Welcome to "In this Together," a podcast where I, Marika Humphreys, share invaluable insights and actionable advice for caregivers like you. In this first episode, I dive deep into the challenging topic of burnout, drawing from my personal journey as a caregiver to my late husband battling cancer. I recount the overwhelming feelings of mental and emotional exhaustion I experienced and how I came to recognize burnout's symptoms: mental fatigue, stress, overwhelm, resentment, sleep disturbances, lack of motivation, and guilt. Caregiving isn't just about physical tasks; it involves navigating uncertainty, grief, and witnessing changes in our loved one's health and personality.
I discuss the pivotal role of mindset in contributing to burnout, explaining how our unconscious thoughts shape our responses and behaviors. Through my own realization about prioritizing my needs, I highlight the importance of uncovering and questioning unhelpful thoughts. By becoming aware of these thoughts, we can make deliberate choices to prioritize self-care and combat burnout.
Throughout the podcast, I'll share personal stories and experiences from myself and my clients, aiming to foster self-awareness and provide perspective on the caregiving journey. So, join me as we navigate the ups and downs of caregiving together.
As a Resiliency Coach for people who are caregiving for their partner, I'm here to support YOU, the caregiver. Learn more about my work at www.coachmarika.com.
Welcome to "In this Together," a podcast where I, Marika Humphreys, share invaluable insights and actionable advice for caregivers like you. In this first episode, I dive deep into the challenging topic of burnout, drawing from my personal journey as a caregiver to my late husband battling cancer. I recount the overwhelming feelings of mental and emotional exhaustion I experienced and how I came to recognize burnout's symptoms: mental fatigue, stress, overwhelm, resentment, sleep disturbances, lack of motivation, and guilt. Caregiving isn't just about physical tasks; it involves navigating uncertainty, grief, and witnessing changes in our loved one's health and personality.
I discuss the pivotal role of mindset in contributing to burnout, explaining how our unconscious thoughts shape our responses and behaviors. Through my own realization about prioritizing my needs, I highlight the importance of uncovering and questioning unhelpful thoughts. By becoming aware of these thoughts, we can make deliberate choices to prioritize self-care and combat burnout.
Throughout the podcast, I'll share personal stories and experiences from myself and my clients, aiming to foster self-awareness and provide perspective on the caregiving journey. So, join me as we navigate the ups and downs of caregiving together.
As a Resiliency Coach for people who are caregiving for their partner, I'm here to support YOU, the caregiver. Learn more about my work at www.coachmarika.com.
Announcer:
Welcome to In this Together, a podcast for partners turned caregivers, where you'll discover invaluable insights and actionable advice to navigate the ups and downs of caregiving with resilience and strength. Here's your guide, Marika Humphreys.
Marika Humphreys:
Alright, hello, caregivers. We are going to kick this podcast off by talking about burnout, one of the biggest challenges that caregivers face. I hear it all the time and today we're going to dive deep into how to recognize it, what causes it and what to do if you're feeling it. So really quickly. I'm Marika Humphries and I am a resiliency coach and I focus on helping people build the skills needed to cope with caregiving or being a care partner for their partner or spouse, and I will share my story throughout this podcast. But today I just want to talk a little bit about my story around burnout and when I first experienced it and what it felt like for me, so that we can talk about how to recognize burnout if you're feeling it. So my late husband battled cancer really off and on for about five years and I definitely went through a couple different times where I was really feeling burned out. But I remember the first time how that felt and I remember just thinking, oh my gosh, I'm just so done with this, and what I meant by that was I was just done with the frequent feelings of fear and anxiety. I was really done with not knowing what the future was going to hold. It felt like we'd kind of put our life on pause and we couldn't really make plans anymore. I was done with the constant appointments and everything revolving around this diagnosis. I was just mentally and emotionally exhausted and then, on top of it all, I felt guilty. I felt guilty for feeling and thinking any of those things because I wasn't the one with this terrible diagnosis. So that was really the first time that I experienced burnout and kind of what was going on in my head, but it may be a little different for you.
