Effects of Caregiver Role Stress
Caregiver stress can impact caregivers and the elderly, leading to emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion. Find caregiver tips and advice to manage chronic stress and caregiver role strain.
Learn how to navigate the complexities of family caregiving, balance emotional health, and find support. Use coping strategies to manage chronic stress, illness, and overwhelming care responsibilities, which can increase when caregivers take on multiple roles.
There’s no reason to allow caregiver role stress to negatively impact emotional health when you can create and practice actions to support a happier, more fulfilling life.
The Role of Caregiver Stress
Adult and spouse caregivers often fill multiple roles, which can negatively impact their lives. The shift from being an adult child to a caregiver for an elderly parent, or from a husband or wife to a caregiver, can make relationships feel task-like rather than personal.
Are you a family caregiver filling multiple roles? Are you experiencing caregiver role stress because there’s not enough time to do everything?
Being a caregiver can be physically,
mentally, and emotionally exhausting when trying to meet others’ needs. Caregivers, through their actions, can teach others—an elderly parent, a spouse, a child, or a co-worker—to become overly dependent on them.
For example, a caregiver preparing dinner meets the family’s nutritional needs, and working meets the family’s financial needs. Bosses or supervisors demonstrate care by training and developing employees. Friends care for each other through encouragement, support, and activity.
Elderly Caregiving Coping Skills
Let’s start by reinforcing the importance of using coping skills to manage stressful caregiving, health, and family situations. Caregivers with excellent coping skills know how to manage role stress, daily and unexpected challenges, and care-related anxiety.
Coping skills can be learned to address a range of common challenges caregivers face. For example:
- Time management
- Setting priorities
- Procrastination
- Problem-solving
- Lack of focus
- Fear of failure
- Diminished confidence
- Inconsistent faith
- Over-scheduling
- Absence of boundaries
- I-can’t-sit-still-and-work-down-a-list
Any or all of these caregiving stress factors can be learned and implemented using self-control, self-discipline, willpower, and motivation.
Always Running Behind
There are many examples of how caregivers and the elderly feel they are running behind, which fuel their responses to stressful tasks. Here are two examples:
You are behind in calling your parents’ insurance company to resolve an issue.
- What is stopping you?
- Why haven’t you made the call?
- What other priorities might delay calling the insurance company?
Based on experience, calling an insurance company can be time-consuming due to not knowing which option to select and lengthy hold times. Add to this the possibility of being disconnected and having to call back. Sometimes getting to the right person who can answer a question can take an hour or two, and you may still end up without a concrete solution.
You are an elderly adult concerned about your health, but you have not made a doctor’s appointment.
- Is fear of a diagnosis holding you back?
- Do you lack trust in your doctor?
- Are there transportation concerns?
If you can identify the problem that is causing the delay in making the phone call, you can likely identify a coping skill to move you forward.
Are You a Caregiver Filling Too Many Roles | Tips for Caregivers Who Think They Have to Do It All
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Pamela’s YouTube ChannelSimple Things to Relieve Caregiver Stress Resulting from Procrastination
Who controls your brain and your thoughts? You do—unless you spend all your time wrapped up in worry about other people and things out of your control. In that case, you are allowing events and outside circumstances to hold your attention.
Rather than allowing caregiver role stress to get the best of you, learn the Pomodoro technique. Work and focus for 25 minutes. Take a 5-minute break.
If you are a caregiver who says, “I have too much to do,” your lack of accomplishment may arise from saying yes too often rather than setting boundaries.
Consider saying, “I’m sorry, but I can’t add one more thing to my list,” or “I’m happy to do that, what can I take off my to-do list so I can make this a priority?”
If you are an adult who lacks confidence because you rely on a caregiver too much, start doing things for yourself. Do that thing or those things you usually rely on someone else to do for you. You’ll be surprised at what you can do and how your self-confidence will rise.
List-Making and Prioritizing
The next coping skill to manage caregiver stress is to make a list of everything you believe you must do. Rank the list by time sensitivity and the consequences of not completing the task. For example, if this task is not completed by this date, the consequences will be problems X, Y, and Z.
Then take a second look at what you believe to be true about the importance of the task. Is your belief accurate relative to the level of importance and the consequences? If another person looked at your list, would they rank the items in the same priority?
How many of the tasks on the list will not make a difference if they are never completed? Do the tasks require any skills, or can someone else complete them? If the answer is yes, start asking for help.
Asking for help is a rarely used and undervalued caregiver coping skill that can relieve caregiver role stress.
