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Caring for Your Parent and for Yourself
Finding a solution for the age-old question, "How do I balance career, parenting, and my personal needs?" was always complicated. However, over the past few years that question has taken on a brand new twist. For millions, the question has become "How do I care for my aging parents while trying to balance career, parenting my children, and tending to my personal needs?" The answer to the new question is even more elusive.
If you are part of the sandwich generation, those caring for their own children along with their aging parents, you are in good company.
Currently, 76 million baby boomers are approaching retirement age. Forty percent of their parents will need long term care. Eighty percent of the care will be done by their adult children. What's the bottom line? Approximately 24 million of us will have our lives impacted by the emotionally, spiritually, physically, and even financially daunting task of caring for our parents along with our own families and ourselves. You'd think with so many people faced with the same issue that we'd all have the solution to one of the most common problems.
The problem? What happens to the needs of the caregiver?
For most caregiver's, their needs are the first to go on the back burner. Depression, burnout, and the loss of sense of self are common when trying to care for elderly parents while managing family, career, and their own needs. Self-care is like insurance for some people. They know it is important, yet they don't always follow through to make arrangements for it.
Some are blessed with the natural ability to embrace the new responsibilities with humor and finesse. For the rest of us, the tasks at hand can be downright overwhelming. Being overwhelmed can lead to emotional paralysis which eliminates our ability to care for anyone at all.
Creating balance in your life, especially with your ever changing responsibilities, can feel, at times, like a juggling act. Never fear! It can be done, and it can be done well. The following six steps, if you incorporate them into your routine, can help you to create some peace and joy for yourself while caring for those around you.
Step 1: Take a Moment and Relax
But....but....but....I can't relax. I have way too much to do. Maybe - but if you give yourself permission, you can always find time. By "take a moment and relax" we don't mean lounge all day (unless of course you have the luxury to do so!) but remind yourself to slow down - breathe - take a moment to sit and collect your thoughts. Sometimes just five or ten minutes in a quiet place can do wonders. Also, if you are honest with yourself, you can find a few minutes here and there. You just haven't been in the mindset to do it. Truthfully, we all waste time when we become overwhelmed because we become less effective.
Now it's time to commit to your own wellbeing! One Mom found a solution that worked for her. Sarah is caretaking her father and two children. She actually built time into her schedule by lingering in the laundry room (a place no-one dared venture lest they be recruited to help with laundry). Before, she used to throw the clean laundry in the basket and toss it on the guest bed and hope that her family would rummage through the heap of clothes when they needed something to wear. Each time she looked at the wrinkled, unfolded laundry on the bed she felt bad. Now, she built in a bit of personal time into the laundry task by taking an extra ten minutes in the laundry room, listening to music or watching television, and folding the laundry before bringing it upstairs.
Folding laundry may not be your idea of relaxing, but think about what would work for you. You will be surprised at how much better you feel by slowing down just a little rather than continually revving up and increasing your stress level. As in Sarah's case, you may choose to relax a bit while doing something. For other's you may take a walk, do some yoga, or read a book, even if only for ten minutes. Shifting your energy will help you to release some of the mental clutter and self-talk that adds to your stress level.
Step 2: Clear your mental space
Imagine standing in your living room for an hour repeating the phrase, "I am overwhelmed, there aren't enough hours in the day, and my father-in-law should never have moved in." How would you feel? Would you feel ready to tackle your day? Probably not. You would probably feel even more anxious than normal. Although few would purposely dedicate time to negative thinking in this way, many of us unconsciously do this as we go about our lives. Thoughts create feelings which create emotions which then dictate our life experience. Anxiety is not necessarily created by what is going on around us, but to our reaction to what is happening. Therefore, start monitoring your self-talk to see if you are making your experience more difficult. (This is not to say your schedule and life isn't hectic - we are just saying don't unnecessarily add to the burden.) Creating mental space creates peacefulness which improves the quality of your days.
Step 3: Organize, prioritize, and put yourself on the list
Your responsibilities can feel daunting, especially when you don't have a clear idea of what you have to do. The first step in organization is to find out. Create a list of your responsibilities. This list should include everything, such as walking the dog, making dinner, going to work, and giving your parent his medication. Include everything. Once you have your complete list, you can begin to tackle the tasks at hand. But, before that, you have one crucial step. Put your own self-care needs on your list of things. This step is not negotiable.
Caring for yourself may seem selfish, but it is the opposite. If you are depleted and exhausted you can't care for anyone. If it doesn't go on the list, you may never find time for yourself. Your self-care item can be anything from calling a friend, having a manicure, getting a haircut, drinking tea while reading a book, or going for a walk. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you do something for yourself on a daily basis.
Once you have your complete list - with yourself included - it is time to prioritize. You may be in the mindset that you HAVE to do everything on the list, but that's not true. Decide what you can get done in one day, without sending yourself over the edge, and postpone the rest for another time. Don't focus on the entire list. Tackle one item at a time. You'll get it done.
Step 4: Stop trying to fly solo and enlist help
One benefit of having your list is that you can begin to see areas where you can enlist the help of family members. This does not make you a bad mother/father or daughter/son to ask them to start helping around the house. Maybe your son can walk the dog. Maybe your husband can pick up groceries on the way home from work. Maybe your mother-in-law can help with laundry. Getting your family involved and teaching them responsibility is good for everyone. Post the list and ask your children or spouse or even your parent who you may be caretaking to "sign-up" for a task.
You can also see if there are any community services available. One working mom, also caring for her mother, called her church to see if they have volunteers to take her mother to the hairdresser once a week. This gave her mother an outing and freed up some time for the working mother.
Step 5: Let go of the guilt
Caring for yourself isn't just about going to a spa. It is also about the way you emotionally and spiritually nurture yourself. Many of us have a habit of treating ourselves harshly. We are relentless in our self-criticism. Guilt over what we may have done, or what we may not have done makes it impossible to create a harmonious life. Guilt keeps us from seeing the good we do for others. Guilt keeps us feeling as though we don't do enough. It also keeps us hooked into behaviors that don't serve our wellbeing. Accept imperfections. Accept that we are doing the best we can. And accept that we can’t be all things to all people all of the time. Most important, accept that other people must be responsible for their own lives and choices.
Step 6: Count your blessings
No matter how stressful your life is and how busy you are or even how overwhelmed you may feel, you can always find something to be grateful for. Taking just a moment, everyday, to express gratitude is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. It may even renew your sense of joy, peacefulness, and love.