In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

33. Navigating Family Dynamics When Caregiving

• Marika • Season 1 • Episode 33

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When you're caregiving for your partner, family dynamics can get complicated fast. Sometimes, family is a blessing—other times, they add more stress. You might be dealing with a family member who's overly critical or always offering unsolicited advice. Or maybe you’re on the opposite end—no help at all, despite your hints and cries for support. This podcast episode is all about managing these family frustrations.

The truth is, it's not your family’s actions that cause the stress—it's how you're thinking about those actions. In this episode, I share tips on how to shift your mindset, manage family relationships, and reclaim your emotional space while caregiving. You’ll learn to separate your needs from your expectations, let go of rigid thinking, and stop lumping all family members into one group of "unhelpful" people. Most importantly, we’ll discuss how to protect your peace so you can stay focused on what really matters—your partner and yourself. 

References: 

20. Embracing Help as a Strength When 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:

Hey, caregivers and care partners out there, welcome back to the podcast. I have got a good one for you today. Today we're gonna talk about something that most of us face at some point in our caregiving journey dealing with family. But first I just wanna check in and see how you are doing. I have just celebrated my birthday it was yesterday. And I have just celebrated my birthday it was yesterday and I have had a great weekend. My boyfriend and I did a little weekend getaway at a nearby not nearby, but a town I'd not visited before called Bellingham in northern Washington, northwestern Washington, super cute little town. So it was great to see something new and see some more parts of Washington state that I have not seen since I've moved here. So, yeah, we're full in fall and the colors are starting to change, the weather's starting to change, so I like fall.

Marika Humphreys:

Fall brings up to the start of the holiday season, which is also about family. So this episode, while I'm going to touch on dealing with family in a caregiving situation, family can be challenging. Family can be challenging during the holidays as well. So you may not be dealing with family issues for caregiving when you're listening to this, but you might also have some holiday time where family issues come up, and the same points apply Specifically for caregiving. When you're responsible for your partner's care, you might find yourself relying on family more than you ever have before, and that can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, having family support is a gift, truly, and those people who don't have it wish they did. I had amazing family support, but not everybody does. But on the other hand, having family to help, while it can be great, it can also bring its own set of challenges and frustrations, and you can imagine right, I mean, for some of you the situation is that you've got maybe a well-meaning family member, but they're constantly critiquing your decisions or giving you unsolicited advice about everything you should be doing. Maybe they want all the details about appointments or what the doctor said. And while it's well-meaning, it can be frustrating and it's usually often the last thing you want to deal with if you've got a full plate as a caregiver. But then there's many of you out there who have the opposite problem. You've asked for help, you've dropped hints and your family is nowhere to be found. No offers of support, no offers, no effort, very frustrating. So dealing with family is hard and relationships are hard. So today we're going to talk about it. We're going to break down a few ways to better manage those dynamics so you can get through kind of dealing with family or not having family with a little more ease in the caregiving journey. All right, so let's talk about the problem.

Marika Humphreys:

When it comes to family, I feel like caregivers often find themselves in one of two camps Either your family isn't helping at all, or they are helping but it's driving you nuts, or it's creating its own stress in a certain way. So one of my clients, for example, her partner had cancer and was battling cancer through COVID and she had no help whatsoever and it was the time kind of full on lockdown. So she was very isolated and felt very lonely and had just this tremendous stress on her plate. But later, when things opened up her sister so she did have family nearby her sister didn't even offer to help, didn't even think to offer, which was hard and I think it was hard for her. She needed help but it wasn't coming and it was possible then at that point. And then, on the flip side, I have a more recent client, her husband. His health has recently declined pretty rapidly and his family has actually traveled a couple of states to stay in an Airbnb nearby so they can be there for him and kind of be able to be with him and help out a little bit, and that sounds great and is really great. Except that now she's kind of managing them while she's caring for her husband, so it can add a little extra stress and sometimes can feel a little, you know, help can feel a little bit more like an extra job.

Marika Humphreys:

So, no matter where you are on the spectrum, whether what camp you're in, whether you're dealing with family that doesn't help, doesn't even offer, or a family that maybe helps but oversteps or creates more stress in your life, it is tough, right, family is tough and sometimes, no matter what, there's something to be frustrated about. Well, that is, unfortunately, the human condition, right? We're always going to find Everything is always a 50-50. There's a little bit of good and there's a little bit of bad and kind of everything right. Because here's the thing it's not actually our family that creates the stress or the frustration, it's not their actions or their lack of actions, right, it's not the fact that they haven't helped at all or that they're too much in your business. The issue comes down to how we're thinking about their actions.

