Episode 149: What Happens When You've Lost Love For Yourself

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Transcript

 

Caregiving can create a great deal of strain on any relationship especially the one that you have with yourself. 

As soon as you become a caregiver for a person the dynamic of your relationship shifts. They quickly come to depend on you for things they might have done on their own in the past. Anywhere from getting dressed to making doctor’s appointments, the responsibilities shared between the two of you become unbalanced. You find yourself doing more for them out of responsibility and, at some point, you begin to see them as someone you care for more than a person you happen to have decided to spend your life with or are related to. 

Caregiving changes relationships. It makes things weird, messy and complicated at best. The more your time with them comes from a caregiving focus the less you interact with them as a partner, spouse, parent, child. At some point you realize you miss what you used to have with them. You miss seeing them as just your dad. You miss your husband looking at you as just his wife. You miss enjoying moments with your child as just their mom. Interesting how we miss just being when we become caregivers. The relationships we took for granted because we never realized they could be taken away or changed. 

Caregiving closes the book on what was our relationship with the loved ones we care for. It abruptly ends the story we were living with them. It’s as if the movie stopped right in the middle, right when we were getting to the good part. When the sequel comes out it’s darker, sadder. Just like the director change for the last Harry Potter movies, it’s as if it’s a different story altogether with remnants of what it used to be. The actors are familiar but changed. The story line has taken a turn you didn’t see coming and it takes you a while to sort things out again. 

The story has changed between you and your loved one and it’s also changed for yourself. Caregiving changes who you are without you even knowing it. So you find yourself trying to come to terms with how things are different between you and the person who was your anchor in life while you feel who you are is slipping away. You find yourself trying to hold on to something but everything is changing so rapidly you don’t even know what to hold on to. You are in a battle with yourself but you don’t really know who is fighting what. Caregiving closes the book on the story of who you were but you’re writing the sequel in real time and you don’t have an outline to go by. You don’t know what to focus on. Your character has completely changed and the love story, action movie or thriller you were just a star in has changed to a poorly written drama. 

You just want to be in the story you were living before caregiving. You knew what the rules were. You had practiced the part you were living so well you didn’t question any of the life choices you had to make and everyone played the role they were given. You knew who you were even if that meant you were always trying to find yourself. Now you are struggling to come to terms with how your dad doesn’t recognize you because he’s been moved to a different movie franchise and you don’t exist in the story he lives in anymore. 

We try holding on to every last shred of the relationships we once had with the people we care for and every last remnant of who we once were. Trying to knit it all together into a comfort blanket that will forever have holes. At first we ignore the changes assuming that things will go back to normal after they have a treatment plan or they are put on a different medicine or after that surgery. You ignore the fact that it didn’t go back to the way it was and your wife’s mood has changed because she isn’t sleeping or your child’s become angrier and you make due because there is no other choice. It keeps going and you become so tired of being a caregiver and are so over how they look at you, talk to you, ask you to do things for them when they can do it themselves that you just give up. You’ll work on your relationship with them when you have the energy,  time, when things get better. Or you wait for THEM to want things to get better. You look for the remains of love, hope, desire in their eyes and then when you don’t see it you are hurt. It makes you sad, lonely, resentful, angry that caregiving has done this to the two of you.

Then one day you look at yourself in the mirror and realize you don’t recognize the person looking back at you. You search in those eyes for a glimmer of recognition, love, hope, desire and when you don’t see it you are scared. Where have I gone? What happened? Who am I and how do I get back to who I was?

This is your turning point. 

This is when the audience get’s excited for your story. This is when the superhero understands he isn’t the same person anymore. 

Yes you’ll rage, cry, plan your escape, count the days on the wall. Maybe you’ll curl up under your comfort blanket hoping you can go to sleep and wake up finding out it was all a bad dream. Once the tears run out and you don’t have any energy left to be angry you’ll find yourself in one of the most beautiful places a caregiver can be.

You see… you can’t ever begin to find out who you are until you realize you’ve been lost and you can’t fix the relationship with your loved one until you’ve learned to love who you are right now. 

Caregiving changes your life. It changes who you are and it pulls apart your relationships and leaves you to try to piece them back together again. Until you realize your relationship with yourself needs to be repaired you will continue to be unhappy with who you are. You will continue to try to play the same part you always have and not know why the role you’ve always played… doesn’t fit. Why aren’t you comfortable with who you are anymore? 

When you realize that part of your loneliness comes from you missing your relationship with yourself, connecting with what you really need and who you really are, you can begin to realize who the new you actually is. 

Sure, once you notice this you’ll want to rage, cry, plan your escape, count the days on the wall. You’ll curl up under your comfort blanket hoping you can go to sleep and wake up as the person you once were… and then things will begin to change. 

You’ll begin to spend more time learning about who you are now. 

You’ll begin to see how caregiving has changed your story and you’ll begin to understand what your new story is. 

You’ll begin to find the pieces of you that you really missed and bring the back to who you are now. You’ll begin to repair the relationship you have with you.

The relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship to repair, especially when you begin to realize that none of your relationships are what you’d like for them to be. If you don’t know who you are now that you’re a caregiver and if you don’t love yourself then how can you love and repair the relationships with the person you care for?

You don’t need to find the old you… you need to introduce yourself to who you are now. Caregiving has changed your life, it’s changed who you are. When you begin to explore the current person you are you might find yourself beat down and unhappy. You may become so overwhelmed with how much you realized caregiving has torn you apart that it feels there is no hope to piece back together the parts you’d like to see again. 

This is the part of the story that brings people at the movies to the edge of their seats. It’s when the hero is beat up so badly that even he begins to believe he can’t continue on. Then he finds the one reason why he needs to keep going. Because his reason why is so strong for him he picks himself back up and he continues fighting. He realizes who he really is and he’s realized what he really loves. 

When you find you’ve lost who you are it’s also your turning point. When you realize what your why is again and how love brought you to caregiving you know what there is to fight for. You realize if you don’t find yourself, if you don’t pick yourself up and keep moving forward, if you don’t love yourself for who you are right now, you won’t be able to really be the caregiver your loved one needs. 

If you can find a way to fall in love with yourself, finding a way to rekindle that love with your spouse, love your dad even though he doesn’t know who you are, and strengthening your love with your child won’t be as big as a task as it seems right now. 

If you can love yourself you will have love to give. If you can love who you are unconditionally you can begin to piece back the parts of you that you miss, say goodbye to the parts of you that don’t work anymore. 

When you realize you have the power to write your own story you can become the person you really want to be and better able to find ways to not only fix the relationship you have with yourself but also fix the one you have with the person you care for. 

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