How to Decrease Caregiver Stress Through Coaching
What do you do when caregiving feels overwhelming, and every task is met with resistance or uncertainty?
This episode offers real-life insights from caregivers navigating the complexities of dementia caregiving during a live “Ask the Dementia Coach” session. Through practical advice and faith-centered guidance, we learn strategies to help caregivers better support their loved ones.
Balancing Relationships and Tasks
One of the key takeaways from this session is the importance of prioritizing relationships over tasks.
When caregivers focus on maintaining a positive and respectful connection, they’re more likely to gain cooperation from their loved ones.
For instance, instead of asking, “Do you want to take a shower?”—which often leads to a “no”—caregivers can reframe the request as, “Let’s get ready together.” This approach fosters collaboration while reducing resistance.
The Power of Limited Choices
Caregiving often involves managing resistance to necessary activities like hygiene or housekeeping. A strategy shared during the session is creating an illusion of choice.
For example, instead of saying, “We need to do laundry,” caregivers can offer two options: “Would you like to do the laundry now or after breakfast?”
This gives loved ones a sense of control, helping them feel involved while ensuring tasks get done.
Addressing Emotional Needs
Caregiving isn’t just about physical support; it’s about addressing the underlying emotions of your loved one.
One participant shared how her mother frequently expressed frustration or sadness about living arrangements.
The advice? Focus on the emotion, not just the words. For example, if your loved one says, “I wish I hadn’t moved here,” acknowledge the emotion by saying, “It sounds like you’re feeling upset. Can you tell me more about it?”
This validation helps caregivers connect with their loved one’s emotional state and foster a sense of understanding.
Faith as a Foundation for Caregiving
The episode reminds caregivers of the importance of faith in their journey. Dementia caregiving, while challenging, is an opportunity for spiritual growth.
By grounding their actions in Biblical principles like compassion, patience, and truthfulness, caregivers can approach their role with greater resilience and purpose.
Practical Tips for Everyday Caregiving
1) Create Activity Kits:
Prepare tasks or games your loved one enjoys, like puzzles or crafts, to keep them engaged and reduce stress.
2) Use Gentle Redirection:
When met with resistance, redirect your loved one’s focus to a new activity or thought.
3) Avoid Therapeutic Lying:
Instead of creating fabrications, reframe conversations to validate your loved one’s beliefs without contradicting reality.
Transcript
[0:00] Hey Christian caregiver, welcome to Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians, the podcast where I teach Bible-believing Christians how to make dementia care
Welcome to Dementia Caregiver Support
[0:11] easier today while also helping you focus on a brighter tomorrow. This is a very special episode of Ask the Dementia Coach. In these Ask the Dementia Coach sessions, which are open to the public so you can sign up and register for them at any time. I do them once a month where I bring people from our audience, just like you, onto the podcast to ask me specific questions of things that they are struggling with because I know and recognize that if they are struggling with these kinds of issues, then possibly you are as well. So for today’s episode, we had three people come and ask me questions and we had a wonderful time dialoguing and talking with one another. The next Ask the Dementia Coach session monthly meetup will be December the 19th at 6 p.m. Eastern, and you can sign up via the website or through the link in the show notes for our next month’s Ask the Dementia Coach. So go ahead and listen to other people just like you asking me questions.
[1:28] Well, hello, ladies. How are you ladies today? Well, hello, Miss Lisa. How are you? I am better than I deserve. How are you? I’m well, thank you.
Meeting the Caregivers
[1:39] Wonderful. Janelle, I’m so happy that you were able to make it. She had sent an email earlier saying that she might not be able to make it tonight. So I’m excited. So I’m very excited to meet you, Lisa. Can you tell me a little bit more about who you support and help? Well, my support is sort of indirect. My husband’s mother has moderate dementia and she is, we live in North Carolina. She is in Florida. She’s being cared for by our niece primarily. And so we provide support by getting caregivers there, support her.
[2:16] Trying to help her structure things. We actually just came back from a trip to Florida. probably go down there periodically just to, you know, visit and assess and sort of see where things are. And I think we’ve just been trying to figure out sort of where we are so that we know that we have the appropriate level of support. And every time I go down there, I just have more questions than answers. So when I found your podcast, I was very happy. I listened to a couple of the podcasts and then I was able to sign up for this session and the one on Saturday. So I’m very excited about cool well the next one the saturday one is like not this saturday that it’s the week after oh okay i’m glad you said that for some reason in my head it was this saturday but it’s on my calendar so okay Well, wonderful. And Janelle, I am so happy that you were able to make it. I thought you were going to go and watch some sort of a grandchild or something. I read the email, but I’ve slept since then. Not really, but.
