Reduced to tears of frustration? Overwhelmed by caring or being passed pillar to post by your LA? Me too, find stress-reducing tips here…
Carer Stress
The majority of carers say they feel more stressed because of their caring role. Few people, other than fellow family carers, fully understand. Carer’s wellbeing is such a ‘thing’, there are even a cat memes on the subject… as you will see.
Seriously though, there are employment regulations that rightly protect people who work long hours and disruptive shift patterns. There’s no such protection for those who care for relatives at home.
Unfortunately we carers can expect some long term stress effects and (hopefully only) occasional episodes of acute stress. We need to learn how to manage our energy and stress levels.
What stress is and what it does to you
Now, perhaps like you, I’ve done a little reading about and ‘had a go’ at mindfulness in the past. I understand the science a bit and how it could help me. But I’ve just never found the time to follow through with the regular practise mindfulness needs to be effective.
So at the July Carers Bucks meeting, I found it very helpful when Sally explained in ‘carer focused’ terms how I and other carers could look after ourselves a bit more. We all find ourselves in ‘acute’ high-stress moments from time to time.
Sally explained our amygdala to us, it’s an ancient (in evolutionary terms) part of our brain. The amygdala is responsible for ‘fight, flight or freeze’ and can, if we’re not mindful, hijack rational thought with an emotional response. The emotional response then clouds our thinking. While we can’t switch this part of our brain off, we can ‘shift’ it when it ambushes us.
Apparently, we feel long term stress physically in our bodies first. However we tend to ignore these physical symptoms and battle on. For me, my shoulders get tense, for you it might be a headache. Read my post Looking After YOU for some additional help.
It’s often only when we are ambushed by emotional symptoms (like anger, frustration, hopelessness, resentment) that we start paying attention to stress. *Guilty*.
Quick stress-reducing tips
Sally pointed out that while we may have no control over the stress resulting from how someone else is behaving or from their choices, we can choose how to react to it.
Here are Sally’s ‘in the moment’ tips that shift our emotional ‘fight/flight/freeze’ amygdala back to a more rational, problem-solving frame of mind.
- ‘Scaling’ the challenge. For example, asking yourself ‘how am I feeling on a scale of 1 to 10 about this situation’ invites your rational brain to kick in. It’s intriguing how merely quantifying something stressful subdues an over-emotional brain.
- ‘Clenching’. If you find yourself angry, clench your fists and any/all other muscles you can summon in that moment to take control of the tense physical reaction. When you eventually relax, you will find the anger has eased.
- ‘Belly breathing’. When we breathe in, we tense and when we breathe out, we relax. So breathing in deeply (using our belly/diaphragm) to a count of 7 and out to a count of 11, for example, ‘forces’ us to relax. Improves with practice, 5 mins a day is good apparently.
- ‘Thumb blowing’. If another person is angry or upset, ask them to blow on your (or their) thumb! I’ve not tried this yet but I can see how it would be hard to stay angry while blowing on a thumb. Apparently, this works well with angry children too. Who knew?
- Doing a power pose to feel and appear more confident. Stand or sit up as straight as you can, with feet apart, stretch your arms out to the side and raise above your head like an athlete crossing the finish line. Take a few deep breaths and the longer you hold the pose (a minute or so), the more confident you feel. Useful before an important meeting and can be done privately in the loo!
I used ‘scaling’ very recently when one of Marj’s care workers was admitted to A&E. On top of other work and family commitments, I had to step back into the hands-on care role while also finding a replacement to ensure Marj’s care worker did not feel pressure herself to come back to work too soon. Initially, I couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed. Quickly remembering to scale immediately freed me to remind myself how I’d been in this situation many times before and had figured it out, which I went on to do.
I recommend you try these stress-reducing tips out too, let me know how it goes.
Further reading/viewing:
- This YouTube video by Braive (I’ve not used them, they’ve just made a good video!) explains our ancient ‘fight or flight or freeze‘ mechanism.
- I like this animation for carers by the Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland.
- Mind has some helpful tips for carers
- For other mindfulness info, courses and resources: Oxford Mindfulness Centre and Be Mindful. I’ve not used them myself so do google.
- A mindfulness book I like is Ruby Wax’s Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled, it explains the science and gives you step by step guidance (that I’ve yet to try!). Shamash Alidini’s book Mindfulness for Dummies also sounds good.
- Mindfulness apps: Headspace and Calm are popular stress-reducing guided meditation aids and there’ll be others if you search. Try a few to find the voices and characteristics you like best.
