Who Cares About the Carers?

Who Cares About the Carers?

Well I do for one, how about you?

The is a story about carers, yes, and also about challenges, compassion, cognitive dissonance, creativity and change.

A big part of what I’ve done over the past twenty years or so involved the delivery of training and workshops, primarily working in and with mental health services, but also in other areas too. I’ve had lots of memorable experiences, many of which I fondly remember and some I’d prefer to forget, as well as some great adventures. Most of that work has been with patients and carers as well as with staff from both statutory and voluntary health and social care providers. Some times separately as individual groups (i.e. carers ) and more often with groups of people from across the board; coming together and working together and learning together. Some times they’ve been pretty sedate and easy going sessions, some times they’ve been highly energised and productive, and occasionally they’ve been more, erm, tense and highly charged sessions involving lots of fireworks. Metaphorically speaking that is.

There was one in particular of the latter type, that I’ll vividly remember for the rest of my life, which could only be described as nightmarish in nature. I learned lots from it though and maybe at some point I’ll write it up and share it.

Anyway, returning to this narrative, if there’s been one topic that’s stood out as being particularly rewarding, no matter who I’ve been working with, alongside and fundamental to the topic of recovery, it’s been in relation to the notion of self-care. Not least, how often and how quickly people seemed or actually became stuck when exploring the idea of looking after themselves. Especially so when we got into exploring what people actually did to keep well.

(If I asked you right now what it is you do to keep well what would you tell me?)

Simply put, for me at least, self-care is anything I do regularly that helps me maintain my health and well-being. As I’ve aged the need for this has become increasingly apparent. In fact, what I’ve actually come to realise is I have to do things just to remain in a reasonably good place, just to counteract the inevitable spiral downwards; entropy, decline, decay, eventual death. That’s not to be morbid, quite the opposite in fact, it helps me maintain a focus on life and living. 

Anyway, simply put, and simple to practice, but many people simply don’t, and for lots of valid reasons.

Share yours?

I’ve worked quite a lot with carers and I’m always deeply moved by their selfless acts of love and compassion, coupled with a devotion to the needs of loved ones and others. However, caring for others often comes at the expense of their own health and well-being and so I wanted to share a little about working with a carers’ group to promote self-care.

Now, wherever I go and whomever I’m working with a primary aim is to build rapport, because rapport is really important is it not? In fact I’ve heard it argued that rapport is everything. But sometimes, once I have it, I have to risk breaking it to get people thinking about how things could be different.

Well, there I was with a lovely bunch of people, some of whom I knew a little, most of whom I didn’t and all of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves. They’d given me tea, biscuits and home-made cake and all in all had been very welcoming. It would be fair to say that things were going pretty well, until that is, we started on the topic of self-care. There seemed to be considerable resistance to them not just completing the ‘wellness resources’ exercise I’d tasked them with but in actually getting started. There was lots of discussion and debate going on but as I wandered around listening it was very clear most of it was about NOT doing the exercise.

The clock was ticking and I didn’t want to waste the limited time I had so I decided it was time to shake things up a little and risk a potential rapport breaking moment.

Back at the front I tapped the side of my long-since-drained bone china teacup, a few times, with my dry-wipe marker pen, and waited. The chatter slowly began to subside and with a little encouragement from the group leader complete silence followed within a minute or so. I waited a few of seconds more for effect and then chucked my pebble onto the surface of the now still pond.

I said “you know the trouble with you people is that you seem to have real problems with two tiny words. You also have a serious problem, all of you from what I can pick up, in that you’re really selfish.”

(If you emphasise the YOU when doing this it seems to have greater effect.)

For a moment or two the collective stillness, coupled with expressionless faces staring back at me, suggested they’d not heard me. Certain otherwise, I waited for the splash… and the ripples.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“Huh!?!” Came a collective tidal wave in response (I think someone actually said WTF. Even better.)

I continued. “You seem to have real problems with ‘I’ and ‘no’. And on top of that you’re all really, selfish.”

