In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

23. Three Steps To Avoid Caregiver Fatigue

July 30, 2024 • Marika • Season 1 • Episode 23

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In this insightful episode, I offer a lifeline to those feeling overwhelmed and undervalued in their caregiving role. I'm sharing a webinar I recorded last year, detailing the three critical steps I took to get support in my caregiving journey.

Caregiving often traps us in prolonged survival mode, which isn't sustainable. It's crucial to build resilience and regain control over your life. I emphasize the importance of validating your struggles because your well-being is just as important as your partner's. By acknowledging your own needs and feelings, you can start to create a healthier balance in your caregiving responsibilities.

I also debunk the myth that you can fix or control your partner's feelings. Understanding this truth empowers you to embrace emotional independence and disentangle your emotions from theirs. This shift allows you to approach caregiving with a clearer mind and a more centered heart.

You'll learn why focusing on what YOU can control is vital. This involves setting boundaries, seeking support, and finding practical ways to manage your own stress. Lastly, I stress the necessity of prioritizing self-care without guilt, helping you find the balance needed to avoid burnout and resentment.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to break free from feeling overwhelmed and undervalued, and to start thriving in their caregiving role. It's time to reclaim your sense of self and well-being while continuing to provide the best care for your loved one.

As a Resiliency Coach for people who are caregiving for their partner, I'm here to support YOU, the caregiver. Learn more about my work at www.coachmarika.com.

Marika Humphreys:

Good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to the webinar Three Steps to Avoid Caregiver Fatigue. When your spouse has serious illness or condition, the emotional and the physical demands can take a toll on your wellbeing, and I know that's probably why you are here today. So you're in the right spot. We are going to explore some beliefs and some real steps that you can take to prevent that fatigue or address it if you're already feeling it, and really preserve your health so you can continue to be the caregiver you want to be without exhausting or losing yourself. So during this webinar, I'm going to teach you three key things that I learned during my journey of caring for my husband. So we're going to dive right in. I want to encourage you to put your questions in the Q&A and I will have time at the end to address them. So if you've got questions, pop them in there as they come up and we'll have time at the end to go over some questions. So I'm've got questions, pop them in there as they come up and we'll have time at the end to go over some questions. So I'm Marika Humphries and I am a certified life coach. I work with people who are caring for their husband. I help them build their mental and emotional resiliency so that they can show up for their partner without losing themselves right. That's the real key there. How do we find that balance? Because it's hard, it's very hard. I have been on this journey. That's why I focus on the people that I do. I know how it feels and know that you often feel like you're in a life that you never expected. Certainly how I felt, certainly didn't want to be a caregiver right At the age of 40, for me, that's when I started.

Marika Humphreys:

This is a picture of my family in 2018. My husband, dave, was in his fifth year of battling cancer and he was quite. You can see in that picture he's quite thin. He was not normally that thin. He would actually pass away six months after this picture was taken. I was his partner and his caregiver during his entire cancer battle, while working full-time. We obviously had a young child at the time, so we were parenting and I was working full-time. During that journey, he ended up with two different types of cancer. He had surgery, he had chemo. We worked with a naturopath at one point. He went to a clinic overseas in Europe for treatment at one point and, as I mentioned, he did end up passing away from cancer.

Marika Humphreys:

So I've been through the grieving process as well, and I just tell you that, to say that I have been there. And while your individual situation is probably a little different, I'm sure, but the feelings, I know how it feels, I know how overwhelming. Sometimes it's chaotic, sometimes it's frustrating and heartbreaking, and often it's exhausting. Some of the things that I learned during that time were life-changing for me, literally life-changing, and some of that is what I'm going to share with you today. So we're going to dive right in.

Marika Humphreys:

I'm actually going to start with the end, right, begin with the end in mind. So here is what I want you to take away today. I want you to come away understanding these three points. The first one is that your struggles matter okay, and while I will tell you that and I'm going to talk about it in more in depth it's important for you to believe that yourself. The second point is that your partner's emotions aren't your responsibility, and I'm obviously going to talk about that more as well. And then the third point is, while you may feel like a lot of what is happening in your life is beyond your control, you do have a lot more control than you realize, and it's just knowing kind of where that is and learning to take action from there. So I'm going to share with you why these three points are key to really changing what this journey looks like for you. So we're going to dive right in, okay, but I want to talk for a minute about where you are right now, what you may be struggling with right now. Maybe all of these things, maybe just some of them. These are probably the reasons why you came here today.

