Caregiver Insights

Mayo Clinic reports that with Gratitude come a reduction of depression and anxiety, while delivering an increase in immunity and mood and even help you have better sleep. 

While these are all wonderful benefits to experience, the real benefit comes to us through a more positive and hopeful lens to view life! So, find something to be grateful for each day for a week and see first hand the change it will make in your life!

Use these guidelines for more happy and relaxing holiday times: 

Adjust: Don’t corner yourself with absolute holiday traditions and rules. Be flexible and make new traditions.

Acceptance: Accept you are doing your best to provide care and joy for all.

Assistance: Spread holiday cheer around and enlist everyone for a holiday role. Spread the joy.

Assurance: Make a special effort to assure your loved one of their importance.

Let’s face it: having “the talk” with your parents about giving up their keys isn’t something that most family #caregivers look forward to. But for many of us, it’s a conversation that could make all the difference for everyone’s safety.

Have you had to have this tough talk with an aging parent? If so, how did it go?

The mask we wear is not the issue. It is not knowing it’s on that can effect our well-being.

Family caregivers can have a several masks to hide and protect ourselves. We can wear a mask that helps our fear, perhaps another one our vulnerabilities. However, regardless of our masks we have darn good idea of who we really are under them. 

If we’re not honest with ourselves, the dissonance between the two can lead to emotional upheaval.

22 years ago, I became a family caregiver.  I was overwhelmed and I went to my comfort zone, which was holding on to everything tightly in an effort to keep everyone safe and as normal as possible. This worked until it DIDN’T!! 

I wish I would have known the “critical” importance of social connection and engagement with others.

A wonderful and yet simple piece of advice I heard was to have the most fulfilling experience with your loved one “meet them where they’re at”.

In others words accept the situation as it is and have the deepest experience possible given the circumstances. Don’t disengage by emotionally and mentally drifting to the better times of the past or projections of the future. 

I recently read an article on @AARP which reminded me of the unselfishness of our family caregiver community.

This is a generous group of people, they seem to readily offer their hand to help others, yet many times they are not there for themselves. 

Take a look at this video and learn the areas that family caregivers can focus on to quickly elevate their lives.

I’ve found that implementing the concept of Active Listening is a great way to become an effective listener and communicator.  Becoming a good active listener is straightforward – and with practice, I think you will see a big difference in the way you positively connect with loved ones, family members, and friends!

Have you ever tried active listening in your caregiving communication? If so, has it made a difference in the way you connect with those around you?

As family caregivers, the importance of effective, respectful communication can’t be understated. What makes communications most effective is the ability to be a good listener. Let’s better understand how we can sometimes unintentionally fall short as listeners and the impressions this can leave.

Practicing gratitude can help lighten even the most stressful days and deliver wonderful health benefits. 

Here are some gratitude suggestions for you to practice:

-Take time each night to write down something that happened today that made you grateful.

-When you are feeling negative about what is lacking in your life, consciously consider all that is positive in your life.

-Call a friend or family member and let them know how grateful you are for them being in your life.

Our perspectives are important influences on our thinking and can ultimately contribute to our actions. 

What is so important is not to blindly and quickly  agree to the meaning others place on their perceptions unless they are in alignment with your values and understanding of a situation and how it can positively influence your behavior. 

It is amazing how many times we can be in the throes of disruptive issues and as odd as it may sound not be fully aware of how we are emotionally being influenced by them until we have passed our tipping point. 

The opportunity is to become aware of how we are physically and emotionally reacting (notice I didn’t say responding) to the situation sooner than later and begin making adjustments in our response and behavior as early as possible with the specific event. 

Ever heard the urban myth about the frog slowly acclimating to a pot of boiling water? Turns out, taking on more and more responsibilities as a family caregiver can feel pretty similar.

As family caregivers, there are SO many things that happen in our daily lives that are out of our control. But what about the little things that we CAN control that can have an immediate positive result in our lives? 

Let’s dive into a few together.

Let’s talk about personal boundaries for family caregivers. 

Setting expectations for others around how you expect to be treated isn’t mean. It’s not you stiff-arming the people around you. 

It’s you giving yourself the opportunity to say “yes” to more things that bring you joy.

We are nothing without our support systems. The family caregiver community has always been an incredibly important source of knowledge and inspiration for me. Here are just a few things I’ve learned from them over the last 21+ years of my #caregiving experience.

In 2021, the estimated economic value of family caregivers’ unpaid contributions was approximately $600 billion.

Without family caregivers, that would fall on the public sector to subsidize in one way or another. 

We don’t need a “thank you,” or a pat on the back.  We need help – real help – through sustainable programs and support systems built to care for our country’s family caregivers. 

However, make sure self-care is at the center of all your caregiver support.

Learning something new and expanding your interests are wonderful ways to grow personally and even possibly breaking some worn out routines. Research shows that when we work at expanding interests, creating new habits, i.e. partaking in new hobbies, helps boosts our emotions, cognitive health and overall well-being.

Consider breaking current patterns and finding interests and activities that are new and personally enriching. It can make such a positive difference in your daily lives!

 When caring for a loved one with challenging health issues family caregivers can spend time wishing things were different for the person they care for and even themselves. 

While understandable, this mindset leads to an opportunity missed…an opportunity to truly connect, an opportunity to spend quality time and an opportunity to embrace a mindset of acceptance.

Acceptance provides a great opportunity to stay in the present and make your connections deeper and more satisfying!

One emotion family caregivers (and all others) can experience frequently is anger, which if ignored can raise havoc with your health and well-being.

The anger I’m referring to is sustained anger. The type you encounter initially suppresses and stays with you and churns inside.

Two interventions to help address this are personal awareness and introducing interruptor behaviors to gradually but effectively diminish the grip of this anger.

Acts of kindness are a wonderful practice to both uplift the spirits of the “act” recipient but also provide wonderful health benefits to the giver.  The science behind these findings is irrefutable!

I would like to personally share with you what I consider a unique act of kindness that I experienced 55 years ago. It meant the world to me then and looking back as an adult means even more to me today! 

THANK YOU MOM!

As family caregivers, we can spend more time worrying about future events instead of focusing on what is in front of us, causing runaway thoughts that are truly out of our control. 

This, combined with hypervigilance is the perfect recipe for quickly becoming overwhelmed. 

Listen to my 4 interrupters that will help you with this issue NOW!

I’ve got well-deserved news! As family #caregivers, we don’t have to give 100% of hands-on care and support to ensure our loved ones receive 100% of the care they need for their well-being! And, there is absolutely no unhealthy guilt required. Let’s dive into this together.

Family caregivers know… living in a constant state of alert is craziness!  Here are 4 tips to help you shed Constant State of Alert (CSA) Thinking.