Anita is caring for her 65-year-old mother, who is living in Assisted Living and has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. Anita lives two hours away and is having trouble coming to terms with her mom’s dementia and struggles with the distance between them. She works full-time and has a nine-year-old daughter. She wants to be strong for herself and for her mom. Anita worries about her mom’s safety and struggles to find the energy to be a caregiver, a mom and a full-time employee. Everything that “goes wrong” seems to overwhelm her.
Managing the many aspects of care and life can be challenging and take enormous energy. Questions we ask caregivers are “What gives you the strength to continue?” and “How can you improve your ability to ‘bounce back’?”
Resilience is the human ability to recover quickly from misfortune; being able to return to original form after being bent, compressed, or stretched out of shape. Finally, it is recovering from disruptive change without being overwhelmed or acting in dysfunctional ways.
Research shows the following strategies are helpful for building resilience or “caregiver heartiness”:
Connections: a primary factor in resiliency is having strong connections with family and friends who are supportive and caring.
Curiosity: be curious about your caregiving situation. Ask yourself, “Is there anything good about this experience for me? What can I learn from this?”
Nurture your inner superhero: seeing ourselves in a positive light, believing in our abilities and knowing our strengths helps us bounce back from stress and challenging situations. Our self-confidence is saying: “These are my strengths.”
Make friends with reality: change is part of caregiving. Caregivers often reflect on the fact that being a caregiver wasn’t in their life plan and with that came a shift in perspective and expectations. Resilient caregivers often provide the advice, “accept circumstances that can’t be changed. Then turn your attention to what circumstances can be changed and focus on them.”
Express your feelings: acknowledge that life is imperfect and hold space and comfort for yourself in the face of difficult times. While it is important to allow for painful emotions, research suggests not staying too long with negative thoughts and working towards a long-term perspective of positivity. It’s a fine balance.
Create meaning in your caregiving role: finding positive meaning (even if it seems small) in your role adds to positive overall health. Having and holding a sense of purpose in caregiving is also associated with resiliency. For some, it’s knowing they are strengthening the relationship between themselves and the care recipient or giving back to a loved one. For others, their caregiving role can fulfill a sense of a greater purpose in life, taking pride in their skills or a desire for a better outcome for the person needing care.
Resilient people can be transformed by their experiences. When life hands you a challenge, such as caregiving, you will never be the same again. Strive to emerge strengthened and better from the experience.
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Wendy Johnstone is a Gerontologist and a consultant with Family Caregivers of British Columbia in Victoria, BC.