Marika Humphreys:

Caregiving is a roller coaster and it will take you on that roller coaster, especially with your emotions. One minute you're hopeful and things seem promising and then the next minute you are sad and frustrated, maybe even angry. It is this up and down and that is part of the nature of the journey. Another challenge that caregivers face is the constant uncertainty. There is so much uncertainty when your partner is struggling with a serious illness or condition and that just becomes a really difficult thing to deal with over the long-term. The uncertainty, because we like certainty in our lives, we like to know what to expect. Worries and fears, lots of worries and fears. Right, that seems like it can change from day to day Every time you visit the doctor. New worries, different changes in their physical condition or their mental condition bring about different fears for you fears about the future, what's going to happen to them, what's going to happen for you, and fatigue and overwhelm. Those are big, big, big struggles for caregivers, and that just feeling of being really stretched thin.

Marika Humphreys:

And last but not least right, is guilt. I've talked to a lot of people last week and every single one of them was struggling with guilt of some sort, right, and sometimes resentment. That doesn't show up for everybody, but I certainly felt it. Guilt and resentment are things that come up in caregiving and then we just we feel awful about them. So this is probably some of the things that you might be able to identify with, and I want to tell you just my story really quick. I felt that everything in our life had become about cancer, which made sense right, it's a very serious thing, but it also sucked. We're living our lives and building our careers and raising a child, and then overnight it pretty much all changed and became about how do we battle this disease? And the more time that went on, the harder it was and the more tired I got, because I ended up feeling all these things on this list most of the time and then I felt guilty about it. I felt guilty for even feeling like I had problems because I wasn't the one with cancer.

Marika Humphreys:

So what happens is we end up in this state of survival mode. Really, caregiver fatigue is really this kind of like state of survival mode that we're just basically getting by or we feel like we're just getting by and it's exhausting. Survival mode is actually a very useful state of being, but it's meant for short periods of time. It is not meant to, you're not meant to live in that state for months on end, because when we do, when we're in a state of survival mode like just barely getting by, we're constantly exhausted. Obviously, we lack energy, which impacts our sleep too. We're not able to sleep, which keeps us in the cycle of lack of energy. We aren't able to focus because we're not getting good sleep and we're not able to make as good of decisions. We're not able to be creative in our problem solving or reasoning. We're not able to solve problems as clearly and easily as we are when we're in a state of survival mode, or being in a state of survival mode hampers those things.

Marika Humphreys:

Is what I'm trying to say and that's what keeps us from being strong and resilient. It keeps us from being able to show up in the way that we want, and that's certainly where I found myself. What we want is to be strong for our partner and feel connected to them. We wanna be present for our family, be able to support them. We want to be present for our family, be able to support them. We want to be able to focus at work and not be distracted. We want to be able to sleep and take care of ourselves physically and emotionally. We want to have some balance I know it's sometimes that seems like an impossible thing. We want to feel, not feel guilty when we take some time for ourselves, and we want to be able to do all those things without exhausting ourselves and take care of our partner. And, probably most of all, we want to know that we'll be okay and that we are still in charge of our own life.

Marika Humphreys:

So how do you get there right? How do you get from a state of survival mode to feeling strong and resilient and connected? And it is possible. I will say that it's very much possible and it doesn't require anything outside of you to change, meaning that it doesn't require a change in your partner's health. It just requires some adjustment internally, which is what I'm going to talk about, at least how you get started on that path. Okay, so the three steps right to changing how this journey is for you is those three things that I mentioned, right. First of all, recognizing, validating your own struggles to yourself, recognizing that they are important. The second step is really learning and being able to care for your partner, also understanding that their emotions aren't your responsibility. And then the third step is learning how to take control of what you can and what you have control over, and being able to let go of the rest. That helps you feel more empowered. Okay, so that first step realizing your struggles matter. They are just as important as your spouse or your partner.

Marika Humphreys:

Caregiving is a path marked by emotional exhaustion and sometimes these unseen struggles and constant dedication. Right, and you are. It can feel very lonely, but you need to know, first of all, you're not alone in that struggle. Everyone on this call has probably felt it and, believe me, you're not alone in feeling the challenge of that. It is hard, it is really hard, and it's very common for us to put our partner, our children, our work commitments, everything else above our own needs, right, the needs of everyone else above us. And again, that's kind of what most a lot of times we're taught in society that's like the right thing to do. But when you're caregiving it's not sustainable over the long term and you're probably finding that right now.

