Coping With Negative Emotions as a Caregiver: Practical Tips
Is caring for a loved one with dementia weighing heavily on your emotions?
Caring for someone with dementia is one of the hardest jobs imaginable, but it’s also filled with moments of love and connection. However, there are days when the weight of it all feels unbearable.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. In today’s episode, we’ll explore a key aspect of dementia caregiving that many shy away from: coping with the negative emotions that arise.
And we’ll look at practical, often overlooked strategies to help you along this journey.
A Common Yet Unspoken Struggle
For caregivers, it’s easy to get lost in the demands of the role. Feelings like guilt, anger, or even resentment may pop up, but you often don’t feel like you have the space or permission to acknowledge them.
You might feel guilty for considering placing a loved one in a nursing home, even though it’s the best option for their care.
Or, you might feel isolated, disconnected from others who don’t fully understand the complexities of what you’re going through. These feelings are real, but it’s important to remember they aren’t always a reflection of the situation.
Caregivers often think, “I shouldn’t feel this way.” But the truth is, emotions don’t follow logic. They are valid even when they seem out of place. Recognizing this is a vital first step toward processing these feelings.
Emotions Are Real, But They Aren’t Always Reality
While feelings of frustration or guilt are valid, they don’t always align with reality. For example, you may feel guilty for decisions like considering assisted living for your loved one, even when it’s the right step for their health and safety. These emotions are real, but they aren’t necessarily reflective of failure.
In many cases, caregivers experience anticipatory grief—the feeling of loss before it even happens. This can cloud your perception and make it hard to see the progress you’ve made. It’s essential to separate the emotional intensity from the reality of the situation.
Practical Steps for Managing Emotions
To cope with negative emotions, you must first acknowledge them. But don’t stop there. Reflect on what you’re telling yourself about your caregiving journey. Are you focusing too much on the struggles? Often, shifting your focus to moments of connection with your loved one can make a world of difference.
Beyond personal reflection, caregivers benefit from biblical counseling. This provides a space to unpack your feelings and receive guidance. Whether you’re grieving an old relationship, struggling with the emotional toll of watching someone decline, or feeling trapped in the responsibilities of caregiving, having a trusted counselor can be transformative.
Why Self-Care Is Essential
Many caregivers feel they don’t have the time or energy to focus on themselves. However, neglecting self-care often leads to burnout. Studies show that 30% of spousal caregivers pass away before the person they are caring for, simply because they didn’t prioritize their own health.
If you’re not taking care of yourself, you risk leaving the burden of caregiving to your own children in the future.
Take small steps toward well-being. Whether that means joining a supportive community, seeking counseling, or attending a dementia coach meetup, prioritize yourself. Your well-being is essential—not just for you but for the long-term care of your loved one.
It’s OK to Ask for Help
Remember, you are not alone on this journey. There is no shame in reaching out for help. Whether it’s through counseling, community support, or a monthly dementia coaching session, finding resources to process your emotions is crucial. Take that step toward caring for yourself just as much as you care for your loved one.
Read More:
Talking About Caregiver Burnout With Michelle Gordon
Check the other podcasts: https://dignicarebydesign.com/category/podcast/
Email me at: lizette@dignicarebydesign.com
Message me at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkdifferentdementia/
Transcript
[0:00] As I continue down this journey of learning how to support dementia caregivers in a different capacity, something that comes up every now and then is how to cope with negative emotions while being a dementia caregiver.
[0:20] And it is a sensitive subject, but I invite you to stay and listen to hopefully an encouraging episode where you can learn a little bit more about what I would recommend you do if you are truly struggling with negative emotions as a dementia caregiver.
[0:41] So check out today’s episode and share this episode with someone you love who might be struggling with this particular situation. Hey Christian caregiver, welcome back to the podcast where I teach Bible-believing Christians how to think through their dementia caregiving journey to ease your burden while we build a community around you. I have been praying about today’s episode and pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in his sight. Oh, my rock and my redeem. Because one of the topics that is very difficult to talk about is something we’re going to touch on today. And that is how to cope with negative emotions of being a dementia caregiver. And this can be a very sensitive subject for many people. And I hope to do it justice. And I I want to try to be very sensitive to the emotions of people in our audience who are struggling with negative emotions while they are a dementia caregiver.
