Episode 152: How to Handle Empty Offers and False Promises as a Caregiver

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Transcript

Do you hate it when people tell you to let them know how they can help?

How powerful one sentence can be. On the outside, it seems like the appropriate thing for someone to say to a person in your situation. From the outside, it can make people think they are doing something good for you by offering themselves to you. In fact, that offer may have come out instinctually and could have made them feel good about offering to help. In fact, if you complained to someone about how people offer to help you, you’d feel like an ungrateful idiot. Hearing your complaint actually come out of your mouth can make you cringe and then you brace for the judgment or scolding you’ll get from the person you thought you could confide in. 

However, as a caregiver, it can still be infuriating, and frustrating and even make you feel lonely even though you’re talking to someone who is somewhat concerned about helping you.

Why? 

Let’s break it down.

When someone says to you… please let me know how I can help it creates a stir for multiple reasons. 

First of all, they’re putting the work on you. 

You let ME know how I can help. Even though it sounds like they are making an active offer they’re actually putting the responsibility on you to tell them what they can do for you. I get it, it sounds a little insane to say there is anything bad about this, however, from the perspective of a caregiver it can feel empty. The person offering isn’t taking any responsibility in trying to help you or help problem solve how they can help. In fact in this scenario, if they don’t help it’s not their fault if you don’t tell them what they can do for you.

The problem is most times when someone asks how they can help you don’t have any idea of what to ask them to do. You know you need help and maybe for a second when they offer you feel a little excited but when it comes to actually listing out what you need help with, nothing comes to mind because you’re too overwhelmed with everything you need to do and quite frankly don’t even have a handle on what caregiving means to you yet. So you smile and thank them. 

Or you might find yourself habitually saying that you have it all covered but you’ll let them know in the future if you think of something. Then you walk away wanting to cry because you need help but the biggest help you need is someone to help you figure out what people can actually help you with. 

There are so many different reasons why you don’t ask for help. You can be so overwhelmed with all that you have to do that it feels too complicated to pull one thing out that a person can help with. 

You can be embarrassed to ask for help or accept an offer because you feel you will be judged if you can’t do it all on your own. Maybe the help you need is with things that you think any adult human should be able to do - like washing clothes or going grocery shopping - and you just can’t ask for that kind of help because that will make you feel like a failure in some sort of twisted idea of what you think life should look like. 

You might not want to ask for help because you’d rather try to do it all on your own even when you know full well that you will suffer, your health and emotional well-being will suffer and you won’t be an easy person to be around because asking for help actually feels harder than the way things are at the moment. 

Either you don’t have the capacity to give suggestions to someone on how they can help or you don’t feel you can ask for help because it will somehow change people’s perception of you and what you’re able to handle. 

Then there’s the issue of you actually finding something they can help with and they don’t follow through. Or you might not trust that a person will actually help you and you’d rather deal with the overwhelm without the disappointment. There’s nothing more infuriating than to hear a caregiver tell me that one time long ago they actually asked someone to help them and that person never showed up. So naturally, they stopped asking for help. The amount of energy and vulnerability the caregiver needed to find in order to identify how someone could help them, the ability to give up control of something that seemed easier to do themselves all in an effort to make more time for the things that mattered and the person they asked didn’t show up. 

I think deep down all of us have that fear of being let down. 

Caregiving Confessions… over time I started to get angry when people told me to let them know how they can help. It felt like an empty offer. Almost like someone asking me how I was and not expecting me to say anything but “I’m ok”. I found it a little insensitive sometimes because I felt they were giving me more work to think of something they can do. Other times I was so overwhelmed I knew I had to get help with some things but didn’t know where to start in figuring out what to ask for. 

The worst part of finding yourself in the middle of this is you don’t always feel you have a person to complain to about it. Mostly because you understand that if someone hasn’t experienced it they won’t really understand and you can really come off as being ungrateful. Adding that to the mix of what you have going on at any point in time is too much so you keep it to yourself. 

We all know when we keep things to ourselves it adds on to the loneliness we already feel. 

We all also know that we really need help.

Sure you can try to continue to do it all on your own. If you’re able to fill you life with happiness at the same time and enjoy time with your loved one then you could be excelling at making caregiving life work for you. However, most caregivers are not in that situation and almost everyone could use even just a little bit of help. 

Over the next month or so I am going to help you figure out how to get the help you need. But first we all need to understand that having our own team is not a luxury… it’s a requirement. Many of you might not have even thought of putting together your own team of people to help you with caregiving. Maybe just the sound of it makes you uncomfortable. Maybe you’ve just rolled your eyes thinking, great, here’s some new frivolous idea she’s going to try to sell me on. 

I get it. For you to accept you need a team of people to help you, you first have to accept that you’re a caregiver and that accepting this role is important to understand. Almost any other role in life you have taken has provided you with a team. If you worked in an office setting you may have had an administrative assistant or at least someone who made the coffee in the morning. There was someone who cleaned the bathrooms, and made sure the lightbulbs functioned. Cleaners came in at night. Security kept you safe during the day. Maybe there were public transportation drivers that got you to work and back. Maybe your children went to the afterschool program and had help with their homework while they waited for you to pick them up. Then there were babysitters that would fill in on days they had off school but you still needed to go in to work. The gym you went to had professionals that taught the classes you took and personal trainers that kept a watchful eye on people working out. All around you there were people who had your best interest in mind, helping you by doing things you didn’t have the time or ability to do, and people who were trained to keep you safe, happy, and healthy. This was probably a combination of friends, family, and paid help and you didn’t think twice about using them to help you enjoy your life. 

Your loved one has a team… don’t they? They have doctors and nurses. There are therapists, people who run the treatment centers, and patient advocates. Why do you think you don’t deserve to have a team to help you?

You aren’t meant to do it all on your own. Yet asking for help can be one of the hardest things you can do. It feels too personal yet you wouldn’t think twice to have a doctor check your loved one to make sure they are ok. You wouldn’t think twice for a nurse to take their blood pressure. Your loved one needs for them to do these things because they need extra care. 

You need people to do things for you also. You should have a care team just like your loved one. Sure it might look different. Your care team can be made up of all the people who have reached out to offer to help you as well as family and friends. Your care team may also be made up of landscapers, cooks, private shoppers, and cleaners helping you by doing things they are good at. 

Your team should exist so you can do all the other things on your list that have to be done for your loved one. The team will allow you to also enjoy time with them and do some things for yourself. 

Once you understand that having a team of people to help you isn’t frivolous then you’ll be better able to respond back to people who offer to help you. Sure it might surprise someone to have you come right back at them with an answer to their offer of help but if people are genuine and really want to help you then they will be happy to be able to. Of course, there will be people that will let you down but if you are putting together your team with purpose you will let that disappointment go and won’t let it be a reason to give up on putting this group of support together. 

Your needs aren’t selfish. Getting help with things that you are able to delegate to someone else is what needs to be done so you can continue to be the best caregiver you can be for the person you love. 

Next week we’ll work on figuring out what you are willing to get help with. 

Thanks for listening.