Do you suffer from having your caregiver armor on so securely that it’s almost impossible to take it off? When you first became a caregiver, you might have felt like everything was just dumped on you. There was a diagnosis for your loved one and you were expected to figure things out.
Too Busy Putting Out the Fires
When you become a caregiver, there is very little to no warning and most times no guidance on how to navigate this change in your life. Your life is turned upside down and you’re too stressed out and busy to notice.
What you do notice are all the sirens going off and all the fires you’re trying to put out. In order to get through this, you probably started to direct all of your energy and focus on your loved one. You made sure they got to their appointments, took their medicines, and tended to all of their needs while trying to keep the rest of your life together. After a few days, weeks, and months of that, you became fatigued, you were overwhelmed with anxiety, overloaded with stress, and scared.
That’s when it happened. That is when you unconsciously shifted to becoming a caregiver at least 90% of the time. It might not have happened all at once. But once you became overwhelmed by everything, you did what you thought you needed to in order to continue on with the pace. You turned that caregiver switch on and didn’t even notice it got stuck there.
Your relationship with the person you care for changes when you begin to care for them. Understanding this change and figuring out how to still interact with them without a caregiver agenda in mind can prove to be difficult but important for both of you.
Going into Caregiving Hyperdrive
When my husband was diagnosed with cancer our relationship became unbalanced. The unspoken deal we made was that he was going to survive cancer and I was going to make it as easy as I could. That’s when the caregiver switch was turned on and I began taking care of 100% of the household, got him to his appointments, scheduled surgeries, and coordinated recovery. I made sure the FMLA paperwork was filled out, people were updated and cancer research was done in any way possible. All while trying to keep our home enjoyable to live in for my daughter.
I became his caregiver because he needed help living. He needed help finding and holding on to hope and positivity. He needed help to recover from surgery and find out how to enjoy life with cancer. These responsibilities became overwhelming and it became increasingly harder to “just” be his wife.
Why Turning Off Your Caregiver Switch Matters
When I was more focused on what he needed 100% of the time, I stopped seeing him as the person he was because I was always trying to assess what he needed.
In my effort to support him, I forgot to simply interact with the man I loved. Everything I did was an effort to keep him comfortable and healthy. It became difficult to not always be in my head. When I sat next to him to watch TV, I wasn’t really there. I was trying to go through my to-do list, wondering when the oncologist would call back, or even try to put together a plan or calculate how many frozen meals I had left before I’d have to cook again.
I wasn’t really there.
I realized this when he was in the hospital. There was nothing for me to do but be there to keep him company. That’s when I realized that just spending time with him was one thing I failed to do well in the first couple of months of his diagnosis. I had jumped into caregiving and forgot to enjoy my life with him at the same time.
When you get stuck in caregiving mode you aren’t able to live your day as the person you are outside of being a caregiver. You lose the ability to be present and enjoy your time with the person you care for. You miss the smiles, the tears, and the moments when things might have been said that actually mattered.
While we were in the hospital, we talked and told jokes. We watched movies and laughed at comedians. It was a little vacation from the scary world we had been living in for a few months. I lost sight of how much I needed to just sit with him and have fun. I forgot how good it felt to be able to laugh with him. Most importantly I didn’t realize that I needed this connection just as much as he did.
When you keep that caregiver switch on it feels like you’re protecting yourself from getting hurt. You find it hard to enjoy a moment because you’re worried it’ll be followed up by something bad. You’re too tired to do anything but be their caregiver and slowly that connection you had before cancer becomes strained. You may begin to feel being a caregiver all the time helps shield you from the pain you’d like to avoid.
You can’t avoid a loss this way.
I know it can feel so much easier to just be their caregiver because to be yourself with them requires you to be vulnerable. That takes a lot of strength and energy to do, however, if you can take a few minutes at a time to really sit down and talk with them, play a game or watch a show, it will help you just as much as it will help them.
You deserve to enjoy the time you have with the person you love and care for.
