory care facility, in New Jersey. No beach vacation, no trip to the Grand Canyon, no spa, no playdate with the grandkids, nothing, nada, matched or even came close to what we had. All because I changed and dropped all the BS I believed about myself, life and death, and everything in-between.
I saw caregiver stress for what it was, expectations, fears, and doubts. I was out of touch with the reality unfolding before me. When I adopted a more objective perspective, a more honest vision of the reality of life, I found contentment and happiness. I lost the stress enveloping me.
I stopped reacting to caregiving. I found a way to balance my emotional responses. I acted with a greater sense of peacefulness and opened my heart to give and receive love.
And you can too.
It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
If you’re a caregiver having difficulty in this role, feeling alone, frustrated and tired with no peers to share your experiences, on a rollercoaster ride of doctor calls and appointments, bouncing between good news and bad news, having more questions than answers, suffering as you’ve seen others suffer, having tried what everyone has said to try but to no avail, then you may be ready for a fundamentally different approach.
