In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

6. The Myth of the "Right Way" as a Care Partner

• Marika • Season 1 • Episode 6

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As a caregiver for your partner, do you ever feel like you're constantly on a quest to make the perfect decision? I hear you. The pressure to always do what's right can feel overwhelming, especially when it's not always clear what that even means.

But here's the kicker – sometimes, there's no clear-cut answer.

In this episode, I'm diving deep into the myth of the "right" choice and why it can actually lead you down a slippery slope of exhaustion and burnout. Instead, I'm all about empowering you to find the choice that feels right for you and actually resonates with your values.

Here's what you'll take away:

  • I'll dive into where this idea of a "right" way to make decisions comes from, from our upbringing to societal pressures.
  • I'll explore the consequences of always seeking validation from external sources, including burnout and self-doubt.
  • You'll discover the importance of shifting your perspective and making choices that align with your own values and priorities.
  • I'll share tips on how to make decisions consciously and deliberately, recognizing that there's no one-size-fits-all approach.
  • Lastly, I'll talk about the power of trusting your decisions and understanding that they're made for the present moment, not set in stone forever.

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, welcome to In this Together. Today we are talking about how to find your own way, but first I just want to share that, if you are listening to this in real time, it has just turned spring and I live in Tacoma, washington. So Tacoma is a medium sized city. It's not as big as Seattle, but certainly not a small town. It's a pretty good sized town and I live actually in the downtown area in an apartment building. So city streets outside my building, and this last week the cherry trees have just exploded into bloom and they are stunning and I love seeing these cherry trees. And I love seeing these cherry trees in lots of places in downtown Tacoma, kind of, you know, in the city streets, and then you have these gorgeous, stunning trees full of bloom and it just warms my heart. There are six trees planted across the street from me and it's kind of funny because they're in front of a really old building. That's sort of ugly in and of itself, but the trees are so beautiful. So I am just really appreciating all the spring blossoms that have kind of come to life, and I know that they don't last long. It's one of nature's fleeting beauties, so I'm appreciating them.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so let's get down to business and talk about what we're going to talk about today. As caregivers, one of the things that we are constantly striving to do is make the best decisions. We are, of course, driven by a desire to do what's right, and both by our partner and our loved ones, and we can really struggle with that. We probably feel, I think, a lot of times. We feel like what does it even mean to do the right thing? And sometimes the answer isn't always clear. The answer on what care decision to make or how to spend our time or how to interact or treat our partner isn't always clear, and what we often perceive as the right thing to do can actually lead to burnout and endless self-sacrifice and exhaustion and a lot of resentment or self-doubt. So what I want to really dive into today is I want to debunk the idea that there is a right way to do things, and I want to instead encourage you to find the choice that's right for you and, like your reasons. Let's dive right in.

Marika Humphreys:

I always like to start with the big picture. I am a big picture person, and what I mean by that is when I have a big picture understanding. It helps me to understand the individual parts that make up that bigger picture. So I like to start with the why behind things. So why are we always looking for the right way or the right choice when we're making decisions or even just deciding how to spend our time, how to make all of those decisions that come with living our lives and being a caregiver? And I think that there are several reasons why we tend to look for the right way or the best choice.

Marika Humphreys:

One is how we grow up, and growing up most of us are taught by our parents or whoever raised us us that life has very clear rights and wrongs and the goal in life is to make the right choices and behave the right way, and if you do, things will turn out better. Our schooling revolves around finding the correct answer, and that just reinforces this idea that the answer is out there and we just need to find it and then, if we do, we'll get the gold star Things will turn out. Often, within our own families, we learn that there are certain expectations and we're expected to behave a certain way and that's the correct way to be and anything that deviates from that is not okay. I think also in our media and our social conditioning. We are often presented with images that portray a happy life, and so we start to associate those images with being a certain way in order to have a happy life. And so we start to associate those images with being a certain way in order to have a happy life. So that's kind of the right way to be, and for sure, if you grew up with a religious background or with religious influences, you were probably taught that there were certain rights and wrongs.

Marika Humphreys:

And, to be clear, I am not suggesting that we shouldn't have a clear idea of right and wrong, especially when it comes to morality. We may want to question or re-decide if we still agree with what we were taught originally. So really, the only point I'm making here is to understand why we kind of are conditioned to look for a right answer and that it often comes from a lot of sources that we are surrounded with growing up and in our environment, in our culture, and those sources, those right answers, were sort of taught that they're external to us, that we need to go find them, that somebody else has the right choice or the right choice resides outside of us and we just need to find it, and that makes it really challenging to learn how to find our own path and to trust our own choices and decide what's right for us. And then the other thing I think the reason why we like to think this way in terms of right and wrong is that it's easier to think of the world in terms of black and white. It's easier when there are only two choices Something is either right or it's wrong. This is the best choice and everything else is not the best. So when things are simple, it seems like it's easier. But there's a problem with this type of thinking and it's really limiting. Our conditioning to kind of look for an external right or wrong becomes problematic when we apply it to a lot of the decisions and choices we have to make around caregiving, around our own lives, around how we spend our time, what limits we put in place. That's when it can become problematic, because when we're always looking to an external source for answers to our own unique situation, we don't learn to find our own wisdom or trust our own judgment. Now I'm going to say that one more time when we're always looking outside of ourselves for the answers, we don't learn to find our own wisdom and trust our own judgment. I really want that to sink in, because often we don't even realize we're doing this.

