How Can Changing How You Think and React Allow You to Be a Less Frustrated Caregiver?
January 11, 2017
Elderly Care in Menlo Park CA
How you think and react to given situations can either increase or decrease your own frustration levels as a family caregiver. If you can figure out how to adjust those thought patterns, you can
reap huge rewards.
You Learn How to Appreciate the Positive
Every situation has its positives, even if it doesn't seem like it does at the time. Take the time to focus on the positives in your life and your situation. Keeping a gratitude journal can help with that quite a bit. Focus on writing down two or three things every day that you're grateful for, even if for a while you're only grateful for waking up in the morning. Gradually, your thoughts will shift to a more positive standpoint.
You Get Information First, then Come to a Conclusion
When you're under the gun constantly, it's easy to jump to conclusions and then get the facts later. That doesn't do you or your elderly loved one any good, though. One of the best things that you can do for yourself is to take a deep breath, focus on gathering information, and then use that information to come to a conclusion. If you can avoid the initial knee jerk reaction, you'll be in better shape.
You Avoid Using Generalizations
Over-generalizing a situation means that you're ignoring the individual aspects of the situation and applying general rules to that situation. This can be a problem because you tend to use words like "always" and "never" to talk about and to describe a given situation. There's nothing that happens every single time, no matter how much you might believe that to be the case.
You Remove Guilt from the Equation
Guilt is a huge factor for family caregivers, but it doesn't have to be for you. If you find yourself talking about how you "should" be doing something a certain way or that you "could" do better with a given situation. You're discounting what you already do if you're subscribing to these kinds of thoughts and that leads to guilt and resentment.
Work with a counselor or therapist if you have a significant amount of trouble with changing these kinds of thoughts and reactions. Take the time to do this for yourself, even if it means bringing in elderly care providers to spend time with your loved one.