Use the 80/20 Rule
When considering your to-do list, use the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle. Twenty percent of the things you do produce 80% of your results.
The other 80% of things you do produce little or no measurable benefit. You may feel good completing them; however, are you spinning your wheels or filling time on a task to distract from doing the hard, time-sensitive, and consequential things?
By setting time and task boundaries with yourself and others, you will become more effective in getting things done that add value.
Family members or a spouse can increase caregiver role stress by making everyone else happy, but themselves. Similarly, stress for elderly adults grows as they become more dependent on others and less able to perform daily tasks that used to be easy.
Unexpected, Out-of-Control Situations
One of the primary causes of caregiver role stress is unexpected and out-of-control life situations. I know this from personal experience and 25 years of professional experience supporting the elderly and adults with disabilities.
Being a caregiver is like starting a home improvement do-it-yourself project. That one thing you set out to do turns into five or more things. Similar to opening Pandora’s box, a DIY project like tearing out a wall or the floor can reveal hidden problems that need attention.
Compare this to an elderly person seeing the doctor for high blood pressure, thought to be related to stress. After examination and testing, in addition to treating high blood pressure, other discoveries include high blood sugar, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels.
So, like the home improvement project, with the goal of a single repair or improvement, an elderly person now has three or more conditions to address. The resulting chronic stress experience can cause the brain to work differently.
Thoughts about past negative experiences can impact the brain’s ability to focus on solving problems and identifying solutions. Instead, the brain is fuzzy, tired, exhausted, and refuses to focus.
The mind gets stuck in negative thoughts and hopeless spirals of impending doom. Thoughts like, “Oh my gosh, what will happen next?” take control. This chronic stress experience places a
significant emotional, mental, and physical drain on caregivers.
Negativity Bias Drives Caregiver Stress
This thought process is called a negativity bias. A negativity bias is a part of human nature that gives greater weight to negative experiences, thoughts, or emotions than to positive ones.
Negativity, fear, worry, and anxiety have a greater impact on caregiver stress than positive experiences.
Having a negativity bias can affect the way one thinks about relationships, problem-solving, decision-making, and so on.
How do you know if you have a negativity bias? Here are a few questions.
- Do you focus more on criticisms or insults than compliments and positive statements?
- Do you dwell on unpleasant or traumatic events more than positive experiences?
- Are your thoughts more attracted to negative rather than positive information?
- Are you waiting for the next bad thing to happen?
- How much time do you spend being thankful for each day and in positive thought versus worry, feeling anxious, or swept away by caregiver stress and negative thinking?
If positive thoughts aren’t winning out, you may have a negativity bias. So what can you do?
Practice and retrain the brain to eliminate a negativity bias by suspending judgment that keeps you more emotionally hooked to the problem than to potential solutions. Reliving past traumas and events can result in ongoing caregiver stress when caring for elderly parents, a spouse, or yourself.
For example, if you have a negativity bias and you watch the news, retrain your brain by choosing a topic that interests you so that you can investigate the information presented or opinions expressed.
Seek information about the opposite perspective. Research to confirm if the information was presented accurately or whether critical facts were left out that purposely increase the fear factor about the information.
Begin by reviewing all interactions and considering both sides of the story before making decisions. Consider the pros and the cons. If you need more information, find a way to get it.
Then practice this thought process in caregiving situations, relationships, and other experiences, rather than reacting negatively by taking information at face value become more balanced in your approach to receiving and evaluating information.
Pause and ask yourself, what’s really happening here? What motivations are involved? What questions should I be asking to figure this out? Being more thoughtful can significantly reduce stress levels because your emotions won’t take you off track to the land of anger, frustration, or upset.
Take Control of Emotional, Mental, and Physical Exhaustion
From a personal standpoint, stop yourself every time your brain thinks a negative thought. Look at your behaviors, what serves you well, and what causes more problems that increase caregiver stress levels.
Every time your mind thinks a positive thought, think of another one. Be grateful for all the good in your life. Soon, the ups and downs of life will be more manageable. Caregiver stress will decrease and have less impact on your mind, emotions, and physical health.
Choose to:
- Believe in solutions to impossible problems
- Stay connected with friends who can provide support
- Seek different perspectives
- Accept that life constantly changes
- Hold challenges in perspective and maintain a hopeful outlook
- Make time to take care of yourself
- Act to address situations rather than detaching and hoping they will solve themselves
Caregiver role stress can be managed by learning and identifying coping skills to solve problems and by developing practices to address negativity bias, which can unnecessarily increase caregiver role stress.
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