Have you heard of the phrase “labor of love?” It’s baked into the idiom: willingly supporting loved ones is hard work.
Whether you’re a professional caregiver or a member of the 1 in 3 adults in the United States who is an informal or family caregiver, you’ve likely faced extreme burnout at some point in your journey.
At Timber Ridge School, we understand that providing care, whether to a child, adolescent, or adult, can be both rewarding and overwhelming, and that you can’t pour from an empty cup.
Ensuring you have the tools needed to support yourself is often the first step toward supporting those entrusted to your care. Today, we’ll look at some practical ways you can prioritize self care while staying focused on helping the people around you.
Recognize the Signs of Caregiver Stress
Are you experiencing caregiver stress?
The Mayo Clinic has a very helpful list of caregiver stress symptoms, ranging from feeling burdened or worrying all the time to rapidly gaining or losing weight to misusing alcohol or drugs to cope with anxiety and depression.
At Timber Ridge School, our clinicians and staff are trained to recognize these signs, and we encourage caregivers, whether part of our school community or beyond, to listen to their bodies and minds. If you ignore these symptoms, not only will your mind continue to suffer but you will experience adverse bodily health conditions down the road as well.
The signs of stress will manifest differently for everyone, so it is important to listen to both your mind and body if it is telling you to take a break. And don’t put off self care! Act to mitigate these outward signs of stress as soon as you become aware of them.
Prioritize Your Physical Health
As the National Institute of Health points out, taking care of your physical needs is a great way to boost your mood and lower stress, which in turn gives you more energy to support those in your care. Many people make the mistake of ignoring either their physical or mental health completely, even though the two are inextricably linked.
How Diet Helps with Burn Out
Make sure you are eating a healthy and rounded diet with plenty of nutrients, drink as much water per day as you can, and get enough deep sleep that you are rested for your obligations. Make a habit of exercising every day and keeping your body active. It doesn’t have to be a structured workout either: sometimes stretching, doing yoga, or taking a short walk are all your body needs to wake up and feel rejuvenated.
How Rest Helps with Burn Out
Prioritize rest. Rest is when your body heals, when your muscles regenerate, and when you can recharge for your next big push. Make sure to work downtime into your busy schedule. Finally, stay in touch with doctors that can assess your physical and mental health and recommend treatments or lifestyle changes to improve your well-being. A healthy body is often a healthy mind, so make sure you’re working towards both!
Many caregivers feel guilt when they prioritize themselves, even for a moment. But remember, self care isn’t selfish: it’s strategic. You’re doing it not only for yourself, but also for the person you’re supporting. Keep in mind the “oxygen mask rule.” If your airplane is going down, you won’t be able to help anyone else unless you first secure your own well-being.
Automate Tasks
It’s easy to get bogged down in small things, but automating recurring tasks can be a great way to reclaim more of your day!
Spending too much time shopping? Services like Instacart can deliver groceries to your doorstep, saving you time and mental energy that can better be spent on your care-giving tasks.
Automatic bill payments both for yourself and your client’s accounts, if you’re tasked with financial assistance, can remove the headache of missing a deadline or stressing about money.
It’s easy to set reminders on your phone or computer these days; just say Hey Siri! (or Alexa, or whatever virtual assistant lives on your devices) and narrate a reminder to do something later in the day so it doesn’t slip your mind. From personal experience, always set a reminder as soon as you think about the task – you don’t want to wait till later then forget!
In an increasingly digital and “smart” world, it’s getting easier and easier to automate small tasks that take up bandwidth from what’s truly important. As you go through your care-giving journey, you’ll find your own ways to make life more efficient. When you do, share them with us so that others can learn from your tips!
Set Boundaries
It can be hard to set healthy boundaries, but sometimes they are necessary to preserve your well-being and better accomplish your care-giving task. If you have to say “no” to a specific duty or to taking on additional work that you can’t handle at the moment, don’t feel bad.
Identify Bandwidth Issues
Quality is more important than quantity, so focus on the task at hand and let someone else cover the things you don’t have bandwidth for. You’ll come across many distractions and non-essential tasks that take your focus off your care-giving priorities. If you can avoid these pitfalls, you’ll have more time and energy for what’s actually important.