[3:15] Yeah, I never thought about the time difference. So I’m in central time. So it’s only five now. So the program is later. So I’m able to make it for a while. Wonderful. I’m super glad that you’re here. So tell us a little bit who you support. I support my mom. My dad died two years ago, a little over, and we didn’t realize how bad the dementia was until after he passed.
[3:39] She was living alone in, I think it was March or April. We asked her to stop driving. She would end up someplace and not know where she was and not know how to get home. And that happened quite a few times.
Navigating Resistance in Care
[3:52] And then finally, we asked her not to drive anymore. And then quickly after that, she was lonely being in the house by herself. And so we asked her to move in with us and she eventually agreed and moved in in June.
[4:06] Okay. Wonderful. And Helen, I know Miss Helen. Helen’s been here before. Helen, I’m excited to see you, young lady. How are you? Oh, fine. It’s good to see you. It’s good seeing you too. And Miss Kate, can you tell us who you support if you want to ask a question or you can just hang out. I’m super fluid. You can ask Helen. I fly by the seat of my pants. But Kate, if you have a question or if you want to share, I would love to hear your story. But I’m, okay, she says she’s just listening and you are welcome to just listen in. If you have a question, you can put it in the chat and I can answer it that way too. Like I said, part of this is truly, truly just to give back. So I’m going to start with Lisa. Lisa, who said that she is trying to figure some stuff out. So, or she comes back with more questions than she goes. So let me hear some of your questions. One of the questions that I actually said to you in email was just about, we have several different caregivers that we have through agencies. Probably to cover the week, we probably have three different caretakers. And for the most part, they’re not really able to do much except sort of sit there and chat with her because whenever they get up to do something, you know, she resists and she’s like, what are you doing? You know, I wash my own clothes. I cook my own food. I don’t need you to do anything. So it would be helpful.
[5:32] They could do more, but again, it seems to, she just puts up a lot of resistance to it. So we aren’t really able to get them to do much. And so we’ve just told them just so that there’s no conflict or anything, just sit there and, and visit with her. So that’s, you know, which that’s valuable, but it would be more valuable if we were able to get them to do some light housekeeping or, you know, things like that and meal prep and stuff. So I’m just trying to figure out ways to get her or get around that resistance that she needs.
[6:04] So to set the stage a little bit better, is she living in her home with your niece? She is. Okay. She is. So it’s her own home and your niece is living there and your niece is at work and then you have the caregivers from the agency coming in. Exactly.
[6:21] Now to help me understand a little bit better, there are typically what I call three buckets of levels that people have.
Understanding Care Levels
[6:29] And so I’m going to give you some descriptors and then you kind of tell me where she is. Okay. The first bucket is the person is still doing all of their self-care. They can take their shower. They can do all of those basic things for themselves, but they’re starting to maybe skip a step here or there, but the quality is still pretty good. So if she were, you know, taking her shower and she came out and going into the community, people wouldn’t necessarily just look at her and say, oh, something’s wrong. The middle bucket, the person is starting to now lose the quality. They’re really skipping steps. They’re forgetting, oh, I did take a shower, but it was five days ago, right? If you were to leave them on their own, they start to look like they’re not taking care of themselves.
[7:24] Back of the hair, clothes are reworn and dirty because they cannot see these discriminating things. So they physically can do things, but they need the reminding. They need the step-by-step sequencing. That’s kind of in the middle. And then the last one is where the person is needing somebody to actually physically help do the activities for them. Which one of the three buckets is she in? She’s definitely not the last one. I think she’s more heading toward the middle. She’s very resistant around self-care in terms of, you know.
[7:58] Challenging to get her in the shower. She says she takes a wipe off and that’s sufficient. She says she can take care of it herself, but it’s sometimes it’s like, okay, no, you need more. But again, there’s just a lot of resistance. She can take care, you know, go to the restroom around, she can eat on her own and everything. But again, it’s sort of like, yeah, we think she’s skipping steps and it’s resisting. She’s resisting the help that we could get. So sort of really in this middle bucket. So the quality is starting to go away. So a couple of things to consider when you’re observing the people who are helping her or when you’re going, when you’re working with her, when you guys go down or when your niece is with her is we really need to make sure that we try to maintain the relationship first, right? And the tasks second. And this is a relatively new realization for me because I come from a occupational therapy background where it’s like, we’re really needing to try to get people to do things.
[9:00] And what I’ve noticed as I’ve switched and started working in this capacity is that if we break that relationship, then the tasks are even harder to do.
