In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

24. Navigating and Overcoming Caregiver Resentment

August 06, 2024 • Marika • Season 1 • Episode 24

Share episode

Send us a text

In this podcast episode, I unpack the complex emotion of resentment in caregiving, offering invaluable insights for anyone navigating the challenges of providing care for their partner.

I delve into the emotional roots of resentment, highlighting how anger, disappointment, frustration, and bitterness often arise from feelings of powerlessness and unmet expectations. I show you how to recognize the subtle signs of resentment, such as persistent anger and growing emotional distance, which can significantly impact relationships between caregivers and care recipients.

I explore common challenges we face as caregivers, including the loss of personal time, physical exhaustion, and shifts in relationship dynamics. Through this exploration, I provide practical strategies to manage and address feelings of resentment. I discuss techniques like recognizing and acknowledging the emotion, taking responsibility for our feelings, and challenging negative thoughts in detail.

You'll walk away with practical tips on how to track moments of frustration, practice self-compassion, and seek professional support when necessary. 

This episode is a must-listen if you're seeking to better understand and navigate your emotions, ultimately fostering healthier and more fulfilling relationships with those you care for. Tune in to gain the knowledge and tools you need to manage the complexities of caregiving effectively.

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:

Hello, caregivers and care partners. I am happy to be back with you and I have been just having a busy summer doing lots of fun things. My newest hobby is cycling and I've been cycling now for just a couple of months. I recently just did a 50-mile bike ride, which was amazing. It was on a trail, pretty flat, so that helped a lot. And, of course, we stopped for lunch in between, which is always great, but flat, so that helped a lot. And, of course, we stopped for lunch in between, which is always great, but I'm really, really enjoying it. I still do ballroom dance. I have been dancing now for about three years, so I love that as well, but just enjoying all the things, okay.

Marika Humphreys:

So today I'm going to talk about a fun, fun topic, and that is resentment. I say fun ironically, of course, because resentment is an emotion that feels terrible to feel and yet it's super common when we're caregiving. I felt it definitely, and I've recently had several consultations with people where resentment was just one of the things that they were really struggling with. We don't like to feel that way, right, we feel bad about the resentment we have, either towards our partner, towards the situation we're in, all sorts of things that I'm going to go into more in detail. So I want to talk about this emotion in depth and really explore what it is, and I've given a lot of thought about how to address it and how to address it in the most simplest way, and there actually is a simple solution. It's not easy, but it is a simple solution. So anyway, I'm going to get to that.

Marika Humphreys:

But first I just want to sort of introduce resentment for caregivers and care partners. When our spouse or our partner has a serious illness, like cancer or a condition we are caregiving for them or everything has become about them, it can often feel like life just starts to revolve around them. Conversations become about their health or treatment or doctor's appointments. Daily life can just get very centered around how they're feeling, how they're doing, what they need help with. Even the future, I feel like, can become about them and is maybe even limited by what their situation is or what they're able to do, and all of this can be really challenging. It's understandable that this happens, but it also can be really challenging for you as the caregiver and that I think that kind of general environment or general situation is what creates a lot of resentment when we've been caregiving, especially over time. So if you notice that you've been feeling resentful, it's very normal and I want you to just extend yourself some compassion and grace and keep listening, because it's really not as complicated as we might feel like it is.

Marika Humphreys:

So let's start by breaking down what resentment actually is. After thinking about it a lot and of course I did some Google searching and some researching and resentment is often defined as a complex emotion and that is because it is the name that we give to an experience of many emotions happening all together and we sort of label them as resentment. So let's pull out what those subparts are. So basically, resentment is a term that we give to a lot of different emotions and we call the experience of all those different emotions resentment. So when we break it down and look at what are the individual emotions and what are those individual thoughts and feelings that we have, it'll be easier to see how it can be actually simple to address the feelings of resentment when we break it down to its individual parts.

