How to Improve Resilience in Caregiving

While research continues to show that caregiving can negatively impact physical and mental health – the effects are far from consistent. Many caregivers experience at least some positive outcomes from their roles. Some may experience few negative effects at all, even when the demands of caregiving are high. This difference is directly related to the idea of resilience in caregiving.

Resilience focuses on the ability to not just endure a challenging situation, but to bounce back and grow from it.

We’re talking about a type of internal strength, one that can change the caregiving process. Being resilient doesn’t suddenly make caregiving a walk in the park, but as your resilience increases, you’re likely to find that many of the stresses of caregiving become less significant.

Why Resilience Matters

This might seem like a strange idea at first. After all, caregiving can be very stressful. It often comes with various physical, financial, and emotional challenges. Changing your perspective won’t make these challenges disappear.

But, working on your perspectives and your reactions can change how you feel about the challenges that you face. This can change how much you struggle with them. As it turns out, suffering is strongly linked to our expectations and the stories we tell ourselves. Both of these things can be changed.

This is one reason why one caregiver might suffer and another thrive, even though their situations are very similar.

Resilience also offers many benefits. For example, it acts as a protective factor against burnout; caregivers who can bounce back from challenging experiences are less likely to experience the physical and emotional exhaustion associated with burnout.

Resilient caregivers tend to maintain a more positive outlook on life, which can, in turn, reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Such caregivers are also typically better able to find joy and satisfaction in their caregiving roles, even during challenging times.

So, let’s delve into the idea of resilience in caregiving, including what it means and how you can be resilient.

Ways to Increase Resilience

Resilience research has yet to prove specific ways that people can increase their resilience. Not only is the area difficult to study, but there are many variations in how people define and measure resilience.

Even so, studies and caregiver experience have identified key themes.

The areas that we’re highlighting below are all approaches that may help to improve resilience. The goal isn’t to try and perfect any single area. Instead, the best strategy is to work on these areas over time, building yourself up.

Taking Care of Yourself

Caregivers must prioritize their own well-being. This includes getting enough sleep, eating healthily, engaging in physical activity, and finding time for relaxation and hobbies – it’s essential that they find ways to maintain their identity outside of their caregiving role.

As Jess Grelle, SVP of Innovation clean-label food company, Safe + Fair, says, ‘Clean, wholesome food isn’t just good for your body; it’s essential for your mind. Nourishing your body with pure ingredients is the first step toward a happier, healthier, more resilient you.’

Caring for yourself ensures you have the capacity to meet challenges as they arise. It also reduces the risk that you’ll end up exhausted and overwhelmed.

Self-care involves thinking about your physical and mental health. It includes getting a support system in place and opening up to others about your struggles. It’s also important to set boundaries. Trying to meet the senior’s every need and want can quickly lead to burnout.

Shifting Your Expectations of Reality

We often suffer from our expectations far more than from the reality that we face. For example, many caregivers struggle with the idea that their life has been taken away from them.

Caregiving can feel incredibly unfair on occasion. This is especially true when the role is prolonged or when you end up caring for one family member straight after another.

It’s easy to dwell on this idea when you see other people living the type of life that you want.

Yet, what good does this do? Thinking that life isn’t fair, that isn’t a helpful concept. Doing so makes the good things more hard to see and makes the bad ones feel worse.

And, here’s the thing, who said that life was fair anyway? Who said that it ‘should’ go a specific way? Caregiving is a common role, one that is going to get even more important as the population grows.

In fact, some cultures take a different approach entirely. Caring for one’s aging parents is often viewed as a cultural responsibility, something that is simply a part of life. Some caregivers in these cultures will still feel resentment, but there is often less stress in caregiving, as the role was expected.

The pattern is one that I can attest to as well.

Changing expectations is possible regardless of how your life patterns out. Part of the process is to focus on what your life is, rather than what it could be or ‘should’ be.

Doing so is a process. There may be many times where it’s easy to dwell on the challenging bits or to think that life really is unfair. Even so, the more that you can shift your expectation, the more the good parts of caregiving can shine.

Changing Expectations of Yourself

Caregiver guilt is a common issue. This adds to the stress of caregiving, making the role much more difficult. Some caregivers attempt to overcome the guilt by pushing themselves harder. That process is rarely effective. It tends to simply increase caregiving workload and stress.

The expectations that you have of yourself are one source of caregiver guilt. You may also take on board the expectations that other people hold of you or even cultural expectations.  

The problem is that it’s easy to expect too much. It’s easy to beat yourself up emotionally when you make a wrong decision or when you’re not able to meet all of your family member’s needs.

An important way to counter caregiver guilt is to be kind and compassionate to yourself. Doing so is a crucial aspect of resilience in caregiving.

Think about it this way…

As a caregiver, your role isn’t to stop their suffering. It isn’t to protect them or to make sure that they are always comfortable. Instead, you’re there to support your family member as best as you can, while still caring for yourself. Being a caregiver should never mean that you’re giving up your needs to take care of someone else.

It’s easy to prioritize your care recipient in every instance. I know, I’ve been there. The problem is that when you do so, you burn out. The quality of the care that you do provide suffers, while your own health may decline.

Changing your expectations of yourself can make it easier to provide care without burning out. The process of self-compassion can help in this area.

Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is a specific approach that is related to the way that you view yourself. As the name suggests, self-compassion involves being compassionate and kind to yourself.

