How to Recover from Dementia Care: The Caregiver Recovery Strategy
Have you ever wondered how to recover after your dementia caregiving journey ends? Whether you’re still caring for a loved one or have finished that chapter, the path to emotional and mental recovery can feel unclear.
Imagine climbing a mountain, intensely focused on reaching the summit. For caregivers, the summit is the care of their loved one. But what happens after you reach the top?
The descent—recovery—is often overlooked. We seldom talk about what happens after caregiving ends, but it’s just as important.
The Overlooked Journey of Recovery
As a caregiver, you may have experienced moments of stress, loss of control, or even trauma. These feelings can leave lasting emotional scars if not addressed.
Often, we think of caregiving as the whole journey, but the recovery after is equally vital. Just like coming down the mountain, this phase requires a new kind of strength and care.
One of the most valuable lessons shared in the podcast was how to reframe challenging caregiving moments. Take a situation where you felt overwhelmed—like taking away a loved one’s ability to drive. It’s an emotional task, full of anxiety and guilt.
But by focusing on what went well (such as ensuring their safety), you can begin to find peace in even the toughest caregiving decisions.
What Worked and What Didn’t
An important step in recovery is reflecting on what went right during your journey. Identify your strengths, whether it was your persistence or patience, and how they contributed to positive outcomes.
This can remind you of the value you brought into your loved one’s life during a time of immense need.
However, recovery also means acknowledging what was difficult. Perhaps there were arguments or emotional confrontations with your loved one. Maybe their anger triggered emotions in you that were hard to manage. It’s okay to admit these challenges.
They are part of your story and growth.
Lessons Learned for Future Caregivers
This reflection isn’t just about reliving hard moments—it’s about learning from them. What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about your loved one? Caregiving is a journey of discovery.
These lessons will not only help you recover but also empower you to help others in the future.
For example, if you had to make a tough decision, like taking away a loved one’s car, you may have learned the importance of standing firm for their safety. The next time you’re faced with a difficult choice, you’ll have this experience to guide you.
Recovery is a Dimmer Switch, Not a Light Switch
Your progress in healing won’t happen all at once. Think of it like a dimmer switch—some days the light will shine bright, and others, it will fade. But that’s okay. Each small step you take is part of a much bigger journey toward healing.
Remember to celebrate your progress, no matter how small it feels. Caregiving was not easy, and recovery is a sign of your strength.
A Path Forward
As you walk this new phase, know that you are not alone. The lessons from your caregiving days can help shape the next chapter of your life. Whether you’re still caring for a loved one or are transitioning out of that role, take time to reflect, learn, and heal.
And most importantly, be kind to yourself—you’ve already climbed the mountain. Now, it’s time to descend with grace, carrying the wisdom you’ve gained along the way.
Read More:
How To Cope With Negative Emotions Of Being A Dementia Caregiver
Talking About Caregiver Burnout With Michelle Gordon
Check the other podcasts: https://dignicarebydesign.com/category/podcast/
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Transcript
Caregiver Recovery Journey
[0:01] Today, we’re going to touch on a subject that I have not heard anybody speak about yet, and that is how to recover from a dementia care journey. And this particular strategy you can use both as a dementia caregiver right now, but also Also, after your dementia caregiving journey to recover from this particular part and season of your life by transforming the way that you think about your experience as a dementia caregiver. So I invite you to listen to today’s episode on how to recover from dementia care. The caregiver recovery strategy.
[0:49] Hey, Christian caregiver, welcome back to Christian Dementia Caregiving, the podcast where we talk about changing the dementia narrative so that we can ease your burden and build a community.
[1:04] Today’s episode is another one of those different types of episodes where I’m really thinking through and focusing on how to truly help people in their dementia caregiving journey all the way from the beginning through to the recovery after dementia and dementia caregiving. Now, something that recently was brought to my attention by a caregiver of a person who was going through a cancer journey is we are so much focused. On the caregiving journey that we forget that there is a recovery period after our caregiving journey. It’s kind of like trying to hike up a mountain. That is what caregiving is. It’s like hiking up that mountain and we’re so focused on getting to the summit, which is taking care of the person that we’re taking care of, that we forget that once we’re at the top of the mountain at the summit, whether that be because the person has recovered in certain caregiving situations, or whether that be because it’s the end of our caregiving journey,
The Caregiver Recovery Strategy
[2:17] we forget that we have to get back down the mountain.
