My advice to a caregiver during Caregiver Awareness Month

A Mindful view on Caretaking, Suffering, and its Relief

A mindfulness perspective on caregiving highlights ways to navigate its challenges with strategies for relief, emotional balance and even thriving. Understanding mindfulness for caregivers can be a great tool for those who need care and, surprisingly, also for those giving it.

Caregiving - also known as caretaking - is unfortunately a growing thing. As doctors learn how to better treat serious illnesses, people are living longer and  often require the care of a family member or a friend.

For example, people with cancer, dementia or memory loss or Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's, stroke or simply old age — all may be in need for someone to be a caregiver, especially one practicing mindfulness. I’m going to assume that you are a caregiver but not yet mindful.

Mindfulness for Caregivers

So, you’re a caregiver, you’re taking care of someone who needs help, who is to some degree disabled, maybe in body, maybe in mind?

And you’re the only caregiver so far? It’s all on you?

And you’d like advice?

First, pray for divine intervention to heal the ailing person.

Then check out your emotional strength: are you sad, depressed, traumatized, lonely? Depending on your personal resources, examine how well or poorly you might be dealing with the emotional demands of caregiving.  If you don’t have much emotional awareness, see your doctor or a mental health professional.

After some time of caregiving, I’d add this: how are you surviving this period of your life? And more importantly ask this of yourself: how can I thrive during this period? Yes, thrive. Because you don’t have to do this alone. It’s not easy, but you can learn how to get more help from others. And maybe you can use your time differently, and wisely, mindfully, so you can thrive, even while you just do the things you do every day - but with a new attitude.

Let me explain this last bit. You can begin to thrive by how you encounter your own life. Apologies if this sounds blaming. Here goes.

It’s been said that there is inevitable suffering in life. You sure as hell already know that. The person you’re caring for and you both are suffering. Fewer people know that a lot of that suffering is caused — please take a breath here—  not by the illness but by how we respond to it. This is a central understanding in mindfulness. For example, we can have a broken arm and spend our days regretting what we won’t be able to do - fill in the blank here - or you can adapt to the situation and figure out how you want to use your time, based on your current situation and resources.

For example, right now I can bemoan the fact that my new president is a wannabe dictator, complain endlessly, feel depressed, or I can sit with my feelings, and when I’ve centered again, I can wonder how I might adjust my life given this new reality.

What We can Learn from Buddhist Teachings on Suffering

This way of thinking originates in Buddhism, and is adapted by American Buddhism and mindfulness. The Buddha said life has suffering and that there is a way out. People have assumed he meant that we can end suffering, but that wasn’t the message.  How could a wise person have suggested we would end suffering? In order for there to be joy, there must be sadness. Without sadness how would we be able to recognize joy? We wouldn’t. In order for there to be a left hand, there has to be a right hand. In order for there to be East, there has to be West. In order for happiness to exist there must be suffering. So, the relief of suffering has to be something that goes…… and comes…. And goes on but never disappears.

If we are suffering all the time, it can be relieved, intermittently. We can find times to accept what has happened rather than getting lost in thinking how to make it go away. That is the relief of suffering: it’s here, I can’t change that, but I can accept it and ask: how do I want to work with this suffering? There’s even a saying that might sound extreme, but is not, in this philosophy: “May this suffering lead to something good.”

With caregiving, suffering is here. The person is ailing, maybe dying. I am the person who’s offering them comfort. I may get depressed. What can I do? I can think about ways to change my attitude from feeling trapped and helpless to a realization that I have choices.

I can get help from others. I can change the nature of how I respond. I can balance the giving I do with taking extra-good care of myself: I can take a course in something. Maybe cooking, for example.

More fundamentally, I can change my attitude to a mindful frame of mind, so that when I’m doing the dishes I can give up saying how much I hate this, how much I want help with the blasted dishes. With this new attitude I can instead do the dishes with an awareness of wonder. Feel the soap. See the dirt floating away. Feel the warm water. Listen to the sounds. Much is possible with this changed attitude. So please ask yourself: How can I thrive?  I mean, really - how can I thrive?

By tuning in to our emotions while caregiving we realize the toll it can take on us. By keeping our attention on what we are feeling and doing in the present, rather than getting lost in regrets or worries, we can mindfully take care of our charge and also bring them joy right along with our own. It’s contagious! Reading our MindBlog newsletter will give you more ideas on how to achieve this.

Surviving in a trapped mindset is not necessary. Thriving is possible. Not permanently thriving, but intermittently.

Further Teachings Around mindfulness and suffering

Maybe the most well-known approach to suffering and its relief comes in the Buddhist 4 Noble Truths. But when you listen to the teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh I’ve pasted below, you may be surprised at their deeper meaning. He explains:  Suffering and Relief require each other.

Suffering and its Relief, understood through The Four Noble Truths, taught by Thich Nhat Hanh - 18-minute video from Plum Village. Note that he speaks of mild, short-term depression. While a great Zen Buddhist teacher, he is not a mental health professional

After seeing this video, I want to add: please don’t despair. Just because difficulty and joy require each other does not mean they have to stay at 50% each. You can reasonably hope for 90% of the time living with ease. But I must add that life, like the stock market, is subject to unpredictable swings. Let’s enjoy the ride.

Jack Kornfield on Suffering and Letting Go

Jack Kornfield extracts Buddhist wisdom and puts it in modern terms. On this subject he writes:

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is not. Suffering arises from grasping. Release grasping and be free of suffering…… Grasping gives birth to aversion and delusion and from these three roots arise all the other unhealthy states…

From his book The Wise Heart.

Stephen Mitchell weighs in via the Tao

Stephen Mitchel’s translation of the Tao the Ching has a similar but different bit of wisdom, in verse 74:

If you realize that all things change there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you aren’t afraid of dying there is nothing you can’t achieve.

From One Caretaker to Another

I apologize for this long answer to your question on caregiving. I hope we can still be friends :)  I just loved the question and got carried away, I guess. It’s so nice to connect with another person. If you haven’t already guessed, I, too, am a caregiver.

And that’s enough from for me.

May these teachings be useful.

Thanks for listening,
Donald