In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

15. Moving Beyond Victimhood in the Caregiving Journey

• Marika • Season 1 • Episode 15

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In this podcast, I dive into the uncomfortable and difficult topic of recognizing when we're in victim mentality during our caregiving journey and how to overcome it. 

Being a caregiver often brings drastic life changes, whether it’s leaving work to provide full-time care or adjusting social activities. It’s natural to grieve these losses, but it’s also easy to fall into resentment and feel trapped. 

Feeling like a victim comes from focusing on what we can’t control, but we can shift our perspective to focus on our choices and regain a sense of empowerment. I share my own experience of feeling stuck in my job during my husband’s cancer battle and how I reclaimed control by recognizing my choices.

The key is identifying where you feel powerless, acknowledging your emotions, and making deliberate choices. By re-deciding and committing to our choices, we transform feelings of powerlessness into empowerment, opening up new possibilities and growth.

References:
12. Navigating the Silent Grief of Caregiving

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.

Marika Humphreys:

Hello caregivers and care partners out there, I am so glad that you are back with me. If you are enjoying this podcast, please take a minute and, after you listen, of course, leave me a review. I would be. Hello caregivers and care partners out there, I'm so glad you're back with me. I would like to take a minute and ask you to leave me a review, after you've listened, of course, to this podcast. You can do that on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share a few words of what you are enjoying about it, and if you want to share it with others, that would be amazing as well.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so today I am diving in to a very important topic overcoming victim mentality and I'm going to explore today how the changing circumstances that we go through as caregivers can lead to feelings of powerlessness and kind of victimhood, and I'm going to talk about what it means to feel like a victim and how to recognize those feelings and then, most importantly, how to regain control through the power of choices. So this topic may be hard for some of you. It can be really hard to confront in ourselves where we have shifted to victimhood. The very process of seeing where that's coming up for ourselves is often the hardest part and from there you can then decide of how you want to proceed. One of the insights I think I've gained as a coach and doing self-development work doing self-development work really consciously for the last five plus years is that there is no arrival place. There is no place where we get in which we then have no problems. That just simply does not exist. But the more you work on yourself and the more you grow and the better you will get at the process and the tools of growth and awareness. But it doesn't mean you stop having challenges and it doesn't mean some of the patterns you see in yourself don't keep coming up. I think often they do. But you get better and faster at recognizing them when they come up and then also you get better at getting yourself out of those patterns. So learning to recognize our patterns that really just aren't useful or that we don't like in ourself needs to come from a place of love and compassion, because we are all messy humans. So, with some love from me and for yourself, let's talk about victimhood. I know that kind of that. Those two words should not go in the same sentence. It feels weird, but again, we're all messy humans.

Marika Humphreys:

I want to first start by just acknowledging how dramatically life can change when you become a caregiver or a care partner. For some of you it may be drastic. You may have had to leave work and become your partner's full-time caregiver. You might be doing certain medical tasks for your partner or things like feeding them or giving them medication. It was probably a major change in your life. And then for others of you it was smaller changes. Your ability to go out with friends became limited. You no longer can travel like you once did. How you socialize had to change. For me it was more the latter.

Marika Humphreys:

But for all of us, caregivers and care partners, our life changes and that is important to just recognize. Our daily routines, our priorities, sometimes even our dreams, have to be adjusted and it is very natural to feel a sense of loss and grief about the changes that we've made. And those feelings are totally valid. I did a whole podcast episode about the importance of acknowledging the silent grief and losses that we often encounter as caregivers. So it's really important to just know that those feelings are valid and to acknowledge them.

Marika Humphreys:

Being a caregiver and the changes that that brings about can be difficult, so acknowledging that difficulty and acknowledging the feelings around. It is important to moving forward, but what also can come up for a lot of us is that we feel frustrated or resentful or stuck about the changes that we've had to make. You might find yourself thinking like I can't do the things I used to do, or I have to stay home and care for my partner. Like I have to, or I can't, or I'm stuck. Those type of thoughts can really lead to a a feeling of being trapped by our circumstances. So let's talk about what it actually means to be in victim mentality. So feeling like a victim occurs when we believe that our situation is entirely out of our control and we start seeing ourselves as powerless. And it's totally understandable and it's a very human response, but it's also one that will just leave you feeling helpless and frustrated and often resentful.