Write a Boundaries Script
Setting boundaries can be challenging, so having a “script” you’re prepared with might be helpful: “I’m not able to commit to that right now, but here’s someone who might be able to help” is a great place to start. This removes in-the-moment pressure when you might be tempted to agree to another request you can’t handle just because you don’t know what to say. Being mentally prepared to set boundaries is the first step toward making it happen in real life.
Take Breaks
Sometimes it feels like if you’re not there, everything will fall apart. This damaging mindset can afflict folks in any profession, but it’s especially prescient for caregivers who have people relying on them each and every day.
Find a Trusted Substitute
If being a caregiver is your job, you have a team of professionals around you who are qualified to step in and help your clients when you need a break. If you are a volunteer for a family member or friend, odds are you have someone in your life who can relieve you temporarily.
Taking a break isn’t easy, but it will lead to better quality care once you are rested and recovered.
Proactively Schedule Time Off
If you’re finding it difficult to plan breaks and then actually get away, try making a physical Care Calendar where you schedule yourself time off. Writing down what you need to do is a great way to get it out of your head and relieve mental pressure, so treat your calendar like a to-do list.
Take a moment at the beginning of each week to methodically record what you have coming up: then pencil in consistent breaks for yourself. Baking them into your schedule will plant them in your head ahead of time so that you aren’t tempted to skip when the time comes.
Ask for Help (And Accept It When It’s Offered)
At Timber Ridge, we believe in community care. Sometimes the hardest thing for a caregiver to accept is that they are in need of their own care-giving. It doesn’t have to be a formal or clinical relationship, although therapy and mental health treatment can certainly help you process trauma and more adequately absorb the needs of others.
Seek Support from a Family Member or Friend
Sometimes accepting help from a family member or friend is a great place to start. No one is an island, and much like your patients or family members rely on you to meet their needs, you should be reliant on others in your community to fill the gaps in your own life. Isolation is a frequent companion of burnout and stress, but trying to do everything on your own will only make things worse. Humans were meant to complement each other!
Join a Support Group
Adjacent to getting help from others is joining a social support group full of people that understand the challenges of what you do. If no one else in your life is a caregiver, you may feel lonely and like no one gets it.
Finding and investing in a group of people who share your profession and your passion for helping others can be life changing. The AARP has a resource guide on finding a caregiver support group near you that you may find helpful.
Download a Mental Health App
Speaking of online guides, there is a treasure trove of resources at your disposal that you can utilize to more effectively care for yourself and the people entrusted to you.
A few apps include Insight Timer – a program that can help you reduce stress and anxiety by taking the time to focus on breathwork and other meditative practices, or Headspace – another meditation app with a particular focus on getting healthy sleep and rest.
Celebrate Your Wins
A victory’s a victory, no matter how small. Celebrate the milestones and accomplishments in your care-giving life. Both you and the person you’re caring for deserve it! If you’re worried about patting yourself on the back, just remember that celebrating wins is a reminder of progress and the gratification of reaching your goals. It will provide great motivation to keep going and can help you stay strong through the ups and downs that accompany this lifestyle.
Keep a win journal!
It’s great to have a written record you can look back on to remind yourself of the progress you’ve made. It’s helpful both in good times and bad. In good times, you can see how much you’re positively impacting the people around you. And on tough days, you can remind yourself that optimism is key because there are better times just around the corner.
As you can see here in this blog on the importance of journaling, one study of 70 adults found that individuals with elevated anxiety symptoms showed decreased mental distress and increased resilience after journaling about the positive aspects of their life.
Thank You!
At Timber Ridge School, we believe that caregivers are the unsung heroes of every community. Caregivers make the world a more compassionate, healthy place. But sometimes those administering the care need help themselves.
Be on the lookout for signs of burnout, stress, and anxiety, and take proactive steps to fight them off. You’ll be healthier physically and mentally, and the people who rely on you will be better taken care of and supported. Thank you for all that you do!