Are you carrying the weight of your loved one’s happiness?
You show up. You give. You rearrange your life. And yet, your parent or spouse still isn’t happy. If you’ve ever felt crushed by guilt because your loved one seems miserable no matter what you do, you are not alone.
This is one of the most common burdens I hear from Christian dementia caregivers. The thought runs on repeat: “If I were a better caregiver, Mom or Dad would be happier.”
But what if I told you — their happiness is not your job?
Stacia’s Story: The “Helicopter Daughter” Trap
Stacia is a healthcare professional, an occupational therapy assistant, and a daughter caring for both of her aging parents. Her dad has Lewy body dementia. Her mom has a history of strokes.
Out of love and duty, she moved her parents into an independent living community. She hoped they would flourish — enjoy the meals, the activities, the fellowship. Instead, they withdrew. Her mom called the apartment “tolerable.” Her dad stopped showing interest in things he used to love.
Stacia’s heart sank. She had done everything “right,” and yet her parents weren’t happy. She confessed:
“I feel like it’s my job to do whatever it takes to make them happy. But it’s crushing me.”
Friend, maybe you see yourself in her words.
The Hard Truth: You Are Not Responsible for Their Happiness
This is where the DigniCare™ Method begins — by naming what is yours and what is not.
Your calling as a caregiver is not to manufacture emotions for another adult. You cannot force joy into someone’s life — not your spouse, not your parent. Even the best care environment cannot guarantee happiness.
What you can do is steward the responsibilities God has entrusted to you:
- Ensure safety as much as reasonably possible.
- Offer respect in your words and actions.
- Provide choices when they are able to decide.
- Model patience, even when frustrated.
But happiness? That belongs to them — and to the Lord.
Step One: Recognize God’s Order in Dementia
Scripture reminds us: “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33).
Even in dementia, there is order. Your loved one’s world is shrinking — not because you’ve failed, but because aging and disease are landing the plane of their life. This is part of living in a fallen world.
When you stop fighting to make life “like it used to be,” you begin to accept this season as one that God Himself has ordained. Caregiving isn’t chaos. It’s by His design.
Step Two: Set Boundaries Around Their Words
As Stacia shared, her mom often made negative comments. That can cut deep. But part of your stewardship as a caregiver is learning what to take in and what to let slide.
You can acknowledge their feelings without absorbing them:
- “I hear that you’re frustrated, Mom.”
- “I know this is an adjustment.”
- “I would probably feel the same way.”
Then — let it roll off like water on a duck’s back. Their unhappiness does not have to rob your peace
Step Three: Use Therapeutic Truth-Telling™
Many caregivers feel stuck between brutal honesty and so-called “therapeutic lying.” As Christians, we don’t lie. Instead, we practice Therapeutic Truth-Telling™.
That means you speak truth with gentleness, meeting your loved one where they are. For example:
- If Dad asks about going back to work, you might say, “I know work was important to you. Today, your job is to rest and let us take care of you.”
- If Mom complains that the new apartment is “tolerable,” you can respond, “Yes, it’s different than before, but I’m glad we can visit easily here.”
Truth plus compassion preserves both peace and integrity.
Step Four: Begin With the End in Mind
One of the DigniCare™ tools is the DigniCare Lens™, which asks:
“Three years from now, what would need to have happened for you to look back and say, ‘By God’s grace, I stewarded this season well’?”
For Stacia, the answer was simple: to no longer feel solely responsible for her parents’ happiness.
What about you? What would change if you released that false responsibility today?
Step Five: Remember Your True Order of Relationships
The DigniCare Foundation™ teaches that caregiving starts vertically with your relationship with God, then horizontally with your spouse, children, and finally your parents.
When you invert this order, guilt and burnout grow. When you align with God’s design, peace follows.
Today’s Takeaway: Release the Weight That Was Never Yours
Caregiver guilt is heavy because it’s misplaced. You were never asked to be the source of your loved one’s happiness. That belongs to the Lord.
Your role? Steward this season faithfully:
- Anchor yourself in Scripture.
- Set boundaries that protect your peace.
- Tell the truth in love.
- Begin with the end in mind.
As you do, you’ll find not only more patience for your loved one — but more compassion for yourself.
Ready for Relief?
If Stacia’s struggle feels familiar, you don’t have to figure this out on your own. Join me for our free live monthly workshop:
How To Immediately Reduce Dementia Caregiver Overwhelm and Stress in 3 Easy Steps
Saturday, September 6th at 12 p.m. EST
Register for Free Workshop Now!
This is not a webinar. It’s live, interactive, and community-driven. You’ll walk away with tools you can use right away — and the relief of knowing you’re not alone.
Don’t wait. Reserve your spot today.
Transcript
You can be doing everything right as a dementia caregiver, showing up, managing all the details, giving everything you can, and still feel like you’re failing.
