Category Archives: Faith Community

Faith Community, Family Caregiver, Senior Care Professionals

How Counseling Can Help Caregivers Cope with Emotions

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Caring for a close family member friend can be emotionally overwhelming.  While many caregivers find fulfillment in helping another person, along with this comes feelings of loss, anger,  grief, and guilt.  Caregivers struggle with depression and anxiety at a much higher rate than the general population.  Counseling can be very beneficial for helping people with what is called caregiver burnout.

Learning to cope with the myriad of emotions that accompany caring for persons with dementia is critically important.  Unfortunately too often caregivers don’t realize they are spiraling downward until it’s too late.  The importance of self-care goes well beyond eating right and exercising when it comes to caregiving.   Counseling can be beneficial in allowing caregivers to express their emotions, while also benefiting from non-judgemental guidance that counselors can provide.

There is sound evidence that counseling and support groups can reduce stress in caregivers of people with dementia. This evidence is strongest for face-to-face or telephone assistance that is targeted at caregivers with depression and tailored to the individual and their circumstances. If caregivers can learn how to respond to persons with dementia, and understand the signs of depression and anxiety in themselves, they are much better prepared for day-to-day changes that are inevitable.

Caregiver burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that may be accompanied by a change in attitude – from positive, and caring to negative and unconcerned.  Burnout can occur when caregivers don’t get the help they need, or they try to do more than they are able, either physically or financially.

Symptoms may include fatigue, stress, anxiety, depression, withdrawal from family and friends, loss of interest in hobbies or activities, feeling irritable, hopeless and helpless, change in appetite, weight or both, changes in sleep patterns, getting sick more often, excessive use of alcohol or medications, and even feelings of wanting to hurt yourself or the person you are caring for.

Factors that lead to caregiver burnout include role confusion, unrealistic expectations of yourself or others, lack of control, unreasonable demands and lack of caregiver education.

If you or a loved one has signs of caregiver burnout, please seek a support group or counselor as soon as possible.  The snowball or domino effect of burnout can have many detrimental effects on care partners and their families.

If you would like a list of Symptoms of Caregiver Burnout, please contact us and we will send you this list, which we suggest you tape on your bathroom mirror to remind yourself of what to watch for.

Pam Brandon is President/Founder of AGE-u-cate Training Institute and a passionate advocate for older adults and those who serve them.  

http://www.AGEucate.com

For 24/7 hotline contact ww.alz.org

Faith Community, Family Caregiver, Senior Care Professionals

How Caregivers can Deal with Anticipatory Grief

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Anticipatory grief refers to a grief reaction that occurs before an impending loss. Typically, the impending loss is a death of someone close due to illness but it can also be experienced by dying individuals themselves.

I dealt with anticipatory grief with both of my parents, and this often happens with long illnesses.  I’ve coached many caregivers through the years on recognizing and responding to this grief, especially for those caring for someone with chronic illness, or neurological illness such as dementia, Parkinson’s Disease, MS, Huntington’s Disease and others.  It’s very important that caregivers understand this grief and have tools to cope.

Although we most often think of grief as something that happens after a death, it often begins long before death arrives.  Many times this grief carries similar symptoms of regular grief (after a person passed).  These symptoms often include sadness, anger, isolation, forgetfulness, and depression.  What complicates anticipatory grief is the fact that it is often coupled with caregiver’s stress and exhaustion.   This can bring on overwhelming anxiety, fear and quickly snowball into physical, emotional and spiritual challenges for caregivers and families.

Anticipatory grief encompasses the loss of a person’s abilities and independence, loss of cognition, hope, future dreams,  and loss of identity for both care partners.   Anticipatory grief can last a long time, as with chronic illness of a loved one, thus the reason caregivers often become overwhelmed and simply exhausted from the lingering feelings mentioned above.

