CareGiver Guide

Having: Compassion – Day 6

As Care Givers, our focus is on getting the job done. We believe that doing the tasks of care giving is what counts most.

From my experience and research, I have to come to know that having compassion is more important than what we are doing.

Having compassion is the essential energy of care giving.
The root of the word ‘Compassion’ is a Latin verb that means ‘to suffer with.’ The definition is “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.”

Paradoxically, learning compassion begins with ‘being friendly towards yourself.’ The Zen Buddhist term for being friendly towards your self is ‘maitri.’ If we are not friendly toward ourselves, if we  don’t love ourselves, how we can begin to love and then care for another?

When we begin caring for another before we have learned compassion, our actions will come from a place of obligation, duty, and even guilt. It will be difficult to sustain care giving over a long period of time without compassion. For we will be attempting to give what we ourselves don’t have.

Performing the tasks of care giving without first having compassion leads to burn-out. Burn out is the feeling that I can no longer do another thing for the person I am caring for.

Learning to have compassion is the necessary first step of becoming a Care Giver.

Doing Without An Agenda – Day 5

As a Care Giver, your role is to serve the person you are caring for (the CaredFor). You are there for that person. You are not there to accomplish a goal that is on your agenda.

For example, if you only have one day available to take the CaredFor to see the doctor, and there is more than one doctor to see, you might think it’s a good idea to schedule appointments to see both doctors on the same day. It appears to be a good use of your time.

But would that be too much of strain on the CaredFor to have to spend a whole day in waiting rooms and being probed by doctors?

This might be an obvious case of fitting care giving into your own agenda. Yet, there are other more subtle ways we deliver care which are really done to meet our agenda rather than the needs of the CaredFor.

The pace at which we prepare and eat a meal with the CaredFor is a good example. We may not realize it, but we may be rushing through meal times in order to get to other tasks we want to accomplish that day. While the pace may not seemed rushed to us, it may be for the CaredFor.

As Care Givers, we have  to watch whether we are approaching our care giving tasks with our own agenda in mind or are we in tune with the needs of the CaredFor.

Doing: Letting Go of Results – Day 4

The struggle I experienced during the time I was caring for my mother came from feeling that I wasn’t sure I was doing the right things, or that I wasn’t doing enough, or that I didn’t know what to do. The combination of these feelings made it difficult for me to just be with my mother.

Had I been willing to let go of wanting a specific result (wanting her to get better), I would have been more at ease caring for my mother.

Toward the end of our time together, I did finally let go of wanting her to get better. I moved toward making memories, not misery. In other words, I shifted my attention to what would be fun for us to do together rather than what would ‘fix’ the situation.

Developing an attitude of letting go of expected results will lighten the load of being a care giver.

The relationship of being, doing, and having: Day 3

As Care Givers we do things for the person we are caring for with the expectation that our actions will make a difference. Usually we are not conscious of the expectation we have for what we are doing. Yet, this expectation shapes what we do.

Before taking action, before ‘doing’, we need to be aware of who we are ‘being’ as a Care Giver. Are we being a healer? Are we being a servant? Are we being a manager? Are we being a companion? Are we being a friend?

For example, if we are being a Care Giver as a healer, there is an expectation that what we do will result in healing the person we are caring for. If we are being a manager, there is an expectation that what we do will control the environment.

How we are being as a Care Giver colors how we do the tasks of care giving. How we are being can cause us to have an attachment to the results of what we do. We do what we do to in order to change something.

The attitudes we have which we bring to care giving also shape how we do what we are doing. If we have an attitude of compassion, we can ‘suffer with’ ( the literal meaning of compassion) the person we are caring for. If we have an attitude of impatience, we will find it difficult to take the time necessary to complete the tasks of care giving.

As Care Givers, how we are being and the attitudes we have, will determine how we do the tasks of care giving.

Thus, it is important for Care Givers to become conscious of how they are ‘being’ and the attitudes they are ‘having’ as they go about ‘doing’ the tasks of care giving.

Another way to care for yourself

My tag line for this blog is that “You can’t take care of another until you take care of yourself…first!” The truism is that you can’t give what you don’t have.

How do you take care of yourself? The obvious ways are making sure you eat and sleep well. Add in regular exercise and meditation and you have covered a lot what is recognized as “taking care of yourself.”

There is another aspect of caring for yourself that I highly recommend to CareGivers: achieving success. Now, you may be saying to yourself, I’m a CareGiver. I have enough on my plate already. When do I have time to become successful? Besides, wouldn’t that be taking my focus away from care giving? Yes. And that is exactly the point. To reduce the stress of being a CareGiver, learning the balance between placing attention on the person you are caring for and yourself, is critical. You need time for yourself so you don’t begin to feel that all that there to life is a caring for your loved one.

