Trapped Taking Care of Someone Else Who is Sick
Are you a caregiver living life and feeling trapped taking care of someone else who is sick? If so, have you considered that the person you care for feels as trapped as you? Have you heard the saying that the grass always looks greener on the other side? Well, that’s until you get to the other side.
Stay tuned for two examples of a caregiver becoming dependent on a spouse or aging parent for housing and money because the caregiver chose to give up their independence to be a caregiver and the other side of the person needing care being entirely dependent on a spouse, adult child or another family member. These scenarios also apply to caregivers working and devoting all their free time to caring for a loved one.
Both Sides of the Story Grow Compassion
It is easy for caregivers to have a one-sided perspective about the time and attention they devote to care for a loved one. It is not until a person is on the other side of the fence—being sick and needing care—dealing with one health problem after another that a new perspective arises.
Health challenges add up until one understands what it’s like to be sick, need care, and experience constant worry and anxiety about a health condition.
Regardless of what side of the grass you are on, living a life trapped, taking care of someone else who is sick, or living in the body of a sick person who needs care, growing your level of compassion, and being practical and realistic about what is possible can improve the day-to-day situation.
If you are a caregiver whose daily life is affected by caring for a sick person, you might feel exhausted, resentful, or angry. Agreeing to become a caregiver for a family member benefits from conversations and plans documenting what is being agreed to, especially if a financial benefit is being extended.
Be Informed Versus Naive
Financial benefits can extend from the caregiver to the care receiver or the care receiver to the caregiver. Do not be so naïve to think that just because you are family, written agreements are unnecessary.
Because you are family, writing this information down and documenting agreements, including financial arrangements, are especially important, including having these agreements notarized, witnessed, and dated. The more transparent you can be, the better you can avoid future issues.
Managing Dependence and Interdependence
Let’s be honest: having another person depending on you for their daily needs can be physically and emotionally draining. Maybe you’re tired of doing everything you can.
Your sick loved one’s health only seems to be getting worse instead of better. If you are a parent and you raised children, you might have looked forward to the day your children grew up and moved out of the house so that you could have your life back.
You are back in the role after a few years of freedom from family caregiving. While there may be breaks from caregiving throughout life, in one way or another, the responsibilities return whether a person is managing their health problems or caring for someone else.
As a caregiver, you know these responsibilities can last for years. People diagnosed with chronic health conditions can have one health problem that leads to one more and one more during a lifetime.
Beliefs About Health and Caregiving Responsibilities
The difference between being a caregiver raising children to 18 or 21 when children move out of the house is that the person you care for is an adult with life experience. Excluding a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s, people with health problems can have rational conversations.
More of the challenge is dealing with individual and cultural beliefs about health and caregiving responsibilities.
If you are a sick person who needs care, you might be angry at the world and your caregiver. Maybe you are so exhausted that you are not motivated to get out of bed in the morning. You might be tired of doctors and your caregiver telling you what to do so that you can feel better. Maybe you want to give up.
Giving up is a choice you can make. But if you choose to give up, you must give up the expectation that your husband or wife or other family members must give up their lives, dreams, and careers to care for you 24/7.
Misery may love company, but it does not make good partners in a caregiving relationship.
Care and Caregiving Choices
In care relationships, there can be two people who are both exhausted. The caregiver and the person who needs care. One wants their life back, and the other may want to be left alone to live out one’s life.
With these opposing goals, is it good for these two people to continue living together or be in a caregiver–care receiver relationship? This is a question rarely asked because the answer may necessitate change.
Let’s look at two scenarios of a caregiver who chose to live with a sick person and became financially dependent on the care receiver.
While caregivers say they had no choice. Any person in this situation chose to be here through their actions, behaviors, and beliefs, which may include the belief that this is what a good son or daughter does.
Is Your Life Consumed by Taking Care of a Sick Loved One?
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Pamela’s YouTube ChannelScenario #1 Trapped Caring for Someone Else
If you are a caregiver who has cared for someone sick for years, you’re probably in a routine. Changing this routine will take work if you want to change your life and regain your independence to end care responsibilities.
For example, if you’ve given up your job, getting a job may be the hardest thing you will ever have to do. If you have relied on the income of the sick person to support yourself, you may be comfortable but miserable. If you are a sick person who just wants to live out your life but you need care, you will need a caregiver. If that caregiver isn’t your family member, who will it be? Where will you receive care?
You see – in this situation, as bad as it may be, two people have worked themselves into complicated situations such that choosing to change the situation will upset the routine.
Bringing the idea of growing in compassion to the situation and agreeing that change must occur, what can the caregiver and the sick person do?
Here are several options
1) Accept the current situation, with all the difficult choices and steps that must be made.
2) The home may need to be sold to pay for the sick person’s care.
3) If the caregiver is financially dependent on housing and income from the sick person, the caregiver will have to get a job and find a place to live.
4) The sick person needs to prepare the house for sale, sell it, and move into care community. This may include completing a Medicaid application.
Change Takes Time
Changes do not happen overnight. So, the best the caregiver and the sick person can do is sit down and write out a plan while being as compassionate and kind to each other as possible. Put yourself in each other’s shoes and listen, listen, listen.
Scenario #2 Trapped Caring for Someone Else
While miserable, the caregiver and the sick person don’t want to make a significant change to separate lives. They agree that they’re in this for the long run. What can be done?
Options include:
1) Setting time and relationship boundaries.
2) The caregiver creates a life outside of caregiving, including getting a paid job.
3) The sick person pays for a caregiver to come into the home or accesses the state Medicaid program so that a caregiver comes into the home.
4) If necessary, the sick person agrees to attend an adult day program so the family caregiver can be gone all day at work.
These changes may be as challenging as scenario #1. However, scenario # also acknowledges each person’s right to live their life in a way that does not negatively affect their life and the other person’s rights to be happy, self-sufficient, and independent.
In both scenarios,
- The caregiver must acknowledge how they came to depend on living in the home and being financially supported by the sick person.
- The sick person must recognize the time commitment that the caregiver devoted to their care and agree that they have a right to re-establish a life that is not solely dedicated to being a caregiver.
Make and Keep Agreements
Agreements in both scenarios include listening to each other without judgment. Until you are in the shoes of another person, it’s hard to imagine daily life experiences.
Speaking kindly and doing kind things must become routine even when either person loses patience or is having a bad day.
Some caregivers say to me, “my mother or father is mean all the time. It would be nice if at least once, I could hear a thank you.”
For the caregiver and care receiver, practicing self-compassion in the current situation is critical. Each person may have firm beliefs they are unwilling to change. Life can be more difficult if one is not flexible in their beliefs.
Have the Courage to Believe Change is Possible
It’s easy to get into a routine and deny that it will take effort to change a situation or even believe there are options for a situation to change.
Whatever situation you find yourself in today, it is possible to change.
Change requires physical and mental work, meaning you have to believe change can happen and then put in the effort to make it happen. The more embedded you are in a care situation, the longer it can take for change to occur.
So, if you are feeling trapped today by taking care of a sick person, begin having compassionate conversations to understand each other’s situations and explore new possibilities.
If you are both unhappy, you can choose differently. Make a different plan. If one of you is happy and the other is not. Begin setting boundaries to move your life ahead.
One must have the courage and belief to start the change process for situations to change. Choose to be that person.
If you need help identifying options or making a plan to change, schedule a consultation with me today.
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