The Importance of self-care for carers
By Alice Lucey
When you’re providing care for a family member or elderly person, you could easily end up investing so much energy and effort into maximising their health and wellbeing that you neglect your own.
Wonderful and all as caregiving can be, nobody has an endless supply of energy. Those many hours spent on caring for others could leave even the most determined of us feeling drained.
Burnout is a common problem among carers, as often the warning signs are ignored in favour of stopping at nothing to serve the people for whom we’re caring.
If you’re a carer and you’ve recently found yourself struggling to sleep, adopting unhealthy eating habits, feeling more tired than usual or basically not enjoying the job as much as previously, these could all indicate burnout.
It’s at this point that you need to take a step back and do something to remedy what could become an overwhelming problem.
Perhaps the person for whom you care has been critical of your work lately. We can all lose patience at times, so try not to be too disheartened by their complaints.
A minor imperfection such as giving them a drink that’s too hot or cold for their liking will not puncture the enormous gratitude that they have for you and what you’ve done for them.
If you feel that the caregiving burden is becoming too much for one person, don’t hesitate in asking someone you can trust to help you through it.
Being able to delegate a few duties elsewhere will greatly help relieve the pressure on your shoulders and enable you to rediscover your love for caregiving.
Help doesn’t need to be as pragmatic as sharing tasks, either; talking out your worries with a close friend or family member can be massively beneficial.
The infographic below from Be Independent Home Care advises on how carers can help to take better care of themselves without neglecting the people to whom they devote their livelihoods
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect all or some of our beliefs and policy. Any links on this page does not necessarily mean they have been endorsed by Defying Mental Illness.
About The Author