[9:12] So that’s the first part of it. And then the second part of it is we have to be very aware of the words that we are using and whether we are asking questions related to the things like, for example, do you want to? Do you want to go do the laundry? Do you want to go take a shower? Do you want to do X, Y, Z? Because when we use the words, when we choose to use the words, do you want to, because we’re trying to give the adult opportunity to choose, they can say no. And then all of a sudden I’m in trouble because I really need you to. And now you told me no, and now I cannot make you. So go Some good strategies or tips are to try to have the formal care partner, you know, say something to her like, well, why don’t you come with me to the kitchen? And then when we’re in the kitchen, oh, let’s get started on dinner. Here, you do this and I do this and have her work with her, not take things
Strategies for Effective Care
[10:16] away from her, but work parallel to her. So the person is the quality control and mom is helping do the task. But the other person is there to supplement. The same thing kind of with laundry. Oh, it’s time for us to go get the laundry out of the dryer. Let’s go fold them and then do it together. It may work. It may not work.
[10:40] It’s challenging when it’s in someone’s house where she’s always lived, but there’s some things that your niece can maybe try to set them up for success by, for example.
[10:56] Starting a load of laundry before she leaves to go to work and then having your mother-in-law and the care partner who’s there do it because it’s the right time for the task. Did that make sense? Was that helpful? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I think even if, you know, if my niece sort of before she leaves sort of lays out, these are the things that, you know, granny that I need you to do and- Oh, Granny, I’m exhausted when I come home from work. It would help me so much if you could do and then maybe list three things and then have the care partner and her do it together and have her wipe cross it out. A lot of these kinds of strategies are trial and error.
[11:41] Fun thing is the moment we figure out what works, it usually works for a while, you know, and it’s wonderful and great. The socialization is wonderful and great, but there are other things that they could also perhaps do with her. If she really won’t let them do any of the housekeeping types of activities, then perhaps we can have them do some thinking activities with her where we’re having them facilitate some games or puzzles or some things that they can do together that are special for her. So there’s a lot that can be done, but it really is just trying to really stop and be very aware whether they’re asking her to do something and she says no, as opposed to it’s a suggestion, let’s do it together. I call it creating an illusion of choice, right? Do you want to do this now or do you want to do it after breakfast? Two choices, two limited choices. We need to do the laundry today? Do we want to do it now or do we want to do it at 11? Do you want to wear this shirt or this shirt? Two choices, not unlimited choices.
Managing Clinginess and Anxiety
[12:53] Okay, that’s helpful. Thank you. Wonderful. All right, Miss Janelle, let me hear what I can help you with today, young lady. Although her camera looks like it froze for a second. You can keep the camera off sometimes if your bandwidth isn’t good. It’ll help and we can hear you better. I can’t quite tell if she’s there or not. We’ll give it a second. There she is. Well, hello, young lady. Sorry, I’m having trouble with my connection. It’s okay. Sometimes if you keep the camera off, we can hear you. It’s more important to hear you than to see you. I’ll see if I can do that. I don’t use Zoom enough to know. There should be a little icon that just says camera. Whoops, I just switched mine off. That was good. I can do the microphone. I know how to make people see the microphone, but I can never remember on the phone either. I always use Zoom on the computer mostly. Otherwise, you can just leave it. Yeah, there you go. Okay.
[13:50] Perfect. Figure out which one of these buttons to do. It’s perfect. So Janelle, tell me what kind of question you might have or what opportunity we can help you with today. So I’m blessed to have a job where I work from home. I care for a handicapped young man who lives with us as well. And my mom loves him. He’s been with us for 30 years. So that part’s great. I’ve noticed that my mom is very clingy to me. It’s just very like this morning I went to take a bath and my husband said while I was gone, She was pacing and very upset and was talking about leaving. Of course, then later, you know, we had Bible study. Her friend came over and then another friend asked her to go for lunch and she had a great day. But I’m just those times when I do have to be gone. She’s very clingy and then she does not. So my sister’s off work right now for a short time. She has some surgery and my sister would like her to come and be over there with her more. But that’s also an issue. She’ll be there for a short time, and then she’ll want to come right back.
[14:54] So a quick question about your sister. When you say there, is that in the same geographic area as you, or is it somewhere else? Yeah, she lives in the same town as me. Okay. So the blessing is that you’re your mom’s safety blanket. She feels extremely safe when she knows where you are and when she can see you. Okay. That’s why she is nervous or anxious when she cannot see you. You’re her person. She feels very safe with you, which is a tremendous blessing. But at the same time, it’s kind of like, you know, when your kids are little and you can’t get away to go potty, right? So it can feel very smothering when you’re the person on the receiving side. So a couple of thoughts or a couple of suggestions are to see if there are ways that you can structure the time around when you need to do some of these things when there is a normal segue for her to be doing another activity or another task.
