When Caring for Someone Means Disappearing Yourself
Caregiving doesn't usually begin with a decision to stop having a life of your own. It happens more quietly than that. You skip your morning walk because there is an appointment. You cancel dinner with a friend because it's been a difficult day. You don't reschedule your own doctor's appointment because there are already too many appointments to manage. You sleep lightly because you need to be listening. You stop doing something you love because, for now, there simply isn't time. Each individual decision makes sense. And then one day you look around and realize that almost everything in your life is organized around taking care of someone else.
A recent TIME article about caregiver stress describes this gradual erosion particularly well. One caregiver talked about giving up “a little bit here” and “shaving this off, shaving that off” without realizing how much she had lost.
I think this is part of what makes caregiver burnout so difficult to recognize.
There isn't always a crisis.
Sometimes there is just less and less of you.
“I’ve Got This”
There can be something deeply meaningful about caring for someone we love.
It can also be exhausting, frustrating, boring, frightening, lonely, and occasionally infuriating.
Those things can be surprisingly difficult to admit.
Caregivers often feel as though the depth of their love should determine their capacity for caregiving. If I love this person enough, shouldn't I be able to do this?
So when they become resentful or exhausted, they may interpret those feelings as evidence that they aren't being loving enough.
They push harder.
They become more efficient.
They tell everyone they're fine.
They say, “I've got this.”
And perhaps they do.
But Can I do this? and Can I keep doing this indefinitely without harming myself? are very different questions.
When Resilience Becomes Another Demand
The TIME article uses the term “toxic resilience” to describe the idea that we should simply keep pushing through regardless of our limits.
I think that's an important distinction.
We tend to think of resilience as the ability to withstand more.
But sometimes resilience means recognizing that something cannot continue in its current form.
It might mean:
Asking a sibling to take over an appointment.
Hiring help.
Going to your own doctor.
Leaving the house.
Sleeping.
Changing a promise you made years ago because the circumstances under which you made it no longer exist.
None of those things necessarily mean that you have stopped caring.
Sometimes they are what allow you to continue caring.
Love and Resentment Can Exist Together
One of the most painful parts of caregiving can be discovering feelings you don't believe you're supposed to have.
You might resent someone who is sick.
You might fantasize about having an entire day when nobody needs anything from you.
You might feel irritated by something the person genuinely cannot control.
You might miss who they used to be.
You might miss who you used to be.
And then you may feel guilty for all of it.
But feelings aren't moral decisions.
Resentment can sometimes tell us that something has become unsustainable. Anger may be communicating that a limit has been crossed. Grief may exist even while the person we love is still here.
Making room for those feelings doesn't make someone a worse caregiver.
It may make it possible to understand what they need.
Self-Care Isn’t Another Assignement
“Make sure you're taking care of yourself” is one of those pieces of advice that is both obviously correct and occasionally maddening.
A caregiver who is managing medications, appointments, insurance companies, work, children, meals, household responsibilities, and another person's physical or emotional needs probably does not need another item added to the list.
Exercise.
Meditate.
Journal.
Drink more water.
Get eight hours of sleep.
Wonderful. When?
Perhaps a better question is the one posed in the TIME article: What is something you would like to have time for?
Not what should you be doing.
What do you miss?
Maybe it's reading in bed. Going to the gym. Seeing a friend. Cooking something you actually want to eat. Watching a ridiculous television show alone. Going to your own therapy appointment. Having thirty minutes during which you are not responsible for another human being.
Then the question becomes less about squeezing “self-care” into an impossible life and more about what would actually have to change to make room for you again.
Accepting Help Can Be Suprisingly Hard
People often say, “Let me know if you need anything.”
And caregivers often say, “Thanks. I will.”
Then nobody does anything.
Partly that's because asking for help requires work. You have to figure out what someone can do, decide what you're comfortable relinquishing, explain it, coordinate it, and sometimes tolerate the fact that another person will do it differently than you would.
It can genuinely feel easier to do it yourself.
There may also be something more complicated happening.
Being the person who handles everything can become part of our identity.
Maybe being needed feels familiar. Maybe accepting help feels vulnerable. Maybe we learned early that competent people don't burden others. Maybe we don't trust anyone else to get it right.
Or perhaps we are afraid that if we acknowledge how much help we need, we will also have to acknowledge how overwhelmed we actually are.
These are useful things to become curious about.
Not because caregiver burnout is secretly a psychological problem. Often there simply isn't enough support.
But our histories inevitably come with us into the ways we care for other people.
You Are Still in the Picture
Caregiving can become so consuming that the caregiver gradually disappears from their own mental picture.
There is the person who needs care.
There are their medications.
Their moods.
Their appointments.
Their safety.
Their future.
And somewhere, increasingly faintly, there is you.
Therapy cannot manufacture more hours in the day or make a loved one's illness disappear. It cannot solve the very real structural problems that make caregiving extraordinarily difficult.
But it can provide a place where the caregiver gets to be the person we're paying attention to.
Where love and anger can coexist.
Where limits don't have to be defended.
Where we can wonder why asking for help feels so difficult.
Where someone can say, perhaps for the first time:
I love this person.
I want to care for them.
And I cannot disappear in order to do it.
All three can be true.