[2:20] Today, we’re going to talk about how to get back down the mountain after caregiving. Now, this particular principle, this particular framework that we’re going to to talk about today is applicable both for you while you’re on your caregiving journey to use as a practical and functional tool, or it is appropriate for you after your caregiving journey to help you recover from your caregiving journey. Many, many people experience traumatic events in their life, and a definition of a traumatic event in your life is a situation or an experience where we feel like we have lost control or never had control over the situation and results in us feeling helpless or overwhelmed. It is how we perceive what happened to us, but our perception is our reality. What we perceive is the reality that we live in, but we can change and transform our perception by revisiting the experience and learning lessons from it. And we can use it now as well as after our caregiving journey.
[3:36] 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 the 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. Register now for our next session of Ask the Dementia Coach. We limit registrations, so don’t miss out. Sign up today.
Lessons from Trauma
[4:16] Last night, I was watching a movie on the Boston Marathon bombings, and it was fascinating. At the end of the movie, they interviewed several of the people who were injured in that horrendous attack on people who were just in a certain place at a certain time. And obviously, to everybody who was in that particular situation, it was an extremely traumatic experience, an extremely traumatic event. However, how the people responded to the adversity, to the traumatic event, resulted in them growing and being able to reframe how they thought about that particular situation.
[5:00] Not wishing it on anybody else, but really leveraging the experience and the situation to make themselves stronger.
[5:11] A traumatic event of anxiety. Any kind can be used by us if we take the time to sit with it and really think through how we can learn from that particular experience. And to a large extent, that is what I did as I went through a lot of different and difficult journeys in my life. The one that is the most striking in my own particular life is how I, over time, finally came to a recognition and a realization that the very traumatic experience of being placed in boarding school, which I talk about freely and openly here, formed me into the person that I am. And that because of that, I cannot hate the experience because I like who God has created me to be. And so what I want us to do today is really look at how you can recover from your caregiving journey after your caregiving is finished or how you can recover or use this particular strategy to empower you in looking at a situation that occurs in your caregiving journey that you can redeem, for lack of a better word, the situation again.
Steps to Recovery
[6:35] So I call this the caregiver recovery strategy.
[6:38] It is, in essence, is six different steps that I want us to go through as you’re thinking through this particular recovery strategy. The first is identify a particular caregiving experience.
[6:53] So in terms of a person who is still navigating their dementia caregiving journey, you can choose an event that had a a significant impact on you. It could have been a challenge or it could have been a success. But choose or identify a particular particular experience. For me, I’m going to use today taking my father’s car, his driver’s license away. That was extremely difficult for me and caused a lot of stress and overwhelm. And we’re going to do this today together as an exercise using that particular situation.
[7:29] So we’re going to talk about taking my dad’s car away. Next, we’re going to evaluate what went well. So what What was positive for me about that experience? What worked? What didn’t work? Actually, what went well? We’re only going to do the what went well. What worked? What was positive? What strengths did I use? How did these strengths contribute to a better outcome? So what went well related to me taking my father’s car away? Well, the most positive outcome related to that was I know that because I took the time and the effort to go through the steps of taking the car away, that other people are now safer on the road because my dad was very unsafe in driving. So that was positive. What worked was I spoke with the doctor. I took him through the process of having other people help us make the decision that he wasn’t safe to drive anymore. And that worked extremely well. What strengths did I use in that particular situation.
[8:28] I used the strength of my professional background, having 30 years as an occupational therapist, having a very strong belief system in what’s right and wrong and recognizing that it is wrong for my dad to continue to drive because of the safety of other people on the road. Those were some strengths that I used. How did these particular strengths contribute to a better outcome. I was able to help my father work through all of the steps required to actually go through this process and my ability to not waver and keep a very united front for my dad did actually help the particular situation. The next thing that we’re going to look at is identify what was challenging.
[9:21] So what didn’t go well? Or what made me feel a loss of control? Or what were difficulties or contributing factors? What could have been handled differently? So what things were challenging related to taking the car away from my dad? What didn’t go well? I did not anticipate him to be as angry as he was. I did not anticipate him to continue two years plus later to constantly, specifically when my sister is visiting, continue to make significant remarks and digs when he goes to the doctor or when he talks to my sister about the fact that I took the car away. What contributed to difficulties, what was extremely, what actually contributed a lot to this being challenging was my dad’s anger. And his anger towards me was very quick to the draw. And because of that, it brings out one of my biggest challenges, which is anger. So my dad responds in anger, and then I respond to my dad’s anger. And that could have been handled differently. I could have really worked very much more on trying to control my own emotions in the moment when things were challenging. So what lessons did I learn? What key takeaways?
