Caregiver's Paradox

Drop everything that doesn’t serve you? Put yourself first? Textbooks and motivational gurus love this advice. They say follow Maslow’s Hierarchy: fulfil your safety needs first. The textbook answer to self-care for a carer sounds ‘leave the person you care for’. Can you do that?

No, you can’t. That's why you're here. Your definition of self-care, of "what serves me," is fundamentally different from the general public. You are compassionate enough to care for another person at the expense of your own health. But is that compassion or is it a biological imperative we haven't understood? Let's dive into the why behind your overwhelms and your endless sense of duty by comparing raising an ordinary child to adult caregiving.

The hard truth is raising a typical child feeds your soul despite some challenges whereas caring for an adult drains it.

When raising a child, you avail from the dopamine surges every now and then, especially when the babies mimicking your speeches, crawling, smiling and reaching to the next developmental stage. These developments signal your brain’s reward loop; therefore, you feel accomplished although you are stretched thin and overwhelmed. This is because the brain releases hormones such as dopamine and oxytocin. This then encourages and reinforces you to complete more tasks: feeding, soothing, teaching, with joy.

When caring for an adult, chances are more decline states than progresses or improvements take enormous time leaving to test your patience. Hence, the most successful outcome is very likely to be a status quo. This ambiguity of progress does not support the positive feedback loop (Dopamine loop). Instead, the high stakes, physical demands, and constant unpredictability activate your stress system, flooding your body with Cortisol (the stress hormone).

This comparison clearly shows the immediate gratification and hopes in the baby-care and the chronic vigilance and constant survival mode in the adult-care.

From the control perspective, you feel things are in control because there is a positive reward (babies’ development) as you care, feed, and nurture. The results are predictable, too. On the contrary, chances are feeling loss of control as the progress depends on your quality of care at a minimal level. Your care may improve certain aspects such as logistics, administration, or nutrition. There is no control over the sickness or improvement from it. Even nutrition, it depends on other medical conditions of the person you cared-for; they may not benefit in proportion to your care. Furthermore, you cannot fix the underlying conditions most of the time. The sickness are their own battles where your involvements benefit least. These circumstances then reduced your locus of control triggering your anxiety and deep exhaustions. The lack of control forces you into a constant state of defence and vigilance. Therefore, the lack of reciprocal results in adult caregiving reinforces guilt, resentment, and a profound sense of failure in you despite your incredible efforts and care.

What you can learn from this comparison is you need to manage your expectations especially in adult caregiving because there are fewer variables you can manage than an infant care. So, what would happen if you can’t manage your expectations including the progress of the cared-for person’s health? You would burnout yourself. Another likelihood is you would potentially mask your feelings and emotions rather than regulating them. In another word, you are keeping the scores of chronic stresses in your body than managing it. The deeper you are stressed, the lower your ability to cope with your burnout and emotions. When you are upset with your messy state of burnout and emotional spill-over, you would tend to normalise actions such as drinking, smoking, over-caffeinating, keeping yourself busy, doom scrolling, compulsive spending for the cared-for person, etc. to ease your tension. This is not coping, in fact. It is masking which will later worsen your mental health. You are just delaying your symptoms with the “I’m OK!” hashtag.

Then, what is the true coping mechanism? True coping involves successfully managing the task while maintaining a relatively stable baseline of physical and mental health, often by regulating stress hormones (like cortisol) or utilizing robust support systems.

This is exactly what I learned to do by developing and testing the L.E.A.D.E.R Framework (a 6-step methodology) that guides you from reactive survival to proactive leadership of your own life.

In my Free LIVE Webinar, "Awaken the LEADER in You from Burnout," I will share how this framework gave me a way out of burnout. You will learn how to:

➡️Hold onto your peace when chaos is crashing down➡️Set boundaries that actually stick and are practical in caregiving➡️Start reclaiming your identity NOW, so you don't start January already burned out.

If this article showed you why you're stuck, the webinar will how you how to get unstuck.

If you're ready to take the first step from understanding to action, you are invited to register for free here: https://live.alice-kate.co.uk/sign-up