Caregiver Tips: How To Prioritize Dementia Caregiver Wellness
Are you struggling to take care of yourself while caring for a loved one with dementia?
Caring for your loved one with dementia is challenging. Many caregivers believe it’s impossible to look after their own well-being during this journey.
But this isn’t true. In fact, prioritizing your well-being is crucial for both you and your loved one.
The Importance of Self-Care
Many people think that being a good caregiver means neglecting their own needs. However, about 30% of caregivers die before the person they are caring for due to stress.
Caregivers often skip their own doctor’s appointments, stop exercising, and eat poorly. This not only affects their physical health but also their cognitive abilities.
It’s important to understand that your health and well-being are just as important as that of the person you’re caring for.
Practical Tips for Caregivers
1) Diet
Follow a healthy diet like the Mediterranean or Keto diet. These diets are neuroprotective and can help maintain your health. Always consult with a physician before making any drastic changes to your diet.
2) Exercise
Physical activity is crucial. It reduces stress and improves overall health. Try to incorporate some form of exercise into your daily routine.
3) Sleep
Ensure you get enough sleep. Good sleep is essential for your cognitive health and helps you handle the daily challenges of caregiving.
4)Stress Management
Identify your stressors and find ways to manage them. Stress management techniques can significantly improve your quality of life.
Recognize Your Strengths
Each caregiver has unique strengths. Knowing your strengths can help you navigate the caregiving journey more effectively. For example, if you find emotional tasks more challenging than physical ones, you can focus on strategies that align with your strengths.
Understanding your innate abilities can help reduce burnout and make caregiving less stressful.
Habit Stacking and Time Management
Routine is your friend. Habit stacking can help you manage your time better. For instance, if you struggle with finding time for your devotions, try combining it with another daily routine. Start your day with a cup of coffee and your Bible reading.
Then, add journaling and exercise to your morning routine. This way, you build a sequence of habits that become part of your daily life without requiring extra mental effort.
Plan for the Future
Caregiving is like hiking a mountain. You need to be prepared with the right equipment and mindset. Think about your life after the caregiving journey. What do you want your relationships and health to look like?
Planning for the future can help you stay focused and motivated during the caregiving process.
Final Thoughts
Being a caregiver is a mental marathon. By prioritizing your well-being, you can become a more effective caregiver. Remember, you can’t change others, but you can change how you respond and take care of yourself.
Start small, make incremental changes, and take one step at a time. Your well-being matters, and taking care of yourself is not just possible, but essential.
Read More:
Talking About Caregiver Burnout With Michelle Gordon
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Email me: lizette@dignicarebydesign.com
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Debunking the Caregiver Well-being Myth
[0:01] Not too long ago, I made a post on Facebook that got some very harsh comments and very harsh reactions from people telling me that it is impossible, impossible for caregivers to actually take care of their well-being and take care of themselves while they are a dementia caregiver and that the vitriol was quite expansive and toxic. And today, I just wanted to take a few minutes to debunk that myth because it is not true. Yes, it can be challenging, but you are able and not only are able, but should prioritize your well-being as a caregiver over the well-being of the person that you are caring for. So listen to today’s episode to debunk that particular myth and if you are struggling and you need a little bit extra help or support.
[1:25] I would love to invite you to what I am calling a dementia caregiving audit. So one listener per month can sign up for a 30-minute free coaching session where you are part of the podcast and we can make you anonymous. You do not need to be on camera. We can just have a conversation, but where I audit exactly where you are as a caregiver in your dementia caregiving journey and help get you on a solid footing for the next part of your journey. The link will be in the show notes for the Dementia Caregiver Audit. So please, if you are super stressed and super overwhelmed, sign up. There’s only one available per month. So please take me up on this offer. There are no strings attached. I am here to serve you as a Christian caregiver. This is my give back goal. Now, without further ado, let’s head into the next episode.
Prioritizing Caregiver Wellness in Dementia Caregiving
[2:53] Well, welcome back, Christian Caregiver, to the podcast where we teach Bible-believing Christians who are wanting to make their dementia caregiving journey easier for themselves.
[3:05] And in this podcast, we believe in using your God-given strengths to help you make this journey easier so that you can still have hope and create moments of joy and ease your burden of caregiving.
[3:26] Thank you for coming back to today’s episode where we are actually going to really look at caregiver burden again because I recently put a post on Facebook that got quite a lot of negative comments related to caregiver wellness or caregiver well-being. And the person who responded to the post that I made, in essence said that it is impossible for a caregiver to come through a dementia caregiving journey in a healthy and positive way. And that people like me who are or focused on helping family caregivers of somebody living with dementia focus on themselves, that we were pretty much full of it and that it is impossible. And nobody understands that this is not possible to do as a balanced and.