Marika Humphreys:

So I want to go a little deeper on this, because I think all of us knows what it means to be a victim. We have no control, basically. But the thing is it's true that there are a lot of things we don't have control over. That's always true In caregiving. We don't control our partner's health. We don't control how they are dealing with their situation. We don't control what friends and family say, or what the doctor says. I could go on and on right, but you get the idea. There's always things outside of our control and yet we don't necessarily always feel like a victim in all of those situations. But so the feeling of powerlessness or victimization comes when we're focused on those things, when we feel like we have no choice, and it feels awful to be in that place. Not having choices or control feels awful. But, as I said before, there's always things outside of our control and yet we don't always have that feeling about all of them.

Marika Humphreys:

So I want to give you an example of this. If you live in the United States, we drive a lot and the cost of gas is something that changes all the time. It goes up, goes down, and it's something we have no control over. And yet most people probably don't feel powerless every time they go to the gas station, because we've just accepted that this is how it is and so we don't focus on it. The fact that that price of gas is out of our control, it's just. If you choose to have a car in the United States, this is just part of the deal. Okay, so that may not be the best example, but I really just want to illustrate that feeling powerless or like a victim comes up only when we're focused on what we don't control or when we forget about the choices that we've often already made. So when we choose to have a car and put gas in it, we just accept that part of that choice includes paying whatever it is, whatever the going price of gas is.

Marika Humphreys:

So powerlessness is a feeling and it comes from your thinking and where your mind is focused, which means that you can shift your thinking. So, feeling like a victim, it's a very disempowering place to be, but it also means we have control over that feeling because it comes from our thoughts. So obviously this is what this whole podcast episode is about is how to shift out of that feeling. But sometimes it's subtle and I think sometimes it can creep up on us. So I want to tell you how to recognize when you're in victim mentality, and then I'll go over some strategies for how to get out of it. So victim mentality often manifests itself in phrases like I have no choice or why is this happening to me? You will feel stuck or frustrated or powerless, and often those feelings then lead to resentment.

Marika Humphreys:

I want to share my story of where this came up for me during my husband's cancer battle. During my husband's cancer battle, one of the areas that I felt really stuck in was my job. I had a great job that I had been in for several years, but I was just feeling burnt out and before his cancer diagnosis I had really wanted to take a position overseas. But then we got his diagnosis and really all thoughts about making any changes just kind of went away for a little while. We were a bit of an untraditional couple in that he was the primary caregiver or actually the primary sorry, not caregiver the primary parent at home, and I was the breadwinner. So we relied on my job not just for income but for health insurance.

Marika Humphreys:

And anyway, a few years into his cancer journey a lot of my feelings about my job just kind of came back to the forefront and I got to this point where I just dreaded going to work. I felt stuck, I felt frustrated and I just blamed cancer. I felt like because of his cancer I couldn't make any changes in my job and it was just awful. I hated going to work and I just felt totally powerless. But it was also around that time that we had joined a coaching program and my coach talked about how your thoughts create your emotions and she also talked about the choices and how important it is to recognize and take responsibility for our choices and take responsibility for our choices.

Marika Humphreys:

So I started really thinking about my job and my thoughts and my feelings around it and one of the things I realized was that, even though I was feeling burned out and really wanting a change, I also had a really good job. I had supportive colleagues, I had a good salary, we had good health insurance and no one was forcing me to stay. And I was actually choosing to stay because of those reasons, because it was a good job, because we had the stability that was important to me at that time. So that choice, initially I just made it unconsciously, which is why that feeling of being stuck sort of crept up on me and I started blaming it on cancer. But once I kind of reflected on why I was choosing this job and choosing to go to work each and every day, I basically made re-decided to commit to my job and stay in it.