Marika Humphreys:

So the key is shifting the way you think about the situation and reframing the emotions you feel around it. So that is what I'm going to talk about today, and if you've listened to any of my podcasts before, you know that or you will have known that our thoughts are what create our feelings. It is not the circumstances in our lives, and in this case, today we're talking about the circumstance of our family, whether they're helping or helping too much, or too much in our business, or not even offering help. It's not that situation. That's the situation, and we all have thoughts about it. So today I'm going to break down kind of three points that I just want to explore to help you shift your mindset and better manage the family dynamics.

Marika Humphreys:

Because this is hard, right, family is hard, and it doesn't matter whether you are a caregiver or family. Just dealing with family has its own stress, right? We're all individuals with our own opinions and our own views of the world, and then you bring that together when someone is sick or has a condition where they need extra help. It is challenging. So I'm going to again cover three points that I think will just help you reframe and think about this situation a little differently, so that you can move out, hopefully, out of frustration, or think about your family situation in just a way that better serves you, as opposed to feeling frustrated or angry or resentful about it.

Marika Humphreys:

And a quick note before I go into these three points is that I'm going to talk about family and I'm going to sort of lump them all together when I just say your family, but in reality our family is made up of individuals. However big your family is or small, it's easy to generalize and I do find that often when my clients have challenges with this, they tend to generalize and talk about well, my family does this, and in reality it's one person in the family or maybe two people that are challenging. So, while it's easy to generalize, each person in your family is an individual and it's really important to separate out your thoughts and feelings about each person rather than treating them as one big group, because you probably only have one or two people in your family. That's a particular challenge for you, but our minds tend to exaggerate and we just tend to lump them all together and say, oh, my family doesn't offer help. Well, maybe one person doesn't offer help that you'd like to or you wish to. So it is important to separate them out in your mind and identify who are the people that are particularly challenging. As I go through these points even though I'm just going to refer to them generally as your family I want you to think about the individuals that are hard, that you have maybe some challenges with.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so the first point that I want to bring up is one of the reasons we really struggle with our family is because we have trouble letting go of how we think they should behave, how we think this time should be. We get stuck because we're attached to the idea of how things should be right. You might think my family should be helping me more, or they should support me in a specific way, be helping me more, or they should support me in a specific way. They should be there for me, supportive, without being intrusive, and the problem with this line of thinking is that when they don't meet our own expectations, we feel hurt, we feel frustrated. But here's the thing the feelings come from our attachment to this idea of how we think it should be, how we think the world should work right, not from the actual way the world works. We think again. I've had many clients say well, my family should offer support or they shouldn't get in our business. But that's just the thought in our head that somehow we get these ideas about the way things should work and we all have different ideas about that. And then the actual situation is different and that's where our struggle lies, in the fact that our reality is different from our attachment to this idea about how we think it should be.

Marika Humphreys:

So Byron Katie, one of my favorite thinkers. She talks about how suffering comes from arguing with reality. I've mentioned this before because it's a great line. One of her most famous quotes is she says when you fight with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time we get attached to our version of how we think things should go and the truth is people are going to behave how they're going to behave, like our family members. You could probably predict how some of them are going to behave and you might be very right about that. And if we cling to our expectations or our ideas about how we think they should behave and it's not what they're actually doing, it's just going to bring us pain, right, because the reality we're trying to argue with it.

Marika Humphreys:

For one of my clients. I remember she believed that her adult children should offer more help with her husband who had dementia, and this was a huge pain point for her. She's like they should offer to help and when they didn't, she just felt very let down, disappointed, angry. I pointed out to her it's just this expectation how they should be, and in order for her to find peace, right and her to move on and get past this, she had to let go of that expectation. She had to accept the reality that they're just not going to offer help in the way that she imagined. And there may be reasons behind that and that's something you can explore. But often we also imagine that, like in this case, she wanted her adult children to reach out and offer help. I don't even know that she had asked them for help, right, she wanted them to offer, she didn't want to have to ask. So that was her attachment to the way things should be and it had her focusing on her children behaving in a way that they weren't, which was something outside of her control, behaving in a way that they weren't, which was something outside of her control. So she had to really learn to shift her focus to what she could control, rather than just stewing in this frustration.