Marika Humphreys:

If you're here and you're feeling any sort of fatigue, you realize you can't do that. You just cannot maintain that constant putting everybody else's needs above your own. So you will recognize how to recognize if you're doing this is if you're feeling tired and burnout. But it's also if you're feeling guilty about that, if you feel bad at all, guilty at all for taking any time for yourself or doing anything for yourself, that's a sign right, that you're not valuing your own needs or you're putting your own needs last.

Marika Humphreys:

If you struggle to put up any boundaries or place limits on your care, that's a lot of you, I know, because it was me too right. We just try to do everything and just do it all and expect ourselves to do it all. Maybe your partner expects some of that, right. But there's a time and place to put some boundaries up and you have to identify what those are for you. So if you struggle with that. That's another sign that you're not valuing your own needs. If you feel like you have no choice, if you feel this, you have to care for them out of obligation. There's no one else to do it right. That feeling is another sign or another indication that you aren't valuing your own needs, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit more because that might be a hard one for some of you. But the real truth is your struggles are important too, even if you're not the one with the illness or the condition or who's disabled or whatever. It doesn't make your own challenges any less real and they deserve acknowledgement.

Marika Humphreys:

When we diminish our own needs, when we constantly put someone else's needs above our own, it doesn't serve us and it honestly doesn't serve the people we love either, because we start feeling resentful, we start burning out. We might even start developing our own health issues. For me, what that looked like was I had this kind of low level back pain that just wouldn't go away. It wasn't debilitating, but it was constantly there for a long period of time. So often our emotions and our fatigue will show up physically in our bodies and we'll feel stuck. We'll feel stuck in our lives, stuck in our caregiving role. And that resentment? If we feel that resentment, then we start judging ourselves for it, right? Then we feel awful about it.

Marika Humphreys:

And I just want to say, if you are feeling resentful or if you are feeling obligated or even angry, please know those are just human emotions and when you judge yourself for those human emotions, you will keep yourself stuck. But I know we do that. I did it as well. Right, I told you that I was struggling and then I would just feel guilty for even thinking about my own problems because I didn't have cancer. I shouldn't. As if there's some ranking on pain, right? Somebody who has this condition is a level 10 and I'm just a level two, so I shouldn't even pay attention. It doesn't work that way, right? Because we're all individual human beings. We're all responsible for our own emotional and physical and mental wellbeing, so we have to acknowledge our own struggle. And when you've been constantly putting others' needs before your own, this is what happens, right? It leads to these issues that I've just talked about. So instead, it's important to normalize and acknowledge your struggles for yourself. Okay, I'm telling you this because this is one of the things I struggled with. We want someone else to tell us this. Maybe you want your partner or you want your family members to acknowledge how hard this is, and that is nice. It is lovely to have others recognize how hard this is. But I want you to do this for yourself, because you will make changes only when you recognize that this is hard and you need support too, or you need to listen to yourself too.

Marika Humphreys:

I remember very vividly the day that I realized this for myself. It was the end of it was kind of nearing the end of the school year. We were living in Northern California, so it was already warm and my kid was at swim practice and we were in a small town, so the pool had this big grassy area around it and I was just walking around on the grass and talking to my mom and I think I was just sort of unloading on her and we were a couple of years into my husband's cancer battle and I was just tired and worn out and then felt guilty about it. I remember feeling so bad that I was just all thinking only about myself and I was talking about that to my mom and I kind of had this realization like, yes, I was not the one with cancer, but I was struggling. This was hard for me too, and I realized that my struggle was important because it was mine. I can't be in charge of his struggle. Yes, that was also important for him, but mine was important too and for some reason it just hit me in that moment, in that conversation that day, that my struggle was also important and had been ignoring it and devaluing it to myself. And that is why I was just so self-focused, because I felt terrible. So I was kind of stuck in the cycle of total focus on myself, which is not what I wanted, but it was simply because I'd been ignoring my own needs.