Marika Humphreys:
I want to talk about how to recognize what we tend to call burnout. If you're feeling it and I think one of the biggest symptoms is just experiencing a lot of mental fatigue and stress so you might have thoughts like oh my gosh, this is just too much, I can't keep this up, I'm just exhausted. Kind of having those thoughts frequently is often a sign that you're just you know you might be feeling burnout in this area. A lot of emotions that come up frequently are overwhelm overwhelm with all that you need to do and take care of. Maybe you feel like there's just too many decisions to make. Another big emotion that often comes up for people is resentment resentment towards your partner, even though that feels irrational. You know that their illness is not their fault. But resentment that this is what your life has become, maybe just resentment towards life in general. You might not be sleeping well on a consistent basis, really lacking motivation or just having a general blah feeling and then, on top of it all, feeling guilty about it. Feeling guilty for feeling any of those things and for thinking any of those things. So all of those experiences are super common for caregivers and I think, if you're feeling them frequently, it's just a sign to pay attention. Okay, all of those feelings and thoughts are really just a message that we need to pay attention to ourselves, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about how to do that and what I mean by that. But really remember, our burnout is common for caregivers. It's a common feeling that comes up. So my goal is to give you some tools to cope with it and hopefully maybe not get to that point in the first place.
Marika Humphreys:
Alright, so what causes burnout? I mean it may seem like an obvious answer, but it isn't actually, I think, what we think of. We tend to think like, oh, it's just too much, I have too much on my plate and I'm tired, but I want to dig down a little deeper. Caregiving for sure puts a lot on your plate. You probably have more on your to-do list than you did before. You might have taken over some of your partner's chores. You know either household chores maybe now you're doing the bills and that was something that they used to do or maybe now you're doing the yard care or home care. You might also be managing their appointments or medication. You might be taking them to and from appointments. You might be contributing to the care decisions, or you could be making those solely on your own for them. You could be in a place where you are managing their entire care or you're responsible for their entire care. For some of you, I know, you're doing this while working either part-time or full-time. You might also have kids at home and balancing that. That was my situation too. I was also working full-time and we had a young child at home.
Marika Humphreys:
So there's a lot physically. You know, these are like physical tasks that just simply take physical energy. But there's a huge mental and emotional component that comes along when we become a caregiver for our partner, and I think that is the piece that most of us don't fully appreciate the toll that it can take and the adjustment that is required when we have a spouse or a partner and then that transitions to now we're their caregiver. Now they're not able to do the things that they could do before. There is a lot of adjustment that goes along with that and it creates, I think, a lot of uncertainty. You know, anytime your partner has an illness or disease of some sort, there's a lot of uncertainty about the future that now you're faced with on a regular basis. You might not know how much longer they're going to be around or what their physical capabilities are going to be in six months. There's often a lot of grief that comes with this transition Grief about the life that you don't have anymore, grief around what you can no longer do either together or just independently because of the situation now, and grief about the partner or the relationship that you've lost. Right the change, something has changed now and we often grieve what we've lost. And then there's just a lot of emotions around seeing their physical changes.
Marika Humphreys:
Often with illness and disease, there are physical changes that your partner goes through. Their body may change, they may be going through the effects of the treatment that impacts them physically, and then there also can be changes in their personality or their emotions, or maybe even their cognitive abilities, kind of depending on what their illness is. They may not be able to think or process information the same way they used to. They may emotionally be different than they were before. Some people tend to withdraw, some people become super angry, some people it's something else. So you, as their partner, are seeing all of these changes.
Marika Humphreys:
That's stressful, that takes a lot out of us emotionally. That is the part that we tend to underestimate, the stress that that causes. So, while the physical tasks definitely take physical energy, they're not, I think, what causes our burnout. What tends to cause our burnout is the constant stress and the mental and the emotional stresses that we experience as a caregiver All the adjustments we have to make because those are the aspects of caregiving, I think, that were a lot of us were just not equipped for and we don't have skills to really handle. Most of us don't come into the world having this, the skill set of being a caregiver. So it's understandable that we don't really know how to handle this, this total change in our life, in our situation. But there is good news buried beneath this story, in that you can learn skills to cope specifically with those mental and emotional stressors that come with caregiving. And today I want to share just one tool really that you can use to start helping you cope with, specifically, the feelings of burnout, and that is mindset.
