In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

5. Self-Awareness and Resilience in Caregiving

• Marika • Season 1 • Episode 5

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It's been quite a whirlwind of emotions for me this week, prompting me to revisit a fundamental lesson I learned early in my coaching journey: the power of awareness. Through coaching, I grasped that my emotional state is intricately linked to what's happening in my mind, rather than external circumstances. So, let's dive into why awareness is so crucial, especially for caregivers.

Navigating the role of a caregiver comes with its own set of hurdles. Balancing caregiving responsibilities alongside personal tasks and the myriad of emotions that come with it can feel like a constant juggling act. While it's tempting to attribute our emotions to external triggers, I'll shed light on how profoundly our thoughts shape our feelings. Armed with this understanding, we can begin to challenge negative thought patterns and foster more constructive perspectives.

I'll walk you through practical strategies to cultivate self-awareness, from tuning into our thoughts and identifying recurring emotions to pinpointing habitual actions or reactions. Self-awareness isn't just a handy tool—it's the cornerstone of personal growth and resilience. By honing this skill, we gain the ability to navigate life's challenges with purpose and clarity.

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:

Hey, caregivers, how have you been lately? I will tell you, I've been on a little bit of an emotional roller coaster this last week, and it's really got me reflecting about a skill I learned early on in coaching, and that is that recognizing how I'm feeling is directly tied to what's going on in my head, about the things going on in my life. So if I want to feel better, it means that I need to pay more attention to what's going on inside than what's going on outside. Okay, so that is actually what I want to talk to you about today the importance of awareness. Caregiving is a crucial skill, I think, for any caregiver, but really any person who just wants to feel better or make some changes in their life. So let's talk, though, specifically about the challenges that caregivers face, because I think that, again, the nature of caregiving is so much of our focus is on another person. It's also on all our responsibilities, perhaps around caregiving or just in our life in general. On top of caregiving, it may be all the things that we have at work going on. It could be our children that we're not maybe you've still got kids at home, or even grown kids who have things going on in their life lots and lots of responsibilities. I'm sure Most of us lead busy lives these days, and when we're feeling stressed out or down or low or overwhelmed, it is very easy to look around and see all the things going wrong or the things in our life that we'd like to change and kind of blame that as the reason why we feel the way we do. But the problem is that a lot of the things in our lives, those external things, we don't have a whole lot of control over. I talked a lot about this in the last episode, focusing on what you can control. So while it would be nice, maybe, if some of those things changed for instance, let's just say, your partner's health improved or whatever struggle you're having at work magically gets better but a lot of times that's not reality. Those are the things that we can't control in life, and so if we want to feel better, it means we have to focus instead on what we can control, and that means paying attention to what's going on inside, inside our head. That is so getting back to that crucial lesson I learned early on, and it was that my feelings are actually caused by how I think about going back to that crucial lesson that I learned early on in coaching. It was that my feelings aren't caused by what's happening in my life. In fact, they are caused by how I think about what's happening in my life. So my thoughts are actually the cause of my feelings. That was a big aha moment for me, a big distinction, because it meant that I had a lot more control than I realized.

Marika Humphreys:

And I'll give you an example of this. Have you ever noticed that you and your partner can go to the same doctor's appointment, hear the same news from the doctor and each of you has a very different emotional response? And that's because your thoughts drive your feelings and we each have our own unique set of thoughts. Our thoughts are shaped by all of the experience we have in our life, our own history. All of those things go into how we think and how we see the world, and we will interpret the same information different than someone else. So another example that is just an obvious one, but I like to use it because I think it really illustrates the point in how we each think so differently about the same thing.

Marika Humphreys:

So let's say, it's 80 degrees outside and sunny. So I live in Washington State. Rains a lot here, summers are not super hot, which is wonderful, actually, in my opinion. Again, that's my thought about it. Let's say again it's 80 degrees out and sunny. Now my thought is that that is perfect weather. I love it and I'm so excited to go out and enjoy the day. My sister, on the other hand, would think that 80 degrees is way too hot, and she would be a little not as happy about it. She would prefer the weather to be in the mid 60s.

Marika Humphreys:

We each have totally different opinions about what a beautiful day is or what a perfect weather is, right. So that's an obvious one, but it's one that all of us can relate to, and it's a good example and a good reminder, because each of us, we are all judging the same situation through our own lens, and we're doing this all the time. We're seeing the world through our own lens but, unlike the weather example, most of the time we're not comparing it to someone else. A lot of times we're just living in our own head. So if you've been grappling with some difficult emotions lately, it's because of what's going on internally and not the actual difficult things in your life. It's what you're thinking about, those things, right? So, in order to figure out what's going on on the inside, you have to turn some of that attention inward. As I mentioned as a caregiver, we have a lot of our attention turned on the things happening in our life, and I think that's most of us. It's not just caregivers, it's people who live busy lives. That is our modern kind of way of living these days is to fill our days with a lot of busy things going on. So self awareness. So in order to figure out what's going on, in order to change okay, so in order to make any sort of change in our life, we have to develop self awareness first. That's really the first step.

Marika Humphreys:

I want to give you an analogy to this, just to really drive the point home. Imagine you're driving in a car without any windows, I'm sorry. Imagine you're driving in a car without any mirrors no rear view mirror, no side mirrors, and the only window you have is the one in front. So no side windows, no back window. Obviously, your visibility is very, very restricted. But if you want to change lanes because you don't like the lane you're in, it is not a good lane, you don't feel good in this lane. You want to get out of this lane and into a different lane. In order to change lanes, you're just gonna have to rely on really luck, right Guesswork, and luck Pray that you don't crash into another car.