Marika Humphreys:

Now, I know this is not easy, but one of the ways that Iron Katie recommends. She has a process that she calls the Work, and you can Google that if you're interested. She's got some great books about the Work. But really it's a line of questioning. So once you identify where your attachment is to this idea of how you think things should be and reality isn't lining up, meaning your family isn't complying with the way you think they should, one of the great questions you can ask yourself is is it true that they should behave this way? Is that actually true?

Marika Humphreys:

Now, for that client I was just talking about where she thought her adult children should help. That was her thought. Right, my adult children should offer to help. She should ask herself is that true? Should they offer?

Marika Humphreys:

And then the second question to that is who would I be without that thought? Who would she be if she didn't have this expectation or this belief that this is what her children should do? She'd be free, right, she would be free of the frustration and anger that she was feeling. And I bring that up. That's a great example, because I guarantee you there's probably people listening right now and I've also had them as clients as well that don't want their adult children to help. They want to protect their children from the caregiving responsibilities or the pain that they're kind of going through with their partner or caring for their partner, but they want to spare their children from that.

Marika Humphreys:

So people have opposite opinions, right? Two mothers can have different opinions about how their adult children should behave. So it's just our own thinking. There is no right here. It's just our own idea of attachment that we form, and when we get attached to it, that's what creates suffering.

Marika Humphreys:

So look at the areas where you have some ideas about your family and how they should be behaving, what they should be doing, and ask yourself is that true? And who would I be if I didn't even think this at all? If I could just let go of this thought that they should do this, who would I be Right? Letting go of those rigid expectations for people opens you up to accepting your family as they are. Okay, and in order to do that, we have to release our judgment of them. Now another point that I know this is a multi-layered thing. It's not simple to just release your judgment of your family.

Marika Humphreys:

But the second point I want to make is I think for caregivers, it's helpful to identify your needs and then let go of how they're met. So we often look to our family for support and help with what we're facing. Then they either don't help at all in some cases or help but not in the way we want. So I think it's really helpful to think about okay, as a caregiver, you should definitely identify your needs. Usually, this type of wanting our family to help and be involved comes from needs right. As a caregiver, there's a lot on our plate and it can feel overwhelming at times. So one of the most important things you can do as a caregiver is to identify your needs. What are your limits? Where do you need help the most? And once you know what you need, then you can clearly communicate it to your family.

Marika Humphreys:

However, the tricky part comes in letting go of how those needs are met. So let me give you an example of this. This happened actually just very recently with a client. For example, if you just need some time for yourself, maybe to go to the gym, take a walk, and you ask a family member to step in, but if they can't help or they don't offer kind of help you expected. What do you do? That's the part where you need to stay flexible separate the need from what you're expecting of this person. Maybe somebody else can step in, maybe you can look to outside resources like friends, or there are volunteer organizations that do this kind of thing Paid help right.

Marika Humphreys:

So I think we tend to again kind of lump our family into the ones that should be giving us the support we need, and that is where the power comes in, separating those out. You have your family. They are a possible resource, and then you have the needs and there are other resources aside from your family. So the key here is to express your needs and make requests without getting too attached to how that plays out. So maybe your family member can't offer what you expected, but they can contribute in a way you hadn't considered. Though the one client that I mentioned who was caregiving during COVID one of the things, the reasons why it kind of came about later as we coached through it the reason why her family member, her sister in particular, didn't offer help as we explored that she realized my client realized that her family always thought of her as the strong one and so because of that they didn't even think she needed help and she wanted them to offer, but she didn't ask point blank for it. And so because they always thought, oh, she's the strong one, she can always manage all the things, so they didn't even think to offer.

