Talking About Your Caregiving Depression

This morning on Your Caregiving Journey, Ann Stookey joined me to continue our conversation about the depression you may feel during your caregiving experience. You can listen to our show via the player at the bottom of the post. When you experience depression, you may think you can hide how you feel. When you share so much space and time with someone, like your caree, your depression will be hard to hide. So, how...

Communicating What’s So Hard to Communicate

This morning on Your Caregiving Journey, Anna Stookey joined me to continue our conversation about depression. We spoke about how our inability to communicate how we feel can contribute to our feelings of depression. (You can listen to our show via the player below.) Anna and I spoke about how we may have learned, growing up, to remain silent about our feelings. We also may have learned to stifle how we feel. Our...

A Depressed Life

Anna Stookey, our emotional wellness expert, joined me on Your Caregiving Journey this morning to talk about depression. You can listen to our show via the player, below. According to a recent caregiving survey conducted by Caring.com, twenty-five percent of respondents stated that they suffer from depression, well above the national figure of 9 percent cited in a 2010 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control...

When Help Spells Meds

Danielle got up every morning—barely. She went to bed tired and woke up tired. She quit her job last year to care for her father full-time. She feels fortunate in that she has help and the budget to hire help. Her husband is supportive; her friends, kind. And, yet, she still feels completely overwhelmed. “I shouldn’t feel this way,” she tells herself. “I am just a wimp. I can fight my...

How Do You Manage the Sad?

Yesterday, on Your Caregiving Journey, Holly, who cares for her husband, joined us to talk about how she manages her sad moments. You can listen to our show via the player below. Holly and I talked about the difference between sadness and depression. For me, sadness is a response to an upsetting situation. I think depression, often described as anger toward inward, has a component of self-blame. I think depression...

What’s It all Mean?

This morning, Anna Stookey joined me on Your Caregiving Journey for a fascinating discussion on finding meaning during life’s tough times. I think you’ll find this show really insightful. You can listen via the player below. During our discussion, Anna suggested we look for our answers to these questions: What frames my life? What’s my life purpose? When we look to find these answers, we...

We Are Not Alone

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one’.” -C.S. Lewis

Wise Words from a Geriatric Psychiatrist

This morning, on Your Caregiving Journey, Dr. Mindy Rosenbloom joined us to share insights on how medications can help with your caree’s difficult behavior and depression. You can listen to our show via the player below. Dr. Rosenbloom told us why medications and their effects change as we age, how a psychiatrist determines the effectiveness of a medication, how depression can worsen the symptoms of dementia,...

We Think We Hide It, But Our Energy Shows

A few weeks ago, I was speaking with a fellow professional coach. Jim Kelly graduated from the same coaching program as I. We talked “shop,” so to speak, and then shared about our work. When I told Jim about working with family caregivers, he offered an interesting perspective: We all have an energy, he said, which impacts how others see us. When a (caree) sees frustration and guilt and hesitancy, then...

Do We Need Emotional Pain?

Well, I’m not sure we definitely answered that question on Your Caregiving Journey this morning. But, I think we have a much better understanding of emotional pain and how to manage its presence in our lives. You can listen to our show via the player at the bottom of the post. We began our discussion with Anna Stookey, who joins us monthly to keep us in a good emotional space, with a description of grief....

Do We Need to Feel Those Hard Feelings?

NPR aired an interesting story (“Is Emotional Pain Necessary?“) this morning about whether depression can be part of grief and therefore treated. Apparently, physicians are discouraged from diagnosing individuals grieving the death of a loved one with major depression; it’s called a “bereavement exclusion.” “The idea was that feelings of intense pain were normal, so they...

Even If a Choice, It’s Still Difficult

Today on Your Caregiving Journey, Donna Ryan joined us to talk about her recent trip to Atlanta with her mom. (You can listen to our discussion via the player at the bottom of this post.) Toward the end of the show, we talked about the worry about discussing caregiving with non-caregiving friends. With the worry comes the concern that complaining could be misinterpreted as being disrespectful to a caree. This...

Introduction

I’m a single Mom, late-bloomer, introvert and about 60. I live in St. Louis, Missouri. I am planning on retiring in spring of 2010 after 30 years as a computer programmer. My hobbies are reading, genealogy, reading, fractal art, reading and gardening. Did I mention reading? At the moment (January of 2010), I am thinking about caring for my mother in my home. I have two children, a son, a daughter at home, and...

Ask Denise: How Do I Resolve a Huge Mess?

Dear Denise, My mother and dad have been taking care of my disabled brother for almost 9 years. She is 76, he is 81. My mother has several serious health issues, heart, high B.P., and diabetes. She had a T.I.A. two years ago and is on blood thinners. Mom (who was an RN) refuses to hire adequate nurses and aides to take care of my brother and now, herself. She could easily afford it. She just hopes that one night...

Empathy

Empathy: Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. Source: Dictionary.com Because you care, you have the ability to feel for your care recipient; you are empathetic to your care recipient’s pain, mourning, frustration and fear. You feel your care recipient’s longing for a life without an illness or disability, the longing for a life that’s full of...

My Story: Looking Inside Depression

Last week, PsychCentral.com posted a helpful article on depression (7 Myths of Depression). I shared the link to the article on Twitter and immediately received responses. No surprise—depression and caregiving can go hand-in-hand. I asked one of the family caregivers who responded, Heather Short, to write about her experiences with depression. What follows are my questions and her answers. Heather is...