Marika Humphreys:

So emotion, resentment is not a single emotion. It's many emotions all in one and typically the emotions that make up an experience of resentment are things like anger, disappointment, frustration, bitterness and, I think, in general, resentment, comes from feeling like we've been forced to accept something that we didn't choose or didn't like. That's caregiving right. Most of us, when we're caregiving for our partner or spouse, it is not something that we chose or willingly went into. And that's not to say that you aren't a willing caregiver, but I often call it the unexpected caregiver, while we all know it's a possibility. Maybe even some of you married someone who you knew you were going to have to be a caregiver for in some form. But outside of that situation, if it's disease or an illness that happens to our partner and that creates a situation where we become their caregiver, it's unexpected, right. It's a role that we didn't expect to play and over time, especially if you don't have boundaries around that role, you can start to feel really resentful for what you feel like you've lost or have been forced into. So it's a feeling of powerlessness in our situation and feeling kind of like a victim to it that contributes to a feeling of resentment. Okay, so that's really important. Not having choice or feeling like we've been forced into something and feeling powerless to do anything about it those are big components of resentment.

Marika Humphreys:

So if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know that what I teach is that one of the ways that we build our resiliency to face the challenges in caregiving is by learning to manage our mind and the practice of doing that. What I mean when I say learning to manage your mind, it simply means becoming aware of your thoughts and learning to see them as separate and optional and something that you actually have control over when you become aware of them, and so we don't let our mind run wild with all the crazy, unhelpful, negative thoughts that will often come up, because we're human, we actually manage it, we direct it, we pay attention and we know when to redirect our mind. That's what I mean by mind management, and you may have heard the term thought work. Sometimes this is also called the thought work. It's really the same type of thing. It's learning to pay attention to the thoughts, the sentences in our head and then directing them, looking at them, questioning them, sometimes redirecting them, sometimes choosing to focus on different things. That is all the skill of mind management and that is a huge part of building your resiliency.

Marika Humphreys:

So, getting back to resentment, thought work is important in the process because it is our thoughts that create our feelings, and resentment is a feeling. It's a feeling or it's a complex emotion composed of lots of different feelings anger, bitterness, frustration, feeling stuck. So a lot of times we think it's the situation or the circumstance that we're faced with that causes how we feel. My partner can no longer walk and is bound to a wheelchair, and they literally rely on me throughout the day and that's why I'm feeling resentful. That's not the case. It's not the situation of that circumstance, it's how you think about it, and because people will have lots of different thoughts, so that's just really important. Or we might think our partner doesn't say thank you and that is why I feel so unappreciated. It's not the case. Even if your partner never said thank you or expressed how much they appreciate you, that might not be the problem. The feeling you have of feeling unappreciated comes from how you think about that right, your expectations that they should say that.

Marika Humphreys:

So it is our thoughts about our situation that cause how we feel and therefore, when it comes to resentment, it is the thoughts that go into it that are creating those emotions. So that is such a huge, important distinction and it means that if we notice, we're feeling just a lot of resentment. It is a combination of those feelings that we're experiencing. Then, to let go of resentment, we have to first identify thoughts that are causing all of those feelings. So if we've been feeling really angry lately, or just bitter or frustrated or unappreciated, we have to identify the thoughts that go into those feelings. That's what I mean by components, right? So we're taking this big experience of resentment and we want to break it down to the individual little parts that make up that experience, that make up that feeling. And that, I think, is first of all, the hardest work is recognizing.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, when I'm saying I've been feeling resentful lately, it's really little moments throughout the day where you feel frustrated or you feel unappreciated or you feel stuck. What are you thinking in those moments? Okay, so resentment is not caused by just one thing, but by many little moments in our caregiving days. Many situations, sometimes sneaky little thoughts, come up and they trigger feelings of anger or frustration or feeling stuck. And so I want to give you some situations that are common for caregivers that probably trigger some thoughts that lead to resentment or feelings of frustration and anger and the things that I've just talked about. Right, because there are lots. We're operating on the fact that this is a really. I want to normalize that.

Marika Humphreys:

Resentment is not uncommon for caregivers and it's very understandable. It doesn't mean that you need to stay there, though it doesn't mean that you shouldn't address that emotion if you've been feeling it, because it does feel terrible to feel it. So let's talk about some of the circumstances that are common for caregivers that often lead to those feelings of frustration and bitterness, feeling stuck, feeling unappreciated. I think one of the big ones is changes in the amount of personal time we have or our autonomy over our time, because caregiving responsibilities depending on how much you are caring for your partner can take up a lot of time and that would have been time that maybe you had otherwise to yourself or for your job or for personal pursuits. So caregiving does take time and that is an adjustment and if you haven't put some boundaries around that time, it could easily lead to some resentment around it.

