Episode 155: The Importance of Asking for Help: A Caregiver's Experience with Overwhelming Tasks

Show Transcript

One day I walked into my kitchen to make dinner and found myself stuck. I was too hungry to think, too tired to decide and too overwhelmed with stress to be able to problem solve. Within minutes I found myself sitting on the floor of the kitchen crying into a box of crackers. 

Let’s talk about figuring out what you don’t actually need to be doing right now. 

Now that wasn’t and wouldn’t be the last time I’d find myself broken by the need to make a meal. From my caregiving experiences it’s usually the easy things that make you feel broken. When your caregiving gets serious because your loved one needs extra care or there’s an emergency or surgery you jump into caregiver mode and put the speed on hyper drive. We all know how it feels to get that tunnel vision when things get really serious. We all put on that armor so that we can go into battle to keep our loved ones safe and alive and keep everything together. The purpose and energy we fuel ourselves with that allows us to punish our bodies and keeps us going despite the fact that we haven’t had any sleep, food, or any type of break. In fact sometimes I know being in that zone is what allows us not to succumb to our emotions and feelings. Mainly we don’t notice the fear and we don’t make time to pause and check in with how we are handling it all. 

I’ve been there and I know that putting the blinders on is somehow the only way you feel you can make it through. However, after everyone is back home or the caregiver emergency has subsided. After people stop checking in to see how things are going. After the frozen meals disappear and the meal delivery gift cards are spent things can get a lot more challenging. 

By then everything feels hard. The laundry has been piling up.  The dishes are hard to keep up with and cleaning in general is hard to do. Maybe you aren’t getting a good night’s sleep and most likely you have been under so much stress for so long that you feel if one more thing is added to your plate you’re going to break. 

Break you do and often times it’s because something that seems simple to someone that isn’t a caregiver or who doesn’t get what you’re going through becomes impossible to do. 

For me it was making dinner. For you it might be the fact that you’ve washed that load of laundry 3 times and it still didn’t make it to the dryer. Or possibly you were sitting on the toilet when you realized you have no more toilet paper. Maybe it’s in the morning while trying to piece together your Childs lunch because there actually isn’t any food in the house. Or you realize after stripping your moms bed at 3am that you have no clean sheets to replace them. 

These so called little things are what often times break a caregiver down because it’s the last straw. It’s the feather that falls onto a badly formed pile of dishes and causes everything to crash to the floor. 

These are the moments that reveal the cracks in the caregiver armor you put on. 

So when a caregiver tells me they never know what to ask people to help them with or how to respond to offers of help and ask me what they should do, I ask them this.

What breaks you? What is the one thing you’ve found yourself doing when you finally break down? When the armor falls off and the blinders are opened. 

Those are almost always the things they need to get help with. And once they identify that task they almost always say… well that isn’t really that hard to do. I can cook meals or wash the clothes. On a good day, I have an extra set of sheets ready for moms bed. It was just a bad day. 

Maybe you’re doing that very thing right now. Dismissing the task or chore that caused you to fall apart last time. The one that is always on your to-do list that causes you anxiety because you can never seem to get to it. 

You say - I should be able to do these things. It’s what any adult person should be able to do to run their household. 

My answer to that is…let go of the myth that you should be able to do it all on your own. 

Any reasoning you have for not getting help with your caregiving is fueled by many personal reasons. You might feel you’ll be judged by others for asking them to help you with things that might seem like simple household chores. Or you judge yourself for not being able to stay on top of them.  Quite possibly you’re ashamed to ask for help or you aren’t able to give up control of certain things. 

Most likely you didn’t even realize you could get help with something as simple as meals, cleaning, laundry and any of the other things that need to be done to keep your house running smoothly. 

You can… and you should. 

Think back to that moment everything hit you. Bring that memory and sit next to me on my kitchen floor. I promise to share my crackers with you and we can sit and cry together because having that emotional release isn’t the problem. In fact I find that when we finally let go it’s because we got caught off guard and took just enough of a pause for our bodies and emotions to take the opportunity to gain our attention. A moment long enough to let out what we’d been bottling up. 

It isn’t the release… it’s the fact that it took having to face that chore or task that brought you to it. 

Being busy all the time is a coping mechanism I know. Not having the time to slow down allows you to believe that you have everything under control when you really don’t. Yet slowing down is what you need. 

Free time to enjoy just hanging out with your loved one is what you need.

Personal time to process what is happening in your life and find ways to release the stress that always seems to be weighing you down is what you need. 

People helping you with household tasks is what you need because your purpose comes from a higher calling.

You are a caregiver. Not only do you need to have the energy to focus on your ability to care for your loved one… you also need to make it easier to be a caregiver long term. The way you do that is by having your own support team. Maybe this group of people are only needed during high stress caregiving times because there are parts of the year that things are very stable with the person you care for. Maybe it’s a team of people that are needed year-round. Whatever the amount of need there is remember the existence of this team, paid or unpaid,  is to make life easier for you. 

I know this can feel uncomfortable and more work than it’s worth. However, I want you to start one small step at a time. 

If you’ve been following along with this series of episodes to help you put together a team of your own you know two weeks ago I asked you to write down all the things you do over the period of a week. If not that’s ok. This series starts with episode 152 if you want to go to the beginning. But for now I want you to think of one thing you’d love if you didn’t have to do it ever again or at least as much as you do now. Pick it from the list if you made one. Chose the task that always makes you feel broken like me in the kitchen. Or just chose a task you really don’t like doing. 

What would allow you to feel freer if you didn’t have to do them?

I’ll use washing clothes. Imagine having a ton of clothes to wash. Everyone is close to running out of clean underwear but you just don’t have the energy to get it done. You throw things in the wash yet you forget to put them in the dryer before they start to smell so you have to start the process over again. Soon you find yourself having a tantrum trying to find matching socks or dumping a whole dresser trying to find that one shirt you need right now. 

Now I want you to imagine grabbing a handful of trash bags and filling them with all the dirty clothes, sheets and towels in the house. Close them up. Take them to the front door and leave them right outside. Then I want you to imagine how are you feel when you walk back into your house knowing that laundry isn’t your problem anymore. Maybe you sit down for a few minutes. Maybe you take a quick nap. 

Then the next day you go to your door and the laundry is magically back …washed for you and folded. How would it feel to simply bring the bags back into the house and simply put them away?

Imagine how it would feel. 

Now this isn’t a fairytale. Services like this exist. I know because I’ve used them. But maybe it isn’t a service. Maybe a family member is the one that takes them and washes them. Or a friend comes to sit in your house with your loved one so you can take a nap and she puts a few loads in for you.

Sometimes we have to daydream about something before we can take action on it. So I want you to take the week to find that one thing you’d love to not have to do and imagine not doing it. How would you feel? What would you do with the extra time? How could it make your life better. 

Don’t worry about who you would get to do it. That will be the focus next week. 

Until then… get to daydreaming!

Thank you for listening!