[1:56] Are you a Christian dementia caregiver struggling to cope? Does dementia caregiving really need to be this hard? I invite you to join our free monthly Ask a Dementia Coach meetup. Get personalized guidance and support from me, a pastor’s wife, occupational therapist, and Christian dementia coach. By blending evidence-based strategies with Christian principles, you can radically improve your caregiving experience.
[2:25] Register now for our next session of Ask the Dementia Coach.
Understanding Our Emotional Mind
[2:30] We limit registrations, so don’t miss out. Sign up today. Something I want us to think about, something I want you to consider, is that God has created us with three parts of the mind. We often only talk about the two parts of the mind, which is our thinking and our feeling parts, but we actually have three parts to our mind. We have thinking, feeling, and doing. And caregiving, in the thinking part, is very clear for us to see. That is our skills, that’s the stuff we learn in school, those are the things that we’re able to test when we start to see somebody changing in their ability to think. So the thinking part of the mind is super clear to many people to be able to see. The feeling part of our mind is our emotions, our ability to feel deeply.
[3:28] Love, hate, guilt, fear, all of these different emotions that we have, that we were created with. And then the last part is the doing part of the mind, and that is how we fix or how we solve problems. If we are free to be ourselves, how we would intuitively solve a problem, how we would intuitively go about doing something or striving. Today, we’re going to talk about
Validating Emotions vs. Reality
[3:58] how to cope with the negative emotions of being a dementia caregiver. Now, something I want us to all recognize or realize is that our emotions are real, but they’re not always reality.
[4:15] Now, what on earth, Lizette, do you mean by that? If I feel my feelings, they are real. They are real to me. I really feel angry. I really feel sad. I really feel frustrated. I really feel overwhelmed. Whatever the emotion is, yes, your emotions are real. And they are valid to you. I’m not telling you that you’re not feeling what you’re feeling, but they’re not always reality. So for example, you can feel guilty about doing something, but not have done anything that necessitates you feeling guilty. Guilt is actually a legal determination.
[5:00] We all, as sinners, are guilty in front of a holy God for our particular sins, particularly, and that is a legal determination. If you go to court and you are found guilty of doing a crime or whatever the case might be, an infraction, that is a legal determination. So when we say that we feel guilty because I perhaps told my mom I would never put her in a nursing home, and now 10 years later, I’m not able to take care of her anymore, and now I feel guilty because I am unable to take care of her and she needs to go to a nursing home. The feeling is valid, but the feeling isn’t necessarily always reality. Another example is I can feel sad or depressed or frustrated with my lack of progress related to my business, my health, my relationship.
[6:03] Whatever the activity or task might be, but I might still actually be making progress. So even though I’m depressed because I’m not as far as I wanted to be, or I’m sad because I don’t feel like I’m making progress, doesn’t mean that the reality isn’t that I have been making progress, that I have lost weight, or that I have learned to speak dementia in a different way. So the feeling that I have is real to me, but isn’t necessarily always reality. And I bring that up Because I want us to consider that our feelings are real and we really need to work through them, but they’re not always reality. And so sometimes just being able to take a step back and recognize that we are feeling what we are feeling and they are valid, they’re valid emotions, but that doesn’t necessarily equate the reality. God did create us with emotions, joy, peace, love, all of these different types of emotions.
[7:14] And it is our responsibility to work through our emotions and not let them rule us. Now, that is easier said than done. And I very much recognize that it can be challenging for us to work through our emotions. I can tell from experience, I can tell you from experience, that I really struggled for a very long time after my parents had us in boarding school to cope and deal with the negative emotions that I had attached to that particular situation. And it was only until I really worked through it with a pastor and thought through it and prayed about it and worked through my emotional response to it, which was way out of proportion to the stimulus. As I reflect back, it was very much I overreacted, but those were my emotions. I had tremendous sense of abandonment and tremendous sense of loss and grief of my parents who were still alive.
Working Through Personal Experiences
[8:33] And it took me a long time to work through those emotions. But one of the ways that I was able to work through them was really considering and thinking about my own thinking about the experience.