[4:42] Healthy way of caregiving. And I just wanted to debunk that particular myth today because I hear what this person is saying. Each person’s situation is different. I understand that some people have more money, some people have less money, some people live in a rural part where there may not be as many resources available. There are different factors. Some of the people that I serve live in the middle of Nigeria, Africa, and I’m extremely confident that their resources are different. I understand it. That is the reality. We’re not all provided with the same resources.
[5:35] And by resources, I do not mean money per se, even though money is certainly a part of it. But resources can mean a lot of different things. And yes, each person and each family have different abilities or different struggles related to resources. But as long as we have this this mindset, this way of thinking about taking care of ourselves as a caregiver, we are never going to take care of ourselves. Because the reality is that our thoughts drive our behavior.
[6:22] Feelings, and our feelings drive our actions, and our actions drive our results. This is for anything and everything. I know for myself, and I am not a betting person, but I bet that if you think about your own life, when you wake up on the wrong side of bed, and you get up, and you think that you’re having a bad day and you feel like you’re having a bad day, then your actions follow that and the result is that you have a bad day. I know this to be a fact for myself. When I had a student many years ago and working in home health, we would drive together for eight hours a day. And she is a beautiful human and she did pass her clinicals and is now a functioning graduated occupational therapist. But at that moment in time, this poor young woman was truly struggling. She was struggling with a lot of negative thoughts in her own head related to who she is and how she shows up. But one day, I’ll never forget this, we were driving in the car.
[7:49] I had a bad attitude. I woke up that morning and I did not want to spend another eight hours in the car with this human. And when we got to my first patient’s house, we got out and we went in and it was a terrible, terrible session.
[8:09] Everything went wrong. The patient had a hard time. I had a hard time, it was just bad. And I remember getting back into the car and slamming the door and having a conversation with myself in my head that went something to this effect. Lizette, you have got to change what you are thinking about this day, because if you don’t change, this entire day is going to be like this last session. And so I just sucked it up buttercup and I got myself out of my headspace that I was in related to being in this car with the student. And we drove to the next patient’s house and I got out of the car and guess what? I faked it till I felt it. And I came Came out and we had a great session and we got into the car and my student, I asked my student, what did you think of that session? She’s like, that was great. It was wonderful. And I asked her, I said, did you notice a difference between the first session and the second session? She said to me, yes, they were totally different. I said, what was different?
[9:25] She’s telling me all of the things that were different, the things that she could see. And at the end of that conversation, I actually said to her, I said, all of those things are true. However, the thing that changed was me. I thought differently about what this day was going to be like. So my thoughts changed my feelings, made them more positive.
[9:53] My feelings drove my actions, and so I faked it till I felt it, and my actions drove the results. And so by way of explaining this concept to you for today’s episode, this caregiver tip and myth-busting episode is how to prioritize caregiver wellness as a dementia caregiver, because we can. But we are the only ones that can do that. We are the only ones that can change. I don’t know about you guys, but most of us have spouses or kids or other significant relationships in our lives. And if you’re honest with yourself, you cannot change the other person, can you? You can only change yourself. You can only change how you respond. And so caregiving is significantly a mental experience, a mental marathon.
[11:02] A mental relationship in how am I going to show up every single day as a caregiver. So the analogy I want you to think of today before we get into the episode of caregiver wellness is I want you to picture in your mind.
[11:24] Hiking up a mountain. Now, in order to go hike up a mountain, walk up a mountain, get up Mount Kilimanjaro or any type of a mountain, you need to be prepared. You need to have the right equipment. You need to have exercised or walked or prepared for it. You need to have your thought processes related to scaling the mountain or going up the mountain. You have to have all of those things in place. You have to have limited food and limited, well, you have to limit the weight that you’re carrying. You have to only take the stuff that you need on this journey because you can only take what you can carry. And the more you take, the more fatigued you’re going to be. So you have to be prepared. You have to be carrying the minimum stuff, but still have everything that you need to be able to get up the mountain. Well, that mountain is our caregiving journey. That is how we go from the beginning of a caregiving journey to the climax or the top of the mountain when our caregiving ends.