Marika Humphreys:

And, like I mentioned, why that's important is because you're the only one who's fully responsible for your own wellbeing. And we forget that when we're caring, because we start taking on the responsibility of our partner's wellbeing, and that's that is the nature of caregiving. But we can't do that at the expense of our own, and I know many of us do. We do that and we kind of we don't think about it. We start to do it unconsciously. So you're probably here because you're finding yourself exhausted. So your struggle means that, yes, it's okay to have difficult days, it's okay to have days where you don't want to do it anymore. It's okay to have doubt, to wonder if you're doing it all wrong or you're a terrible caregiver. Personal struggles, right, all of that is part of the challenge of being a caregiver and I want you to just acknowledge that for yourself. Right, acknowledge that this is hard, and when you believe that and give that compassion to yourself, it is the first step towards starting to understand what your particular struggles are, kind of what the nature of them is and to start addressing them.

Marika Humphreys:

Your experiences are valid. I'm going to say this a lot. Your feelings are important and when you validate them for yourself, that is how you start to grow and move towards healing. Right, and, like I mentioned, I don't want you any negative guilt or resentment or anger you may feel, whether it's towards your partner or towards your situation. Just having those feelings does not mean anything about you as a human. It means that you are a human and we all have emotions. They aren't good emotions and bad emotions. They're just emotions. They're just part of the human experience. All of us feel guilt, self-pity emotions they're just part of the human experience. All of us feel guilt, self-pity, all of us feel resentment at times. They are part of the human experience and they don't mean that we're a bad person. So I want you to let go of that judgment for yourself. It's simply a reminder that you need to take care of yourself. Okay, we're going to move on to the second step, and that is realizing that your partner's emotions aren't your responsibility. This is a hard one. This was probably my biggest struggle For much of the time.

Marika Humphreys:

During my partner's, during my husband's battle with cancer, I was always trying to fix his pain, and especially the first year. It was physical pain. He had a really, really strong bout of, or ground of, several rounds of chemo and he was just, he was miserable. It was awful and I felt awful seeing him in such pain and just like he was bloated. He felt this, he had this nausea and I would just. It kind of made me like anxious and busy because I wanted to fix it for him. I felt like that was my job, like I should be able to soothe him, I should be able to comfort him and his wife. Like this is what spouses do, but usually there was nothing that I could do. This was kind of like other than get him a pillow and like, maybe pain meds or nausea medication. There wasn't much I could do.

Marika Humphreys:

Later he had a lot of emotional pain, and that was often anger, not usually directed at me. It was more like directed at sometimes his body, sometimes the things he couldn't do anymore, sometimes just the world in general. And it was still hard, though. When he was feeling angry I was like on edge and I worried about it. I worried about, like, how anger would have impacted his health. So I got to this point where we try to like anticipate what might set him off and try to fix it in advance. This is a terrible idea, because you can't you can't try to like it's. I was so focused on trying to fix or control his emotions and I literally it was something that I absolutely had no control over I felt completely powerless and frustrated because I usually just ended up annoying him further and my energy was anxious and on edge and like kind of always just like this nervous energy. So when you're around someone like that, who's just anxious and on edge, it puts you on anxious and on edge, like it just perpetuates. So it was miserable for both of us. I had this belief that it was my job to make it better and that some of you may have something similar to that.

Marika Humphreys:

Your partner's emotions become intertwined with your own. I know that happens for a lot of us and it makes sense, because caregiving is about caring and love. It's a fundamental part of being a caregiver and being a spouse. But the truth is that you are each responsible for your own emotional well-being. You can't manage your partner's emotions any more than they can manage or control yours. So this means finding recognizing that emotionally you are independent. You need to find emotional independence. When you're able to embrace emotional independence from your partner actually leads to a much healthier dynamic and you're actually able to support them more effectively than you are when you're emotionally interdependent or emotionally dependent is really a better word, not interdependent when you're emotionally dependent on them. So when they get upset, you get upset, or when they're sad, you're sad, right?

Marika Humphreys:

When you're intertwined in their emotions, it comes from this idea that it's your job to somehow manage it or fix it or comfort them. But you can't right, you cannot. You don't have control over another person's emotions. And when we think that way, we show up in this anxious anxious energy or nervous energy or worried energy right, we're not as able to support them from a loving, calm place, which is what we want, right If we're struggling. Support them from a loving, calm place, which is what we want, right If we're struggling. We want someone to be calm and loving and confident. We don't want their anxiety on top of our own. So I had really felt like it was my responsibility to make my husband feel better and because I took that responsibility on, I found it really hard to separate my own emotions from his emotions, because it was always like I'm failing at this job and I was trying to take responsibility over something I literally had no control over. And I want to say that I think part of the reason why we fall into this is also because we really struggle with their pain.