[8:47] And so what I’d like to propose to you today, if you are struggling with negative emotions of being a caregiver, I want you to do a couple of things. The first thing is really pay attention to what you’re thinking about yourself. You’re thinking about the situation. So if you’re thinking about your caregiving situation and what you’re focused on is the difficulties, the struggles, the challenges, the overwhelm. If you’re focused on those emotions, I implore you to consider talking to your pastor, sitting with an elder and really unpacking some of what you’re thinking about related to your dementia caregiving journey and really work and focus on trying to stop those thoughts before they start. Where our thinking goes is where our actions follow. Having said that, though, there is a time and a place when if we are really struggling with these negative emotions of being a caregiver, that there is a time and a place for counseling, for biblical counseling.
[10:05] Not necessarily any type of quote unquote psychological counseling, but true biblical counseling to help you work through whatever the emotions are related to your specific situation. You might be continuing to deal with the loss of a previous relationship. For example, if you are married and this is a second marriage and now you are helping a second spouse who has dementia, you might be struggling with your emotions because we haven’t entirely grieved our first relationship or we are grieving because we have anticipatory loss. And if we’re in a situation where we’re not able to control our own emotions at that moment in time, it might be time to not only do the dementia coaching component or listening to the podcast and getting practical tips and tricks related to caregiving, but it might be time to actually look in and sit down with a biblical counselor to work through your emotional response to the particular situation.
[11:18] The counselor, the biblical counselor, will have you work through it related also to your thinking and your feeling and have you do practical things to help you through this particular situation. You know, many of you may feel like you do not have time to do that right now, but it is vitally important for you as the caregiver to take care of yourself in this caregiving journey. Because if you do not take care of yourself in this giving journey,
The Importance of Self-Care
[11:50] what we in essence are doing is we’re kicking the can down the line.
[11:54] And you may precipitating this negative cycle to 30% of spousal caregivers actually pass away before the person that they’re taking care of, because they haven’t taken care of their own health, because they haven’t taken care of themselves. And the reality is, if that is a situation that occurs and you’re taking care of somebody living with dementia, now you’ve in essence put your children into the same position that you were in. As a dementia caregiver, if you do not take care of your own health and well-being, what we in essence do is we end up kicking the can down the line, which may mean that we put ourselves in, by not taking care of ourselves, we come into a position where what we’re doing is we haven’t taken care of ourself, we take care of the person that we’re taking care of. They pass away, but because we haven’t taken care of ourselves, now our children need to take care of us because we didn’t take care of ourselves.
[12:59] We cause the caregiving situation results in them not taking care of themselves, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for it to continue to go down the line.
Seeking Support and Counseling
[13:09] We just kick the can down the line. So what I’d like you to consider today, if you are a family caregiver, whether you’re a spouse, whether you’re an adult child, whatever your role or your relationship is. If you are really struggling with negative emotions related to being a caregiver and you have not been able to, despite listening to the podcast, trying the strategies that we’ve been discussing about thinking differently, and you’re still unable to turn the Titanic around.
[13:43] I ask you to consider approaching a biblical counselor and getting some real other support other than just the support of a dementia coach, the support of a community, the support of your family. It is vital that you as a caregiver take care of yourself as well throughout this journey. God is with you and he will be your refuge and your strength. And there is no shame at all in reaching out and getting help. If there’s anything that I can do to help you through this journey, I invite you to come to our monthly Ask the Dementia Coach meetup where you have an opportunity to sit with me and ask me questions. And I would be happy to dialogue with you, help you along your journey. If you are interested in the Ask the Dementia monthly meetup, the link is in the show notes. You can be anonymous. You can be off of camera.
[14:49] You can ask me any question that you would like, and I will do my best to serve you in the deepest capacity that I know how. You can also message me on Facebook or on Instagram, the word ask, and we will send you immediately through an automation, just the link for you to sign up for our monthly meetup. The monthly meetup is where several Several people are together and you can
Community and Monthly Meetups
[15:17] find community and not feel alone. So do take me up on these monthly meetups. I look forward to seeing you. The next one is my birthday and you will get to share my birthday with me. So sign up for and ask the Dementia Coach monthly meetup. And as I always try to end this podcast is may the Lord bless you and keep you. And I will see you in our next episode.