Marika Humphreys:

And because I brought that sort of subconscious choice to the forefront and made it deliberately and thought about my reasons and thought about the benefits of this job and thought about my reasons and thought about the benefits of this job. It changed entirely how I felt about my job, because I changed it from I'm stuck and I have no choice to no, I actually do have a choice and I'm choosing to stay here. This is a choice I want to make for now. So all that resentment and all that blame and feelings of stuckness basically just went away Now. I definitely still had feelings of burnout, but it just changed to where I could then focus on okay, how do I address these feelings, instead of getting trapped in just feeling stuck and powerless. So I then went to work on how do I find more fulfillment in my job? If I'm going to stay here, if I'm going to commit to staying here, then how do I enjoy it more? And I did. I actually ended up getting a promotion in my job after that and I basically found other ways to challenge myself and enjoy my job. But it started because I consciously chose to recommit to my job and I brought to my consciousness the reasons for that choice and I liked those reasons. I felt like there were good reasons, so recognizing thoughts like I'm stuck or I have no choice or I can't.

Marika Humphreys:

That's the first step to shifting your mindset right To moving past victim mentality. You have to first identify where you're falling into that pattern of thinking and you really want to pay attention to feelings of resentment or frustration or helplessness. Are you frequently feeling overwhelmed? Do you often wish your life was different? These are all just indicators that you might be viewing yourself as a victim in some way, or powerless to your situation.

Marika Humphreys:

Now let's talk about the power of making deliberate choices. Let's talk about the power of making deliberate choices Even in challenging situations. We always have options and we have choices. We may not always like all of our options and so often we discount them. We discount the options that we would never choose, but that is part of why we feel like we don't have a choice. So let me give you an example of that.

Marika Humphreys:

Let's say you want to go on a weekend trip and you are your partner's full-time caregiver. So your options are you don't go. Are you don't go? You take your partner with you or you find someone to care for them while you're gone. But another option that you may not even think is an option is that you leave your partner to fend for themselves. Now, if they can't care for themselves which is the reason why you're the full-time caregiver that might not be an option that you even consider or put on the table, but it is actually an option.

Marika Humphreys:

And it's important for our brain to recognize all the options, even the ones that we would not consider viable options. Because the truth is because, if it's something you wouldn't even consider choosing, you want to remind yourself why that's the case. That's a choice that you've made already, right, and it might be a choice you want to continue to make. But by kind of not acknowledging I am choosing to not leave my partner on their own because they can't care for themselves You're kind of discounting that choice that you've already made. And where we have power in our lives is over our choices, our decisions. So we always want to be really clear about our decisions and our reasons for those decisions and how committed we are to them.

Marika Humphreys:

So recognizing what your particular situation or challenge is and then choosing to focus on what you can control rather than what you can't is a powerful shift. And I recognize that it's not always easy to make that shift and sometimes you have to grieve the losses you've experienced first. So I want to give you a process to recognize and then shift out a victim mentality. The process is simple but doing it is definitely more difficult, because if it was easy, then none of us would ever feel like a victim, and we all do at some point in our life and often in some area in our life. So this is not an uncommon feeling and, like I said, sometimes it can be sneaky and you may not always recognize it. But you can shift out of that.

Marika Humphreys:

The first step is to recognize where in your life you are in victim mentality. You aren't a victim, right? You're thinking like a victim. So if you're feeling stuck or frustrated or resentful, pay attention, because those feelings are big indicators that in some way you are focused on the things that are outside of your control. And if you find yourself saying or thinking things like I have no choice, I can't, I'm stuck, pay attention, because those thoughts are also indicators of a victim mentality. For me it was I'm stuck, right, I was feeling stuck and I was thinking I have no choice. So when you recognize this, you want to get clear on what specifically you're feeling powerless about. Is it lack of flexibility to do a certain thing. Is it a change in your social life or your downtime? Get specific what is the circumstance and how are you thinking and feeling about that circumstance? So for me, the circumstance was my job about that circumstance. So for me, the circumstance was my job and I was thinking I'm burned out but I can't leave because we need the insurance, and so therefore, I felt stuck right.

