In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

25. Holding Space for Your Partner's Pain

August 13, 2024 • Marika • Season 1 • Episode 25

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode, I dive deep into one of the toughest challenges we face as caregivers—seeing our partners in pain and feeling powerless to help. I share my personal experience of caregiving for my husband during his battle with cancer, and I know firsthand how easy it is to get stuck in “fix-it” mode. 

But here’s the hard truth: we can’t fix our partner’s pain, whether it’s physical or emotional. What we can do, though, is hold space for them, offering comfort through our presence and love without trying to solve the unsolvable.

I talk about how this simple but powerful approach helped me and how it can help you too. By letting go of the urge to fix things, we can actually connect more deeply with our partners and provide the support they truly need. This shift in perspective not only eases their pain but also brings us peace as caregivers.

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 hope you are doing well and had a chance to do something relaxing and rejuvenating this weekend. I just got back from a really awesome long weekend camping trip with my boyfriend in the Olympic Peninsula. I'm in Western Washington and we have the Olympic National Park it's just a couple hours from me and it is just an incredibly stunning and beautiful area and we went up there for several days and did lots of hiking and some kayaking and swimming and it was just really what I needed to sort of restore and get some perspective and stare at the stars and enjoy nature. So I'm feeling very rejuvenated at the moment and today I want to talk to you about A that you can support your partner when they're in pain without getting anxious and sort of being affected emotionally yourself.

Marika Humphreys:

Because when we're caregiving for our partner, whether it's due to illness or disease or disability I think one of the most difficult parts of being a caregiver is seeing your partner struggle, seeing them in pain. It's really hard to see someone we love in pain and not be able to do anything about it, and sometimes that may be physical pain, possibly from their condition or from the treatment of their condition or their illness, and sometimes it's emotional pain like sadness or anger, frustration seeing them in pain. It causes us, as their partner and their spouse, to respond emotionally as well, right, with frustration or helplessness or anxiety, and at the same time, while we're feeling that way, very often there's very little, if not nothing, that we can do to comfort them. In certain times like that, you probably feel very powerless when you see your partner struggle. So everybody ends up in pain, right? Your partner's in pain and you, as their caregiver and spouse or partner, are struggling as well because you're unable to help, or it feels like you're unable to help. So I want to talk about a way that you can actually support your partner when they're in pain, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain. That actually brings both of you more comfort and connection. Okay, so let's dive into this topic and I want to just explore again the things that our partners struggle with when they have a serious health issue or a condition or an illness.

Marika Humphreys:

In a lot of those cases, there is physical pain. I'm most familiar with cancer because that's what my husband battled and cancer treatments are painful, often more painful than the disease itself. Chemo, radiation those are some of the most common forms of treatment for cancer and there are definitely different variations on each of those treatments, but a lot of times they leave people feeling nauseous and bloated, exhausted. They lose their hair, they can have all sorts of physical consequences from those treatments itself and often the treatments last several sessions. They can go on for weeks or sometimes even months. So there may be some soreness or certain pain in certain parts of the body. They're constantly being poked and prodded. I know for my husband. He had actually chemotherapy a couple different times and he had radiation and he often would just feel terrible afterwards, and not just for a couple hours, it would be days, sometimes days on end.

Marika Humphreys:

For other illnesses and conditions, physical pain may be caused by different reasons. So maybe there is some chronic pain that your partner deals with, or maybe there's frequent headaches. So I just want to encourage you to think about what is the physical pain that your partner has, if any, because of their health situation, because of what they're facing, and how frequent is it? Is it daily, is it just periodically? So there's physical pain associated often with illness or disease or certain health conditions, but the other kind of pain that you probably see your partner in is emotional pain and obviously this is not just when our partner has an illness or disease that they're struggling with. It can be in any relationship at any time, but I do think it probably comes up more frequently when there's a health condition that they're facing.

