Cut Your Caregiver Some Slack

In a couple of days, I will give a workshop on “Care for the Caregiver”. This is an important workshop as it addresses how to care for seniors who are caring for others without pay.

A close family member or friend who takes the role of “caregiver” cares for most seniors in need of care. The job description of a caregiver is pretty wide and can include anything from buying your groceries to making sure your Medical paperwork is all correct, to do your taxes, to cleaning your apartment. In fact, there really is no list of jobs that makes a resume of a good caregiver except for the one job of doing “anything you need her to do.”

Caregiving is an unpaid position. Your caregiver does what she/he does for one reason–to take care of you. If you can step back and look at it objectively, that’s a pretty amazing job, especially because as age advances, the demands on your caregiver can get more and more stressful.

While it’s not something we talk about, some senior citizens have a reputation for being demanding. Part of this reputation is the many challenges we face just when we are least able to handle them. Medical problems, fatigue and depression can be so debilitating that we are less able to tackle the issues of life just when they really need to be tackled.

The most common caregivers are one of your children who lives closest to you, or a partner or spouse. Since this important person is a family member, it’s easy to “unload” on them when you don’t feel good, when you are confused, when you feel angry, or when you need something done.

It’s easy to get impatient with them when something needs attention and they are not there to attend to it. It is also easy to want your caregiver to stay with you and never go home. This may be because you get lonely or you wouldn’t have to worry about something coming up that needs attention.

We need to have a reality check with each other about who your caregiver can be to you and what they cannot be. Your caregiver is not (a) a live-in maid, (b) your personal slave, (c) responsible for everything wrong in your life or (d) a person who lives only for your needs. If this wonderful person is one of your children, he or she may have a family and a job. You cannot expect them to drop those things to attend to you only. By being a little realistic, you are on the right track to having the right relationship with your caregiver.

If you looked at the role of a caregiver through the eyes of that person who cares for you, they have a lot of stress in their lives. Your caregiver knows you want her to stay with you all the time. He/she knows you are angry about your situation and about your limited resources and about things that don’t work the way they should. The weight of your impatience and anger weighs heavily on her.

There is a genuine problem known as caregiver burnout. People who follow such things have documented many cases where a caregiver has a nervous breakdown trying to keep up with the demands of an ageing parent and their own families and jobs. You don’t want that to happen to your caregiver. So, cut your caregiver some slack.