Caregiver Blues

Caregiver Warrior

On days when I wake up already tired and not feeling my personal best, an argument begins in my head. The glass half empty personality starts moaning and groaning and begins to scare the bejeezus out of me with scary scenarios and predictions. I tell myself something is really wrong with me physically, I don’t have the strength to get through my day and all those things and people I have to take care of are going to suffer and everything is going to go down in flames. I start to feel really anxious and scared and feel impending dread. The glass half full side of me kicks in and tries to reason with all of this chatter and begins to apply all the tricks of the trade I’ve leaned to jump start my day, get me going and deliver me from the land of doom and gloom. Or to ignore as my friend Rory says, the twin children inside of me named moan and groan. Obviously this battle is not the most pleasant way to start my new day and takes an extraordinary amount of energy that I could use elsewhere thank you very much. But it is part of the territory of caregiving and is only temporary. Eventually, for those of you who are wondering, the glass half full usually wins and I move forward in my day. I have learned however, that I can make these types of mornings worse if I am not careful. I am reading a wonderful book entitled The Mindful Way Through Depression by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. In the book they explain that feeling sad and down is normal and trying to fight the sadness and depression puts us on a downward spiral that keeps the sadness going. We find fault with ourselves for being in a sad state and this triggers more self criticism and judgement and old memories of other times we were sad. It’s like being in quick sand. The worse thing you can do is struggle. You just sink deeper. It is so ironic that caregivers, who in general are some of the most loving and caring people in the world, actually spend time second guessing themselves about the job they do and beat themselves up especially if they experience moments of sadness or exhaustion. What a shame!! If we had a cut on our body, we wouldn’t stick a knife in it to make it worse! Why do we beat ourselves up at a time when we need to be kind and gentle with ourselves? Just by reminding myself that sadness is so very normal and completely understandable especially as a Caregiver Warrior, I help myself recover and heal faster. Meditation and thinking good thoughts about myself also help. I remind myself I am a good, caring, loving, kind, dependable person and something triggered my sadness and the old sadnesses associated with it but it will pass. I deserve to feel sad and I give myself permission to feel sad without beating myself up. I will get through my day successfully and this feeling will lift at some point. So if you wake up feeling blue or down, just know it is a side effect of caregiving and life in general and do everything you can to give yourself permission to feel those feelings. Then do everything you can to be kind to yourself and get comfort from friends, family, doctors, support groups or therapists. Above all let that glass half full part of you take over and tell you how wonderful you are because you know and I know that despite feeling down you are going to go about your day making sure your loved ones are taken care of. Because that’s who you are and that’s what you do. You are a Caregiver Warrior miracle worker.