Marika Humphreys:

So anybody dealing with something that's impacting their health, their mobility, impacting their independence, maybe even affecting their autonomy, people are going to have a lot of different emotional reactions All of those things losing your mobility, your independence, your health. They can be really difficult to come to terms with, and so your partner may be angry over the loss of their body or not being able to do certain things they once used to do. They may feel like their body has betrayed them, or they could be really sad or depressed about their prognosis or the future. They might be struggling to come to terms with just the reality of their situation. They might feel anxious or scared or worried, frustrated loss of independence and autonomy which often accompanies a health situation. They may feel just uncomfortable having to rely on other people for basic things that they used to do themselves. They may struggle with being the center of attention, with a lot of health appointments and everybody's focused on them and so they're the ones receiving care instead of being the ones giving care. So your partner is going to have emotions about all of these things and a lot of times those reactions may be different than what you would expect or how you would respond.

Marika Humphreys:

So dealing with a health situation will cause, often, physical pain and most certainly, emotional pain. But it's not just for your partner, right? I want to talk about what you go through as a caregiver and partner when you're seeing them in this pain. You have to watch them go through this struggle and that is really hard when they're in physical pain. Often there's just very little that you can do to ease it for them. Sometimes it's scary. We don't know what the cause is, we don't know how to react, so that triggers an emotional response for you, right? You're going to feel anxious or worried or helpless. You might struggle knowing what to do, like, do you need to call someone, do you need to go to the hospital? And when they're struggling emotionally, it's also really hard. Your partner might be frustrated or angry or withdraw, and those emotions are just really hard to witness. Without wanting to soothe it in some way, you might feel responsible for how their emotions and responsible for making them feel better, or you may want to comfort them and then probably feel very helpless to do so. I've definitely had clients tell me that when they thought they were saying something comforting and trying to be reassuring to their partner, it actually had the opposite effect and made them irritated or angry, and that can feel very confusing and frustrating and just helpless. I think is what a lot of times we feel when we see our partner struggle and we can do so little.

Marika Humphreys:

This is something that I struggled with throughout my husband's entire battle with cancer. I was always trying to fix his pain and his initial round of chemotherapy was an incredibly aggressive treatment that it required 48 hours of a hospital stay each time and he would get this infusion and it was just kind of a horrible experience for him. It left him nauseous and feeling utterly terrible for weeks afterward and it was intended to shrink the tumor that he had in his arm before they were going to operate, but it didn't actually work to do that. So all this suffering and pain he went through with these treatments and it was ultimately ineffective, which he felt very angry about for really years afterward because it was so much suffering and it felt like it was all for nothing, and I always tried to comfort him, wanted, felt like I needed to comfort him, but I couldn't. I mean there was not much that I could do for him to make him feel better. And I definitely was a little apprehensive of his moods because he was usually pretty talkative and outgoing and so when he'd get quiet I knew that he was upset and I always just felt bad. So it's so hard to watch someone you care about suffering and feel so helpless. I always felt like I needed to do something, like it was up to me to comfort him.

Marika Humphreys:

So, as caregivers for someone we love, often our first response when we see them in pain is to want to fix it somehow, to act, to fix the problem, to make it better. I think another really similar experience is when you see your children hurting. Right, you don't want your children to suffer, so we try to take away the pain or we try to comfort them, and the problem is we can't fix someone else's pain. That's the hard truth. It's not in our control. Your partner's pain, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain, is not something you have control over. And when you try to fix their pain or somehow alleviate it and then fail to do so because it isn't something that you have control over, you end up suffering as well and feeling helpless, and so it ends up that your partner's suffering, you're suffering, everybody's in pain, and that's not a great situation either.

Marika Humphreys:

There's a couple of reasons, though, I want to talk about. When we get focused on trying to fix or somehow alleviate our partner's pain, it's actually counterproductive, because it gets us in an emotional state as well as them. So let me explain what I mean by when I say it's counterproductive. Getting into this what I call fix it mode, or wanting to solve for the pain, it will keep you from connecting to them. By focusing on trying to fix the pain and make it go away, you will become less present to what they're actually experiencing, and that might look like you get busy, you try to help, you are calling someone, maybe you're searching. The more you do that, it's just harder to be in the moment, and when you're not in the moment, we that it's just harder to be in the moment, and when you're not in the moment, we're not connecting right. We're not connecting with what they're going through.