Marika Humphreys:

You want to be careful to not overgeneralize. Like I have no flexibility, because overgeneralizing or making these broad statements, it just isn't useful and it often isn't super accurate either. You want to instead focus on specific aspects of your situation, like I can't go out with girlfriends anymore without finding help. Right, the more specific you are, the easier it will be to address. So just be careful not to overgeneralize. I have no time anymore. Well, that's probably not true. You have time. It's just your time may be um full of certain obligations.

Marika Humphreys:

So the second step in this process is then to acknowledge the emotions that you are feeling. So sometimes we just feel angry or we feel sad. Sometimes we feel stuck or hopeless, like. It's important to acknowledge those emotions. Remember how you feel is a result of how you're thinking about your circumstance. It's not because of the circumstance. It's how you think about the circumstance, right. It's how you think about the price of gas, whether you have feelings about that or not, whether you have feelings about that or not, for me it wasn't my job, it was how I was thinking about my job that caused me to feel stuck. So that's all to say that those feelings are still valid and we want to acknowledge them, while at the same time recognizing that those feelings are because of our thinking.

Marika Humphreys:

But recognizing and validating and sometimes just letting ourselves sit with the loss and grief is an important step. And if we try to rush or skip over that step, it can be really hard to move out of feeling like a victim if you haven't first just acknowledged oh, this part of my life has changed dramatically and that sucks, you know, and I want to just grieve that a little bit. So once you've identified where you're feeling powerless and you've just acknowledged any emotions that are connected to that, and sometimes that process, the acknowledging emotions is not something you can do in an instant. Sometimes you just need to sit with it and just be aware that, hey, this has changed in my life and I need to and I feel sad about it and grieve that for a little bit, but then okay, then then is the time that you can identify what your options are and re-decide. And when you consciously choose again or make a new choice, that is how you take back control and open up new possibilities for yourself, shift your focus. So sometimes that part of re-deciding can be really quick and easy.

Marika Humphreys:

So first just take some time to reflect on the choice that you're currently making in this area. Did you consciously make that choice or did you just fall into it? Like often, we just continue to do what we've always done, and sometimes our reasons are really good. They're good reasons and we want, for example, we want to be the one to take care of our partner because we love them. That's a reason that feels good to us. But other times our reasons come from it's just because it's what's expected of us, or we feel obligated or we feel pressure, and those often are not good reasons and that's why we end up feeling resentful, and sometimes it's a combination of reasons. So just reflecting on your current choice and why you're making it can be the kind of end of this process, once you bring that to the forefront, when you reflect on and remind yourself of your reasons and you like those reasons, then it's done, then it's just a matter of committing to your decision. And, um, then it's just a matter of committing to your decision and I'm going to talk more about committing here in a minute but for other situations, I think it can be really useful to go through the process of re-deciding and to do that first.

Marika Humphreys:

Just, you want to get clear. What are all my options here, even the ones that I would never do? Let's just put them on the table, like think about them or write them out. It's important for your brain to know you have options. And then you just want to think about what is important to you right now, given your current situation. Sometimes what we decided in the past whether it was a conscious decision or a subconscious decision was based in different situations. Maybe you had more energy, maybe you had more time, maybe you had more resources, and now your situation has changed, which may be why you're feeling the way you are, or something has changed. So that's another reason why it's good to re-decide, because sometimes our circumstances, our constraints change and it means we need to make new choices.

Marika Humphreys:

So, identifying your options, thinking about what's important to you, what you value, what your current constraints are right now, and then simply choose, and it may be an easy choice or it may be a really difficult one. Either way, you want to like your reasons by identifying what your reasons are for that choice and then liking those reasons. That is how we ensure that our decision is in line with our values and our priorities, right, and so for most things, it's also good to remember that you can make a different choice later on, like. This doesn't have to be a forever choice. I remind myself of that frequently. A forever choice, I remind myself of that frequently, and I think reminding yourself that you can revisit choices and decide something different later is important because it gives us, it reminds us that this doesn't have to be something we live with forever.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, again, things are always changing. Our situation is always changing. Our energy levels, our constraints, our resources are always changing. So it makes sense actually to re-decide on a fairly regular basis, maybe once a year, once every six months for certain things. Once a year, once every six months for certain things. Okay, so the choice may be easy once you identify what your reasons are, or it may be a really difficult choice, but you get to decide and you want to like those reasons, and then the last step is to commit. Last step is to commit. This step is probably the most important because when we commit to our decision, it lets us move on and start thinking instead about how do we make the best of this decision.

