Episode 204: Mastering Your Evening Routine as a Caregiver: A Stress-Free Guide to Prioritizing Self-Care

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Episode Transcript

You find yourself falling asleep on the sofa only to wake up hours later to a very loud hour long infomercial for the Snuggie. You roll off the sofa, shuffle to the bedroom and collapse on the bed. Maybe you change into your pajamas… maybe you’ve been wearing them all day. 

You wake up tired, stressed out, out of sorts and just feel like you’re on this horrible hamster wheel of caregiving. Waking up feeling like crap. Not remembering how you fell asleep at night. Never feeling like you can catch a break. 

Last week I spoke about morning rituals and habits you can transform into short moments of calm. Now let’s talk about your evening ritual. 

You might think that self-care isn’t for you. There isn’t any time or money. You can’t just stop for periods of the day to do something just for yourself. 

Just know that is the experience of a lot of caregivers, you’re not alone. 

Being able to take more time for yourself is ultimately a necessity but taking baby steps to get there can be a stress free way to making yourself more of a priority. Starting with things you already do and making them moments of joy for yourself or a place to pause in your day is key. 

Evening routines and rituals aren’t as easy as morning ones but they are worth the effort. 

Creating a ritual out of a habit isn’t easy because you might not have boundaries set for your evenings. It’s also when you are most vulnerable and find it harder to make decisions that you can benefit from because crashing on the couch is all you have energy for. 

How you go to bed at night sets the stage for how you start your day. Evenings can be crazy. You might have children that play sports or have homework that needs to be done. There is usually a meal you eat but maybe not as a family or sitting down to eat it. But at some point you will fall asleep. 

Wether or not you have a plan for that is what decides the kind of morning you have the next day. 

Just like the mornings and controlling what you do right before you open your eyes and the first few minutes after you wake up, doing the same with the last moments of your night can give you more control over how you end your day. 

How you end your day is important. Here’s what you can do. 

Here’s where I break the rules a little. I want you to try to physically go to bed and do it at about the same time each night. I know if you don’t already do this and it isn’t a habit then there’s no way to transform something you already do. This is a tough one but necessary. It’s already for caregiver to get good quality sleep. There’s a lot fighting against you if you try to sleep throughout the night but you are overwhelmed with worries or your loved one needs help with things at night you have to wake up for. 

However, if you don’t physically put yourself to bed and set that routine and make bedtime a habit it’s really going to be difficult for you to sleep well at all. You and I both know that not having a good nights sleep contributes to you feel like crap in the morning, which leads to an extra cup of coffee mid day, which leads to reacting instead of responding, which leads to emotional eating, which leads to feeling more like crap, which leads to not being able to enjoy any part of your day, which may lead to some yelling at someone in the evening, which leads to not cleaning up after dinner, which leads to crashing on the sofa and waking up at 2am to the Snuggie commercial. 

All to start the cycle all over again. 

Having a bed time is important. You’ve done more difficult things as a caregiver than to have to actually go to your bed when it’s bed time. I believe you can do this. 

So let’s imagine you go to bed at night, while you’re relatively awake, in order to go to sleep. 

Perfect first step. 

If you brush your teeth before going to bed then you can use that as a tool to get rid of the nastiness of the day, resetting your thoughts or giving yourself a mental high five while you watch yourself in the mirror. I talk more about using teeth brushing as a moment for yourself in episode 203.

Many of your night time habits could be ones that should be eliminated in a perfect world. Watching videos on social media or crime drama on tv are not optimal but I get it can be hard to get rid of. I’m not going to tell you to have no screen time before tv. If you can do it, great. But if you enjoy laughing at videos of people tripping with your partner than go for it. 

One thing everyone does at night is having that moment right before you let go and fall asleep. There are two types of us… the ones that can fall asleep quickly and the one’s who can’t turn their brains off in order to fall asleep. 

You control the moment between putting your head on the pillow and falling asleep. It’s something you will do every night. There is no need to carve out special time, pay to do it or buy expensive equipment to care for yourself in this moment. 

It’s just you… with you. 

Keep this in mind… oftentimes what you’re thinking of when you go to sleep will stick with you and your brain will continue problem solving while you’re sleeping. If I go to sleep worrying about scans my husband has the next day I will dream about it all night, or worse I won’t fully go to sleep and my brain will be more active than it should throughout the night. Plus I will wake up still thinking about it, exhausted from not getting a good nights sleep and anxious about the day. 

I know that how I put myself to sleep will affect my night and how I feel when I wake up. What I do with that short period of time between closing my eyes and falling asleep depends on my day. Maybe I need to relax a little more… I’ll focus on breathing. Not breathing in a special way but just that I’m breathing. Or I’ll do a little dreaming or active visualization where I visualize myself having fun or relax on a beach or walking in a beautiful forrest. I do something that sets my brain towards the direction I’d like for it to go while I’m sleeping. 

On days that are hard to fall asleep and for those of you who wake up in the middle of the night and find it hard to fall back to sleep your best tool is your breath. Diaphragmatic breathing is when you breathe deeply and it causes your belly to grow and then come back each time you breathe. Imagine watching a baby breathe. Their tiny bellies moving with each breath. Well this style of breathing allows your nervous system to switch into the rest and digest mode instead of fight or flight (which most of us are in most of the time). Breathing deep into your belly causes your nervous system to switch and allows your body to know it’s ok and safe for you to fall asleep. 

I know it’s easy to say if you know how to do it. So in the transcript of this episode I’m going to link a breathing exercise you can listen to in order to learn how to breathe this way. You can also listen to it when you need a little more help to fall asleep. You can find that on the podcast page at www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com Just click on podcast and then episode 204. It will also be included in my newsletter so if you already get that you’ll have it in that email. 

Let’s say you need to use this tonight and you don’t have the time to listen to a deep breathing exercise, although I highly recommend it, here’s what you can do. Just breathe.

Focus on one part of your breath. I usually suggest noticing it at the tip of your nose or noticing your belly rise and fall. If you aren’t a belly breather yet then focus on the beginning and the end of your breath. Your brain will want to go back to worrying and problem solving and you’re going to do your best to say, “no more thinking for today” and go back to focussing on just your breath. 

If your brain is still fighting you then you can give it something to do. You can count your breaths. When you inhale you say in your mind “I breathe in for 30” Followed with “I breathe out for 30 on the exhale”. You just keep moving down the line, number by number. You might lose track and that’s ok, just go back to the last number you remember saying and work your way towards one. 

Most of the time this process will work, even when you wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling back to sleep. 

Doing what you can to fall asleep calmly can give you more of an opportunity to have a better quality of sleep and a calmer morning. 

You control what you do right before you go to sleep. Changing the feel and the intention of that moment give you the power to make it a moment that can reduce some of your stress and help you avoid overthinking your day. 

Taking moments like these and using them to relax, even if just for a few moments, is the start towards finding ways to enjoy your caregiving life one small step at a time. 

You deserve these moments. 

Thank you for listening.