Marika Humphreys:

When I say pain, I really mean that in a broad sense. Sometimes that's physical pain, their decline of their body, whatever that might look like. Sometimes it's emotional pain. They are going through potentially a lot right, and that is a huge adjustment mentally, emotionally, physically and we have this kind of I don't know where we get it, but we have this idea that they shouldn't have to be in pain or it's not fair for them, that somehow it's not right and we need to make it better or we need to make it right.

Marika Humphreys:

But the problem with this kind of thinking and then sometimes it's in the back of our mind is that the reality is they are struggling, they are in pain. It is what's true for them. And while it's natural to think it's not fair or it's not right or it's somehow unjust, when we think that way, we end up arguing with the reality of what is and that isn't helpful for you or your partner, because pain is a part of the human experience and it needs to be acknowledged, not denied. So when we try to fix someone's pain, we're, in essence, kind of denying that experience for them. All human beings, we all experience pain. We experience anger, frustration, sadness, guilt, resentment, and for someone who's got a physical condition or a serious diagnosis, pain is a part of that journey, often more than it is for someone who doesn't have that situation.

Marika Humphreys:

So I say that to say that we need to adjust our thinking and know that pain is a part of this experience for both of us and we want to be able to expect it so that we can acknowledge it. That means acknowledging their pain as well as your own. Okay, it's not something we can fix. It just needs to be acknowledged. So what do I mean by acknowledge right?

Marika Humphreys:

When we understand that we're not responsible for their emotions, and the second part of that is they don't need us to be, they don't need us to fix them or to try to fix them, but they do need our love and our support and our acknowledgement of their struggle. So when we stop trying to fix them and we are better able to just acknowledge what they're going through, when someone is struggling, what we first want is our struggle to be seen and heard. Right, we want our suffering to be acknowledged. We don't want people to fix us. Usually we want to just say, like gosh, this is hard and it sucks, and we want someone to go. I know and I'm here for you and I love you. And sometimes it doesn't mean saying those words. Sometimes it means just being there, it means just offering support and love instead of solutions, because, remember, emotions are not a problem, all of the emotions, they're just part of the human experience. But we do need to acknowledge them.

Marika Humphreys:

When we focus on acknowledging someone's pain with support and love, without taking responsibility for it, it allows you to maintain that emotional independence and show up calm and supportive and strong and resilient, and when someone is in the room who is exuding a calm and in control, it's like, yeah, I want some of that. Like that is how we support them, that is how we can influence them. We all want someone to believe in us, even when we're not believing in ourselves. But you won't be able to get there when you're trying to fix their pain because you feel responsible for it. So I hope that makes sense.

Marika Humphreys:

This is a hard really kind of a hard mental adjustment for most of us. I know it was for me, but it was also the probably biggest game changer for me and how I was thinking about my husband and his struggle. So I want to move on to the third step here, and that is understanding that you actually have more control right now than you probably realize, and you will feel more empowered during this time when you learn to focus on what you actually do have control over. So that starts with. One of those things is learning to let go of the fact that you don't have control over their emotions, right, the reason a lot of us feel so exhausted is because we're trying to control all of these things outside of us. I'm going to talk a little bit more about some of those examples, but I remember feeling very much like I had just no control in my life anymore, like cancer was in charge, and it felt awful and it was because I had become so focused on my husband, on his health, on his emotions, on everything the doctors were going to say the future, which just seemed like completely unpredictable. Now All of those things were outside of my control. I wasn't spending any time focused on what I did have control over, which was me, how I was thinking and how I was processing my emotions and how I was showing up each day. So I want to take a minute and just talk about some of the things that are outside of your control, because these are the things that we often focus on as a caregiver, and it's important to see where your control ends.

Marika Humphreys:

Right, what's outside of your control? And usually these are the things that we have influenced but we don't control, and that's an important distinction. What other people say do I will say. But both of those things what other people say and do, like, for example, what the doctor says, how supportive your family is or not, sometimes the things your partner says, or your partner does or doesn't do. All of those things are outside of your control. So recognizing that right just helps you cope with it better.

