Managing your Attitude as a CareGiver is a critical skill.
As you begin each activity of care giving, remind yourself ‘to be kind.’
‘Be kind’ is as much a guiding principle of care giving as ‘do no harm’ is a guiding principle of the Hippocratic Oath.
Three keys to becoming successful:
1. Clarity – know what you want and focus on it.
2. Competence – define what you need to know and learn it — whether it be a strength or weakness — learn both types of skills
3. Discipline – keep to the course, one step at a time. Trust in your dream; let no one deter you from it.
In managing the care of the CaredFor, work toward keeping the CaredFor autonomous while still maintaining a safe space.
Be there.
Be supportive.
Be an advocate.
Avoid taking over the life of the CaredFor.
Based on a talk by Dr. Michael F Weisberg, MD at the 2016 DAGS (Dallas Area Gerontological Society – dags.org) Annual Fall Forum
Here’s a thought provoking reflection by one my favorite authors, Richard Rohr, OFM. on Paradox. As a CareGiver, you will live continually in the realm of Paradox.
Mystery Is Endless Knowability
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
How do we live the contradictions? Live them—not just endure them or relieve ourselves from the tension by quickly resolving them. The times where we meet or reckon with our contradictions are often turning points, opportunities to enter into the deeper mystery of God or, alternatively, to evade the mystery of God. I’m deliberately using the word mystery to point to depth, an open future, immense freedom, a kind of beauty and truth that can’t be fully spoken or defined.
Many mystics speak of the God-experience as simultaneously falling into an abyss and being grounded. This sounds like a contradiction, but in fact, when you allow yourself to fall into the abyss—into hiddenness, limitlessness, unknowability, a void without boundaries—you discover it’s somehow a rich, supportive, embracing spaciousness where you don’t have to ask (or answer) the questions of whether you’re right or wrong. You’re being held and so you do not need to try to “hold” yourself together. Please reflect on that.
This might be the ultimate paradox of the God-experience: “falling into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). When you can lend yourself to it and not fight it or explain it, falling into the abyss is ironically an experience of ground, of the rock, of the foundation. This is totally counterintuitive. Your dualistic, logical mind can’t get you there. It can only be known experientially. That’s why the mystics use magnificent metaphors—none of them adequate or perfect—for this experience. “It’s like. . . . It’s like . . . ,” they love to say.
Mystery is not something you can’t know. Mystery is endless knowability. Living inside such endless knowability is finally a comfort, a foundation of ultimate support, security, unrestricted love, and eternal care. For all of us, it takes much of our life to get there; it is what we surely mean by “growing” in faith. I can’t prove this to you. Each soul must learn on its own, hopefully aided by observing other faith-filled people.
Gateway to Silence:
Welcome what is.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox (CAC: 2007), disc 3 (CD, MP3 download).
Most of us, when asked how did we know we are healthy, typically answer: “I look good and feel good.” This is not an adequate answer.
The World Health Organization defines health as: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”1 Health is about the ability of the body to heal. If we are healthy, we will be able to maintain our well-being.
If we maintain the body’s healing systems, such as the immune system, and eliminate anything that inhibits the efficiency of the body’s healing systems, it is likely that we will be able to avoid many diseases and overcome the diseases that do manifest in the body. As my doctor, often reminds me, “God didn’t leave anything out of the body necessary for healing. “We just have to eliminate anything that’s blocking the body’s ability to heal: toxins we ingest, breathe, or otherwise absorb; an excess of glucose and fat; a continued buildup of hormones released when we are under stress; inflammation; subluxations in the spinal column; lack of nutrients the body needs to function effectively; insufficient levels of oxygen in the bloodstream — to name just a few.
As I have written in Chapter 7 of my book, Become a Compassionate CareGiver. Reduce Stress. Avoid Burnout2 , it is more useful to develop a health model that works on keeping the body healthy rather than on focusing on ‘curing disease’. Disease is a symptom of a body whose healing systems are compromised. Find out where the healing systems have broken down and why, restore them, and the body will heal the disease.
A poignant example of thise approach to healing can be found in the book, The Cancer Killers3.
In this book, Dr. Charlie Majors documents how he overcame stage 4 bone marrow cancer without chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. With his oncologist, he discovered that toxins that had built up over his lifetime compromised his body’s ability to destroy cancer cells. Once he rebuilt the capability of his immune system to destroy cancer cells, the massive tumors inside his brain cavity disappeared. He no longer has bone marrow cancer. Now he is a ‘Cancer Killer,” as we all are when we maintain the capability of our immune systems.