Marika Humphreys:

When you choose deliberately, it doesn't mean you're going to like everything about that choice right. In my situation, I still had feelings of burnout about my job, even after I decided to stay there. It didn't make those feelings go away, but it allowed me to instead focus on how can I address those feelings instead of just feeling powerless. So when you commit to your decision again for now, then it allows you to get to work on addressing any other thoughts that come up from a place of empowerment, because now you're actively deciding and you can figure out how do you make this decision work right? How do you make this a good decision? How do you address the lingering issues that come up because you are committed to, let's say, being your partner's full-time caregiver or whatever the decision is?

Marika Humphreys:

Every time you make a conscious choice, no matter how small, you are exercising control in your life. This is true in all areas in your relationships, in your job, in your, you know, day-to-day Like. This is how we exercise control and this is how we feel in control by making deliberate decisions, even seemingly minor ones. It is powerful and it makes us feel powerful. It is powerful and it makes us feel powerful and that, ultimately, is how we shift our focus from feeling like a victim and all the things that we can't do to feeling empowered and all the things that we are choosing or deciding to do what we can do, choosing or deciding to do what we can do. So, instead of feeling limited by our circumstances and feeling powerless to them, through deciding consciously and deliberately, we open ourselves up for growth and opportunities and connection and joy and more possibilities. Right In my story, once I recommitted to staying in my job, I ended up taking a promotion and moving into a new position.

Marika Humphreys:

But I had to get my mind right first. Right, I had to commit to this is where I'm going to stay for now, and so then I started looking for okay, how can I make this job more fulfilling? Okay, so it started with me getting out of victimhood in that area of my life. Okay, that is how powerful this can be. So, so this perspective of seeing where you have control and making deliberate choices. That's how you live more fully, more positively, even given the constraints of caregiving, and that is how we open ourselves up to new possibilities, new experiences. We start to notice the small victories and the moments of happiness where maybe we couldn't even see them before because we were stuck in our misery of feeling like a victim, of feeling like a victim, right. So this is one of the major areas where, just by working through the process to shift out of victim mentality, it can change your experience dramatically. You don't have to change your circumstances, right, because it's not our circumstances. We all have circumstances in life and, just like the price of gas, we get to decide how much we want to focus on those circumstances, the ones that we can't control, or we get to decide that we can make powerful choices given what our circumstances are. And that's how we feel in control, that's how we exercise control in our life and that is how we live purposely and with resilience. Right, it's not the challenges we face, it's what we do in face of those challenges, in face of those challenges. Okay, so I hope this was helpful and maybe a little challenging if you start to recognize.

Marika Humphreys:

Oh, I have been feeling really powerless and kind of like a victim in certain areas. It was for me. I definitely had to confront my own thoughts in my job, and this continues. I recently just did this with an area of my business. I think feeling powerless can creep up for us in a lot of areas. Sometimes they're big areas and sometimes they're little ones, and you just want to get good at recognizing it and working through it. And the case for me most recently, at recognizing it and working through it. And the case for me most recently. My coach helped me work through it. So this is also where a coach can be super helpful, because sometimes we just don't see it ourselves.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so, thank you all for joining me today. Um, I know again, this is a challenging topic, but feeling like a victim is a very human and natural response, but it's not a place that you have to stay. So, deliberate choices, liking your reasons that is how we regain control and that's how we feel empowered in our life and in our caregiving journey. Okay, so, go out and make some deliberate, conscious choices, go re-decide, and I'd love to hear how it goes, and I'll see you next week.