Marika Humphreys:

I think just the physical exhaustion that many caregivers feel just from simply having more tasks to do or some of the tasks of caregiving can be tiring, additional chores, an endless routine right, that exhaustion can lead to feelings of resentment. Another big one is unmet expectations, and what I mean by that is sometimes we feel resentful for losing the life that we thought we'd be having at this time the travel or the free time to pursue hobbies and because of our partner's health, we feel that opportunity or that's gone. So that can be really challenging to come to terms with and can create a lot of resentment around to come to terms with and can create a lot of resentment around again. Sort of unmet all these kind of unmet dreams or aspirations or expectations about what we thought our life would look like right now. Any sacrifices you've made, even if you made them willingly. I've talked to someone recently who quit their career in order to be their husband's full-time caretaker and so sometimes we have to cut back on certain things that give us an identity. Like maybe if it is your job and you had to cut back in your job, you lose some of your professional identity in that process. So not dealing with the grief of that transition can lead to resentment then, because again you feel stuck. Even if you made that choice at one point willingly, it may no longer feel like that anymore.

Marika Humphreys:

I think another thing that comes up for caregivers is unfulfilled needs. When we become our partner's caregiver. Often it can change the dynamic of our relationship. Maybe they were equal partner, our companion, our best friend and they're not able to be those things anymore, or at least right now. There's a loss of intimacy, often due to their health, which can lead to a loss of connection. Sometimes I know for me and my situation it totally changed our social life, like we couldn't just go out and in the same way that we did together, and so if we don't make adjustments to those changes it can lead to a lot of unfulfilled needs need for companionship, for a social life, for connection. That can lead to resentment I've talked a little bit about this one but kind of really clearly not feeling like we don't have a future.

Marika Humphreys:

I think that is a big one like not being able to make plans For me in the case of with my husband's cancer illness, just the future just seemed totally like something I couldn't think about because there was no certainty around it. So for some of you maybe the future just seems like more of the same and that may feel bleak. So some idea of our future being taken away, lead to feelings of resentment and, as I mentioned, you come in an unexpected caregiver, like feeling trapped and stuck in a role that we really didn't want or isn't our ideal. I mentioned too in the beginning, I think, resentment. We can feel a lot of resentment about. The focus of our life can shift to them and their life and everything about them and their days and their appointments and their health and their feelings. I definitely went through periods like that where it felt like everything was about my husband and everything about him, which again was understandable, and everything about him, which again was understandable, and yet I sometimes resented it, right, I sometimes felt that. So in all of those situations that I just mentioned, the common thread there is when we're feeling resentment about it. It's because we often feel powerless to change our situation and we've sort of stuck in it or forced to accept something that we didn't ask for or didn't want, right. So that powerlessness is an important element and it's important to just recognize. Because I'm going to address that, I'm going to give you a few steps on how to let go of resentment, but I first wanted to bring attention to the areas that it is very common for caregivers to become resentful, especially if they haven't made adjustments in their own life and taken care of themselves in ways to compensate for the changes they've had to make.

Marika Humphreys:

As a caregiver For me, as I've mentioned, resentment definitely came up quite a bit in my own journey with my husband and his battle with cancer and there were times when it was in the thick of treatments and I just felt like our whole life revolved around cancer and the treatments, even the times there was a couple of years where he was free of cancer but there was always the threat that it might come back. It was sort of always a shadow over our lives. It definitely impacted us going forward and again, all of that makes sense. But there were times where I was resentful about it and he was my partner, he was my husband, he was my best friend and I wanted to support him and be there for them. But sometimes I felt like that was at the cost of my own life and my own dreams, my own aspirations and that when I felt that way, that is when resentment would creep up and I resented cancer. But sometimes I resented my husband for having cancer, even though I knew that was not his fault, it wasn't his choice, it wasn't a rational line of thinking.