Marika Humphreys:

Another thing it does is it creates this anxious vibe when we're in fix-it mode or worried mode, our partner picks up on that energy. So, instead of calm and comforting energy, we give off worried, anxious energy, right? Imagine if we went to the hospital with an injury and everybody we encountered the hospital staff, the doctor, everybody was worried and anxious. And they took a look at us and like, oh my God, that would be horrible, right, we would freak out because we want the doctor and the hospital staff to be calm, confident, in control and I'm not saying that you need to be like that, because a doctor has obviously had some training on how to deal with a crisis, because it helps them to act. When they're calm, they can act more thoughtfully and they also exude confidence. And calm helps the patient, right. So if the same is true with you and your partner, if you're anxious and freaking out, they're going to pick up on that and probably feel more anxious themselves, which is usually the last thing that we want to do.

Marika Humphreys:

And then the third effect that being in fix-it mode creates, I think, for our partner is it's not really the support that they need, and when someone is hurting, one of the things we want first is to have our pain acknowledged. Now, that's probably not something your partner is going to say directly, but it is a human need. We want our suffering to be validated. We want to first just have someone appreciate what we're going through. Think about when you're venting to a friend. You don't want your friend tell you all their solutions. You want them to say, oh gosh, wow, that must be so hard, I'm so sorry you're struggling. So it's the same with our partner. When you're trying to fix or soothe their pain, you're not actually validating their experience. So those are just a couple of reasons why that mode that often is just an automatic response that we have to their pain, is counterproductive. And there is a solution. Okay, there is an alternative, and that's what I want to give you today. That's really simple, actually, and something that you anybody, can do. I'm going to sell you on why it's useful and what it does for both you and them.

Marika Humphreys:

It's a concept we use in coaching called holding space. In coaching, we hold space for our clients, which means that we just allow our clients to express whatever thoughts and emotions that they're having, without judgment right. We provide a safe and loving space for them to just express themselves, without worrying about how they're coming across. We don't offer suggestions to make them feel better, we don't try to fix their problem. We just give them room to express themselves, to be fully in the emotion, and that alone is super powerful, right? Because when we're hurting, sometimes we don't want to be fixed. Sometimes we just need to rage, or we need to hurt, or we need to feel sad, we need to feel fear. Sometimes we just need someone to listen to us, and that's what holding space is it's listening with love. I will tell you.

Marika Humphreys:

I'm going to tell you a story where this happened. This realization, what my husband needed from me, was very clear and it was a super profound moment. We were getting ready to go on a trip, actually to go get coach training, the two of us, and we had already sent our child off to the grandparents. At that point we were watching a show, we'd just eaten dinner, we were watching a show, and he abruptly got up and left the room, which was unusual. So I went to see what was going on and I found him in our room on our bedroom, kind of clutching his chest and definitely in pain, and I started freaking out, worrying and getting into fix it mode and I hovered about, asked him. Oh my gosh, what should I do? Should I start Googling things? I was kind of going through this list in my head.

Marika Humphreys:

He was in pain, definitely, but it wasn't excruciating, and I could tell he was a little scared, and so was I. But he said Marika, just grab my hand. And he said, marika, just love me. So I stopped and I sat with him and I held his hand and I just tried to radiate love and we just sat in that way for a few minutes I don't even know how long and then I don't even remember how it ended, but we didn't go to the hospital. I think his pain sort of went away. We don't still know what happened, but that moment was so profound for me because he was asking me to hold space for him. He didn't say those words, he said love me. He just wanted the comfort of my presence in my love.

Marika Humphreys:

So holding space for your partner can be a powerful way to support them when they are in pain, and it can look like many different forms, right? What's important is that you focus on being present with love. You might rub their shoulder. Maybe you just listen. You might say things like I'm here. I know this must be scary, I'm here for you. Or you can even just love them from afar.