Understanding Caregiver Guilt
Why? Because no matter how much you give, your loved one still isn’t happy. And that gap between your effort and their emotions can quietly crush your joy, your confidence, and your peace.
Hey, Christian Care Companion, welcome back to Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians, the podcast where we tackle the heart-level struggles behind the day-to-day demands of Christian caregiving, of somebody living with dementia. I’m Lizette Klute, and if you’ve ever felt weighed down by guilt because your loved one’s happiness feels out of your reach. You were in the right place. But before we get into today’s Dementia Caregiver Support in Action episode with Stacia, I want to invite you to our next free live monthly workshop on Saturday, September the 6th at 12 p.m. Eastern. This is not another webinar. It is a live and interactive and no replay workshop where you will connect with other Christian dementia caregivers and get personalized guidance and leave with practical tools to lighten your load.
It is designed to radically transform how you view your Christian journey as a caregiver. Space is limited, so grab your spot now at thinkdifferentdementia.com forward slash WSL. And yes, I said this is a live event only. I have noticed that the people who show up stay all the way through for the experience of being in a community. All right, now let’s get into today’s episode because this struggle, feeling responsible for your loved one’s happiness, may be one of the heaviest weights you are carrying right now.
Navigating Parental Happiness
And I want to show you there is a way forward. Now let’s listen to Stacia being guided in today’s episode, How to Quit Feeling Guilty When Your Loved One Isn’t Happy in Dementia Caregiving.
All right. So, Miss Stacia, I am excited that you are here, young lady. So, have you listened to the podcast before? I have some. And when I initially signed up for this course today, I was in a moment of really struggling. And I’ve had a little bit of a breakthrough this last week that’s really helped me. So, I’m feeling better about everything that I’m going through right now. Good. So welcome, Ms. Stacia. I’m excited that you’re here. Thank you for clarifying for me how to pronounce your name correctly.
That made it so much easier. And so we’re going to start with the same question I ask everybody, which is, in six months from today, if you look back on your caregiving journey and things were easier for you, What would need to have happen for you to say that you are stewarding this caregiving journey well or easier, keeping in mind your health and all of your relationships as you’re thinking this through? So what would make it easier for Stacia? If I were to not feel so responsible for my parents’ happiness. Okay. Right now, they are not very happy. And I have felt for a long time that it’s my job to do whatever I have to do to situate them in whatever way so that they can be happy. Okay.
Before you keep going, I’m going to ask you the second question, which is what is getting in your way of feeling responsible for their happiness? What’s stopping you from achieving that particular goal? Them okay they uh dad is in the middle of a lewy body dementia diagnosis.
We’ve had the dat scan last week and we go next week to get the results from all of that and i understand that along with that there’s a lot of apathy and that is heartbreaking to me because he’s never been apathetic about anything. He’s always been passionate about everything. And my mom just kind of tags along with however my dad’s going. Her dementia is more, you know, safety awareness and impulse control kind of thing. She said TIAs and she’s used to being taken care of. Two years ago, she had an MCA stroke and so he had to do everything for her. Well, now he’s the one who’s needing more help, and she’s not stepping up when I think she can.
Okay. So real quick, very interesting. You’re using a lot of medical terms. Are you in the medical field or just very well-versed? Well, this is part of my problem.
Finding Balance in Caregiving
I’m actually an OT assistant, and I’ve been a Christian my whole entire life, and so I feel like I have more patients with my patients than I do with my parents. And so my actual question is, how do I find the balance between patients, having patients with them, and being condescending? I don’t want to be condescending to them. And I know that, you know, when I’m dealing with my patients in an assisted living center, nursing home, whatever, which is not my primary, you know, place of work. I mainly do pediatrics, but I’ve also done assisted living and skilled nursing, When I’m dealing with them, there’s a separation.
I’m not their blood relative. I’m not ultimately responsible for their life and their happiness, and so I can do what I need to do to get them to do their therapy. My parents are not hearing anything now from the professional medical community that they have not already heard from me for years. I am so grateful that you’re here, Stacia. I am so grateful that you’re here on so many different levels because you’re me a little bit ago, okay? Like, I am you. You’re me. We speak the same language, okay? So would it be okay with you for me to share? I’m going to ask you a few clarification questions, and then I will share with you if it’s okay with you because the answer is not going to be an OT-specific answer. Okay. Okay. So, mom and dad, about how old are they?
82 and 83. Okay. Do they live with you? We’ve moved them seven months ago into an independent living apartment. Okay. Is it a CCRC, which is a continuing care retirement community for people who don’t know what the alphabet soup is. So they’re in a continuing care retirement community, independent living, so that the possibility in the future can be assisted living memory care or skilled, correct? Yes, yes. And obviously, if they’re in independent living, they’re still functioning at a point where they can be living in the independent living. Yes, if they have each other, they do help each other out. They supplement one another. Yes. Okay. Now tell me a little bit more about your life situation, not the work-related stuff, not the OT and PEDs and those things, but your life. Are you married? Yes.