Marika Humphreys:

Yet that's just how our brain works, sometimes right. Our partner is the representation of the resentment we feel. So it is easy to sort of blame them for it, even if we know logically it's not their fault. But that affects us. As I mentioned, resentment feels terrible and everybody I talk to that struggles with resentment and caregiving feels terrible about it. And when we are feeling resentment, often that emotion will fuel our actions, it will impact how we behave and that is where I think we feel bad because we find ourselves behaving in a way that we don't like.

Marika Humphreys:

For myself and for the clients I've seen, I have noticed that when we're feeling resentful we have less patience, we are short-tempered, we're more quick to anger, and that anger is usually directed at our partner, unfortunately, but maybe at the kids as well, or some other family members. And then when we behave in those ways that we then feel guilty about it because again, we know it's not their fault and yet we kind of take out our frustrations on them, and so I think that causes us to shrink in our own life. Right, we're less motivated to take care of ourselves. We're more prone to finding ways to numb ourselves, meaning eat food to escape or drink or buy things or zone out in social media or with a TV, ways to numb ourselves because we feel terrible. We're less social, because we're not as in a good of a mood. We don't want to necessarily be around others, we don't want to think about the future because it feels hopeless. We're less able to just notice what I always call the beautiful moments that are hidden in the challenging times. So, to be grateful for anything, we're less able to see it.

Marika Humphreys:

When we're stuck in our own misery of resentment, we often can't relax because we're feeling guilty or bad, or we're just obsessively trying to think of a way to escape our situation, which means that we're not able to be present and we're constantly worried about the future or kind of wishing dwelling in a past that is no longer available anymore. So it does keep us stuck. Resentment keeps us stuck in a cycle of misery because we're focused on our own pain, acting out of it, right, which then causes more pain, and when I say acting out of it, I mean being short-tempered, being quick to anger, being moody or grumpy, and then we feel bad about that. So we end up just staying stuck in this kind of misery cycle, which means we're stuck on the problem without being able to find a solution. So that is how resentment affects us directly when we're feeling a lot of it, but it also affects our marriage or our partnership. Right, it affects our relationship.

Marika Humphreys:

Often, sort of focus our resentment on our partner as the embodiment of the problem, because, indirectly, they are I mean their health, their situation. At least we connect it right. My whole point, though, was that it isn't the situation ever, because it doesn't matter. It's how we think about it. So I'm going to get to that. But we do associate our partner as the source of the problem, and that's when we can become short-tempered with them, snide comments or be sarcastic or just quick to anger and not be able to let things go. That's what, often, my clients tell me, that how they behave in their relationship when they're feeling resentful.

Marika Humphreys:

And I just want to say, as I describe this, if you find yourself thinking, yep, I've done that, or ooh, that's so what I'm doing right now If you kind of see yourself in what I'm describing describing it because awareness is helpful you want to see it, but judgment isn't helpful. So and I'm not suggesting that you feel great about it, but avoid judging yourself for it Like I'm a terrible person I shouldn't do that, of course it's not their fault. That kind of judgment will just keep us stuck as well. So we want to just pay attention and then if you see this is sounding familiar for you, then it just means there's just some growth to be had here and all of our emotions are always just messengers that are there to tell us something. So what is your resentment trying to tell you? Maybe it's trying to tell you to create some more balance in your life in certain ways. So remember, judgment isn't useful, self-judgment isn't useful, but awareness is. And now, if you've noticed it, then you can start to get to work on the steps to address it.

Marika Humphreys:

And so, getting back to how this affects our relationship, when we're feeling resentful, we will start to distance ourselves from our partner, and I think that can show up in a couple different ways. Commonly, we will distance ourself emotionally, which means we often won't feel as compassionate towards them or tender towards them. We might withdraw emotionally, we might not talk as openly and honestly about our feelings, so we kind of shut down. If we distance ourself physically, I just, you know, have less touch, less hugs, less physical touch, less affection in general towards them, which they, if they notice that it's going to cause probably some feelings of rejection and loneliness on their side and on our side right. So it just creates some physical distance and if we distance ourselves mentally we become more critical, more argumentative, more defensive right, which then escalates any conflicts and makes it harder to find common ground and can create a very adversarial relationship. So all of that resentment can really impact not just us and how we show up in our own lives, but our relationship as well, and it just creates distance and, as I've said multiple times, it feels terrible.

