You may ask if this description fits for even for those who have a good, healthy relationship with their aging parents. The answer is, “Yes”. The full gamut of emotions tends to be part of the experience for most caregivers. What differs between the two groups is the intensity of feelings and the duration of the negative experiences.

Unfortunately, the emotional roller coaster of the adult child-caregiver is only one aspect of the spine-tingling ride through one of life’s most complex and trying stages. The physical demands that can include housekeeping needs along with varying levels of assistance with basic life skills are also stressful. In addition, there are legal, financial, administrative, and medical needs to consider. And let’s not forget the emergency phone calls, hospital trips, interrupted plans, and difficult decisions involving care including the gut wrenching ones regarding placement in nursing facilities and end of life care.

Recent statistics can help us to grasp the magnitude of the effect of caregiver stress on not only individuals, but also on our society. It has been estimated that more than 25% of American families are involved in elder/parent care in some way. Currently the Baby Boomers are the most involved in this role. Since this is the largest segment of our population at present, it is a significant issue.

It has been reported that $34 billion a year is lost in employee productivity because of elder care responsibilities. This is more than that lost from childcare. In addition, it has cost industry more than $7 billion a year to replace workers who leave jobs to care for the elderly.  Seventy seven percent of those who remain in the workforce, report less effective job performance. It has also been found that more employees develop health problems from the stress of elder care than from child care. These statistics clearly show that there are many challenges for the caregiver, as well as for society as a whole.

The complexity, magnitude of competing needs, stress, conflicting emotions and sheer physical drain of caring for an elderly family member is enough to make you wish you had skipped Math and English class and majored instead in Caregiving 101, or in the PhD program, Saving Your Sanity in the Midst of Chaos and Confusion. Fear not, you can learn now. Our radio show Caregiver Corner addresses the stresses and concerns of caregivers each Monday morning on BlogTalk radio. In addition, we will be discussing these issues here on the blog, in a teleclass series in the fall and in our soon to be released book: Self Care for the Caregiver: The Heart of Compassion. Our intention with these efforts is to take our learning and experience and provide you with the support, comfort, wisdom and stress relief you need in order to navigate the choppy waters of caregiving and make it safely to shore with your whole self intact.

Prolonged stress leads to anger, depression, anxiety and illness.  The more responsibility you take for yourself, the more easily you are able to navigate the roads of change.

  What is optimal “self” care and how can you practice it?

Self care requires truly understanding yourself from the inside out and balancing the needs of your body, mind and spirit.   It involves taking time to nourish yourself every day and knowing your trigger points.  Once you are aware of different stressors that impact you, you can learn tools, techniques and resources to draw on whenever needed.

Peg and I have been writing a book on preventing Caregiver Burnout. This work integrates an energetic/spiritual approach and brings it to the issue of stress management and burnout prevention that is such a big issue for caregivers.

We have our own experience to draw on as well s our other partner, Tony Pace’s experiences, but we would love to hear from you as we develop this work. You can join the conversation on our Monday morning radio show, fill out the confidential questionnaire that appears on the homepage on this website or email us.

Here are some of the questions we are exploring in our book and on our radio show:

What do you see as the biggest issues in care-giving?

 What do you think is important to address for this growing population?

How does care-giving fit into one’s sacred path?
 
How did your life change as a result of caring for elderly parents? 

What has been the most difficult or challenging aspects of caring for elderly parents?
 
What has been most satisfying about caring for others?
 
What really works when it coming to caring for oneself?
 
How do you deal with frustration or angry feelings toward those you care for?

 For many years mind-body research has focused on the effect of stress and negative emotional states upon hormonal fluctuations, immune response, heart and brain function. It has become clear that stress and negative emotion lead to disorder within the heart’s rhythms, as well as within the autonomic nervous system, thereby affecting the rest of the body’s function in a negative way. The good news is that the opposite is also true— positive emotion leads to increased harmony, coherence and balance within these same systems.

Significant positive changes have been repeatedly documented in the body’s systems when techniques are used that purposefully create feelings of appreciation, gratitude and unconditional love. The voluntary triggering of these emotional states was found to increase coherence both heart rhythms and the autonomic nervous system which regulates heart rate, breathing and other vital functions. This results in a positive effect on all psychological and physical functions. In addition, it was found that people’s perception of stress shifted in a positive direction; they developed an inner resilience that is referred be as “stress hardiness”.  People became less prone to react negatively to stress and better able to actively manage and reduce unavoidable stress. That is all great news but there is more: physical performance improves, creativity is enhanced, problem solving improves and intuitive functions are enhanced.

 This is all excellent information! It does however require that we DO something to create these inner shifts within ourselves. Having a daily meditation practice that involves quieting the mind and body, slowing thoughts, developing the capacity to observe feelings without becoming attached and engaging the heart, all help to bring a kind of mindfulness to your day that allows you to release stress more easily in the moment and develop the resiliency that will bring you all the gifts of higher level functioning….more than worth the effort you put in for twenty minutes out of your day. (I keep reminding myself of this all the time as a motivator—it gets easier with time.)

 If you need help you can find a free nine minute meditation on this website to get you started. In addition all our radio programs contain a 10-15 minute meditation at the end. And of course our recorded programs that are listed in the store can also help!

Guru Tim has been traveling the globe with Tony Pace and observing the cultural climate in various places in the world regarding stress.

 Listen to hear:

 What are people saying?

How is stress experienced in different cultures?

What are the ways people in other countries cope with ”world stress”?

 MOST IMPORTANTLY, we will be discussing healthy ways that you can move beyond coping, away from suffering and into flourishing despite the external triggers.

Join us live or on the web at 10 A.M., Monday, June 28, 2010 or listen to the download at your leisure.

 At first glance it can seem uncaring to focus on shifting to a higher state of consciousness when so many are suffering so much. But we may ask, ‘how does it serve another to feel as downtrodden, sad, or grief stricken as they do’? We can only help others if we work at keeping ourselves strong and healthy. It is then we can help to raise them in whatever way is appropriate or possible.

 So we need to do what we can in terms of donations of time, money or service to those in need, but we also need to be aware of our mental and emotional states. It is easy to become caught in emotional loops and fool yourself into thinking it is the same as or part of participating, caring or helping.

 We can practice living more in the present moment through becoming aware of our troublesome thoughts and emotions, clearing them, achieving more neutrality and thus being freer to cultivate higher level states of BE-ing. Centering within yourself helps to build strong energy that fosters clear thinking and honest emotion. In is only from your “nowness” you can truly be of help to others.