E30: How to find resilience in your caregiver challenges

You jump in your car and the check engine light goes on.  Well you think to yourself, should I just leave it or bring it back into the shop.  There obviously is something wrong. 

How does this relate to caregiving.  Today I want to talk about resilience

Things have shifted in your life, as well as mine.  Your life is not the same.  Change has happened or maybe it’s still happening, like mine is in the caregiver life and caregiver journey

Dealing with changes, challenges, barriers and disruptions is hard.  It’s frustrating,  It’s scay and then there is the uncertainty too.  It challenges your beliefs and it can knock you down.  

Resilience is the promise of the human spirit  - that it can rise through it.  That you can move forward with great faith and optimism and recapture it all.  

It's the  ability to believe.  When a challenge or situation occurs and we can’t find the strength to pick ourselves up.  We believe this and our mindset is stuck.    Our ability to do that (thing) is slows us down by hurt, pain, trauma, grief or whatever you are feeling.   Think about your struggles.   What is the one thing that happened recently that brought you down?

When you’re in your deepest, darkest, it’s hard to find that mental strength.  First and foremost, you have to be ok with this and grant yourself grace since you are not perfect.  

Resilience begins with acknowledgement of the challenge, struggles, and difficulties of the hardship.   Because picking yourself up, remaining strong in this time is super hard

When we don’t allow ourselves to sense it and feel it, we leave that check engine light on and risk that it will wreck our engine.  Hurt and pain are like that engine light.  We can’t drive it and hope it gets better.  It won’t get better.  It won’t go away. 

Realization of resilience is picking yourself up and even if you go in the wrong direction.

The choices you make next is the most important. You find clarity.   When going through your challenges, struggles and what feels like things you can’t figure out.

Clarity is what is needed.  Ask your self these two questions 

• Who I am?
• Where do I want to go?  

You don’t want to live in the pain.  

Resilience is the ability to no longer discourage

Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.

Are you saying , it’s easier said than done.  I was earlier this week.  I was saying 

• You don’t know what this is like
• You never went through this
• No one understands.  

Others may not totally understand but there are others that do.  Don’t let yourself go there - it’s a slippery slope to isolation, loneliness, depression, closing off your heart and thinking others don’t understand or care.  

If you can’t progress or you have patterns of trauma or severe stress, it’s time to talk to a licensed professional or therapy.  They can help you with a process to get through this.  

My closing thoughts today for you is that this caregiver life requires resilience and grace.  When you find your new day of mindfulness, you’ll feel clarity.   Each situation is a process, an education to learn from.