Marika Humphreys:

So compare that to making a change in your life without self-awareness, right? You're just sort of navigating blind. You're kind of guessing what to do differently or the reason things aren't going the way you'd like. So, just like, mirrors and the windows in your car help you see what's around you and give you visibility. The self-awareness acts as an internal mirror to help you see yourself more clearly. It helps you see where you are so you can figure out where you want to go.

Marika Humphreys:

So I want to give you some areas to focus on to develop your self-awareness, and for some of you, you may already be very aware in certain areas of your life, but you may not be aware in other areas of your life. I think that's the case for me. I do have a lot of awareness around my thoughts, but I'm not always aware of my emotions and sometimes I'm not always aware of the actions I'm taking that are just out of habit. So, for example, you might be super aware of the feelings you have that come up for you frequently, but you might not be aware of what you do when those feelings come up. So, again, I just want to offer that some of these areas you may not have as much awareness on as others.

Marika Humphreys:

So the first area to bring your awareness to is your thoughts. Notice what thoughts you have. Are you constantly judging yourself or are you constantly judging others? Do you talk kind of meanly to yourself? Do you go down mental rabbit holes? Pay attention to the thoughts you have, and the best way to do this is to write them down. You can write them down around a certain topic or just ask yourself what is bothering me, and that will give you a lot of thoughts. Okay, again, we are not used to being aware of our thoughts. We're used to living in our thoughts and we're not used to looking at them with perspective. So that's what I'm asking you to do here is awareness of your thoughts means observe them. Notice them, because they aren't you, they're just a part of you, right? And that is one of the key pieces you want to have awareness of, because it's going to drive those emotions you're feeling.

Marika Humphreys:

Another area to bring your awareness to are your emotions. Are there feelings that come up for you frequently? Do you know how those feelings feel inside your body. Does your throat get tight, or perhaps your chest feels like a lot of pressure, or do you get stomach aches. A lot of times, that's associated with emotion. Try to figure out and be able to name the three feelings that come up for you most frequently. A third area that is really really useful to have a lot of awareness around are your actions and reactions, the things you do or avoid doing, and this can be like are you short with someone? Do you mindlessly go to the kitchen for something to eat? Do you spend too much time scrolling through social media? Notice those actions that you don't really like about yourself, or you'll feel bad maybe after the fact, like maybe you yell at someone or do you withdraw and shut down. You want to notice the actions you take or the things that you avoid doing. Start noticing them. Again, we're just paying attention. This focus is just on awareness as a starting point.

Marika Humphreys:

Then, the last area that I think it's really helpful to have awareness around are your triggers. What sets you off in some way, what bothers you or what makes you emotional? Are there any patterns that you notice? Sometimes it's the way someone says something that can just set us off. Maybe it's a certain person that you know triggers you. They get you irritated easily or upset. Sometimes it's a visual thing, like for many of my clients and I remember for myself as well, seeing their partner go through physical changes can be very triggering. It triggers all sorts of thoughts and feelings when we see their body change, either as a result of their illness or through treatment. So that visual thing is a trigger for them. So again, it's just super good information to have to know what triggers you or to know what sets you off, and you can bring this awareness after the fact, meaning you've done it and then you realize, oh, that was something that was triggering for me. So that's often what awareness is is something we see after the fact and that's totally fine, right? It's easy to observe ourselves later or kind of, as we reflect on the day or on an event and notice the things that came up for us. So awareness is really just about knowing yourself so that you can decide if you need to think or feel differently in order to make a change, in order for things to be different. But I will say sometimes awareness is all you need in order to facilitate change.

Marika Humphreys:

My example is this week. I really realized that I just tend to kind of go mindlessly into the kitchen in the evening times when I'm feeling a little restless or bored and I end up eating too much of food. That just does not make me feel good. So I really decided to bring some awareness to this, and what I mean by that is, first of all, I noticed that I kind of go unconscious at this period of time. Usually I'm watching a show and I just unconsciously I've developed essentially I've developed an unconscious habit of just going into the kitchen and finding something to eat. So by bringing my conscious awareness to it, I have actually interrupted that pattern. And what I mean by that is I literally have told myself okay, Marika, stay conscious here. That is my reminder to myself in the evening, the minute I would kind of want think, ooh, what do we have to eat? I tell myself stay conscious here. And it reminded me that that was a pattern of behavior that I mindlessly do that I wanna interrupt, and by bringing my awareness to it I was able to interrupt the pattern. Now I've worked on this particular pattern a lot, so you may not be able to interrupt all your patterns just by having awareness of them, but it is a starting point. It is a crucial starting point, cause if you don't even have awareness of it, a lot of times we don't even know what we do or why we do it.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay so, and the last thing I wanna leave you with is you can bring this awareness throughout the day. That is what I pretty much do now, after having practiced this for many, many years, but in the beginning, I set aside time For me. It was usually in the morning, and then sometimes that was at lunch, when I used to work in an office and I would download all my thoughts, and that was a way of bringing awareness to it. So you can set aside time in the morning or at the end of the day to reflect on the day. And, again, a good way to do that is to pick a topic and write your thoughts about it, or to ask yourself what's bothering me.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so remember, awareness is the first step towards any change, and it's self-awareness that we're talking about here. We're all very good at being aware of all the things that other people do, but we wanna turn that attention inward in order to build our resilience and our skills to just cope with the challenges of caregiving. Okay, caregivers, I hope this was helpful and I will see you next week ["Maria's Work".

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.