Marika Humphreys:
Understanding your mindset and how it contributes to burnout is what I want to talk about next. So mindset is a term that has become very common in the world today. I feel like, if you listen to anything around self-help or self-development or business, we talk about mindset a lot, but we, I think, talk about it so often that people have stopped explaining what it actually is. So I recently heard a great explanation of mindset that was so simple. I really want to share that with you. So think about how we go through our day, day in, day out.
Marika Humphreys:
Most of us respond and make decisions and have thoughts that are just habitual. We just kind of adopt habitual ways of behaving in our life, and that makes sense. We don't want to think about everything every step of the day, so we do things out of habit, sort of on autopilot, and a lot of times our responses to problems and situations that come up are just habitual responses, right? So essentially, our mind is set in a certain way, thus the term mindset. So mindset is really just a collection of thoughts that we've adopted over time. That's what our current mindset is these thoughts and ways of being that we've just adopted over time, and most of that has been unconscious, right Through our upbringing, through our cultural influences, through other people's thoughts and expectations of us, and often we don't question any of that, we just sort of all bring it in and that shapes how we react to the problems in our you know, in our life. Our mindset can be very helpful to us in some ways as a caregiver, but there may be aspects of our mindset that is not so helpful. Now is really my situation, and my guess is, if you are experiencing burnout, that's probably your situation too. So I want to give I want to give you an example of what I mean by aspects of your mindset that may be helpful or not so helpful.
Marika Humphreys:
Before my husband's diagnosis, some of the thoughts that I had were things like I need to be independent and handle things on my own. I need to work hard and just do more in order to be successful. I need to be strong and resourceful and I can figure things out. Those are some of the thoughts that I had After his diagnosis and when I became a care partner. I adopted some other thoughts, unconsciously, around caregiving specifically, and some of those were we'll get through this together, he shouldn't have to be in pain. It's my job to comfort him when he's in pain and my needs just aren't important right now. All of those thoughts I had operating in the background and they were shaping my decisions, how I responded to things each and every day, how I responded to problems and how I approached really everything in my life. That meant my work, parenting and being my husband's care partner. As you can probably imagine, some of those thoughts were really helpful to me, like we'll get through this together and I can figure things out and I'm strong. Those are really really helpful thoughts. They helped me to be resilient.
Marika Humphreys:
But I had other thoughts that were not so helpful that I didn't even realize, but that contributed to later my feelings of burnout, and one of them probably the biggest contributor was the sneaky little thought that I didn't even know I had was that my needs are not important right now. That one little thought meant that I didn't really take my own struggle and emotional needs make them important in my life and I really tried to ignore them. It seems so innocent, right, and it felt so true, my needs aren't important, but because of that, I ignored my own needs and I was feeling terrible and then feeling guilty about it, right? So it's crazy that that one little unconscious thought I had was driving me in a way that I didn't even realize and because of it I was judging my struggle as less important and not worthy of my attention. Our thoughts are always operating in the background, they're shaping our feelings and they impact how we act and the choices we make in our lives, and it's always happening in our lives in all areas, right? It's just that most of us aren't even aware of this interplay.
Marika Humphreys:
I think the next question is okay. So what do we do about it? I mentioned that you can learn tools to cope with the mental and emotional stress of caring for your partner, and one of those really tools is figuring out what is your mindset, what are the thoughts that you have that are driving you, that you may not actually have conscious awareness right now. You may not ever thought to look and think about. What thoughts are you having that are causing you to ignore your own needs and I'm gonna give you a way to figure that out.