[16:00] And I know it messes up everybody’s routine a little bit, but either maybe get ready before she gets up so that she doesn’t, so you’re ready for the day and she doesn’t perceive you to be leaving her, or when she is naturally engaged in another activity that will keep her engaged so you can have some time to yourself and on your own. Related to your sister, I think it’s very valuable to you as her primary care person to utilize your sister as much as you can, because if you don’t create space, not you, you, but a person, right? If we don’t create space for you to have some time, it is very hard to do it over the long haul. A couple of thoughts related to what happens when she’s with your sister. Does she just start to ask to go home? Or can you explain a little bit about what’s actually happening at that time? Saying she wished she’d never come here. And after she did come in here, after she moved here, she very quickly said that she wanted to sell her house.
[17:11] I’m not sure why. I wanted her to hang on to it. I thought my daughter, one of my daughters could rent it from her and then it wouldn’t be gone. But she just insisted, I just want to get rid of it. So we did that. But yeah, She says, she just pretty much says, I wish I’d not come. And she’s told me in the past when she’s been mad, she’s like, I want to go live in a nursing home. But then we took her for a visit to a place that sent us an invitation. And she’s like, I don’t know why I’m here. Ask them. My sister and I went. So she doesn’t remember saying that. So I think she was just mad. For whatever reason at the time. Sure. You had broken up right at the beginning. So what I understood out of the rest of what you said was that when your mom came to live with you, that you guys sold her house with her permission at that time. But now she’s remembering that she used to have this house and wants to go back home. Am I correct?
[18:08] She doesn’t want to go home. She does remember that the house is gone. She does remember that. She is saying, why did I ever come here? And what do you say to her when she says that? I really don’t know what to say to her. Okay. And actually, she didn’t say it to me. She said it to my husband this morning. And when she told me that she wanted to go to a nursing home, I’m like, okay, mom, we can look. We can look into that. It takes a little bit of time. You can’t just get right in, but we can go look around. I’ll make some appointments. And then we did make the one appointment. I went and toured one, but she didn’t remember that she had said that. But your intent is to try to keep her with you? Yes. I don’t think she’d be happy there.
[18:52] So, we would like her to stay here as long as possible. Okay. So, a lot of times, and it’s hard when you’re not in the situation itself for me to always come up with the right words, but a lot of times what we need to try to get to is the emotion underneath what they’re saying. Go for the emotion behind what she’s saying. So it could be something like, well, I don’t know why I should never have come here. The response could be, something to the effect of, it seems to me like you might be a little frustrated. What can I do to make it easier? Or if the person is looking sad, it seems like you might be sad. Tell me more about it. Try to get her to talk more about what’s going on in her head and then try to connect with the emotions, the emotions behind what she’s saying.
[19:49] Because it could be just, You know, she’s just gotten in a loop somewhere or she’s really still grieving the loss of her independence and the way her life used to be. But if we can connect with where she is emotionally, it can go a long way in decreasing whatever that emotion is, whether it’s, you know, fear or, you know, she shadows, maybe she’s a little anxious when she can’t see you. All of those kinds of things.
[12:03] It starts with how I think about dementia, how I think about being a caregiver, how I think about the burden that God has providentially placed on me in this caregiving journey.
Invitation to Monthly Workshops
[12:19] And so I really want to encourage you today that we can do this. We can do this well. We can do this for God’s glory and for our good, we can do this in a posture of service, in a posture of gratitude, in a posture of growing us in our sanctification, and that you do not need to do it alone. And so my invitation to you today on this one-year anniversary of this podcast is that once a month, I do a free monthly workshop.
[12:59] And this month’s workshop is November the 23rd, which is this coming Saturday. If you haven’t signed up to join me in one of these free workshops, and next year, my goal for the workshops are that they be a different workshop every month. But for right now, this workshop really talks about some tools and resources that we need in our back pocket and what we need to believe in order to be an effective caregiver. So if you haven’t joined me yet, join me this coming Saturday. They are actually live. You will be able to meet with me. We can talk. I will answer your questions. It’s a wonderful time for you to get just a little bit more support for yourself in this dementia caregiving journey. Thank you for listening to these podcasts. I pray for you every single day. I hope you pray for me that the Lord will bless the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart in order for them to be effective to send out his message into the world. And I usually try to end all of my episodes with may the Lord bless you and keep you. Sign up for this Saturday’s workshop and I will see you in our next episode.