Let’s take a look at success. One definition of success is the progressive realization of a stated goal. Define a goal, and do a little each day to move toward completing that goal. That’s success. It’s not necessarily about becoming financially independent or finding your soul mate. You can achieve success doing something as simple as planting basil seeds in a pot that you place on your window sill and nurturing it until it produces leaves big enough to spice your food.  You can define success as finally finishing reading that novel that’s been on your shelf for the past year.

Why is achieving success doing something simple essential to reducing the stress of being a CareGiver? Because it allows you to experience seeing the results of your actions in a task which has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Care giving is an open ended task that expands over time. While there is a beginning to care giving,  it difficult to know where’s the middle or when the end will  come. That lack of control over the process and uncertainty of the time frame are two factors that contribute to the stress of being a care giver.

When you can give yourself the gift of becoming successful doing something simple, you can draw on that experience for comfort when you face the chaotic, open-ended world of care giving.

You can’t care for another until take care of yourself…first!

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13.

As CareGivers, we indeed lay down our lives for a loved one or friend, the CaredFor. Whether we do so out of choice or obligation or guilt, we lay aside  major concerns of our own lives –  family, career, retirement, security – in order to care for another.

CareGivers then also lay aside another major concern: caring for themselves. Using some form of  a logic that defies common sense, the CareGiver believes that taking care of the CaredFor is a ‘prime directive’ to be accomplished at all costs. Slowly this translates into it’s OK not to care for myself as long as I am using my energy to care for the CaredFor.

What CareGivers fail to recognize is that you can’t give what you don’t have. If you are not well, how can you care well for another?

A recent study on teaching math showed that math teachers who were uncomfortable with math transferred that feeling to their students. Those students developed an aversion to math.

Similarly, if a CareGiver is uncomfortable with their role in taking care of another, it will transfer to the person they are caring for.

What I have learned in taking care of my mother and as a hospice volunteer is that I need to empty myself of any expectations before interacting as a care giver. Part of caring for myself is to become aware of my unexamined beliefs I hold about caring for another.

Am I aware that my attitudes affect how I do the tasks of care taking?

Am I aware that I expect my actions to produce an immediate result in the healing of the CaredFor? Is it any wonder then that I feel disappointed when I don’t see any immediate changes?

Am I aware that being present to the CaredFor, without expectations,  without an agenda, is the best gift I can give?

I have been told that listening to someone in way which allows that person to know they have been heard is the greatest gift one person can give to another.

CareGivers, it is selfish not to care for yourself first! When you don’t care for yourself first, eventually the care giving becomes about you as you attempt to give what you don’t have. When you are cared for, you can freely give. You can move attention away from yourself to focus on the CaredFor.

Peace & Joy

Richard

“Miracles happen in the space of forgiveness.”

In a workshop I attended over 25 years, I heard the words, “Miracles happen in the space of forgiveness.” This morning I shared that thought with a friend.  Based on what he had shared with me about his childhood and how his life was going now,  it seemed to me that there was something incomplete in his relationship with his father. I suggested he should have a conversation with his father during which he consider forgiving his father for what had happened.

My friend called me this afternoon after having  that conversation.  He told me he had some good news. After struggling for several weeks to resolve a problem, suddenly a piece of the solution showed up. From his point of view, it was a miracle.

As CareGivers, we see ourselves in a continuous struggle to provide the best care for the person we are caring for, the CaredFor.  At times, we feel as though we are losing that struggle. We become overwhelmed doing the day-to-day tasks of care giving. Often this leads to our becoming angry at having to be a care giver, angry at the disease that is wrecking the health of the CaredFor, and maybe becoming angry with the CaredFor.

At this point it would be wise to enter the ‘space of forgiveness.’ Who are we to forgive?

First, ourselves. Then, others. Forgiveness starts with ourselves.

What are we to forgive? Whatever in us that is causing to become angry. The anger starts to surface because we may be expecting more of ourselves than is realistic.  The anger starts to surface because we want to blame someone or something for the pain and suffering we are experiencing . The anger starts to surface because we feel the whole situation is unfair.

At this point –in the now — we can stop to look at our anger. We can forgive ourselves for not living up to our unrealistic expectations. We can forgive ourselves for wanting to strike out and blame someone. We can forgive ourselves for wanting it to be fair.

In other words, we are moving from wanting the world to be the way it is not and moving toward accepting what is going on now just the way it is. We are moving into the ‘space of forgiveness.’

It is here where we become open to miracles happening in our lives.