It is cheaper to maintain your body’s healing systems than to pay for the medicines or surgeries to cure a disease.
1 The World Health Organization http://www.who.int/about/definition/en/print.html
3Majors, Dr. Charles, Lerner, Dr. Ben, with Ji, Sayer, The Cancer Killers – The Cause is the Cure, Orlando, FL: Maximized Living™, 2013
We define success in monetary terms
rather than as one who brings out the
best in another, one who reduces fear
and increases love.
Focus not so much on success but
becoming a human being.
Death is not a problem to fix,
Nor a puzzle to solve.
Death is not
what you think
death is.
Death is not the end
of you,
unless you think
you are just your body.
Death marks the end
of your mind,
if the mind is merely
the activity of your brain.
Death is the end
of pain and pleasure,
as both require a body to feel
sensations and emotions.
No death, no fear.*
No death, no tears.
If you fear death,
you will fear
for your life.
You will fear life.
*”No Death, No Fear” is the title of a book
by Thich Nhat Hanh
Richard Anastasi
August 2, 2014
Find a quiet place. Sit comfortably. Then as you breathe in, say to yourself “I accept …” and repeat one of the phrases in blue. Then exhale, and say to yourself, “I surrender…” and repeat the corresponding phrase to the right that is in red. Do this for each row in the table.
|
Accept: |
Surrender: |
| The unconditional love of God. | To the idea I am not worthy. |
| The gift of a breath. | To receive the gift of a breath. |
| Being breathed into. | To opening up to inhale what is being breathed into me. |
| The gift of being made in God’s image and likeness. | To accepting God’s gifts; there is nothing to earn, nothing to do. |
| That all that I am is lovable. | To seeing with the heart that this is true. |
| That I have chosen where I am now. | To knowing I can, with grace, make other choices. |
| That nothing can ever separate me from the unconditional love of God. | To being loved unconditionally. |
| That everything belongs. | With consent, to the purification process of the Divine Healer. |
| Progress, growth, and expansion. | The need for perfection. |
|
Being. |
Doing. |
The Way of the CareGiver
Find Beauty in the Small Places of Your Life!
Is there a plant growing in a crack in the sidewalk? Did you stop to notice it?
Did you hear the cooing of a morning dove as you backed your car out of the garage?
Did you notice the play of colors on the bedroom wall reflected from the mirror on top the cedar chest?
Did you see the sun peeking through the clouds of pink and grey?
Beauty surrounds us, each and every day, unnoticed in the small places in our lives.
Gather that beauty into your heart. Store it away to draw on when worries mount and hopes fail.
==========
Greet The Present Moment!
Take a breath.
Take another, slowly. Inhale…Exhale.
Take a moment to notice what you are feeling.
Can you locate this feeling in a specific part of your body?
Have you felt this feeling before?
Notice what happens as you slowly inhale, and then exhale.
Feel your lungs and diaphragm as they inflate and deflate.
As you exhale, can you feel your breath as it passes over your upper lip?
Rejoice that you are alive, that you can breathe, that you can feel the air passing in and out of you.
Rejoice that you can feel the touch of those you love and who love you.
================
We all have expectations. Some of us tend to expect the best, others, the worst. What we might not have considered, is the affect of our expectations on those we care for.
Researchers conducted a simple experiment to show the power of expectations. Here’s how the experiment went.
Research was being done with laboratory rats. The rats were put in cages labeled either ‘smart rat’ or ‘stupid rat.’ But the rats were really all the same. The sign designated their ‘intelligence.’
When the researchers (who were unaware that there really was no difference among the rats) performed their tests, the rats in the cages marked ‘smart’ always outperformed the rats in the other cages.
How the researchers interacted with the rats changed based on the label on the cages. Effectively, the ‘smart’ rats were expected to do better; those rats were treated differently and they wound up doing better than the rats labeled ‘stupid.’
The same holds true with people. Expectations affect the performance of children, students, soldiers and those with physical impairments such as blindness. Source: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/544/batman
Given this research, Care Givers have to be aware of their expectations as they interact with the person they care for. If the Care Giver is worried and fearful, it will affect the mindset of the person being cared for. Guard against bringing your expectations into your care giving activities.