Marika Humphreys:

If they're angry and they need space to vent their frustrations, you can send them love from a different room, and this may seem simplistic. Send them love from a different room, and this may seem simplistic, but I will tell you what it does. What it does for them is it allows them to be fully present and just express and process what they're going through, what they're feeling. It allows them to do that without having to worry about you or your response or anybody else's response, and just be in the moment of their own experience. Right? It provides comfort, just knowing that someone is hearing them, that there's a safe place to do that. It provides some validation that what they're experiencing is important and it creates a connection, because often pain is a vulnerable state and when someone is there and with us it's comforting and it's how we connect.

Marika Humphreys:

And what this will do for you, the caregiver of your partner it will allow you to focus on being present instead of trying to fix something that you can't right. It will release you from the responsibility of trying to make it better when, again, that's something that's not in your control. It allows you to harness your love, it allows you to connect to them, it allows you to feel calm, and both of those things together right. That is really just the first step of holding space. It's something you can always do when your partner's in pain, and the way to get there I think this is the harder part is because often it's an automatic reaction to want to comfort them or fix it somehow.

Marika Humphreys:

You first have to counter that automatic reaction and I want to give you a couple ways to do that, because it's really about how you think about their pain and emotions. That's important. So how you actually hold space, how do you get in a place where you can let go of your own worry and your own anxiety and your own desire to fix it somehow and make them better, is you have to get your mind wrapped around two things primarily, in order to hold space for them, you have to know that it's not your responsibility or within your control to fix their pain, because we can't fix other people's emotions for them. And the second thing is that emotions don't need to be fixed. A lot of pain in the cases we just talked about can't be fixed, like if it's physical pain, sometimes it can't be fixed. Sometimes it just has to be felt. That is the unfortunate reality of being a human. Sometimes we experience physical pain and sometimes we have negative emotions, and both of those things are okay in this context, right, negative emotions are a fact of human life. They don't need to be fixed. They just need to be acknowledged and processed right.

Marika Humphreys:

By holding space, you can help your partner do that, and one of the beauties of this is it is something that you can always do, I know. For me, I always felt like what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? You can always love, right? Holding space for your partner when they're in pain is something that is always available to you. You don't need to react and fix something or make it better. You can't fix their suffering, don't have that control, but you can always love them. You can always be a loving witness to their pain. You can always allow them space to just express themselves in a safe and loving environment, without fear, without worrying about anybody else, without fear of being judged or worried how people respond. Holding space is just giving them a safe place for their emotions or their pain.

Marika Humphreys:

So I do want to say, though, that holding space doesn't mean that you don't first take action if there is action to be taken. So if they need it, maybe you do call the doctor or you get them some pain medication or you help them get more comfortable. So if there's action to be taken, do that first, but then afterward, when there's nothing left to do, then you can hold space for your partner. Hold space for their anger, frustration, their yelling, their nauseousness, their sadness, their grumpiness. Just hold space for it. You don't need to fix it. Okay, remind yourself. There's nothing more you need to do, but just witness and hold space. And emotions aren't a problem. This is another reminder. What they're expressing, even if they're yelling at you, also doesn't mean anything about you and it doesn't mean anything about them. It's just emotions and there's nothing to fix. Just hold space. So the next time your partner is in pain, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain, I want to encourage you to remind yourself. Right, emotions are not within your control to fix, it's not your responsibility, and you can hold space for them and give this a try.

Marika Humphreys:

I'm telling you it was a game changer for me. Changer for me Wasn't always easy to do, but it allowed me to be calm and connect and not feel so anxious and worried and really burdened with a responsibility that I had no control over. And I think my husband that's what he wanted from me. He wanted just listening and loving. Sometimes that doesn't even require words, it just requires an energy and intention from you. So give this a try, let me know what you think, let me know how it goes. I'd love to hear your experiences. Holding space is just something that we don't really think about doing, and you can do this with any member of in your life, right, any person you can hold space for. Sometimes there are things to do and take action, but a lot of times we just want to be there. Let someone go through their experience of pain. All right, my friends, give it a try, let me know what you think and I'll see you next week.