[12:44] Which for some of us is likely when the person that we love has passed away. But the reality of the matter is the analogy does not stop there. The analogy is when we are done at the top of this mountain, we still have to get down. And getting down the mountain is recovering from caregiving. But all we ever focus on is getting up the mountain, getting through the caregiving journey, and we are not looking at after the caregiving journey, how do we get back down this mountain? How do we look like as a caregiver on the other side of our caregiving journey? Because I don’t know about you, I’ll be 54 in September, and I…
[13:38] Want, when my caregiving journey is complete, however long that is, whether it’s five minutes, five years, or 15 years, at the end of this, I know the following to be true. I want to still be married to my husband. I want to have a good relationship with my daughter, my son-in-law, and my daughter who isn’t married, who hopefully by the end of this might be married, and maybe Maybe there will be a couple of grandkids running around if the Lord so blesses us with grandchildren.
[14:12] And if not, I want my health to be good. I want my relationships to be good. I want to have the energy to go traveling. I want to be able to run a business and be successful and serve other family caregivers of people living with dementia. That is what I want my life to look like after caregiving. And if I do not think about that now, I know for a fact that the result that I’m going to have at the other side of my caregiving journey is not going to be what I envision. Because without a destination that we’re going to, we are not going to get there. So when we are scaling this mountain and all we’re focused on is the person living with dementia and getting through this journey, and we’re not looking at how do we recover after this journey, how do we come through this journey in a healthy way, we have inadvertently set ourselves up for failure. And my goal today is to help you learn how to prioritize caregiver well-being.
Seeking Support and Connection in the Caregiving Journey
[15:28] Do you feel alone and isolated and need a little bit more help and support in this journey? Sign up for our next Ask the Dementor monthly meetup where we will come together. Less than 10 people are allowed to sign up at a time so we can have fellowship where where we can answer questions, where you can get some Christian guidance and just an awareness that you are not alone on this journey. I really want you to be able to connect with me. I want to be able to answer your specific questions. So if you’re struggling, if you’re tired, if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re stressed, if you just need a little bit of help, sign up for the next Ask the Dementor monthly meetup. The link is in the show notes below.
Importance of Self-care for Caregivers
[16:28] So first thing that we’re going to look at today is really understanding. I really want you to understand how important you are in this journey. Let’s sit with that for a second. Do you, dear Christian caregiver, recognize that you also are important in this journey. It is not just about the person who needs help. The person who needs help does need help, and we recognize that. But But do you understand as a care partner, as a caregiver of someone that you are just as important and that your well-being is just as important as theirs?
[17:22] Let me tell you some statistics. Did you know that about 30% of caregivers die before the person that they’re caring for because of stress? Did you guys know that? I say that statistic quite a lot, but you might be new to this program. And if you’re new to this program and you haven’t listened to a few of the episodes related to caregiver stress, I invite you to go to listen to episode 63, Beyond Burnout, How to Stress Less in Dementia Caregiving. Because I talk about dementia caregiver stress and well-being a lot on this program because I believe that this is one of the missing pieces in caregivers actually being able to navigate the marathon of dementia caregiving because it’s a marathon and it’s not a sprint. Another statistic is about 74% of caregivers are very concerned about their own health and 27% or almost 30%.
[18:41] Actually delay taking care of their own health. So 75, almost three quarters are concerned and only 40% actually do something. About 30% of people delay taking care of their health. So what does this look like when you are not taking care of yourself as a caregiver? This is how it comes out practically. These are the practical ways that we know for a fact based on evidence-based research that people are not taking care of themselves as a caregiver. They skip their own doctor’s appointments. They stop exercising.
[19:26] They don’t eat well. They either overeat or they undereat or they start to drink too much or they fight with their spouses if they’re married and their spouse is not their person they’re caring for. It impacts their health and their relationships. And one of the biggest results that caregivers actually have, and this should really, really give you pause, but one of the biggest changes a caregiver has, if they don’t take care of their own health, is actually their own cognitive abilities. So sit with that for a second.
[20:15] If you as a dementia family caregiver do not take care of yourself, you are at a higher risk for your own cognitive decline, which means that we are kicking the can down the line.
[20:32] If you are the spouse of somebody, that means while you are the spouse, you are the primary caregiver of that person. But two things can happen.
[20:44] You, because you’re not taking care of yourself, can pass away because 30% of caregivers die before the person that they’re caring for.
[20:53] So you pass away and now inadvertently you have put your own children into this mix to now have to take care of the parent who does have dementia, or you are the child taking care of a parent living with dementia, not taking care of yourself. Your parent passes away, and now you have cognitive decline, and in essence, you have kicked the can down the line, and now your children are having to deal with consequences of you not taking care of yourself.
[21:28] So these are important considerations. These are important things for you to consider as you are making the decision not to take care of yourself as a caregiver. If you have not yet taken the caregiver burden quiz, I invite you to message me either on Facebook or on Instagram, only the word quiz, and you will get a link to a free quiz that you can take to see where your caregiver stress and caregiver burden, what that actually looks like, as well as some action items to help you on the first step of your journey. So that is the first point, understanding the importance of taking care of yourself as a caregiver.
