Caregivers such as healthcare workers, social workers, and family members taking care of their sick loved ones should maintain their own health. To be an effective primary caregiver, you must be physically fit and mentally healthy because caring for ill people could be exhausting and psychologically draining. Burnout could easily result if the body and mind aren’t strong enough to handle stress, anxiety, and challenges that come along the way when caring for the sick.
Learn the important reasons why caregivers should maintain good health by reading below.
- Prevent Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is a chronic stress condition that stems from helplessness when caregivers feel unable to provide comfort and relief for those under their care. This condition can take months or even years, which usually causes insomnia or oversleeping, increased irritability, overall exhaustion, stress-induced headaches, and gastrointestinal upset.
Compassion fatigue is common among family members who are taking care of their loved ones at home, such as a special child, old parent, or an ill grandparent. They may feel hopeless, tired, and restless.
Caregivers should practice self-care to prevent compassion fatigue:
- Time for Yourself: Separating yourself from your role as caregiver at least for an hour every day for a positive relationship with the patient.
- Seek Support: Seeking support from professionals and your community to help you in dealing with what you were going through.
- Healthy Living: Maintaining a healthy lifestyle and an optimistic outlook in life, which will be discussed further below.
- Avoid Getting Sick
If caregivers fail to attend to their health needs, they would likely to get sick too. As a caregiver, you should be in the best physical condition possible to perform all everyday tasks for your loved one, such as bedside care, feeding, and administering prescribed medications. If you want to provide the best quality care to your ill family member, make sure to do the following:
- General Checkup: Caregivers should also undergo a general checkup at least once a year to find out if they have high blood sugar, cholesterol levels, infection, tumor, or other physical abnormalities. Also, general checkup should include neurologic and mental health assessments. Take prescribed medications and supplements regularly to maintain a healthy immune system and replenish important nutrients that dietary sources can’t fully provide.
- Maintain A Healthy Lifestyle: It’s essential to maintain good health by eating nutritious foods, exercising every day, and getting enough sleep. While it may seem easy to say, these healthy reminders could be challenging to do for caregivers. That’s why you should strive your best to stick to a schedule or plan by setting reminders or notifications through your phone or oversized calendar.
- Accept Help from Other People: As a primary caregiver for your loved one, you’re probably thinking twice to ask your other family members, relatives, friends, or even professionals. There is absolutely no stigma in asking for Home Care Assistance to give you a break once in a while so you can recharge your own batteries and go back to your loved one with renewed energy and health. You may have fears that they won’t be able to provide the utmost care like what you’re providing to your sick family member. However, carrying the workload alone can cause physical exhaustion and mental stress. Learn to accept that you can’t do it all alone, and you need other people’s help.
- Keep A Positive Outlook in Life
Find time to relax and enjoy to keep your mental senses intact. Seeing your sick loved one suffer from a serious disease, chronic illness, or terminal illness can be devastating. You might end up having negative thoughts and find life miserable overall.
Don’t wreak havoc on your whole being. Safeguard your mental health by considering the following tips:
- Take A Break: Take a weekend family vacation or treat yourself to a spa to rejuvenate. Non-stop work or doing the same things every day can easily lead to boredom and exhaustion. Taking a break from the usual stuff you do can give both you and your loved one a sigh of relief.
- Improve Your Mindset: You can improve your mindset by thinking positively, considering the law of attraction, taking more exercise, organizing your life, and feeling grateful always.
- Make Caring More Fun: Not because your child, spouse, or parent is sick, you can’t enjoy bonding activities anymore. There are many ways to enjoy life through board games, passive exercises, gardening, cooking, art crafts, and other activities that doesn’t require too much physical effort.
- Be A Good Role Model: It’s vital to show your child or sick family member that you’re a good example by showing your genuine care and love. Be firm with your instructions, enforcing taking medications, eating, and doing other activities on time. Also, be honest if you’re feeling tired and develop open communication with your loved one. In this way, you can have a more structured care setting, promote faster recovery, and better improve the patient’s quality of life.