Marika Humphreys:

Nobody likes feeling resentful. Most of my clients and myself included, we ain't feeling that way. You feel terrible about it and feel horribly guilty, usually, okay. So how do you let go of resentment? I have been thinking about what's the simplest way to do this, because it does feel, I think, like a big experience. It can feel sort of hopeless for feeling resentful because the underlying feeling there is powerlessness I'm stuck in something that I don't have a power to change and that powerlessness comes because we're associating this emotion with the situation right, the caregiving situation that we're in and that you likely don't have much ability to change. You can't change your partner's health or the level of care they need. But the resentment comes from how you think about it.

Marika Humphreys:

We've already talked about the key. There is breaking it down to the individual moments throughout the day where anger, frustration, bitterness, feeling unappreciated, feeling stuck, where those come up. And that's how we address the experience of resentment. So you want to break it down to the individual components. That is the simplest way to address resentment. But because it's not just one emotion, it's a combination of many emotions, it is going to take a little bit of work. It is a simple process, but it's not an easy one. So the four-step process. I'm going to give you four steps here, but just know that I've said this is a simple process but not easy, and this is where a coach can be super helpful, because it's likely you'll have to work on this just over time. Right? This comes from many of these moments that build up then, and then we start feeling resentful.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so the four-step process. We start feeling resentful. Okay, so the four-step process. First step is you have to recognize it. Where is resentment showing up for you? Sometimes it likes to lurk in the background, because we're often ashamed of feeling this way. We're ashamed of feeling resentful towards our partner towards our situation. So you want to just start paying attention to the moments throughout your day where you might feel bitter or angry or unappreciated. Pay attention to those moments. Those are the moments that contribute to resentment and just know again, it's because of how you're thinking. So you first want to recognize those feelings and then ask yourself what am I thinking about this? And this requires you to have a lot of awareness about yourself and about your thinking.

Marika Humphreys:

So I've talked in other podcast episodes about the importance of awareness. It is so, so critical to building resiliency, because if you just take all of your thoughts and you sort of don't look at them and see them as optional or as something that you can manage or control, we're just always going to be the victim of our thoughts. And we have a lot of crazy thoughts and a lot of negative thoughts and a lot of thoughts that are dark and awful. But when we can see them as just thoughts that contribute to, sometimes, feelings of resentment, then we can just start taking a look at them. So I want to give you some of the thoughts that are just common types of thoughts that can contribute to feelings of resentment, because the thought is what creates our feeling. So we want to pay attention to the situations that trigger your impatience, trigger your frustration, trigger your bitterness. That's what I want you to notice. What are the situations that trigger it? What are you thinking? And then how are you feeling?

Marika Humphreys:

Some of those thoughts, some of these ones that I'm going to share, I've certainly had. Shouldn't be this way, or this isn't fair. I didn't sign up for this. I don't want to deal with this anymore. They're so ungrateful. They never appreciate me. I have no life anymore. It all falls on me. This is too much work. This is my life. Okay, I'm pretty sure I've thought all of those, especially during my husband's cancer journey. So those are the types of thoughts that I want you to pay attention to. They're little sneaky things often, but they're all feelings of powerlessness and really a rejection of the situation we're in. But they are the thoughts that will create feelings of bitterness or anger, feeling stuck or unappreciated, and the more you notice thoughts like that coming up, the more you're going to stay stuck in resentment. So you first have to find those moments, notice them, start writing them down, even Because the second step in this process is to allow the emotion that comes up and I'll tell you what I mean by that.

