In This Together: Building Resilience When Caregiving for Your Partner

39. Empowered Caregiving - Adjust Your Focus

• Marika • Season 1 • Episode 39

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In this episode, we dive into the third day of the Empowered Caregiving Challenge, exploring how to shift your focus to regain energy and control in your caregiving journey. You’ll learn how letting go of what’s beyond your control can help you reclaim your power and navigate caregiving with greater intention and resilience.

I’ll show you how to focus on the things you can influence:

  1. Your Thoughts – Learn to manage where you direct your attention and how to shift unhelpful thoughts, like constant "what-ifs," into purposeful and empowering beliefs.
  2. Your Emotional Responses – Discover techniques to process emotions without letting them take over, including strategies like mindfulness and emotional regulation.
  3. Your Actions – Understand how intentional decisions and supportive systems can create a win-win environment for you and your partner, helping you both thrive.

By the end of this episode, you’ll have practical questions and strategies to implement immediately, helping you feel more empowered no matter the challenges around you.

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:

Welcome to day three of the Empowered Caregiving Challenge. Today is all about adjusting your focus. I'm Marika Humphries and I am a resiliency coach for people who are caregiving for their partner. Yesterday we talked about letting go of the things that are outside of our control and releasing the weight that we carry around. When we try to control and focus on the things that are outside of our control or that we don't have control over, once we free up that energy kind of lift that weight from our shoulders, then we have more energy to focus on what we can control, and there is plenty that we can focus on there. So think about it like you're decluttering a messy closet. Once you remove everything in the closet that doesn't belong there, or and you put it in its place, then you can finally see what's important or what needs to be there. So in caregiving, we often feel overwhelmed by all the things that are outside of our control, and that is a very disempowering feeling. So when we're able to narrow in on what we can influence, that is how we take back our power and so much of our energy.

Marika Humphreys:

I want to give an analogy here because I think it's just a really useful way to think about it and really I feel like it's pretty accurate as well. So imagine you're driving in a storm and I feel like this is very analogous to a lot of parts of caregiving. You can't control the weather, but you can control how you navigate through that storm. So, instead of worrying about the wind and worrying about the rain, you focus on adjusting your speed, on steering really carefully and keeping your eyes on the road. So, similarly in caregiving, when we stop sort of fighting or resisting the storm, the external storm in our life or with our partner, and we instead focus on how we navigate through it, that's when we have a lot more, we can have a lot more intention and purpose and we'll feel essentially more empowered. So let's get clear on what we actually do have control over.

Marika Humphreys:

There are three main areas that I always talk about, and they're worth repeating because repetition is also how we learn things. The first area that we have a lot of control over is our thoughts and where we direct our attention. Now, you might not control every thought that comes up. We have lots of thoughts throughout the day and many of them just come up on repeat or habitual thoughts, but we do have control over what we focus on. And once we are aware and notice our thinking, we can also choose to think on purpose, think deliberate thoughts, Because so much of how we feel hour to hour, day to day, is because of what's going on in our head, is because of the thoughts that are running through our head and dominating our mind. So you really want to notice those, you want to pay attention to those, and what we think about and focus on determines how we feel.

Marika Humphreys:

So if you spend a lot of time thinking, thought, what if thoughts? Oh my gosh, what if this happens? And I don't know what I'm going to do, what if this happens? You're going to feel worried, you're going to feel scared, maybe even anxious. So one of the recommendations I like to give for people if you have a brain that tends to go to what if land and worry land, one way to handle that is to answer. Give yourself an answer Like what if this happens? What will I do? And spin in the what if? But when you answer it, give yourself an answer. Think about it for a minute. What would I do? Often, what we will do is what we have done in the past and we also fall back on our strengths. So that's another thing I like to encourage people to do is think about what are your strengths, and you can rely on those to get you through that, whatever it is. So I'll figure it out. I'll reach out to friends for support. I'll take it one step at a time. Give your brain an answer to the what ifs.