Marika Humphreys:

Now, what you do and how you respond to their words or to their actions or to their lack of actions inactions is what you control, right? You control whether you fly off the handle or whether you take a moment and calm yourself. That's what you control. You can't control what they say, because the doctors are going to say all sorts of things, are going to give you all sorts of news that feels uncaring. Sometimes Family is maybe going to be supportive, but many times there's a family member you struggle with or your partner could be that person that you're struggling with. So you just have to see that those things are not in your control so we can't spend so much of our energy trying to control it or stressing about it. Partner self I already talked about that one right how they feel, how they're coping emotionally or not coping outside of your control. You can influence. But your influence is going to be greatest when you are calm and you are taking care of your own needs. Then you're going to have a greater influence by showing up in a calm and loving way.

Marika Humphreys:

The future or the past both of those things are outside of your control. Sometimes we obsess about the things that we should have done or that we wish our partner had done in the past Should have gone to the doctor sooner, they shouldn't have smoked so much, or they shouldn't have taken such terrible care of their health, or I should have insisted that they listen when they were feeling that experiencing that weird pain, like all of these should haves, wish we had. Yeah, it's going to come up Like you're going to think those things, but you want to let them go. It's in the past. No control, right? We don't control the past anymore. It's past, and the more time you spend focused there, you will not be focusing on what you do. Control, which is in the present, okay, the other time.

Marika Humphreys:

The other area that this shows up for us is the future. What's going to happen? Sometimes it's fear around losing them, what that looks like, all of it, and maybe whether how that impacts the kids, if you have kids, or how that's going to impact you, or all the dreams and the future you plan together, or what's going to happen financially. Like all of these, what ifs right is a future that you have no control over, and when your brain is focused on it, it causes a lot of unnecessary stress because it keeps you from being in the present, keeps you from enjoying the time that you do have with your partner, from making the most of it, from showing up fully present, embracing the life in the moment and outside events, what's happening in the world around us. Like I do not listen to the news. I haven't for years and I will tell you I most recently I looked on my phone and read some news articles and I reminded myself why I don't do that. Because all of those things in the world the weather, politics are not something I directly have any control over and the reason I learned this when my husband was battling cancer.

Marika Humphreys:

The more we are focused on things that we don't have any actual control and outside events like world events or politics or politics and weather are big ones, you feel more disempowered, you feel more powerless and you're going to show up as a victim in your own life because you're thinking about things that you literally can't control, like whatever's happening with the weather right now. We're just kind of like Washington State is having this heat wave, as I know many places in the country are, and then there's tropical storms, but other than that, it's like, okay, I got to put on a jacket or I got to stay cool. What you can control is how you show up in the face of whatever you're facing. So I didn't touch on everything there, but you get the idea right.

Marika Humphreys:

Empowerment comes from distinguishing between what's within our control and what isn't. And while a lot of the time during my husband's cancer battle, especially in the beginning, my focus was very much on all the things outside of my control and I felt powerless because of it, and I sometimes I felt like another victim to his cancer. So you want to ask yourself, I want to encourage you right now to ask yourself where do I feel powerless? Where do I feel like I have no control? Or where do I feel obligation? Where do I feel like I have no control or where do I feel obligation? It's a little bit different. Obligation is a little bit different, but it's ask yourself that question, because your answer to that question will tell you where you're focused on things that are outside of your control.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, you have the power to shape this journey. Sometimes we forget that as caregivers, it becomes so much about them and we forget that this is our journey too. Okay, we're in it too, and often for us it's a different journey. Right, they might be struggling with their health and their emotions as a result of that. For us, it can bring up all sorts of different things. This is your journey too, and what you control, how you show up and live this journey right now, right. So that means how you respond to things, the decisions you make, how you approach and solve the challenges you face, how you respond to the emotions you feel. Do you push them down or do you try to allow them and work through them? How much you take care of yourself. Those are the things that are in your control, and some of how you can do that is by being really aware. This is a lot of what I teach my clients of how to notice what you're thinking, how to acknowledge your emotions and not feel guilty for them, and then how to allow them so they move through you and then learn how to make choices deliberately instead of just feeling or acting out of obligation or acting out of habit or just kind of taking things on because we think we should. So when we do those things, when we start noticing our thinking and allowing our emotions and making deliberate decisions, our whole experience can change. Okay, so kind of going back to the three takeaways here, your struggles matter. Emotions are not your responsibility, and you will feel more empowered when you learn to focus on basically you and how you show up in this world, how you respond to the challenges in your life, how you take care of yourself, how you make decisions. That is when you will start feeling more in control. That is the three primary takeaways.