In modern culture, the idea of self-compassion can sound selfish and a little narcissistic. After all, supporting someone else is meant to be virtuous, so a process like self-compassion can’t be good too, right?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many people are incredibly hard on themselves, often expecting that they consistently perform to a much higher standard than they would ask of anyone else.

A more detailed discussion on self-compassion can be found here, while the video below highlights some key aspects.

Self-compassion isn’t talked about as much as self-care, but the process is just as important. In fact, self-compassion can have more immediate benefits for caregiver stress.

This happens because you can be compassionate to yourself in the midst of a caregiving crisis. In contrast, there are many times where you cannot take yourself out of a situation to meet your own needs.

Thinking About Attribution and Blame

The stress of caregiving is often linked to blame and resentment. The pattern isn’t surprising. Caregivers are often giving up their own wants to support a loved one.

When the loved one appreciates the sacrifice and helps wherever they can, caregiving tends to be much less stressful. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen.

There are many reasons that care recipients may be difficult or stubborn.

• Sometimes they’re afraid of losing their independence.
• Other times they may be reacting emotionally to the fears of aging – lashing out at you without really meaning to.
• There may also be underlying causes that you’re not aware of, such as medication side effects, cognition challenges or simply tiredness.
• It is also possible that difficult behavior is intentional, however, this pattern is less common than it may first appear.

Most of the time, difficult behavior isn’t what it first seems to be. Taking the time to understand the underlying causes of such behavior can have a huge difference on the stress that you experience.

Positive Coping Strategies

Coping strategies can be positive or negative. Negative coping strategies tend to make things more difficult over time. Unfortunately, they’re also the approaches that many of us default to.

To improve resilience in caregiving, you’ll need to shift away from the negative strategies and toward the positive ones.

Common Negative Coping Strategies

• Negative self-talk, e.g. ‘this is impossible’, ‘I can’t handle this’, ‘I’ll never get my life back’.
• Pushing negative emotions down (like resentment) and pretending that you do not feel them.
• Distracting yourself from emotions and stress, rather than addressing what you are experiencing.
• Blaming someone else or ‘life’ for your situation.
• Thinking about situations as being horrible or unbearable.
• Pretending that challenges do not exist or hoping that they will go away over time.

Positive Coping Strategies

• Positive self-talk, e.g. ‘this will pass’, ‘nothing is impossible’, ‘we can do this’.
• Accepting yourself and the emotions that you feel. You’re human and your emotions won’t always be what you want. That’s okay.
• Asking for help and accept help that is offered.
• Finding support, such as through support groups and friends.
• Finding ways to laugh and look for humor in small things. Laughter can take the weight out of many situations, making everything less stressful. Comedies can help too.
• Mind-body approaches, like meditation, yoga and tai chi. These help to increase the connection between your mind and body, decreasing stress in the process.
• Focusing on regret, not guilt. Guilt suggests that you did something wrong, which generally isn’t the case. Even if you did, the past is the past. Guilt is not helpful for moving forward.
• Forgiving yourself for anything that you feel you did wrong. You’re human.
• Looking for constructive ways to release emotions, such as punching a pillow as a way to vent anger or burning the energy with physical exercise.
• Taking time out for yourself and make sure that you are meeting your own needs.
• Attempting to resolve problems that arise.

Living in the Moment

Looking at the big picture has advantages, but it’s easy to do so too often. Sometimes we become so focused on patterns and overall challenges, that we miss the joys that come from little moments.

Celebrating the good things as they happen can help to bring your attention back to the moment.

And honestly, there are good moments in caregiving, many of them.

Sometimes they might be as simple as the chance to connect with your family member emotionally or a fun moment where you are both laughing.

When you’re focused on the overall picture or on the challenges, it’s easy to miss these little moments. But, looking for the good is powerful. The more that you celebrate the positive moments, the less stressful caregiving becomes.

If you want more ideas, the site Happier Human offers a variety of approaches to help you stay in the moment. Some of them might seem inane at first, but don’t be too quick to judge. After all, some powerful techniques don’t look like much at all when you first try them.

Effective Approaches to Caregiving Challenges

The final area to think about is how you approach caregiving challenges. Every caregiver will run into situations where the best answer isn’t obvious. Sometimes there won’t even be a best answer.

The way that you approach these challenges can influence the outcomes of the situation. More effective approaches reduce stress, which helps to make you more resilient over time, while saving your energy for when you need it the most.

• Confidence. Be confident that you can find a solution. You are a competent person, who knows your family member better than anyone else. While the solution may not be obvious or even ideal, you will be able to work things out. This type of confidence is powerful, as it makes it easier to think clearly and to find the solutions that you are looking for.
• Connection. Research shows that social connection is critical for reducing caregiver stress and burden. The effect of connection is influenced by quality as well as quantity, so it’s important to find social connections that strengthen you.
• Creativity. Be creative with how you approach problems. The best solutions may be unexpected. Being open to creativity can make solutions easier to find too, while making the problem-solving process less stressful.
• Experimentation. In a similar way, don’t be afraid to experiment. Try out different approaches. This is the best way to learn what will work and what won’t. An approach not working doesn’t mean that you’ve failed. Even if a potential solution goes badly, you’ve learned something in the process.
• Positivity. Approaching problems with positivity can help a lot. Focus on the idea that you can find a solution, even if you don’t have any idea of what that potential solution might be yet.
• Priorities. Many situations are confusing and can involve multiple challenges. Knowing your immediate priorities helps to make things clearer. You’re able to choose where to put your focus and look at the areas that matter the most.