Marika Humphreys:

Another area that we can focus on that will empower us is the meaning that we give to the things in our life. So this is another way that our, another type of thought that we have in our heads throughout the days is the meaning we give things. Whenever something happens, when you go to an appointment, when you see your husband, let's say you see how he looks, or his behavior, or a friend says something when all of these things happen in our world, often we're giving them meaning, we're assigning a meaning to that, but a lot of times we don't question what the meaning we're giving it. If you see your husband and you can tell he's starting to lose a lot of muscle, all of a sudden we give that a meaning like oh my gosh, he's wasting away or he's super frail, and we make it mean something terrible. But that's a choice. What we make it mean is something that we have control over. So that is a big area where we have control. Is the meaning we give things. We can make it mean something bad. Control is the meaning we give things. We can make it mean something bad, and then we're going to feel bad, or we can make it mean something more neutral, and then we will feel more neutral. So thinking about the meaning that we're giving things is one of the ways that we can take back control of our mind and where our focus is. And then Another area that I think we also don't think about much is what we believe.

Marika Humphreys:

Think about your beliefs. Many of us have beliefs that we've just adopted from our family, our upbringing kind of some from society. We sort of adopt beliefs from society, cultural beliefs, and a lot of times we just form beliefs over time as well, just form beliefs over time as well. And when I think about this like one of the areas that I see come up a lot of times for caregivers is when they see their partner struggling or they see them physically struggling, mentally or emotionally struggling. When you see anyone you love struggling, what you believe about them will make a difference and you can choose to believe that they can't handle it and they need your help and you're the only one that can help him. Or they're not doing okay, or they're getting worse.

Marika Humphreys:

We can have all these beliefs, or you can choose to believe in their strength, in their resilience, because, as humans, we all also have inner strength and resilience within us. And I always love to choose the path of believing in someone's strength Because, for one, it comforts me when I remind myself that my loved one is stronger than I might realize. Or they've gotten through lots of hard things in the past and they can get through this too, or they can navigate this, they'll be okay. When I remind them that they're strong, I feel more reassured, right, but it's also a gift we give to them. When you think about someone who, if you've ever been in the position where someone has said something like, oh, I worry about you, I'm just so worried. It's a really not great feeling to have to be worried over. But when someone believes that you're strong and you're going to get through it, that is a beautiful thing. Sometimes, when someone believes in us, it helps us to believe in ourselves. So believing in another person's strength is really a gift that you can give them.

Marika Humphreys:

So we have control over what goes in our mind and what occupies that mental space in our head and when you become aware of it, you can start shifting your thoughts away from the stressors and the things that you can't change and focusing instead towards solutions, towards positive moments, towards what you can control, what you want to believe. Okay, so that's the first. One is the mental space. The second area that we have a lot of control is over how we respond to our emotions. We can't stop ourselves from having emotions. Emotions come from what we're thinking about. So when we're thinking terrible thoughts, we're going to have bad emotions. When we're thinking great thoughts, we're going to feel better.

Marika Humphreys:

But what we can do, and where we do have control, is how we respond when the especially negative emotions come up. Do we let them dictate our day? Do we let anger or resentment fuel our actions? Do we try to numb ourselves from them with food or TV or alcohol, or do we try to stuff them down and bottle them up? Or do we cover them up sometimes with positivity, like we just sort of kind of call it like glossing right over and we're just like I'm just going to be positive. So all of those are very natural responses. They're human responses to emotions and I want to encourage you not to judge yourself if you respond typically in one of those ways more often than you'd like. But the key here is really just recognizing what your typical response is so that you can be aware of it right. And when you learn to recognize your emotions and learn to sit with them when they come out, without judging yourself for having them, for the emotion that you're having that is the ability to process your emotion Then you stop letting those emotions control you and you have more control over your emotions.

Marika Humphreys:

So we can we do have control over how we respond to our emotions, and I will say this is a skill. This is a big skill that I work with my clients on, and it's not a skill that most of us know. But there's a lot of ways that help us regulate ourselves with our emotions meditation, mindfulness, eft. If you've ever heard of tapping, that's another technique, that's one that I teach my clients. So there's lots of ways to regulate, but I want you to just to keep in mind that how you respond to your emotions, how you re-regulate yourself when you become dysregulated, when you're full of emotion is something that you have control over and that is such a powerful skill to have.

