La Jolla Senior Care News

Maintaining Your Mental Health throughout Your Caregiver Journey

Caregivers Pacific Beach CA

Being a family caregiver for your elderly loved ones can be incredibly challenging. The Office on Women’s Health notes that women caregivers are particularly prone to caregiver stress and the physical and emotional health consequences that can occur because of it, including exhaustion, headaches, depression, and anxiety. This can not only diminish your effectiveness as a caregiver, but can decrease your quality of life. Maintaining your mental health throughout your caregiver journey is essential to ensuring that you can stay strong and healthy for your parents, the rest of your family, and yourself.

Try these tips for maintaining your mental health throughout your caregiver journey:

  • Organize. Keeping yourself organized helps you to feel more in control in all of your care efforts, which helps to ease tension and stress. Organize your efforts using a detailed schedule that includes all of the tasks that you need to do for your aging parents, as well as your obligations for your children, your partner, and your career. Do your best to keep your vehicle and your home clean and neat, which will ease your anxiety and make it easier to handle your daily tasks. Never underestimate the power of lists, which can help you to quickly and clearly see what you need to do, and allows you to cross of items as you complete them so that you can feel a sense of accomplishment that will motivate you to keep going.
  • Know your limits. You want to do everything that you can to make sure that your aging loved ones get the care and support they need and deserve, but trying to handle too much can just set you up for failure and disappointment, which discourage you and keep you from being able to do the things that you need to do. Instead, be honest with yourself about your limitations and give yourself permission to not feel guilty about being able to handle everything on your own. This lets you focus your energy and attention on the things that you can accomplish and get them done to the best of your ability.
  • Ask for help. Once you have identified your limitations, do not be afraid to ask for help. This can mean asking your siblings to be more involved or hiring a home care provider to divide your care efforts. If you do not feel that you need to have a care provider on a daily basis, consider having a respite care provider come in and provide care so that you can take a break.
  • Indulge yourself. Just because you are caring for your parents does not mean that you have to sacrifice everything that you may want to do for yourself. Taking time to pamper yourself is an important part of relieving stress, easing your anxiety, and maintaining your own identity throughout your care relationship. This can be as simple as taking a bubble bath every Friday evening or stopping for your favorite lunch once a week. Doing something for yourself on a regular basis helps to keep you from getting burned out.
  • Keep your perspective. When you are facing a difficult care journey and start to feel stressed, it can be easy to forget why you made the decision to be a caregiver. Take the time regularly to remind yourself why you want to care for your parents and the benefits that you get out of the relationship. This can help the stress to feel less overwhelming.

La Jolla Nurses Homecare can help your aging parents remain in their own homes, call 858-454-9339. We are a home care agency providing quality and affordable senior care in La Costa, CA, and the surrounding communities."]” data-sheets-userformat=”[null,null,767,[null,0],[null,2,10667209],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],2,2,null,0]”>For more information about how the caregivers at La Jolla Nurses Homecare can help your aging parents remain in their own homes, call 858-454-9339. We are a home care agency providing quality and affordable caregivers in Pacific Beach, CA, and the surrounding communities.

Brittnei Salerno

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