The Emotions Of The Caregiver
The routine tasks of care giving involve doing the old parent’s laundry, shopping for groceries, essentials, paying bills, working out the paperwork for Medicare and some odd jobs. When one takes on the responsibility of care giving you should learn to do it with emotional detachment - this makes the routine job fairly easy. Once you are mentally prepared for dealing with the problems of the old folks, the decision itself has solved a problem and now you need to work on the format of care giving that will eventually help the ageing parent. All aspects of care giving should be meticulously worked out to save maximum energy and time, which will make this function not as difficult. A little researching into this would help. And seeing the joy on your parent’s face would be compensation for the work put in.
To take care of old parents and manage their homes or their daily chores, you could start by appointing staff, but at this stage in life more important than that is the emotional support that they want from their children. Ageing is difficult and the problems that come with it are many and trying so a little warmth and understanding will go well to keep the ageing parents in a better frame of mind.
This can be a noble duty if you can perform it wholeheartedly especially when the parent is terminally ill. The pain - physical and mental can be agonizing. Even if they are putting up a great bold front, one can understand the under currents of hopelessness. This behavior can be complex in most situations and to handle it with compassion is very important. Dependency to most old people is crippling. It lowers their self esteem and they begin to feel hopeless and lost in this situation. Moral, emotional support at this stage will help them overcome this feeling and give them a positive attitude to living. The very feeling of being wanted is more than enough to bring joy into their life.
The caregiver is quite burnt out when dispensing care, especially in the last stages of the illness. It is common to find a caregiver quite detached at the funeral. Having seen the illness and helping through the suffering, the caregiver and the ailing patient build up a unique bond in this process. The caregiver is as disturbed all through the care giving and also needs time to heal.
Care giving for loved ones like your own parents is of vital importance to emotional stability. One needs to understand the depth of care giving as it is highly demanding and can sap all the energy. Patience and compassion are two qualities that can work wonders while caring for the aged.
The heart and soul of care giving is the emotion of compassion and not pity. You can pity a hurt puppy or a crying baby, but to pity the elderly is to remove the little self esteem they have retained. Feeling sorry for them is not the right attitude to work on, but to give them a moral boost with kind words and gestures is indeed making their last moments on earth worth the while.
The three important factors to care giving are:
- Not to focus the attention on yourself as that makes you feel low, thinking of all the work you are doing. Instead concentrate on the old parent - this will enhance your relationship and create better bonding.
- Deal with the solution to the problem, not its effect, just as a good doctor cures the disease and not the symptoms. Too much thought should not go into the problem, instead to find the solution to cure the problem is of maximum importance.
- Let the sunshine in, change the décor to happy colors, bring in some fresh flowers, tell your folks you love them and enjoy caring for them. This will bring the spiritual bliss to both the giver and taker.
