Caring for Everyone But Yourself? A Wakefield Therapist on Caregiver Burnout
The Personal Cost of Constant Caregiving
Feeling lost in caregiving? Reach out today for help from a therapist in Wakefield.
Whether caring for an aging relative or spouse or caring for a child with a disability or other concern, caregiving a deep commitment. While it can be rewarding to support someone you love and incredibly meaningful to contribute to their comfort and happiness, the process can also be incredibly draining. Even the most natural and committed caregivers can face burnout and get overwhelmed in their role. Fortunately, therapy can be a very helpful place to maintain endurance and have a sense of restoring yourself as a person beyond caregiving.
What Caregiver Burnout Looks Like
What does it look like when a caregiver hits burnout? It of course is individual, but according to the Caregiver Action Network at https://www.caregiveraction.org/understanding-caregiver-burnout/, “Caregiver burnout refers to a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by the prolonged stress of caregiving. This condition often develops gradually as the demands of caring for a loved one accumulate over time. Common signs of caregiver burnout include: Feelings of frustration, irritability, or anxiety; Depression or hopelessness; Difficulty sleeping or fatigue; Physical symptoms such as headaches, muscle pain, or digestive issues; Emotional exhaustion, irritability, and guilt; Feeling isolated or trapped in your role; Neglecting your own needs without realizing it.
If you have personally been involved in caregiving, many of these probably feel familiar to you. As an individual, you may find yourself snapping at your partner more, falling behind on deadlines at work or drinking waaaay more caffeine than is typical. You might loathe spending time with other friends even if you have the time to do so because you don’t just have enough energy for it.
Why It’s So Hard to Ask for Help
Caregivers can face a number of dynamics that make it hard to ask for help, either with the caregiving itself or with their own needs during the caregiving journey.
Externally, cultural influences can be very challenging. Often, there is an expectation, particularly on women, to sacrifice their needs for the needs of others. Going against this can be regarded as selfish or thoughtless. Who would want to associate with those qualities?
Internally, there could be an over-intense sense of loyalty to your loved one, that will not relent and allow you to come up for air. You may feel like any request for help is a complaint about providing care, and that complaining about providing care means you don’t love the person as deeply as you should.
Whether from inside or outside, you may feel pressure to be the “strong and steady one” for others, or to “have it all figured out,” not allowing any cracks to show. Yet these roles can become incredibly trapping with caregiving demands endure or intensity, and leave you depleted.
Therapy, with a therapist in Wakefield with experience supporting caregivers, can help you understand the dynamics that are making if hard for you to ask for help. In understanding them, you can also learn to challenge them a bit and determine what you truly believe is best for you and your life, and consider changes that might help you maintain stamina and engagement in caregiving. By lifting some of the social expectations, you may find yourself actually more deeply committed to your caregiving role, because you figure out a way to do it that feels most authentic to you and the person you for whom you are caring, instead of simply doing what you assume is expected of you.
The Invisible Load of Caregiving
Without ever being in a caregiving role, it is almost impossible to describe the logistics and emotions involved. The emotional labor associated with caregiving is massive and extremely poorly understood in much of American society. The closest comparison is to parenting of a typically developing child, and even parenting is deeply misunderstood and underestimated at many times.
The emotional challenges of caregiving are very personal, so can be hard to describe. I remember a few years ago feeling really confused about what to do for a long weekend, and struggling about what I simply felt “off” about the long weekend, and almost as if I didn’t know how to enjoy it best. This felt completely foolish as an adult until I realized that for most of my adult life, the vast majority of my long weekends were spent in a caregiving role, as I was the primary caregiver for my grandfather who lived ~300 miles away. So I rarely had a long weekend at home, and certainly never had consecutive holidays weekends to structure at my leisure (leisure being a relative term as I was a homeowner with a spouse and two very young children at the time during COVID). The baggage of caregiving is unique and can be very peculiar, yet it is very real.
Caregivers often struggle to explain to others why they don’t leave their phones downstairs at night, why they keep so many extra granola bars in their car or purse, or why they often feel like their schedule needs to be a few steps father ahead than other people typically want. All of these invisible habits and rhythms can be very isolating and become lonely over time. Meeting with a therapist can provide you with a place to make this invisible load more visible. By doing this, you can actually see more clearly where your energy is directed and once it is visible, it can be a bit easier for you to see opportunities to make changes. After all, it can be hard to fix something you can’t see.