Marika Humphreys:

And I want to give you an example, actually, of one of my clients recently. Her husband has dementia and she's pretty much a full-time caregiver and she lives in a rural area outside of town, so they're about 20 minutes or so outside of town and she's feeling very socially isolated and kind of tied to home because she was feeling like it's irresponsible to leave him alone. Now he can function on his own and while she's home she often goes out into the yard and works in the yard and so he's kind of on his own a lot. She actually also, as we explored this idea, she actually told me she had actually cameras set up that she could monitor him when she's outside of the house, when she has left the house, and he can call her and kind of she has all these systems set up, but she couldn't shake this idea that it was irresponsible of her to leave and so she basically felt trapped at home and she was starting to become resentful and irritated and she'd be short with him and so she felt really torn right. So I asked her to just question what does it mean to be responsible and who was she being responsible to and what kind of came out of that was.

Marika Humphreys:

She really wasn't trusting her own judgment. When she started thinking about this, she realized there were some days where he would do better than others. And she, because she literally spends all her time with him, she recognized that okay, some days I can leave him alone and it's okay because he's functioning fine. And then other days she knows if he hasn't slept well or something's upset him, she knows he doesn't function as well and it's not a good idea to leave him alone. So the answer for her was nuanced and not a simple, clear cut answer. But when she explored it she realized she actually knows him quite well and can read his signs and can make that decision kind of on a day-to-day basis. The answer was really that she could trust herself to see when he seemed to be doing okay and other times when he wasn't, and we also talked about the fact that something could happen while she was there. So there are no guarantees even then.

Marika Humphreys:

So the point again of me kind of sharing this story was she just felt like the wrong answer was to leave him alone, period, and she didn't even have the ability to explore what that actually meant and question it. It was kind of old thinking and I will just say interject right here that if this story or me kind of talking about a right or wrong sort of triggers you in any way and you find yourself maybe feeling defensive or finding a strong response, that's a really good indication that it might be something to think about, like, really question it for yourself what is it about this story that maybe triggers you? Because it's usually again something to look into. We tend to internalize these expectations and we try to meet them and often try to become a superhero in the process, without ever even questioning them. We have these ideas about what a good spouse should be, what it means to be responsible, what it means to be a good caregiver like all of these ideas, what is the right thing to do and we stop even questioning those. And there is a consequence to that.

Marika Humphreys:

I think it's really good to point out that the consequence to not trusting ourselves to find our own answers and kind of find our own way is usually self-doubt and burnout and exhaustion, often resentment, unhappiness those are the emotions that come up as a result, as a result of kind of looking for this external right way and trying to live it out without questioning it or finding our own way or the way that works for us. It's really limiting when we do that to ourselves because we don't actually allow ourselves to even explore possible solutions or different approaches to the challenges we might face, like in the case of my client. She didn't even think to question why. You know what does it mean to be responsible in this scenario? And I think the other consequence to trying to find the correct choice is that we think it will guarantee a better outcome. I coach on this a lot.

Marika Humphreys:

Actually, we think that if we find the right choice or we make the right choice or we make the best care decision, it will somehow guarantee success, it will guarantee the best outcome. And again, we're taught this in life right, if you make all the right choices, you're guaranteed to have a happy life. But we know that that is not true, that there are no guarantees, and whether it comes to making life choices or deciding on a care plan or managing our time, we can make the quote unquote best choice and things still may not turn out the way we hoped. So instead I want to introduce the idea of thinking about it instead of there's a right and wrong or a best choice and a worst choice. There are just choices and outcomes. Choices are neither right or wrong, but they will have different outcomes.

Marika Humphreys:

Right, even the most thought out, well-researched choice may not turn out the way you'd like, and there's a great analogy that I want to share with you to kind of illustrate this. So, if you think of archery, when you're aiming an arrow at a target, there's several things that you can control. Right, you can control your breathing. You can control how far you pull the string back. You can control right, you can control your breathing. You can control how far you pull the string back. You can control your aim and how well you aim. But once you let go, there are forces that act upon that arrow that are beyond your control and will affect its flight and how it hits the target. So that is essentially how choices work, how our decisions in life work.

Marika Humphreys:

Right, there's a lot that we can control. It won't determine a perfect outcome, no matter what Finding your own way. There is no universal right way to navigate life, to be a care partner. Instead, there are simply choices and the outcomes they produce, and we cannot predict those outcomes in advance. We can guess at them, but we can't know for certain how it's going to work out. No one can, not even your doctor or all of these experts. No one knows how things are going to turn out, because we're all individuals, right. So the best we can do is make decisions that are well-informed and that align with our values and our priorities, and we can make decisions and we can like our reasoning around those decisions. That is one of the best litmus tests to any decision or choice you make is what are your reasons and do you like them? Do you like the reasons why you made that choice?

Marika Humphreys:

I'm going to tie this episode up and just kind of close out by saying, as caregivers and care partners, there is no playbook, there is no blueprint. Rather, it is about finding what works best for you, choosing your own path and choosing it deliberately and consciously. And that means making decisions from a clear emotional space and not making decisions out of obligation or fear or any of those kind of clouding emotions that we can sometimes be influenced by. And then, when we've made a decision, remind ourselves this is the decision for now. I love adding for now, because it means you can make another decision later, or choose a new path later, or alter, you know, alter up your choices, but then we need to trust that we've made the best decision with the information we have at the time. That, my friends, is your best defense against regret. So many of us don't want to have regrets and I will do a whole nother podcast on regret probably soon, actually, because I just coached him on this topic recently but our best offense against regret is making conscious choices that we feel good about at the time, at the time.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay. So liking your reasons, all right. So I hope that is helpful for you. It is a really good reminder. There is no right way. There is only the way that is right for you. For now, all right, my friends, I would love it if you are finding this podcast useful. Leave me a review that helps other people find the podcast and send me your comments. I'd love it if you're enjoying this. Leave me a five-star review, but please also just be honest. You can always email me with your comments as well, like any suggestions or questions you have or things you'd like me to cover in future episodes. Marika at CoachMarikacom 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.