[22:23] Now, what are the four most important things that you can do for yourself as a caregiver? How do we walk this back? How do we navigate this journey? The four most important things that you can do to help yourself are the following four things. Diet, exercise, sleep, and stress. Those four things. You have to have a healthy diet. And there are lots of different neuroprotective diets that you can consider. The mind diet is one. The keto diet is another one. The Mediterranean diet is another one. These are all researched and evidence-based.
[23:18] Diets that you can follow for your health. Now, this is not a recommendation for you to change your diet without considering things related to your own health history. So please check with a physician before you radically change your diet. But diet is something that we can control. The The second thing is we have to exercise.
[23:44] You have to move. We are created to move. We are not created to sit still. And physical exercise has so many other benefits, including helping decrease your stress. So we have to figure out a way to get exercise into your life every single day. And then the next one is sleep. You need to sleep. Sleep is vitally important for your own cognitive well-being and for your own ability to navigate this in an effective and marathon-like way because dementia caregiving is a marathon. And then stress, managing your stress, figuring out where your stress sores are coming from in your caregiving journey. So those are the four most important things that you can do as a caregiver to help start to undo some of what you are experiencing. And then next, we’re going to talk about you need to know as a caregiver, what are your caregiver strengths?
Understanding and Utilizing Caregiver Strengths
[25:07] Now, this is something else we don’t talk about a lot. Each of us is created in the image of God, but we are created uniquely differently. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And because of that, each of us is created with a unique set of things that make us us, right? We have a thinking ability. We all have a certain, we’re gifted with a certain IQ or we’re gifted with a certain ability to do certain things in the thinking processes realm. We are also gifted with personalities that we can assess in a different realm. But there’s a little lone in between one that is our ability to actually follow through and strive and do things and everybody does it differently. And when we go against this intuitive grain.
[26:12] This intuitive way that we are created to be, when we are doing things against that, the entire time, we burn out. We are exhausted we are not working in in the most effective way that we can and when this happens we create for ourselves perfect storm and the more i’m learning about what it is that each person has that is their innate or specific and individual to them strengths.
Speaker0:[26:52] When we go against those strengths, when we do not know or incorporate them into our caregiving journey, then we inadvertently are burning ourselves out because we are working against what we have been created to do. It is more than just the physical tasks of caregiving. I met with a woman earlier today where we were discussing some of her struggles and her challenges, and what I found fascinating is I asked her, which is harder for you, the physical components of caregiving or the emotional components? And she told me the emotional. And I’m 100% convinced a lot of what we are contending with as caregivers is because it goes against how we are naturally wired. The way I’m naturally wired to be a caregiver is I need just enough information to be able to make a decision, but I do not do well when I have fear.
[28:03] Too many systems that I have to navigate, which is one of the biggest struggles that I have is because navigating the healthcare system is system after system after system. It’s all that follow-up stuff that I have to do.
[28:18] Calling and finding out about medication and following up on this appointment and doing all of those things, that is what actually causes me my stress. It’s not the other stuff it’s not so much a lot of the other kinds of things i can i’m created to come up with ideas all day and every day i can sit here and come up with 15 scenarios in three minutes flat without even breaking a sweat but if you told me i need to call the pharmacist and the the doctor’s office to get that medication and I can only go pick it up on Wednesday at five o’clock in the afternoon. That is what causes me stress. But now that I know that, the structure, I have to gamify those components in my caregiving journey so that it doesn’t frustrate me. I’ll use this As another analogy, like last year, this time, I went through an extremely difficult period as a caregiver where I’m like, Lord, I am going to lose it. I cannot do this anymore.
[29:34] It is too much. There’s just so many things that I have to do. I have to do this and I have to do this and I have to do this. And I didn’t really understand why it was so hard for me until I came across this assessment related to caregiving strengths.
[29:54] And I recognized that the reason that it was so difficult for me for that six-week period or eight-week period was it was a lot of following through. My parents had doctor’s appointments after doctor’s appointments after doctor’s appointments, all in the span of six to eight weeks. Well, now that I know that, and I recognize that just knowing that has made such a difference for me, because guess what? From now until the end of August, I’m back in that six-week period, but I’m better prepared. Because I understand now that this is what is the stressor for me is all of those following up, following up, following up type of situations. And now I’ve made it a game for myself. And I also know that it is only six weeks.