- Work Together: Your sick family member can’t thank you enough for your effort and time, not wanting you to feel too much burdened about the situation. You don’t want to let your son or daughter feel that you’re already getting tired and try your best to portray a positive attitude. However, not being open with your thoughts and feelings can cause emotional buildup, causing sadness, loneliness, and even a major psychological problem. That’s why working together and maintaining open communication are crucial in keeping things balanced.
- Keep Things in Place
If a caregiver is physically and mentally unhealthy, keeping things organized and smooth-flowing can be difficult. You might forget the scheduled medication administration or buy some important home medical supplies your loved one needs. Sometimes, people lose track of time and forget they missed eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Unhealthy habits such as smoking or drinking when you’re stressed out may also lead to chronic diseases. You might forget to attend your dental and medical appointment because you’re too focused on caring for an ill or bed-bound family member. Sometimes, you might even forget to take a bath and groom yourself.
Keep things in place by maintaining a healthy lifestyle so you can think clearly. You’ll be able to focus more on planning your day and doing the important things you need to manage and finish. Organize your workload by keeping a schedule when doing household chores, feeding and caring for your debilitated family member, and personal time for yourself.
- Maintain Social Connections
Social health is an essential part of overall health. People tend to feel guilty when they leave their sick loved ones at home to enjoy social gatherings. However, it shouldn’t be the case. It’s okay to attend social gatherings once in a while.
Check these great tips to help maintain your social connection and maintain a good social life without compromising the general well-being, health, and safety of your loved one:
- Attend Events: Attending a closed friend’s wedding, or any special occasion can help you unwind, relax, and enjoy. It won’t hurt asking another family member, relative, or a professional on-call nurse or caregiver to attend to your sick loved one’s needs while you’re gone for a few hours.
- Call A Friend: Seeing your family member suffer and bound to a bed, especially seniors with a chronic or degenerative disease like Alzheimer’s, can be emotionally painful. Some people just need someone to talk to in their downiest times. If you’re feeling too wrapped up with your situation, calling and talking to a friend brings relief from the pressure that your responsibility brings you. Expressing your emotions and thoughts to a close friend is an excellent way to unburden yourself of the pain and suffering you’ve long been carrying.
- Join Support Groups: There are many support groups for caregivers and patients suffering from different medical conditions such as cancer, ADHD, muscle dystrophy, drug addiction, depression, and other mental health disorders. Don’t underestimate the important benefits you and your loved ones can obtain from joining support groups. Caregivers can now join support groups virtually, bringing the utmost convenience and relief.
- Establish Meaningful Relationships
When you’re healthy, it’s easier to establish meaningful relationships than when you’re suffering from pain and other signs and symptoms of disease or mental health condition. Establish a good relationship with your ill loved one, other family members, your community, and healthcare professionals attending to your child or parent’s medical needs.
You’ll communicate properly and plan the best management by collaborating with the patient and other significant people. Doing so will make your life easier as a primary caregiver. Being healthy makes you physically and mentally capable of handling obstacles that life throws at you. You’ll be stronger and cope up with problems bravely. In this way, you can better support your loved one physically and emotionally.
It is necessary to help one another with love and understanding to make a better future for humanity. However, it would help if you had more effort from everyone to do that.
In a world where competition and greed have been emphasized for centuries, it is helpful to bring back the importance of meaningful relationships.
People who work with others will need to establish meaningful relationships with their co-workers to do the job properly. They also need to try and be part of an office community.
This community can help one another when they face problems, hard things in life, or want some moral support at work. For example, when working at the Law Firm of Elliot Ifraimoff & Associates, establishing relationships with other paralegals will make the workday smoother and more enjoyable.
Fostering relationships will result in less arguing and result in more productive work. In addition, as an office community, everyone can help each other run operations smoothly.
By maintaining fruitful relations with people around you, you’ll feel good about yourself and find the caring experience rewarding. Whatever the result would be, you know you’ve given your best and can accept the outcome kindheartedly with deeper spiritual faith.
Conclusion
Caregivers may feel frustration, uncharacteristic lack of empathy, and hopelessness because of compassion fatigue, along with physical signs and symptoms such as exhaustion and headaches. Maintain healthy living to avoid getting sick and feel good about yourself to keep a positive outlook in life. Also, maintaining your own health can help you establish more meaningful relationships with your loved ones, people around you, and including yourself.
