You’ve noticed it, haven’t you? You clicked on this article because of the title. It tapped into something you’ve been experiencing, changes in your behavior. Ever since you became a family caregiver — whether it was out of necessity, a sense of responsibility, or even feeling you had no other option — you’ve noticed changes in your demeanor, attitude, patience, and behavior.
More often than not these changes in behavior for family caregivers can be directly related to stress. You might not think looking after your elderly mother, spouse, or even a sibling is going to cause much stress, but it does. Even if you weren’t working at a full-time job when you began this responsibility, you could still be experiencing an intense amount of stress in your life.
How do we recognize stress?
Stress affects everyone. Far too often it is impacting people financially. When people are strapped financially, worried about how they are going to cover the bills each month, or keep food on the table, or keep from getting the house foreclosed on, that is going to pound down stress in their life.
Stress can be associated with a variety of symptoms, including difficulty sleeping, constantly brooding about specific topics, even if there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it at the moment, and even health related challenges.
How can you deal with caregiver stress?
You may notice you’re getting short tempered with people, even your closest family and friends. This isn’t normal behavior for you. Usually, you are even keeled, cool under pressure, but right now even the smallest mistakes and mishaps are causing you to get extremely frustrated and angry.
Your snapping at people, even strangers in stores or on the road. You can’t sleep at night. You wake up so many times and struggle to fall back to sleep, then wake up completely exhausted and that only makes things worse.
The best way to deal with caregiver stress is not just confronting and acknowledging it in your life, but taking steps to remedy it.
Relying on a home care services aide to help support this aging family member is one of the best steps you can take to reduce caregiver stress in your life. You don’t need to rely on somebody for full-time care. You can still support this aging senior, but no longer be the person solely responsible to look after them.
Through an agency, home care services aides can be hired for part-time care, even just a couple of days a week. It’s a great way to transition both you and that aging family member who depend on you into this new lifestyle. It will give you time to focus on things you need to focus on which will, in turn, reduce stress.