Marika Humphreys:

I want to talk for a few minutes about why this really matters. When I look back, especially at my journey, when I look at the clients that I've worked with this is again a generalization, but there's really two paths that we end up taking as caregivers and I think a lot of us unintentionally on the path on the left. This is the path of self-sacrifice, of constant worry, stress, often the guilt and the resentment and anger that we sometimes feel, feeling powerless. This path does lead to burnout and exhaustion and that means that we just don't simply have the energy to show up for ourselves or our partner or our family in the way that we'd like. That is where I was, 100% where I was when I had my kind of aha moment outside of the swimming pool, and it just means like, if you're here, it just means that if you're feeling that way, it's a good indication that you're coming to the realization that something needs to change and you're looking for answers. So that's a good place to be, because that's where I was. I'm like, okay, I can't keep going like this. Got to find a solution, something else. Right, because there are answers out there for you.

Marika Humphreys:

The other path is one of self care, right. One of learning how to handle the worries and the stresses and the anxiety that come with caregiving. The path of learning how to acknowledge and not judge your emotions and learning the process of letting them flow through you. Learning how to stay focused on what you can control and letting go how to recognize what that is and then letting go of the things that you can't, or coming to terms with the things that you can't control. Both of these paths are hard. They're both hard journeys, but the path on the right is what will lead to strength and resilience. It is what will lead to growth and to taking control of this journey that you are on.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, it's not just about them. Okay, this is your life journey as well, and when you can do that, you're more able to show up not only for yourself, but everyone who needs you. That is kind of the irony, really, that when we start taking care of ourselves and doing the three steps that I talked about today, we're actually better able to show up for other people in our lives, and it's not how we tend to think. So I want to, first of all, just show you that that is possible, because I know a lot of times caregiving is. It is hard, there's no doubt, but I want to show you what's possible during this time. So I do want to share with you some free resources that I have to really help you do the three steps that I talked about right how to value your own struggle, learn to separate your emotions from theirs and learn to focus on what you have control over.

Marika Humphreys:

I have several free resources on my website, coachmarikacom. I do a twice monthly blog that I focus on caregiver struggle, so you can always find that on my website. I also have a free little video on there as well. You will be on caregiver struggle, so you can always find that on my website. I also have a free little video on there as well. You will be on my mailing list if you're here. So I put out a Wednesday caregiver tip newsletter that I always just talk about a tip or some of these things like I kind of go more into depth on some of these things that we've talked about today and how to actually do that in your life.

Marika Humphreys:

I also do a free training on Facebook every single Monday, 9.30 Pacific time. So, whatever that is in the time zone you're in, I go on live on my Facebook business page, but also in the Facebook group. So if you're part of the Facebook group, you will see me in there as well, so you can always check that out. The recordings are saved in Facebook, so even if you don't show up live, they're always there. And, as I mentioned, if you're not in my Facebook group, I do have a private Facebook group. That's free, but it's just private, meaning it's meant for people who are caring for their partner, and I want that place to be supportive and inspiring, because so much of this journey is really hard and there's a lot of struggle. That's just part of it, right? So you need a place to go to really look at. Okay, how can I shift my focus a little bit, or what can I be grateful for, or just find some inspiration in the midst of the challenge.

Marika Humphreys:

I will also tell you I'm a life coach and I help people just like you, so I do offer individual coaching. For if you're looking for more support, my program is called Raise your Resilience and I teach you resiliency skills. So some of the things I teach is the by-product of that. Why it matters is you'll learn how to feel calmer and more present Okay, I talked about that a lot during today's presentation and like learning how to separate your emotions, that emotional independence, and also learning how and a lot of that comes from how you think about what is happening in your life, what's happening to your partner, all of your struggles, maybe, what's happening at work.