Marika Humphreys:

In the moment, when you're feeling angry or irritated or bitter or frustrated, usually we either act out that emotion, like we say something snide, or we're short-tempered with our partner. We just act short with them. We try to stuff it down because we feel guilty or bad about it, and then we stew about it later. Those are often the common reactions when those feelings come up. But instead allowing an emotion is different in that when the emotion comes up, you notice like, oh, I'm feeling so irritated right now. You notice that feeling, you recognize it, you acknowledge it to yourself. It's literally like I'm feeling irritated right now and you just allow yourself to feel that way, without acting it out or trying to suppress it, because it's just a feeling caused by a thought right. To suppress it because it's just a feeling caused by a thought right. We often feel guilty and bad about the feelings we have and that's those judgments cause us to want to push those feelings away. But instead you have to just be willing to acknowledge and allow those feelings.

Marika Humphreys:

And I've talked again about emotions in other podcast episodes, so I'm going to cover it more briefly here. But emotions are not good or bad, they just are. We tend to label them as good emotions or bad emotions, because bad emotions don't feel good in our body. Good emotions feel good in our body and when we have bad emotions, like anger or frustration, we tend to behave in ways that we don't like, and I think that's also the reason why we call them bad emotions. They're emotions that we don't like to have, but that's because the action, because we're acting out the emotion, the emotion itself, is neither good nor bad. It just is.

Marika Humphreys:

Emotion is. You can think about it like a bodily function. We don't judge our bodily functions. We don't judge burping. Maybe we don't do it in public, but we don't judge ourselves for needing to burp. It just is right. We just recognize it's a bodily function. Well, emotions are like that as well. They're just a energy, that sensation in our body that we feel, that's triggered by how we're thinking, and if you can think about it as neutral and remove judgment from it. That is what I mean by allowing it right, recognizing it. Oh, I'm feeling really unappreciated. I just did this thing for my partner and they didn't say anything. And now I'm feeling really unappreciated. And you just notice it. Notice that you're feeling. I'm just feeling unappreciated because I wanted them to say thank you or I wanted them to just acknowledge how much time that just took from my day. So that is step number two. You have to be willing in the moment to just allow that emotion and acknowledge it when it comes up, because you can't skip over that. In the moment, you will feeling that emotion and it needs to be felt or it needs to be acknowledged in some way.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, the third step is being willing to own or take responsibility for our resentment. This is a really important step because when we feel resentful, it's because we've become a victim of our circumstance. Right, we feel powerless in our circumstance, in our situation. We feel we have no choice, so we didn't choose this. And the antidote to feeling powerless is to take ownership and take responsibility.

Marika Humphreys:

When we take responsibility for something, even for something we don't like, we gain authority over it. And when we know that is just how we think and it's just a bunch of sneaky little thoughts that contribute to this feelings of anger and frustration and bitterness and resentment, then I think it's easier to take responsibility for that. It doesn't feel so big and it shouldn't, right, it's just thinking, it's just negative thinking. That is very common part of a human being's experience in the world. But our thinking is what causes the resentment. Not our circumstance, not the fact that we're a caregiver for our partner, not their situation, not their health right, not the thing outside of us. It's how we think about that.

Marika Humphreys:

So it's our thinking that is causing our feelings of resentment. And the more you can take responsibility for that, the faster you will be able to start letting go of it because you've recognized it is something you're causing yourself, and not to feel bad about it, but again to gain authority over it. We can only change the things within our control, and if it's something that we don't have control over, then we're powerless to change it. So when we can separate the circumstance from our feelings of resentful or feeling stuck in it and recognize the stuckness, the powerlessness comes from how we think about it Then we have authority and ability to let go of that resentment, to change it. And then the last step it's to change our thinking. Or sometimes it's easier to shift our thinking.

Marika Humphreys:

I like to say shift because I think often it's more powerful and it's easier to do because we usually have other thoughts as well that we're just not focused on. So the way to change any emotion that we're feeling right is to shift where your focus is or the thought behind it. So if resentment is composed of a bunch of different moments throughout the day where you feel anger and bitterness and frustration and stuck and unappreciated, we need to get down to those moments and shift our thinking in those moments. Right, that's the part that takes some practice. Takes practice to shift your thinking and it takes repetition as well, because a lot of our thinking is habitual. So in order to shift it to something different that doesn't feel as bad, doesn't create negative emotion, we have to practice doing that. So I want to just give you some examples of how you can shift your thinking in the moment.