I’m married, and my son has grown and lives four hours away. Okay. Well, for this year, he lives four hours away. After this year, he’s going back to Germany for another four years. He goes four years, one year. Okay. So he must be, oh, I was going to say military, but he’s a missionary. No, he’s a missionary. Okay. And so he’s just started his one year here, and he’s married and has a 10-year-old granddaughter. My husband and I live, his parents have both passed away. So that’s it. We live 20 minutes away from my parents. My sister lives seven hours away. My brother lives four hours away. And I’m the youngest. And my parents put me through CODA school and I always told them how much I appreciated it. And my dad said, well, you can change my diaper someday. And here I am. Okay. And I’m happy with that. I’m fine with that. My husband supports it all. Okay. So another clarification question. Are you the decision maker as the youngest? Yes. Medical power of attorney. Medical and, okay. Yes, everything.
All right. So your original question was how to find the balance between patience, not T, you know, the emotion, not patient. The virtue. Right, the virtue, patience, and not being condescending. And the way I’m going to frame it for people is through the lens of what I know. I’m hoping that I understood what you are saying. As a healthcare provider, we have all of this knowledge, and now this knowledge has come home to roost. And we find, as a healthcare provider, that it is not the same.
Right. Okay. So I mentioned earlier that I used to be you. And some days I’m still, I’m 100% still there. The medical model as a Christian woman for most of my career, and I was an occupational therapist, I’m still an occupational therapist. I joke with people, I’m an occupational therapist that’s recovering. I’m a recovering health care.
And the reason I use the words a recovering health care provider is because I actually had to unlearn everything that I have done for 30 years to get where I am right now. And I started in the health care field. I have all of the knowledge. I know all of the tricks of the trade to get people living with dementia to be able to make it easier. When I was in the medical model, my faith as a Christian was always a Band-Aid on top of the medical model.
I couldn’t go into somebody’s room in the hospital or whatever and talk about my faith and use biblical principles for caregiving in the medical model. And I never recognized it until stepping out into the space now. Then when my dad got super sick about two years ago going on three i actually went the other extreme right i went into the caregiver centered model so it legitimately is a thing the medical model and then the caregiver centered model the caregiver centered model talks about your burnout your overwhelm your you know the caregiver burden inventory and all these different things which are well and good and they’re needed because yes, we do need to not burn out if we are helping somebody, right?
But what it also was, was kind of like a band-aid. It’s like, okay, then it was all about me. So yes, I would take care of the human, my dad, my mom, but it became all about me. And then as I’m running through this process and I’m like, but Lord, this is so hard. Why is this so hard? I know what to do. I’m an OT. I know what an MCA is, a TIA. I know the words. And despite my medical background and having been a family caregiver for most of my adult life, my mom had a stroke when I was 19, I still couldn’t figure it out. And then I stopped and I said, okay, then what is the solution? As a Christian, what is the solution? And that is what started me on this journey. And the answer that came was that it is a relationship-centered model of care. And it starts not with my relationship with the person I’m taking care of. It starts with my relationship with the Lord. And then my relationship with the people around me. Right? Including then my parents.
And once I really started to recognize that I actually had to unlearn some of the things that I had learned as a clinician, which are well and good, and I still teach those principles,
Transitioning to a Relationship-Centered Model
but from a pragmatic personal perspective for me, I had to unlearn a lot of the medical model. You mentioned, you know, my parents have heard all of these things from the healthcare providers before because they’ve heard it from me, right?
That is 100% my situation. My parents have throw rugs all through their house, girl. Oh, no. All through their house and we have had that conversation ad nauseum right and so what i had the the reality that i had to come to and i know i’m kind of going a circuitous way of getting there was that they are adults and they’re entitled to make stupid decisions okay related back to your dad right you mentioned at the beginning if you were not to feel so responsible for their happiness right none of us are responsible for anybody else’s happiness that’s the epiphany that i’ve had some help coming to this last week yeah i have felt that it was my job to make them happy and to and to set them up so that they can be happy and that’s why i moved them into this or I encouraged them to move into this independent apartment, but they were fully participating in the move, the sale of their house, the move to this specific facility versus others. But they’re not engaging in any of the amenities. They’re not engaging in the activities or even the meals. They’re hardly leaving their apartment and they’re sitting there miserably.
