Dementia Caregiving: Tips to Overcome Burnout and Find Balance
Submitted by Beth Rush
Founder and Managing Editor
Body+Mind Magazine
Caring for someone with dementia is an act of love, but it’s also stressful. It’s constant work to ensure that person is safe and healthy. You may not feel comfortable acknowledging the resulting burnout, but that doesn’t make it disappear. Learn everything you need to know about this dilemma to overcome caregiver burnout without sacrificing your routine.
Reasons Why Dementia Caregiving Leads to Burnout
Acknowledging that caring for someone causes emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion is difficult. However, these factors influence every caregiver’s burnout.
1. It’s Full-Time Work
Whether you get paid for your caregiving efforts or not, they’re a full-time job. Experts estimate that caregivers provide 15.3 billion hours of informal care each year. You’re likely tending to your loved one throughout the day by monitoring them, bathing them, feeding them, and assisting with their bathroom breaks.
If you have a part-time caregiver, you still exert emotional energy while you’re away from your loved one. You’re worrying about how they’re doing, thinking about upcoming appointments and potentially stressing about what the next few months or years will bring. Both care methods are exhausting, even if it comes from a place of love.
2. It May Complicate Your Family Dynamics
Care partners are often the family members of the person living with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. The parent you’ve relied on your entire life now needs you for more than emotional support. Role confusion is a common caregiver stressor. Time may help you process the change, but it can also cause long-term discomfort if you don’t know how to deal with your new dynamic.
3. It’s Not Fully In Your Control
No matter what you do, you can’t fully control another person’s well-being when they have dementia. You can schedule an MRI to evaluate their biomarkers and determine how their condition is advancing, but you can’t stop them from experiencing specific symptoms. The lack of control may cause things like stress, discomfort and even panic over the long-term course of your caregiving experience.
Ways to Overcome Caregiver Burnout and Find Balance
Care companions don’t have to live in a constant state of emotional distress or physical exhaustion. Use these tips to manage burnout and balance your needs while maintaining your care routine.
1. Practice Accepting Your Emotions
It’s easy to push your feelings away when you have to focus on someone else. Unfortunately, those feelings build up and add to your emotional exhaustion. Recognizing and accepting them is an excellent first step when you’re ready to overcome caregiver burnout.
You don’t have to understand each emotion deeply to release its hold on your stress levels. Ask yourself what you’re feeling and name it. It can be that simple. Use those steps to accept your impatience or frustration and reduce your caregiver stress by not fighting your instinctive emotions.
2. Delegate Whenever Possible
The combination of panic and responsibility can make some people take on too many responsibilities at once. You want your loved one to have the highest quality of life possible, but that doesn’t mean you can handle everything they need and maintain your mental health. Try delegating responsibilities to ease your stress. If family members or hired caregivers can shoulder some of your loved one’s needs, you’ll feel your burnout becoming less of a daily challenge.
3. Form a Supportive Community
Healthcare providers often practice social prescribing for their dementia patients. They encourage their patients to join social groups where everyone does an activity they enjoy. Although you don’t have an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, you need to have a community as well.
State-level, national organizations, and grassroots groups are available to help people in your caregiving role, but you can also contact other groups for support, such as:
- Alzheimer’s Association
- Alzheimer’s Foundation of America
- Family Caregiver Alliance
- Memory Cafe Directory
- Alzheimer’s Speaks
- Dementia Action Alliance
You’ll feel less alone in your caregiver role as you find online or in-person support groups. Overcoming loneliness is one of the best ways to reduce burnout. It may mean challenging stigmas associated with support groups, like worrying if people will think you’re not strong enough to manage your responsibilities. However, you’re ultimately taking care of your mental health so you can be there for your loved one more effectively.
4. Revisit Your Expectations
4. Revisit Your ExpectationsWhen people jump into a care partner role, they often think if they check off their responsibility list each day, they can regain a sense of control. In reality, you’re working alongside your loved one’s condition as it progresses. Your best care efforts won’t solve or slow their symptoms.
Revisiting your expectations to set realistic goals for yourself might help your mental health more immediately. Instead of aiming for a perfect day, your expectation could be doing your best to keep your loved one happy. Achievable goals are always better for your mental well-being than grand, unreachable goals.
5. Talk With a Therapist
You may devote all your free time to your loved one’s care, but delegating could open up enough time for you to see a therapist. Whether you attend sessions virtually or online, their expertise will help you untangle your mental health. You’ll talk through your daily thought patterns, vent your frustrations and develop self-help tools in a safe space with a non-judgemental therapist. It’s a powerful way to minimize burnout and balance your needs if you can find the time for recurring sessions.
6. Save Time for Self-Care
People sometimes believe that the only forms of self-care are going to the spa or taking a vacation. While those strategies reduce stress effectively, they aren’t always possible if you’re devoting most or all of your time to a loved one’s care.
Self-care is any stress-relieving choice you make during your day, so it’s always possible to fit into a caregiver’s schedule. Use two minutes after parking your car to appreciate your accomplishments, no matter their size. It’ll boost your self-esteem, which fosters a more positive mindset. Take slow, deep breaths during a bathroom break or listen to calming music while your loved one sleeps. Anything that eases your mind can be part of your self-care routine.
7. Get Better Sleep
Sleep schedules can be tricky for care companions. You might need to get up throughout the night if you live with your loved one and they can’t sleep very long. Maybe you’re staying awake because you’re worrying about them or researching treatment options.
The key is to get better sleep whenever possible. You don’t need to get a full eight hours to defeat burnout, even though that certainly helps. Try improving your sleep quality by setting your thermostat between 65 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit so your body enters sleep mode faster. Change your mattress or invest in a more supportive pillow. If you’re comfortable in bed, you’ll sleep more deeply when you get the chance.
8. See Your Doctor Routinely
You’re likely used to taking your loved one to their medical appointments, but when was the last time you scheduled a routine checkup with your own doctor? You have to care for yourself to show up for others, especially someone relying on you each day.
Schedule your annual doctor’s appointments and any other preventive care services applicable to your health history. You’ll get a few minutes to chat about how you’re doing, which might point out more effective ways to care for your overall well-being while you’re dealing with burnout.
Manage Caregiver Stress More Effectively
It’s possible to overcome caregiver burnout if you keep tips like these in mind. Finding the best ways to minimize burnout and balance your care companion routine takes time, but it’s worth it. You’ll feel stronger while tending to your loved one and managing the other responsibilities in your life.
Beth Rush
Founder and Managing Editor
Body+Mind Magazine
Beth Rush is the mindfulness editor at Body+Mind. She writes about caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease. She also shares tips for coping with c-PTSD, PCOS, and climate anxiety. Her goal is to encourage readers to live their best lives.
Subscribe to the Body+Mind Newsletter for more posts by Beth.
