Balancing care giving and personal life is one of those questions caregivers often ask when they are in a frustrated mood.
Taking care of a love one requires your complete attention and it is such a time intensive activity. Making a balance between your personal life and caregiver life may almost seem impossible.
As care givers, you often may feel your life is stolen because you have prioritize your family and forgotten your own self.
Nobody knows about such a journey, what you give up, what you feel inside, and how the years pass by you.
But would you change it?
It depends on a lot of factors:
- Relationship,
- Emotional closeness,
- Attachment to them, and
- How selfish you choose to be or how much you can take …
No one can tell you what to do.
At the end of the day it is your decision as a caregiver that you will have to live with right or wrong...
Your feelings are perfectly normal and I think these are real and understandable feelings that many of us wrestle with, especially as the quality of life of your Love one declines.
Ways to balance personal life and caring life if you are the care giver of an adult
1. Seek help from family members
It is understandable. Try to get a weekly sitter so you and your hubs, kids or friends can have time together. At first it will be all about your love one, however, over time you realized that if you are not healthy, then you cannot give your all for your love one.
You have to learn to ask for help where ever you can get it. It’s important to remember, you cannot do this alone. Be kind to yourself. It’s always harder on the caregiver than it is on your love one. You are not alone.
You have to find time for yourself! So do not feel guilty for taking time for yourself. You must enjoy your life, as did your elderly love one!
Try and get as many people involved looking after your love one otherwise you will burn yourself out and may end up with depression and anxiety.
2. Get a good support system
You can talk to your doctor, get more help and more support from support groups. There are support groups for people dealing with a loved one with a brain injury and memory issues or other age related disease. If you cannot find one locally, there should be one or more online.
Your local hospital should have some referrals for you. These groups will help you a lot and with this group of people, you will learn a lot. Also, local senior centers, city hall, might have some resources for you to check.
Also read: 35 Best Caregivers Support Groups You can Find on Social Media Today
3. Get what they call "respite care”
I do agree with others that if there is any way you can take advantage of any respite situations or more regular assistance you should do that without guilt.
But, I also understand those arrangements are much easier said than done. Respite allows you to take your love one to a place for a period of time to give you and the family a break.
This will help you tremendously. Family should understand that this is a temporary new normal.
You should check into respite in your city. Contact a senior’s agency or a hospital social worker and ask them about respite care. They can direct you.
4. Use a Senior Placement Specialist (SPS)
They do not cost the family or loved one anything. The SPS already knows the communities and homes in your area, the ones that are good and the ones that are not.
They will work with your finances to make sure you are taking advantage of every available financial program for your love one.
They will whittle down your choices to the ones that fit your requirements and go on tours with you. People don’t realize these folks exist.
They are essentially paid after the placement (and it has to be successful) by the place YOU choose to put them.
They also have many, many additional resources that can help you accomplish a lot of the other little stuff that a caregiver may not think about.
Check out this Info-graphic below for more ways to balance personal life and care giving if you are taking care of a senior.
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8 Reason why balancing your personal life and care giving life may seem impossible
Balancing your personal life and caregiver life depends solely on you and the influence of your demands for example, workplace demands and family demands or the care giving situation you are in. Some of this personal and care giving demands you take into consideration are the major obstacles you have to tackle and they are:
Working shift and hours: Your type of job and working conditions (the number of hours you put in a day/week for work, work shift like day shift or non day shift) will greatly affect your ability to perform your care giving role. Your job stress may have a spillover effect on your family because of the difficulty in creating a balance between work and family.
Occupation: Your occupation plays a big role in your ability or inability to balance your personal life and caring life, you need to take into consideration the flexibility of your job. Different occupations have different flexibility levels for example, lawyers have more job flexibility (though court datelines may sometimes affect them) compare to nurses and bus drivers.
Number of children: People with one child find difficulties balancing child care and elderly care especially if they child is under the age of 6. But when you have more kids, and some are age 9 – 17 then sibling self care arrangement comes in; a situation where the older siblings can help provide some care to the younger ones while you can freely care for the senior citizen.
Household income: Caring for a senior isn’t easy as there is cost and needs you must meet up with and all this expenditure will have a toll on your personal and household income.
Total time you spend out of the house: This factor depends on the quality of care. Most often you may turn to spend most of your time caring. That will makes it difficult for you to spare some time for yourself, thus balancing your personal life and caring seems impossible especially if you are putting more hours at homes caring.
Marital status: Perhaps if you are married and your spouse isn’t employed, your spouse would probably take up most of the caring responsibilities. But if you both are employed then you both will have to share the caring responsibility. But this division of labor will favor the person who works most for most of the caring will be in the hands of the unemployed spouse.
Ease of finding elderly care arrangements: Finding an elderly care arrangement with ease will be very helpful for any disruption in finding a caring community will equally have a toll on your personal life.
Satisfaction with care: Earlier I mention respite care; your judgment of satisfaction from such care may be complex. Do you feel the cost of caring doesn’t reflect the quality of the care received? Do you feel your relation with your love on is deteriorating? Majority of people express dissatisfaction with their caring arrangements and turn to personally take up the task, this can upset your daily activities as well as your personal life.
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