Marika Humphreys:

Right, if you're thinking, oh, this is so unfair, simple shift to this is just my life right now, that's an idea that might not feel great for you, so it can be some other version of that, but something that just removes judgment around it. Right, when I'm thinking this is unfair, there's a judgment there versus this is just where we are right now. This is just my reality and that's okay. Adding that's okay is super powerful, by the way. It's telling yourself it's okay. Adding that's okay is super powerful, by the way. It's telling yourself it's okay. I could tack that on to almost any sentence and it will remove the negative vibe from it.

Marika Humphreys:

This isn't how it was supposed to be. You can shift that to this is not what I expected, but it's what happened, or something like that. This isn't what I expected and it's where we are, or maybe even this is how it was always going to be and I just didn't realize it. Something like that, right, some form of shifting out of it wasn't supposed to be like this. That's a thought will trigger unfairness, a feeling of unfairness to. This is life. Sometimes bad things happen. Another example this is life. Sometimes bad things happen. Another example right, I used to think I don't want to do this anymore, that I had that on repetition for a while in my head and I really had to recognize it and pull it out and work on it, because it was super unhelpful and it created feeling of misery.

Marika Humphreys:

I felt totally stuck and mostly I was just tired. But by repeating to myself I don't want to do this anymore, I felt terrible. And the reality was when I broke this down, when I noticed it and I pulled it out of my brain and I started to question it. I realized that actually I am choosing to be there for my husband. I remember this time when I was saying this to myself, unconsciously until I noticed it. I remember that it was a really challenging time for his health and for me as well, and I was choosing to be there. I wanted to be there a hundred percent, and it was tiring and it was exhausting, but I was still choosing that I loved him.

Marika Humphreys:

So sometimes we say things that aren't even true for ourselves, but we repeat it over and over again and when you notice it and then can question it, a lot of times it's not even true. A lot of times we are choosing to be the caregiver and the care partner that we're being and we sometimes just have to remind ourselves. And it also, when you think about it as emotions or messengers, it also may mean we need a break or we need some more time to recuperate, like those can also be true. So you can choose to do all the things that you're doing for your partner and also recognize that you may need some more downtime than you realized or you may need to have some more social outlets than you are currently getting right. Resentment is still a messenger and it messages that you may need to make some adjustments in your life as a caregiver. That's probably the last step is to pay attention to the message and see what that resentment is overall, telling you about ways to adjust your life to what needs are going unmet. In what ways can you create some balance for yourself that the feelings of resentment are bringing to light, right? So that is really the fifth step is making adjustments or being willing to look at how you can have some needs met that may be going unmet at this time.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so resentment is not a great thing to feel, but it is not as overwhelming a situation as you may think it is when you break it down to its individual components. That's really important to do. There's lots of little things that contribute to feeling resentful, and you want to figure out what the big ones are. For you, there's probably only a couple situations that trigger those feelings that are contributing to your resentment. So figure out what those are, start paying attention, be willing to feel the feelings, acknowledge them without acting them out right.

Marika Humphreys:

Take responsibility for the fact that these are just thoughts that are creating this feeling and it's not the situation that you're in, and then shift your thinking in those moments, practice shifting your thinking. What else can you think that just shifts it? And then, lastly, the message that this resentment is telling you. What is it that you need to adjust in your life to address the feeling? Is it some constraints around your role? Is there something that really exhausts you? Is there something you can get help with? Is there a conversation that you need to have with your partner?

Marika Humphreys:

Take the action to make an adjustment, but only after you've done the work ahead of time to identify the thoughts, feel the emotion, acknowledge it, take responsibility for it, shift your thinking. Then you take action to make changes in your life or have a conversation or get help or whatever it is that you may need to act on. Only then do you take the action. So do the hard work first, and if you find yourself just struggling with this and want help, this is what I do. This is exactly what I do when you work with me as a coach. I help you deal with emotions like this, because it can feel sort of overwhelming and challenging to do on your own. So if you're looking for help, the next step is you get on my calendar and you can do that directly from my webpage and set up a consultation with me. So I'm here to help if that's what you're looking for. Hopefully this is helpful, because I know resentment is a really challenging emotion and it's not fun to feel. All right, my friends, I will see you next week.