And that’s entirely, you know, could be multifactorial, right? They’re sitting, I’m just going to use your words, right? They’re sitting there miserable, may not be their perception of it. It may be your perception of it. They may be perfectly fine, right? You may be. Well, but they make comments that they’re, you know, like. They’re adults. My mom met with somebody and she’s like, the person said, how do you like your apartment? She goes, oh, it’s tolerable. And and then you know then you just have to be like I tell people in my community all the time all the time you gotta let it roll like a duck over your back because it is not up to you to ensure that your mom is happy your role as a as a daughter as the wife of your husband, is to ensure that they are safe to respect them you mentioned that they made the decision with your collaboration and to know and recognize that they may never be happy living there and yes it is tolerable but this is god’s providence for their life in this season of their life.
And even though they have their world is changing and if we are blessed to live long enough, all of our worlds will change if we are blessed to live long enough our world goes from there in you mentioned your son in germany right as missionary some point or another in his life he’s not going to be able to function as a missionary anymore right because his life is going to change so just as a child is growing up their life is going from little to big as the adult. So as any normal person who is changing because of a normal aging process or things changing, you know, we think about landing the plane, right? We know your dad has Lewy body dementia. We know your mom’s had multiple strokes, right? So they’re in the process of.
Landing their plane. And what’s going to happen in that process is their world is going to continue to shrink. And that is normal aging from the sense of living in a fallen world. Some of us just fall out of the sky. We have that rapid, you know, that stroke that takes us out, that heart attack that puts us, none of us are going to make it through here alive, right? And so I’m very grateful that you had that epiphany, that it is not up to you to make them happy. Your job is to start to put up healthy boundaries about what it is that you will allow them to speak into your life.
Accepting Limitations and Emotions
They can they can express their emotions that doesn’t mean that we have to take them on, then you can acknowledge yeah i know this this is an adjustment i’m sorry you feel that way i would feel the same so stacia was that helpful yeah yeah i’m sorry i did not mean to make it.
It’s the landing the plane comet you know he but we are you know and so i and i’ll just i’ll mention this lastly the thing that the world tells us is dementia is confusing right it’s that you’ll hear everybody say it’s so confusing it’s so confusing and the reality is if you have spent any amount of time in hospice.
Right? If you’ve spent any amount of time around people who are actively dying, they all go through the same process to land their plane. The difference with dementia is it is a longer landing period. But I had a friend, from her diagnosis until she passed away, was six weeks. She was diagnosed with bladder cancer, right? And in her terminal cancer process, I literally saw her go through every single one of the stages of dementia. It’s not dementia that is causing the landing of the plane, right? It is the physical, yes, it’s the changes in the brain, but it happens with all of us. If we are blessed to pass away from a normal aging process and landing our plane in that way, then we will go through all of these stages. Our world is going to start to shrink. We are going to need more help from other people. I know my Bible but I have not got it memorized there’s a passage at the latter part of John talking about.
Somebody will hold your hand dress you and lead you places you do not want to be right? And that is the reality of any person who is slowly aging over time and declining and so i hope that encourages you more than discourages you yes sweet lady what is one action step what’s one thing you can take from our conversation today and and do actually implement next week um allowing myself to to step away i guess to to not feel like i have to be a helicopter daughter.
I understand. And as the healthcare provider, young lady, I’m going to leave you with this. They’re going to fall and there’s nothing you can do about it because I know that’s part of what’s going through your head, right? You want to put them in bubble wrap. You want to put them in bubble wrap and protect them from all the things that you’ve seen can happen. Yeah. And the reality is you can’t. We’re not going to, you know, we’re not going to shove them under the bus. We’re not going to trip them. We’re going to try to do the things that we know are the strategies that can help. And if they will not or cannot, then we have to be okay with them failing.
Learning to Let Go
I guess that’s where I’m struggling personally, is not getting mad at them with being patient and not getting mad at them for not using these strategies that I’m constantly trying to pound into them. I understand. I totally get it. I totally, totally understand. And the hardest skill for you is going to be to learn to be like a duck with the water rolling off your back. Yeah. But Stacia, it is hard. It is. It is hard. If you need more help, just hop on my calendar and we can take a 20-minute conversation and see how further I can help you with this, okay? Thank you. But I’m super excited that you were here today. Thank you so much. Thank you.
People who are really benefiting from the community are the people who joined earlier on, before they need it. And that have been active and are participating in the community because then they already know what questions to ask and they have a place to come and they’re not constantly wondering, what do I need to do? How do I need to do it? So people listening are interested in tapping into or learning about the community. I’d invite you to just go to the website, thinkdifferentdementia.com. There’s a link for you to schedule a 20-minute call. There’s no pressure. I’ll serve you regardless of whether you join the community or not. But it is a way for you to take this relationship a little deeper, a little bit more hands-on support, because really the research also shows it’s longitudinal support over time. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I would highly recommend Lizette. She’s awesome. I appreciate that endorsement.