Reconnecting With Yourself Outside the Caregiver Role
It is important to maintain connection with your comprehensive self, not only to maintain stamina in caregiving, but also because many caregiving journeys end with loss and demand restructuring of your life post-caregiving, which can be very challenging, especially if you have lost yourself in caregiving.
You are more than the support you provide to someone else, even if a very big part of you is caring, loving, compassionate and good at organizing logistics.
It can be incredibly difficult, however, to find the time and create the space to maintain connection with parts of your identity that do not show up in the caregiving dynamic. After all, there aren’t many caregiving scenarios where fostering a love for motocross or walking golf courses can easily be juggled. It is really easy to kiss off any hobbies or passions during caregiving, as it simply feels like there is not enough time for them, yet it can be helpful to stay away from all-or-nothing thinking.
A therapist in Wakefield can help you discern what aspects of your identity feel most neglected and consider ways to even slightly allow those neglected parts to show up more in your life. A therapist can help you carve out little space for autonomy and in doing this, hopefully support you in feeling much more like yourself amidst the caregiving role.
Guilt and Grief: The Emotional Landscape of Caregiving
Guilt is unfortunately a common companion along a caregiving journey. It can show up as guilt for not doing enough for your loved one, for neglecting other relationships or for neglecting yourself. You may even feel guilt for not being able to remedy the challenge facing your loved one, and that might case you to lose yourself in an almost frenzied dive into caregiving, as if caregiving more frantically could somehow make up for this perceived shortcoming.
Understanding the role of grief is incredibly important. As a therapist in Wakefield, I like to work with individuals to understand the role that guilt is playing for them. Why might it be showing up for you? What might it be trying to accomplish? If you could consider grief to be a little character, what might it be trying to do to help you, even if it just seems to be making you miserable? By understanding the role that guilt is trying to play, you can learn to interact with it a bit more assertively. This might look like learning to talk back to guilt a bit to assert that yes, you do indeed love this person, yet no, watching every tv show they like and never watching anything of your own doesn’t mean you love them less. It means you’re in relationship to them and that friction is a typical and non-alarming part of any relationship. It might look like learning to allow yourself to go for a walk at lunchtime every day to spend with your loved one since you know they are cared for at that time. Yes, it is time apart from them, yet no, commitment is not measured in minutes and keeping yourself healthy is an important part of bringing your best self to your time together.
Working with a therapist can support you in navigating the commitment to your loved one with much less guilt and much more freedom to honor your own needs.
Grief is another incredibly familiar character along the journey of caregiving. Whether it is anticipatory grief, grieving losses of things that will never happen for the person, or a combination of these and much more, grief is complex and powerful. It can also be incredibly challenging for a person who is still alive, as the other people in your life probably do not understand your grief. Yet you have lost your life the way you knew it. You have lost the person you knew or hoped to know. Your heart knows that, but it often doesn’t know what to do with that grief.
Therapy can be very helpful to understand your grief, prepare for future and ongoing losses, and also to have a space where you can be genuine and authentic about how you are feeling. Complex feelings (including relief), can be expressed without judgement and this can help you feel more whole through the process.
How a Therapist in Wakefield Supports Caregivers Long-Term
Caregiving can be an incredibly lonely journey, yet you owe it to yourself and your loved one to support yourself as best as possible throughout your journey together, whether it is brief or long-term. Getting perspective from a professional with experience in helping caregivers break through the challenges of caregiving can be incredible helpful and sustaining. You do not have to do all of this alone, even if much of it is a solo journey. You can learn personalizing strategies to maintain your energy and perspective.
If caregiving has left you feeling overwhelmed or invisible, talking to a therapist in Wakefield can help you reclaim your energy and reconnect with yourself. Whether you are entering therapy for the first time or looking to reconnect with the process, I offer a welcoming, supportive space to explore your challenges and goals. With the flexibility of in-person and online therapy, we can find a space for therapy in your lifestyle and schedule.
Are you ready to take the next step?
Let’s connect over a free, 15-minute phone consultation for therapy in Wakefield