Here are a few tips on how I dealt with anticipatory grief and coached others along their journey as well:

  1. Feelings attached to anticipatory grief are normal  Like normal grief, you must allow yourself to experience the different emotions that come with it so that you can move on to acceptance.
  2. Remember you are not alone!  Reach out to others who are walking your path.  Support groups often provide vital links for people to share with others openly and honestly.
  3. Accept your loss. Although it’s not easy and you may need to spend time talking with others, reading, journaling or other means where you can express yourself, ultimately as caregivers we must face and accept that no matter how much you would like to change a situation, it is what it is.  You will give yourself a gift by going through this process of acceptance.
  4. Remember that death is a part of life and that because you are grieving does not mean special moments and memory-making is gone.  Quite the contrary… you may find that by reframing your thoughts and accepting that every moment is even more precious, you will gain so much more in return by truly living in the moment with your loved one.
  5. Everyone grieves differently and accept that your grief will be different than other family members and friends.  Accept that the journey of grief is everyone’s own walk and we should be as accepting of others and our own.  In other words, this is a time to walk with grace.
  6. Be intentional about caring for yourself.  This might mean extra time allotted to meditation, prayer, exercise, journal-writing, reading of whatever it is that feeds your soul.
  7. Reach out to others, even when it’s the last thing you want to do.  Maintaining your relationships and connections is the healthiest antidote to cycling into isolation.
  8. Be mindful that when your loved one dies, feelings of relief are normal, but this does not mean that you will also not experience grief again.  It will be different grief but certainly will come with many of the emotions felt during anticipatory grief.
  9. Your best gift may be to reach out to others who are experiencing anticipatory grief.  Giving when you feel you have none more to give is often the best medicine.
  10. Practice the art of gratitude for the ups and downs, joys and challenges.  Illness and death certainly bring soul-pain, but can also open up avenues for deep personal growth and strength.

Pam Brandon is President/Founder of AGE-u-cate® Training Institute and a passionate advocate for older adults and those who serve them.  A long-time caregiver herself, Pam has inspired thousands of caregivers with education, support, and wisdom.

http://www.AGEucate.com

Faith Community, Family Caregiver, Senior Care Professionals

How Can We Lovingly Embrace the Ending…Tips for Families

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What is a harder conversation topic with elderly parents – money or death?  If you guessed death, you get a gold star.  Why do we find it so very difficult to discuss the inevitable?  Surely we’ve all come to grips with the fact there is one thing certain about life and that is death.  We can embrace the ending by learning to embrace the life that we still have with our loved ones until the times comes when they are no longer with us.

Often it is not death that frightens people but the process of death.  Will there be pain, suffering and will it linger?  Fear of the unknown often is what ties us up into a pretzel of NOT wanting to talk about the ending.  What if we could learn to open up conversations so that everyone could be more prepared for the unknown, more accepting of death itself, and in turn make the process of dying a compassionate and loving experience?  Sadly, too often I see insecurity indecisions and pain overtake what could be a sweet time of compassion, filled with memories in itself.  Memories to embrace and treasure.

Most families have a considerable amount of unfinished business in this arena.  Here are some tips on how to open doors of communication, come to grips with what some call a “long goodbye”, especially those living with dementia or other chronic illness, and certainly lastly how to make the goal of acceptance and compassion be first and foremost in all planning, decision-making, and conversations.

  •  Make your wishes known.  That means we listen to our loved ones, preferably long before we have to make difficult decisions for them.  I want to interject here that we all need to understand that we should be guided by Plans A, B, and C – understanding the Life Plan A almost never is a reality.  That said, as care partners and families we do our very best to fulfill those wishes, but many circumstances may make that impossible.  Far too many times I’ve heard promised made to loved ones that they will be able to pass at home.  When the time comes, and that is not able to be fulfilled the family member feels horrible guilt.   Remember, we should be open and honest in lovingly expressing that we will do all we can to fulfill their wishes, but that it may not be possible for a number of reasons.
  • Spend more time embracing the moment of the ending rather than funeral plans.  Why is it that we agonize over what songs will be sung and flowers delivered – when our loved one needs our compassionate hand to embrace and hold at this moment?  Far too long we have gotten priorities a bit confused would you agree?  What if we put that energy and emotion into what can be embraced int he here and now?
  • Remeber that one’s feelings and emotions remain intact, although declining, until the end of life.  Response to touch, expression, love, music, even nature can have profound effects on the dying person.  Talking “around” a dying person is as much a sign of disrespect as it is a sign that they’ve been dismissed as a person.

“Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End   

Pam Brandon is President/Founder of AGE-u-cate Training Institute and a passionate advocate for older adults and those who care for them.  She is co-creator of the Compassionate Touch® program for end-of-life care.  www.AGEucate.com 

Faith Community, Family Caregiver, Senior Care Professionals

Holiday Traditions…Accepting Change and Transition

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or christmas cooking and kitchen utensils on wooden table, top view

I love traditions, especially holiday traditions.  Being from a large Italian/Norwegian family food played a big part in these traditions.  We didn’t just make a few dozen Christmas cookies.  We made hundreds and hundreds of cookies.  The Friday after Thanksgiving was when the season’s serious cookie baking kicked off.

My mom and I would gather the old family recipe cards, many which were already decades old by that time.  We’d gather our shopping list, pull the tins (that were only used for Christmas cookies), clear the kitchen table and enthusiastically start the month long activity of creating sugary, buttery, nutty, chocolaty, almondy, gingery, cinamonny wonders.

My dad was only allowed the burned or “seconds” cookies, which he looked forward to at least one or two from each batch.  Other than that, the cookies were layered in tins and frozen, and not to be touched until Christmas eve.

As our family evolved, kids married and moved away,  Christmas gatherings were no longer always in the high double digits.  But for some reason, even when I too was married and starting my family, there was always the sense that it wasn’t Christmas without truckloads of cookies being lovingly created.  As the years past, I had to get a grip on the fact that 600 cookies was not necessary for a family of four, even with many plates for friends, shut-ins and church  events.

Traditions are certainly important.  They remind us who we are and they give us an identity and purpose in this big crazy world.  Accepting that traditions can evolve is also very important, or it can lead to feelings of disappointment and sadness.

How can we keep traditions alive while adjusting to changes in life, circumstances, and the people with whom we share these life memories?

Here are some suggestions that I came to grips with as my own parents aged and as physical and cognitive decline made us look at holidays at what was important.

  • Accept that change is a part of life, and be open to trying something new and different.  Wow, this was tough for me, but when I did – guess what?  It made me feel free.  Instead of a small shipload of cookies, I was happy to bake just my very very favorites.  In doing so, I freed myself up to enjoy other things during the Christmas season that I enjoyed.
  • Decide what is important and make that a priority, but know you may have to scale back.  Attending Christmas church services and festivals was and always will be at the core of my joy during the season.  As my mom’s Parkinson’s disease progressed, it became difficult to get out, so we chose just a few simple services and concerts that were more manageable and enjoyable for both of us.
  • Big is not always best.  In fact, I can say with conviction that in the years I’ve shared this with caregivers, it is almost a universal fact that if we focus on quality, quieter visits, it becomes much more enjoyable that large boisterous crowds.  We think that is a gift, but in actuality, most older adults begin to feel very overwhelmed and anxious is this environment.  So instead of ALL the family, set aside small bits of time to enjoy your loved one with conversation, touch and just the joy of presence… that is preserving the moment.
  • Accept last minute plan adjustments.  Illness, disability, cognitive decline or any other number of circumstances may mean that a holiday plan may need to be canceled or changed.  This is called life, and if we accept it with grace, it will be less stressful on caregivers, families and your loved ones.  Sometimes these unexpected changes are actually blessings in disguise for accepting what may be a new normal.

It has been 10 years since my mother’s passing, and while I hold these traditions near and dear, I have also been able adopt new traditions with my family that make life all that much richer.  My hope is that you may do the same.

Pam Brandon is President/Founder of AGE-u-cate® Training Institute and a passionate advocate for older adults and those who care for them.  

www.AGEucate.com