Let’s Get Real About Caregiving

Special Three-Part Series

As a life coach and a former caregiver, I've had the privilege of witnessing firsthand the profound impact that caregiving can have on individuals. About a third of my coaching clientele consists of caregivers and widows/widowers.

Caregiving is a demanding role that requires unwavering love, resilience, and selflessness, often at the expense of one's own needs. Fern Pessin, author of I’ll Be Right There, A Guidebook for Adults Caring for Their Aging Parents talks about taking on the role of parental caregiving by default. “Becoming a caregiver can begin without you even realizing it and suddenly it’s all consuming”, she says. Unlike caring for a spouse you’ve chosen, Fern shares that caregiving is not always a choice, sometimes it’s an obligation and fraught with all the emotional baggage that the relationship brings.

I vividly recall my own journey as a caregiver to my beloved wife, Desiree, who journeyed with breast cancer for eleven years. The emotional intensity of the experience was profound. And, while caregiving is an incredible testament to the human spirit, it can also leave caregivers feeling drained, lost, and uncertain about their abilities.

In truth, by demanding constant vigilance and unwavering support caregiving is…let's call it out…trauma, and needs to be acknowledged as such, in my opinion. Caregiving carries elements of trauma within its core.

Trauma, broadly speaking, refers to an emotional response to an overwhelmingly distressing event that exceeds one's ability to cope. Hello – caregiving. The effects of trauma flow over to all areas of our lives, making it difficult to be “normal” in “normal” situations. When considering the characteristics of trauma and comparing them to the caregiving experience, there are evident parallels:

Uncertainty and Lack of Control: Trauma often invokes a sense of powerlessness and unpredictability. Similarly, caregivers frequently face situations where the rules seem elusive or constantly changing, leaving them feeling uncertain and without a sense of control. The sudden twists and turns of a disease, a fall, loss of resources, lack of help, can send a caregiver spiraling like the spinning scene in Mel Brooks’ movie High Anxiety.

Constant Adaptation: Trauma can disrupt one's sense of stability and necessitate ongoing adaptation. Similarly, caregiving demands flexibility and continual adjustment to the evolving needs and circumstances of the person being cared for. In other words, your job function changes daily which can be jarring to people who don’t like chaos. Fern is someone who prefers structure, so she created systems and planned ahead of time to keep from constantly adapting in crisis.

Perpetual Learning Curve: Trauma can thrust individuals into situations where they feel unprepared or incapable. Similarly, caregivers may perpetually encounter new challenges that require them to navigate unfamiliar territories, leading to a perpetual sense of being at a level of incompetence or “impotence”.

Overwhelming Demands: Trauma can overwhelm an individual's capacity to cope. Caregivers often face an overwhelming array of responsibilities, emotional burdens, and tasks that they must manage on top of their day-to-day life responsibilities, leaving them feeling as though they can never catch up or fully meet the needs at hand.

The emotional intensity and prolonged duration of caregiving, especially in circumstances such as caring for a loved one confronting a long-term illness like cancer or dementia, can exacerbate every ounce of one's energy. The continual stress, emotional strain, and uncertainty involved in caregiving leads, clearly, to a form of trauma response. No ands, ifs, or buts about it!

Caregiving is a silent heroism that demands acknowledgment. Tune in next week for part two of this three-part series.

Please visit my website www.robertpardi.com if you would like to learn more about me and my philosophy of Possibility in Action?. #possibilityinaction

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