Marika Humphreys:

So a lot of times, how our family members perceive us and our needs can be very different from how we think of ourselves and our own needs. And many times, if we are unwilling to let ourselves be truly be seen, our family won't know what we need. So letting yourself be seen to your family members, it does require being vulnerable, and you may have to be willing to let yourself be vulnerable and share your feelings and your struggles with your family members if you want them to at least understand what you're struggling with. And that is a starting point for perhaps getting some help. And again, you still have to let go of how that help comes. But I do think that is a barrier that we don't even recognize a lot of times is they may perceive, in a way that you don't recognize, in a different way than you perceive yourself. So, being willing to open up and share your struggles and again, I recommend only doing this with the family members that you feel safe to do so. That may not be all family members, but if you do have some that feels safe to be emotionally open with, those are the ones to open up and share and say, hey, I'm struggling, or I'm feeling really burnout or tired. This is what I need. Is there any help you could offer? So part of this I talked about, I did a whole podcast episode and I'll link it in the show notes about asking for help and accepting help.

Marika Humphreys:

Sometimes I think we shy away from opening up to our family because we feel like, again, it feels vulnerable and it sometimes feels like a sign of weakness. But I really think it's actually strength and self-awareness to be able to ask for the help we need. So let go of your attachment, of how your needs are satisfied or identify your needs, and then let go of how you get that. Help to how you get the help right. Let go of how that comes. Help to how you get the help right. Let go of how that comes, okay.

Marika Humphreys:

And then the third point is don't let being right be more important than the relationship. Now let's be real. Sometimes we just want to feel right. In relationships, in disagreements, we want to be right. We want to be justified in our frustration with our family members.

Marika Humphreys:

But here's the catch being right and feeling justified can come at the cost of a relationship. So holding on to the idea that your family should act differently, that you're the one in the right and they're the ones in the wrong, that is just going to create more distance and more conflict. And I know part of why this happens is because family dynamics often bring up old wounds, past hurts, sibling rivalry, unresolved issues. We tend to have a history with our family members and it's easy to think you might have thoughts like oh, my sister always does this, and feel that anger well up. But remember the anger doesn't come from what your sister did today. It comes from how your mind connects it to other times in the past when you felt upset by her actions. So that's where we can bring our past drama to the present and complicate our relationships.

Marika Humphreys:

But this is also an opportunity to create new relationships, right. And instead of holding on being right, ask yourself what's more important the relationship or needing to feel justified. And that does require that you have to acknowledging your emotions. It doesn't mean ignoring past hurts and past injuries. You do still have to acknowledge those and process them and take ownership of them. Meaning I feel this way because of how I was thinking, not because of what my sister did or what my mother-in-law always does. Right, it's how I think about it and that's what creates this feeling. So that's the taking ownership part. Feelings are caused by your own thoughts, not your family member's behavior. So caregiving can be a time where it's an opportunity to love your family in a new way.

Marika Humphreys:

Flaws and all Okay, we all have our challenges. We all have challenging parts of us and that is what makes us human. It's also where we all are the same right. And when we can learn to love our family with their flaws and shift our focus toward healing those relationships rather than resentment and being right, then we can build connection right. Then we can build connection. So letting go of being right and preserving the connection even when they don't behave in the way you think they should, okay, so those are just a couple things to get you thinking differently about family dynamics.

Marika Humphreys:

I hear you, it is hard and it does require kind of a new way of thinking about your family, letting them be the messy humans that we all are, loving them through it and still identifying your needs and being open to how you get some of those needs met. It doesn't have to always come from family. So family dynamics are tough, and especially when you're in the middle of caregiving. So whether your family isn't helping or their help sometimes feels like a headache. I want you to know there are ways to manage this situation and protect your peace, and this is what building your resiliency this is where it can really come in useful is learning.

Marika Humphreys:

The skill of learning to manage your mind around your family members' behavior is really powerful, because that can threaten to take us away from our loved one, the one we're caring for, our partner or our immediate needs, and puts us in this drama that we just don't need when we're caregiving. Extra drama, nobody needs it. Okay, caregiving requires enough energy and shifting. So learning to shift your mindset, letting go of expectations, focusing on the relationship instead of being right, can make this challenging time a little easier and keeps you out of the family drama, so you can have that energy for your life and the caregiving responsibilities you have. So that is what I want to leave you with today is some tips on the rethinking some of the family dynamics.

Marika Humphreys:

And listen, I know caregiving is challenging, and if you are looking for support, that is what I do. I talk about it. That is how I help people, so you can always reach out and set up a time for us to talk. I do also get on my webpage, because I've got links to a free resource on there free video on how to help your partner when they're in pain, and you can also get on my mailing list and check out my free Facebook group as well. So check out my website, coachmarikacom. That's the way to get in touch with me. All right, my friends, I will see you next week.