Marika Humphreys:

And then, finally, the last area I want to talk about here is our actions. This is a big area where we have a lot of control, and this is probably the thing that we think about most. When we think about control or changing something in our life is like what are we going to do differently? But I really want to encourage you to think first also about how you want to think differently, or how you want to feel differently, as well as what actions do you want to take that are different. So every day, we decide how we're going to show up in our life and what actions we take. Every day we're making decisions. Think about all the decisions we make. A lot of those decisions we make once and then we just kind of live them out each day. So we sort of go on autopilot and that is totally fine.

Marika Humphreys:

But have you set up a good system for yourself? Did you make a good initial decision? Did you set up a system that supports you and your partner right? If you've ever read or heard about the book Atomic Habits, it's a great book. I was just thinking I should really reread it, because I read it quite a while ago, but he's got a quote in there. He says you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And he's basically saying we can have these lofty intentions, but on a daily basis, when we're just getting through the day, it is our systems that will be the bigger determiner of the actions we take on a regular basis. And I find this to be so true, especially in the things like how we eat, how we exercise our errands, like the regular things that we do on repeat in our lives. Those are things that are great for setting up systems.

Marika Humphreys:

But I want you to think about what system you can set up that supports you and your partner. It doesn't need to be an either or. How can you have a win-win there? How can you support yourself and your partner right? So setting up good systems is one way to be empowered in your life. We also have control over the deeper choices that we make, the ones that we aren't making every day, not the little decisions, but the bigger decisions how we treat ourselves, how we treat our loved ones, how we navigate challenges. All of those bigger decisions, all of those equate to how we are showing up in our life and when we're intentional with our actions, when we set up supportive systems and when we make thoughtful decisions that consider our own welfare as well as our partner. That is how we feel more empowered. That is one of the biggest ways to be empowered in your life journey, not just in caregiving, but in your life in general. Right the opposite to that is letting fear or exhaustion or resentment fuel our actions and fuel our decisions, having systems that we haven't thought through and don't support us right or our best intentions. So, summarize, I've talked about a lot here, but it all comes back to shifting our focus to what we have control over.

Marika Humphreys:

We've talked about the areas that we have control are what goes on in our head, so our mindset, how we think, what we focus on. We've talked about how we have control over, not necessarily the emotions we feel, but how we respond when emotions come up, what we do in the space of emotions. Do we let them control us or do we process them and let them go through us? And then, finally, our actions and our decisions. Those are the big areas that we have control over and when we focus on those things and I like to say turn the focus inward and focus on doing the best we can for ourselves in those areas. That's when we have control in our life. That's when you will feel empowered, that is when you will feel in control, regardless of what's happening around you, because all the things that happen, the crises in the world, what's going on for your partner in their health, what's going on in the bigger world, what's going on in politics all of those things are outside of our control. So refocus back to where you do have control your thoughts, how you respond to your emotions and your actions and decisions.

Marika Humphreys:

So I want to give you some questions to think about. The first one is which area my thoughts, my emotions, my actions do I want to feel more in control of? First, just pick one area to focus on, which one do you want to feel more in control of? And then, in that area here's the next question what three small changes could I make to feel more empowered? And then the third question is what thoughts can I use to help me focus on what's within my control, and a good one. For that, I like to just simply ask myself what do I have control over here, what's within my control.

Marika Humphreys:

So in my program, my coaching program, raise your Resilience, we dive a lot deeper into developing the skills of managing your mind, processing your emotions and taking deliberate action. Those are the three core skills that I work with my clients on in that program. So I teach you how to do those things practical steps and give you tools so you can practice and get good at all of those areas, because those are the areas that when we build up our skills, we become more resilient, we become more adaptable and we feel more in control, regardless of what's happening around us. So if you are ready to take this work deeper, set up a consultation with me and we will take you to feeling more empowered in your life, all right, so join me tomorrow, where we're going to focus on prioritizing you. All right, everybody, I'll see you tomorrow.