How To Reduce Stress When Caring for Aging Parents

medium.com
April 15, 2023
by Savio P. Clemente

First and foremost, be aware that this is a stressful situation, and this is a normal reaction. You’re seeing this demand that’s coming towards you, and probably feeling, “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” Just knowing your starting point — then you can start to plot out a path.

With all that’s going on in our country, our economy, the world, and on social media, so many of us are under a great deal of stress. Caring for elderly or aging parents can be particularly stress-inducing. We know chronic stress can be as unhealthy as smoking a quarter of a pack a day. What are stress management strategies that people use to become “Stress-Proof? What are some great tweaks, hacks, and tips that help reduce or even eliminate stress when caring for our aging parents? In this interview series, we are talking to authors, and mental health experts, who can share their strategies for reducing or eliminating stress. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Maribeth Gallagher.

Maribeth Gallagher is a Doctor of Nursing Practice, a certified Mindfulness Based Stress-Reduction teacher, and an award-winning program director for Hospice of the Valley’s Dementia Care and Education Campus, the most innovative dementia-focused nonprofit in the Southwest. Gallagher helps the caregivers of elderly people struggling with dementia in a unique way.

As a clinician, she’s a consummate expert on the illness and its impact.

As a mindfulness practitioner, she’s well-versed in stress reduction and holistic mental health.

Finally, as a daughter, she knows all the emotions that come with watching a loved one’s decline.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!

I started my professional career as a professional singer here in the United States and abroad. When my family member developed dementia, I had little preparation for what the journey would entail. I was learning as I went along. Toward the end of the journey, Hospice of the Valley helped provide comfort — taking care of our whole family. That experience was so transformative that I decided that the world didn’t need another singer. I felt called to see if I could, in some small way, contribute to the well-being of people living with dementia and their care partners who would accompany them on the journey.

What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?

I would share insights with myself that I had to learn the hard way.

One is, when you care for a person who has dementia, it’s so important to understand what it’s like to experience brain changes, and how these changes impact the way this person perceives their world. So one should learn as much as possible about the condition that their loved one has.

Next, especially if it’s an incurable condition, it’s important to keep remembering, you can’t fix this. However, we can accompany this person every step of the way with compassion, and as much skill as we can bring. I would also tell myself, and this is based on the literature as it pertains to dementia caregiving, that some days are just good enough. Some of us have tendencies towards perfectionism.

And perfection is sort of the perfect recipe for pain — emotional pain. It’s helpful to realize that some days, I’m just being called upon to bring out the best of myself and that varies day to day. It’s so common for us to lose sight of caring for ourselves at the same time, but you can’t pour from an empty cup. So I would advise my younger self to do a lot of self-care, not only physically but emotionally.

None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support they gave you to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for them?

There were so many people along the way who helped me optimize my well-being and develop resiliency. They offered unique gifts that created this beautiful tapestry of support — from those who gave me concrete “this is what you do in this kind of situation” medical advice to the friends who just provided a soft place for me to fall apart and be less than the ideal image that I had of myself.

And then there were spiritual support people. Many were practicing Mindfulness and seemed to be able to stay calm in the midst of all sorts of chaos. When I saw that, I knew that I wanted to develop that skill as well.

Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s now talk about stress. How would you define stress?

I would define stress as a demand that’s coming towards me for which I don’t believe that I have adequate resources to meet without feeling imbalance. It feels like a wave that’s bigger than I can handle.

What are some of the physical manifestations of being under a lot of stress? How does the human body react to stress?

Stress looks different for everyone, although there are similarities.

When we start with just the body, our fight, flight or, freeze — the sympathetic nervous system — kicks in. Maybe I feel my heartbeat more, maybe it’s pounding. It’s going faster, maybe my respirations are more shallow. Maybe I’m feeling restless, and jittery. In my mind, I’m not able to pay attention, I don’t have the sustained focus. Maybe it’s interfering with my sleep, my attitude, or my appetite.

In so many ways, stress impacts the body, mind, and spirit.