“I beg your pardon, what do you mean by that?” One particularly vocal member of the group fired back.”

“Well, you seem to have real trouble in considering your own needs and a real problem in saying no to the demands from others.”

“And, you’re really, really selfish!”

“How can we possibly consider our own needs when the people we care for are unwell and for the very same reason how can we say no?” came the reply from another, complete with a shaking of the head, as they looked around and sought validation from the others.

And they got it. I think they were united in their distaste and disagreement with what I’d said.

The tension in the room went up a notch or two.

“What are you on about? How can we possibly be really selfish if we spend so much of our time, effort and energy caring for other people? Wouldn’t we be really selfish if we were putting our own needs first?”

As they spoke this person also looked around at the rest of the group, with arms apart and palms upwards as if to say “who is this guy, what is he talking about?”. Cue a Mexican wave of rolling eyes, which I’m pretty certain were about me and my message and not about the comments from a fellow participant.

So, I asked, “are you telling me that caring is important?”

“Yes!” Came an instant, highly charged reply, the whole group virtually in unison.

“And are you telling me that the people you care for are important?”

“Yes!”

“Does caring for your loved ones make a big difference?”

“Yes!”

“Well there you go then. Ample evidence of your selfishness…”

Now let me tell you, over the years I’ve been on quite a few training courses that were aimed at helping me understand people better. (Actually, I really went on all of those course to try and understand myself better but that’s a whole other story.) Anyway, apparently when people look at you in a certain way it can mean a certain thing, and what they say and how they say it can provide clues as to how they might be feeling. Sometimes it’s easy to pick up say for example that they love you and they’re feeling deep affection for you (this wasn’t the case here) and sometimes it’s easy to pick up something else. I’ll be polite and say that what I was picking up was something very much along the lines of (extreme) annoyance and irritation, possibly bordering on anger.

So I continued…

“Show of hands. Have any of you worried about what will happen or who will take care of your loved ones if you became ill and/or were no longer around.”

Almost all hands raised, including my own.

“I’m saying you’re selfish for not loving, nurturing, and caring for the number one most important person in your life.”

“YOU!”

“Because if you don’t what might the possibly avoidable consequences be?”

“Let me ask another question.”

“If you continually made withdrawals from your bank account, and yet never made any deposits, what would the likely outcome be?”

Complete silence, so I had to choose a volunteer to assist me.

“I’d run out of money and probably go overdrawn.”

“Absolutely!”

“So, would you agree you cannot give what you haven’t got?”

“And if/when you check your bank balance and find there isn’t as much as you might like there to be how does it feel? Does it feel great, good, not so good, terrible?”

“Would it be selfish to put money into your account?”

I didn’t wait for answers.

“Not taking time to consider self-care, your own wellbeing, you potentially leave yourself less capable of caring for the people you love. And the flip-side of that is if you regularly practice those things you know will help you be in credit, have a healthy balance, then you’ll be even better placed to care for others. Would you agree?”

Much nodding of heads.

“If the people you care for are so important to you how is it that you’re doing everything in your power to ensure you cannot ultimately be there for them at some point?”

Cognitive dissonance?

Silence again. I stayed with it, determined not to break it.

“Because I’d feel guilty being in a good place when my partner wasn’t” offered one of the group.

I acknowledged the response, a response I’d heard dozens of times.

“From experience I can tell you that what happens for most people is they confuse self-care with selfish and because of the guilt of perceived selfishness they end up caught up in a double bind.

“It’s not actually that you’re really selfish, of course it isn’t, if anything you’re incredibly self-less, but to your own detriment and to the detriment of the care you want to give.”

Well, let me tell you, that triggered a sea of stunned looks and lots of wonderful discussion about self-care, wellbeing and wellness resources.

Rapport returned!

But then we got stuck again…

Want to explore more?

Tune in to the next narrative ‘Carers, Wellness Resources and the Thingy’