[30:47] And it’s back to back and a whole bunch of things back to back to back. And six weeks from now, it’s going to be done. And it’s done for another six months to a year because they don’t have some of their appointments are every three months, some are every six months, you know, that kind of thing. So I’m able to now recognize that. And now because of that, I’m actually putting strategies in place for myself, which is delegating to my husband some of the activities, some of the busyness so that we can accommodate and help my parents, but at the same time not burn me out. So this afternoon, my husband is picking up my dad to take the cat to the groomer because that is just one thing that’s easy for me to delegate so that I can go to the doctor’s appointments with my parents. So understanding your unique strengths.
[31:41] Your innate abilities as a caregiver, and then having a customized way of navigating it based off of your strengths, I believe is a wonderful way for us to decrease your burden and stress as a caregiver and gives us a way to actually prioritize exactly what you need to
Practical Strategies for Time Management and Habit Stacking
[32:08] help you stay well throughout this journey. So the next point that we’re going to look at a little bit briefly this afternoon is some practical things. So I want you to consider time management as well as habit stacking. Now, what is habit stacking?
[32:28] Routine is our friend. We function, when we have to think about something, that means we’re expending energy. Our brain is created to find the path of least resistance. We want to take the easiest route through. And the way we do that is through habit. So when we have to create a new habit, we need to do what’s called habit stacking. And this is how you help to actually manage your time because anything that you can do without thinking about that is just a part of your daily routine means that you’re not expending that brain power, that mental energy to do it. So routine is your friend.
[33:16] When I first struggled to actually really do well with my Bible reading because it was kind of hit and miss, it was haphazard, it was one day here, another day there, all of those types of things decades ago, the way I was able to do that was by habit stacking. And the habit stacking was first thing in the morning, get up, go to the bathroom. I always have to go to the bathroom. most people do when they get up. But immediately the first thing that I do before I do anything else is my morning devotions with my cup of coffee. Then I wanted to start to diarize or journal. So the habit stacking that I had, I already was in the habit of reading my Bible and doing that in the morning. So the habit stacking was stacking the journaling on top of the morning devotion because I did that every single morning. Then I wanted to start exercising. And so now the habit stacking is we get up in the morning. I do my devotions. I journal. I get dressed to go to the gym and we go to the gym every single day. So I’ve sequenced this habit stacking. I do not even think about it. It is part of my daily routine. And so that is how you habit stack.
[34:41] Because when we do habit stacking, and you can do it any time of the day, any habit that you need to create, you create through habit stacking. And when you do that, it helps you to actually create time.
Speaker0:[34:57] Because time is the other thing that family caregivers frequently tell me they
Discovering Your Innate Caregiver Strengths
[35:02] struggle with is finding the time to do things. So some action steps for today. I want you to, if you truly want to learn more about where to find out how to take this index related to caregiver strengths or what your strengths as a caregiver are, I invite you to just schedule a call with me. The link is in the show notes and I can show you where you can go to find out about your innate strengths as a caregiver. And if you find out your innate strengths as a caregiver, this has application to every part of your life. If you are working, you can use the information you find out related to your innate strengths as a caregiver at your work, in your relationships with your spouse, in all of your relationships with other people, because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And each of us has these innate strengths that we can use to.
[36:16] But because we go against the grain so much, it causes us friction and stress. So I invite you to go to the link in the show notes. If you’re interested in finding out more about what this looks like, to find out what your strengths are as a caregiver, go ahead and schedule a call. If not, if you just want to know how stressed you might be as a caregiver, just message me the word on Facebook or on Instagram, the word quiz, and it’ll send you a link straight to your inbox where you can just go take the caregiver burden quiz. Is and we can find out exactly what your challenges are related to caregiving so that you can prioritize your well-being or your wellness as a caregiver. So dear Christian friend, please remember that not only do we have to get up the mountain of caregiving, but we need to be able to get down the mountain of caregiving. And when you work with me, one of the biggest differences that.
[37:39] Make me different is that we always start with the end in mind. We look to your future after caregiving and everything is backed out from there. So I trust that today’s episode was jam-packed full of value. I am very excited that we can have this dialogue about caregiver giver well-being. It is vitally important to you and your own future to think these things through. I know it’s a hard conversation to have. I know it is not always easy to come up with these practical strategies, but there are ways to do it. We just have to start somewhere. It’s like the old joke, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you regain your health as a caregiver?
[38:43] One bite at a time. And the sooner we start taking care of you as the caregiver, the sooner you are able to truly become an effective caregiver of someone else. And as I end all of these podcasts may the Lord bless you and keep you and thank you for being here today if you like these episodes please share them with someone that you love that is also on a caregiving journey specifically if they’re helping somebody living with dementia and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.