I grew up in an era where a very common saying was “Stress kills.” But in living through stress, and also studying science, I’ve learned that it’s not stress that kills us, but our reactions to stress can definitely kill us.

Is stress necessarily a bad thing? Can stress ever be good for us?

The good news is, we can learn different responses to stress, and realize that stress can actually be an incredible teacher that grabs our attention and allows us to practice new behaviors.

We have to remember that all thoughts are not true. We don’t have to believe everything we think, because it can walk us down a strange road that works against us.

In science, they talk about micro-practices, even catching stress when it manifests itself and being aware of it. Over time, we make little changes that build up, like pennies in the bank.

Let’s now focus more on the stress of caring for elderly or aging parents. This feels intuitive, but it is helpful to spell it out in order to address it. Can you help articulate a few reasons why caring for our aging parents can be so stressful?

Let’s pull back the lens and look at how, from birth and all through childhood, our parents are the people who figure it out. They’re mighty. They don’t need any help. They’re the people we go to for help.

And suddenly, as they age, or as they become more frail, we see them in a different light. And that doesn’t compute with everything we’ve previously known. It’s changing things, which can be alarming and cause fear. It can also cause sadness — and grief. These are complex emotions we’re dealing with.

It changes our whole perspective and shakes the platform upon which we’ve stood and operated our whole lives. It’s important to recognize these feelings and how they’re normal reactions to a seemingly abnormal situation and to treat ourselves with kindness.

Can you share with our readers your “5 Things You Can Do To Reduce Stress When Caring For Your Elderly Or Aging Parents”?

1. First and foremost, be aware that this is a stressful situation, and this is a normal reaction. You’re seeing this demand that’s coming towards you, and probably feeling, “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” Just knowing your starting point — then you can start to plot out a path.
2. Learn as much as you can. But don’t think that now you have to take over and that this is what’s most important. Now it’s time for you to use your best communication skills, heart to heart, with your loved ones and say, “What is most important to you now?”
3. Then what are your self-care practices going to be? For some of you, it’s going to be exercise, and maybe for some prayer or meditation. Maybe it’s being out in nature, playing with your pet, or whatever those things are you enjoy.
4. Next, who are you going to go to for support? It takes a village. Do you have support systems lined up? How good are you at asking for help when you need it? If we are going to be helpers, we better get in touch with whom we can ask for help.
5. There’s a concept called befriending the self. Ask yourself: What is it that you would do for yourself in these situations? Some of them are incurable situations, and we won’t be able to fix them.
   How is my attitude? How am I showing up? Can I bring compassion? Understanding? Can I understand that I’m still a human being? That’s not an excuse — there’s accountability. But we’re messy and we’re weak at times. But we’re also strong and fabulous at other times.

Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?

The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley has podcasts, a magazine, and classes you can take. It’s all based on the neuroscience of happiness and well-being. They have a happiness calendar with 30 days of micro-practices you can do. We must optimize well-being not only for the person in our care, but for ourselves.

Next, there’s a podcast that I particularly love. It’s called 10% Happier by Dan Harris. This is a journalist who was looking at the practice of Mindfulness from a more skeptical approach and asking the right questions.

As human beings, when we’re not happy, part of our brain says, “Oh, something must be wrong.” But life isn’t only about happiness — it’s the full spectrum. But we forget that. There are lots of studies on happiness and how happiness can be cultivated. Some people are kind of born generally happy, others not so much. But what we’ve learned from neuroscience is that happiness actually can be grown, again, through practice.

There are different mindfulness practices on mindful self-compassion and loving-kindness. There are podcasts like Happier by Gretchen Rubin and another one called Happiness Lab.

What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?

The collaborative works I’ve done are with my colleagues at Phoenix-based Hospice of the Valley and it’s abundantly clear that dementia is going to touch all of our lives in one way or another. The good news is, you don’t have to face the caregiving journey alone. If you are the loved one of someone with dementia, the first step is starting to learn about it. And Hospice of the Valley’s Dementia Care and EducationCampus website is a great place to start. There are lots and lots of videos and podcasts and all sorts of information.

As Dr. Maya Angelou says, “When we know better, we do better.”

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.