[10:36] That’s the fourth step. I’ll extract the lessons that you learn, key takeaways. What did I learn about myself? What did I learn about the person I’m caring for? And how can this help you grow? So a key takeaway for me related to my father in the car is that I absolutely cannot talk about the car at all. I cannot bring it up. When he brings it up, I need to ignore what he says, whether he gets angry at me or not. I just need to be a duck and let it roll off of my head, off of my back. What did I learn about myself in this experience? I learned that I have a backbone, that despite the difficulty, I was able to stand firm in my belief that there is right and wrong and that it wasn’t right to continue to allow him to drive, even though he wanted to. What did I learn about the person that I’m caring for? I learned that my father is a very unhappy and angry person, and for that, I feel extremely sad for him. And how did this help me grow? row. It helped me grow in knowing that I have to be able to have these hard conversations with my clients, other people when they are struggling with not wanting to take the vehicle away because the lessons that I learned from doing it. And next, the next step is we’re going to create what I call a recovery plan. What would I do different if.
[12:04] I needed to do it again. What would I implement or change the next time? Obviously, taking a car away is typically a one-time procedure. But if I were to do it again, one of the things that I really would have preferred to do if we had to do this again, what I would have preferred to do is wait longer before I went down that road with my father. But my father at that time was not willing to wait. He was fighting me every single time we saw him about the car. And the lessons that I learned that I can keep with me is that it is experientially difficult as a caregiver to take the car away from a person and that you have to be able to have alternative
Celebrating Your Progress
[12:50] plans in place so that you can help that person continue to remain independent. And then celebrate your progress. Remember that this is a journey. It is not like a light switch and on and off.
[13:05] Caregiving is a journey. It’s kind of like more like a dimmer switch. Our progress may be a little bit of progress with the light coming on and then maybe a little bit of a dimmer. It’s a back and forth. So we need to celebrate the progress that we make in our caregiving journey. If you have lost somebody you love because of dementia or a dementia caregiving journey, I want you to use these exact same questions and start to work through recovering as a caregiver. Identify your caregiving journey. Evaluate. Your whole caregiving journey, what went well, what was positive, what worked, what did you learn, what strengths did you use, then identify what was challenging, what didn’t go as well, what made you feel loss of control. Then I want you to sit and extract the lessons that you learned, key takeaways, what did you learn about yourself, what did you learn about the person that you’re caring for, and how did this help you grow? And then what would you have done differently? If you were to do this again, what would you have done differently? And then how can you use these lessons that you’ve learned in your life now
The Journey of Healing
[14:19] and then celebrate your progress?
[14:21] Remember, recovery, caregiving recovery is a journey. It is like a dimmer switch that is able to take two steps forward and one step back. It is not going to happen overnight. It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey. Know one thing, and that is the Lord is with you throughout this entire journey. He has not left you alone.
[14:45] He has not left you without means. He has not left you without support. Pray every day for the Holy Spirit to come alongside you and help you heal after your caregiving journey. Heal and become a better caregiver if you’re still in your caregiving journey and know that this specific situation is for your good and for God’s glory, even though it may be challenging. So we can take our experiences, our traumatic events, our difficulties. Difficult challenges and reframe them into a way to take the lessons that we have learned and apply them to our lives and have it be a part of our sanctification process as we are on our journey to a better future and a hope of the future. So thank you for being here today day in our podcast episode where we talked about how to recover from dementia care. I invite you, if you have not yet joined the next Ask the Dementia Coach session.
[15:55] We have a monthly meetup. The next one is September the 19th, which is my birthday. And so you get to spend my birthday with 6 o’clock Eastern, and I invite you to sign up by messaging me the word ask on Instagram or on Facebook, and we will send you an automation that you can use to sign up for the next Ask the Dementia Coach. This is my way of giving back to you and giving you access to ask your particular questions and find a community of like-minded people who are walking through this journey with you. You are not alone. You do not need to be alone. You do not need to struggle on your own. Take me up on this once a month opportunity to be in community, to have your personal questions answered. And I look forward to seeing you at the next Ask the Dementia Coach. And thank you for listening to today’s episode, and may the Lord bless you and keep you, and I will see you in the next episode.