Marika Humphreys:
But before I do, I will go back to my story and kind of tell you how I had my realization and I call it sort of my first aha moment, and it was. I remember very specifically I was, it was summertime. I remember talking on the phone to my mom it was summertime and my child was on the swim team and practicing and I was talking on the phone to my mom, I think, just venting and sharing how tired and burnout I was. And for some reason, while I was talking about it, I realized that I had been devaluing my struggle because I didn't have cancer. I had made that mean that anything else was just not important. And I realized well, that's silly, because everybody's suffering is their own right. We all have problems that are important to us because there are problems. Another way to think about that is if you have a rock in your shoe, nobody else feels that pain, but you do, and if it's a big rock, it hurts. You can try to ignore it. That's gonna be difficult, right? Essentially, that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to ignore the rock in my shoe and failing miserably and feeling guilty that I was suffering because this rock was so painful. So I had this realization on the phone, talking to my mom, that my struggle and my feelings of burnout were important because they were mine and I needed to pay attention to them. And yes, it was different than what my husband was battling, but his battle was his to to fight, and not that I would ignore. You know my needs, but the problem was, by Me not paying attention to my own struggle, I wasn't able to be there as much for him in the way that I wanted because I was feeling miserable. I became so focused on my own misery I couldn't show up as the person I wanted to be for him. So that was the realization I had, that that I went from thinking you know, my needs aren't important right now to my struggle is important because it's mine and it's my responsibility To address it.
Marika Humphreys:
If you're feeling some burnout, how do you uncover and change your mindset? Well, the first step there is to actually uncover it. What is your current mindset when it comes to caregiving? What seemingly sneaky little Thoughts do you have that are pushing you around that you may not even be aware of? To figure that out. I'm gonna give you some questions to think about and to ask yourself and just ponder. The first question is why am I feeling burnout? Ask yourself that question and write down everything that comes up. Okay, it's a simple. That's gonna give you a lot of insight already. Maybe it's the struggle that you know you're trying to do too much, right, work is work is stressful, and then you come home to a stressful environment. Just write down all the things that come up.
Marika Humphreys:
The second question I want you to ask yourself is how important is my own health right now? Really, be honest with yourself. What is the answer to that question? That is gonna show you what you're valuing, and there are no right or wrongs here. These are just questions to bring some awareness, okay, and then the last question is what am I currently doing to support myself and why? So that is gonna show you what actions you're taking or not taking. Right, I was very good about staying physically active and prioritizing my physical health, but I wasn't so good about managing my emotional health and getting emotional support, and I really didn't realize how important that was, and that was one of the again with my aha moment, that was what led me to get more emotional support actually led me to coaching, which later you know, which literally changed my life. These questions are just a starting point to get you thinking.
Marika Humphreys:
If burnout is what you're experiencing, then at the root of it are probably some unuseful thoughts you have around the importance of taking care of yourself and your own needs, and the first step is just to figure out what those thoughts are. And if you want to take the next step right, just start by questioning them. Is this really true? How could I approach this differently? Okay, so that is where we start uncovering those sneaky little thoughts, and the beauty here is we do have authority over how we think. When we start becoming aware of the of our thoughts, the things that are often Unconscious, when we bring them into our consciousness and we have awareness around them, then we can make more Deliberate and conscious choices around them. That's essentially what happened for me. Right, I became aware that I had this thought that my needs weren't important right now, and once I became aware of it, I realized well, that's silly, that's just not true at all. But that awareness was was the key, pivotal piece. So I'm encouraging you to bring some Contemplation to this for yourself right now this week.
Marika Humphreys:
Mindset work can be challenging to do on your own because most of us are so used to living in our own head we don't even question ourselves and how we think. But my hope is that by sharing my story and throughout this podcast, I will share stories of my clients as well. I hope that you may you see yourself in those stories and that can often help bring awareness in a perspective when we hear ourselves and in other people's stories that are maybe similar. Remember we all have the answers and wisdom inside of us. We just have to uncover that, and that's what I'm gonna Help you do throughout this podcast. All right, caregivers, so spend some time this week thinking about the thoughts behind why you're feeling burned out, and I will see you next week.
Announcer:
Thanks for listening to this episode of in this together. If you would like to learn more about Marika's work, go to www. coachmarika. com.