Marika Humphreys:

So I teach you how to take those worries and stresses out of your mind, how to look at them and kind of separate yourself from all of our thoughts and worries and mental drama that we all have. I teach you how to separate from that so that we can look at it and sometimes question it, because a lot of things that we think are just thoughts, right, and we give a lot of our thoughts way more attention than they deserve or that serve us. So when you learn that process I call it mind management, really learning how to manage your mind, not just letting your mind kind of spin you out or stress you out or leads down to the rabbit hole of worst case scenario you learn to manage your mind and that is how you will feel more calmer and it allows you to be more present. Okay, and I also teach you how to recognize what your emotional triggers are, because all of us have kind of unique ones that certain situations will trigger us. And then you wanna know what emotions get triggered for you and what that actually feels like in your body.

Marika Humphreys:

Learning to understand that emotions are just a sensation that we have in our body allows us to separate from the intensity of the feeling. For me, this was anxiety. I experienced a lot of anxiety, primarily when I was caregiving for my husband, and I learned to really understand what that felt like for me and to really make friends with it, so it didn't scare me so much. So, whatever that is for you, some of you may be experiencing a lot of anger or sadness. We'll dive into that. What does that look like, how does that feel and then learn how to allow it to move through you. So we tend to think that emotions are just gonna stay with us forever, and the irony is, the more we resist emotions, the longer they stay around. So you have to learn how to allow them in and allow them to go through you. It's like a wave it will wash over you unless you try to hold it back. So that's a skill that I will teach you, and just those two skills alone you will be able to support not only yourself but the ones you love, because you'll start having more energy to show up in the way that you want to.

Marika Humphreys:

And then sometimes I also focus with my clients on relationships sometimes, or time management, making decisions, all of those other things how to find some form of joy in their life, because that often feels impossible. Like those are other things that I work on, depending on what my client is struggling with. I'm going to share just a client story here, so many, especially for people that become a widow or widower. There's a lot of like negative stories out there. We hear about the terrible stories and there are no doubt there are people who, especially through loss, can kind of lose themselves and aren't able to recover from the grief. Now, whether you are facing a loss or not, that isn't necessarily your journey right now or your partner's journey, but we think about it right. Our fear of that can really impact us. So I want to share with you one of my clients, naz.

Marika Humphreys:

She came to me. Her husband was coming home from the hospital from surgery for his cancer I believe he had stomach cancer and she was exhausted and really stressed and worried. It was during COVID, so she had no help either. And she was exhausted and really stressed and worried. It was during COVID, so she had no help either. And she was working full time, working from home, but she really wanted to be strong and supportive for him. But she was just barely holding on. So we worked on and she also felt. Actually she also felt very alone and isolated.

Marika Humphreys:

So right away we worked on teaching, like helping her calm her panic. That was a huge thing. So just call me she would call it I'm going down the rabbit hole. So we worked on teaching her how to recognize the things that would kind of trigger her and then learn how to calm her panic before she would spiral into like, oh my God, this is going to happen. This is going to happen in like kind of this rabbit hole, and we also worked on helping her reconnect with her husband and really share with him.

Marika Humphreys:

So she had kind of stopped talking to him and she was actually going through a health scare of her own, but she didn't want to tell him because she didn't want to worry him. But he was still her husband, even though he was, yes, weak and struggling. He was still her husband and she wasn't letting him support her emotionally in the way that he had always done. We tend to try to protect them, but that prevents them from a role often that they still want to fill if they can. If that's something that your partner does for you. That was something he did. He supported her emotionally, so I helped her see that she can share with him without burdening him. There is a difference there. You can share, expecting your partner to solve it for you, and that is how we connect with our loved ones, right? We open up and are vulnerable. I will just say that he did pass away.

Marika Humphreys:

He passed away a couple months into our coaching and I continue to coach her through his death and through the process of grief for her. I actually now coach her on building her business. She's changed careers, she's rediscovered kind of who she is and she told me she feels more authentically her than she ever has in her life. But that is because she worked through these challenges head on as they were happening. She learned to process her grief, both before he passed away and during and after, and continue to build her resiliency through that struggle, right Through being open to feeling the emotions and learning how to look at her thinking and allow her feelings. And that's how we grow strong, that's how we come through this more resilient. I want to thank you all for being here and, yeah, it was a pleasure. Hopefully you got some great information or great change of perspective from what I talked about today and I will see you all, hopefully on a consultation. All right, bye-bye.