Choice in Caregiving – Reframing Your Views

Caregiving is a challenge, both physically and emotionally. It is a role that can be immensely draining, especially if you don’t take care of your own needs. But, at the same time, caregiving also has its rewards.

For example, caregivers are performing a service and are often able to develop a closer relationship with the person they are looking after.

Yet, for many, seeing the positive can be difficult. One element of that is simply choice.

A recent summary of Caregiving in the United States suggests that close to 50% of caregivers feel like they had no choice in becoming a caregiver. To make matters worse, many of these people would have had to make financial and personal sacrifices to perform the caregiving role.

There are also many cases where you may have a choice – it’s just not much of one.

For example, you might have to choose between caregiving and essentially abandoning your aging parent, knowing that their health would suffer as a consequence. Some people do take the abandonment option, unfortunately. But, for most of us, it simply isn’t even worth considering.

As a result, many people find themselves pushed into caregiving. And this pattern may have some significant effects on the caregiving relationship and on the health of the caregiver themselves.

For example, research shows that caregivers who aren’t given a choice are at an increased risk for stress, including emotional stress. This may promote other negative outcomes, including physical health issues.

The lack of choice may also harm the relationship between the caregiver and their career, sparking resentment and perhaps conflict.

In a similar way, the lack of choice could affect other relationships. For example, it could lead to resentment toward siblings and family friends, especially if they provide little support to the caregiver.

Finally, the lack of choice can mean that caregivers are dropped into their roles suddenly. As such, they may have had little time to prepare mentally or practically for the role of caregiving. This could make them less effective as a caregiver and may mean they struggle more with some of the complex components of caregiving.

It’s clear that a lack of choice can have significant impacts. But, what’s the answer?

After all, you can’t exactly change the events that got you involved in caregiving to begin with.

One key response is to alter the way you view your situation.

Stress is often strongly connected to our sense of control. So, when we feel helpless and taken advantage of, we tend to be much more stressed overall.

Yet, regardless of their situation, everybody has some decisions that they can make.

Taking hold of those choices and exercising agency can have a large impact on stress, giving people the ability to move forward.

For example, AARP posted an article on How to Feel Empowered as a Caregiver, which talks about specific ways to give yourself choice and reduce the stress that you experience.  This includes making decisions about the type of care that you provide and why you do so.

Even if you didn’t choose to provide care initially, you can still consciously decide to continue on as a caregiver. Putting the decision back in your hands can have a large impact on your physical and mental health, helping to reduce the stress that you experience.

A related topic is acceptance and learning acceptance as a caregiver can also play a role in helping you to manage better.

The same is true for gratitude. It’s easy to get so caught up in the negative and the bad moments, that we forget about the good ones.

For that matter, research suggests that we all have a negative bias, resulting in a tendency to focus on and remember the negative events much more easily than the positive ones. Gratitude is one approach that can help refocus your mind.

After all, every situation involves some combination of good and bad elements – and there is always some good to find.

So, giving yourself agency and focusing on acceptance and gratitude can help you to reframe your caregiving relationship, while decreasing the stress of caregiving. These approaches may not remove the challenges that you face but they can make them easier to cope with.

If things are still overwhelming, you can also ask for help and there are ways of doing so that are effective – even if you don’t expect them to be.