My advice to a caregiver during Caregiver Awareness Month

A Mindful view on Caretaking, Suffering, and its Relief

Older person and their caretaker, feeling the burden of care giving. It can be easier when we understand the Mindfulness of suffering and its relief.

Caregiving, also known as caretaking, is unfortunately a growing thing. As doctors learn how to better treat serious illness, there are more people living longer…. and often requiring the care of a family member or a friend. For example, people with cancer, dementia or memory loss or Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, stroke or simply old age — all may be in need for someone to be a caregiver. I’m going to assume that you are one, yourself.

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

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

And you want 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 deal with the emotional demands of caregiving.   If you haven’t spent a lot of time developing personal awareness, see your doctor or a mental health professional.

After a year or two of caregiving I’d add this: how are you doing at 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 get the ailing person to give you more emotional support. And maybe you can use your time differently, and wisely, so you can thrive, even while you just to 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. Here goes. It’s been said that there is inevitably 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. For example, we can have a broken arm and spend our days regretting that we won’t be able to do… you 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 resources.

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

This way of thinking originates in Buddhism, and is adapted in American Buddhism. 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 meant that 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 could not. 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.

If we are suffering all the time, that can be relieved, intermittently. We can find times when we 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 a saying 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 trapped and helpless to a realization that I have choices.

I can get help from others. I can take a course in something. Maybe cooking, for example. And I can even do things during the lulls in caregiving.

More fundamentally, I can change my attitude, 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?

Surviving  in a trapped and endless way is not necessary. Thriving is possible. Not permanent thriving, but intermittent. And that’s enough for me. Thanks for listening. Sorry for this long answer to your question on caregiving. Please, let’s still be friends :) I just loved the question and got carried away, I guess. It’s so nice to connect with another person.

Philosophical roots around reducing 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. It turns out: 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 psychotherapist.

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

In his book The Wise Heart, 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.

May these teachings be of use, Donald