How to Handle Caregiving’s ‘Gut-Check’ Moments

Believe in your ability to deal with any caregiving challenge that comes your way

Barry J. Jacobs,

AARP

Comments

En español

Published August 05, 2024

two woman standing next to each other with one looking into a mirror

Illustration: Seb Agresti

On a hot June day in 2010, I packed up the last box with the possessions of my mother and stepfather and then asked them to excuse me for an hour. I drove to a sandwich shop a few miles from their South Florida condo mainly to clear my mind and think. As I sat there lingering over a large turkey sub, staring out the storefront window at the moving traffic, I talked to myself:

“Your mother is frail. Your stepfather has advanced Alzheimer’s dementia. You and your wife are moving them to an apartment a mile from your home in Pennsylvania so the two of you can take care of them. This is likely to go on for years and change your lives. Are you ready for this?”

Fourteen years later, I remember this — what I think of as a “gut-check” moment — as the start of the seven-year caregiving journey that was harder than I expected and changed our lives much more than I could have guessed. It was the first of many gut-check moments during caregiving that is still vivid in my mind. Another was the first time I had to calm my severely agitated stepfather who was storming angrily around the apartment making threatening gestures. Yet another, much later, was sitting vigil at my mother’s bedside while she was breathing raggedly in the last hours of her life. Facing what were new challenges for me was like trying to steady my nerves while looking down from a very high diving board. These times were personal tests when I needed to gather myself, find courage and take the plunge.

More from Barry Jacobs

How to handle ‘gut check’ moments
The enduring grief of my dad's death
Are you a ‘control freak’ caregiver?
Caregiving can alter life’s goals
Holiday rituals help heal grief

For some caregivers, facing these types of challenges comes easier, almost as a matter of course. For those like me, however, caregiving is a series of little moments when we need to reach for something within ourselves that we’re not sure is there in order to do what is necessary.

How can caregivers best handle their own gut-check moments? It depends less on the innate talents and abilities they have or the coping methods they typically rely on than the attitudes and beliefs they bring to caregiving. Here are some ideas for those attitudes and beliefs that may be helpful:

Adopt a “growth mindset”

Stanford university psychologist Carol Dweck has written extensively about people who believe that if they focus, work hard and open up to new learning, they can improve themselves. She said they have a “growth mindset” — essentially, the belief that they can grow to meet new challenges, even ones that initially seem too difficult for them. This concept can be readily applied to family caregiving.

Few caregivers already know all there is to know about caregiving before stepping into the role. Most of them learn while doing or by talking with friends who’ve been caregivers or by reading caregiving websites and books. They trust that they will muddle through in the beginning but gradually become more adept and confident, growing personally and, sometimes, spiritually in the process. Facing gut-check moments with a growth mindset means they believe that, despite any self-doubts, they will ultimately meet the challenge to make a significant difference in the life of their care receiver.

Beware self-defeating fears

Dweck contrasts the “growth mindset” with what she calls a “fixed mindset,” the belief that little can be done to improve one’s abilities. This idea is closely associated with what is often called fear of failure. When faced with caregiving’s challenges, some caregivers automatically dread falling on their face. Instead of trusting they will gather the information they need about whatever they don’t know, they dwell on making a harmful mistake, such as mixing up medications or causing a fall, out of ignorance, incompetence or neglect. Fear of failure, however, doesn’t make these caregivers more conscientious and effective; it makes them more anxious and tentative and likely to make mistakes. The gut-check moments then loom larger, the distance from diving board to pool seemingly vast.

Finding inspiration

Even caregivers prone to fears of failure can move toward a growth mindset by seeking inspiration to counter their self-doubts. That could come in the form of hearing or reading stories about other caregivers who go from frightened novices to polished experts on meeting the needs of their relatives. Even better is reflecting upon their own past experiences for examples of how they mastered skills they weren’t sure they could, such as running a business, playing a musical instrument or riding a horse. By believing in themselves, even new caregivers face those gut-check moments with the assurance that they have the wherewithal to stretch themselves. They then go about proving to themselves and others how resilient and capable they can be.

%{postComment}%

Barry J. Jacobs, a clinical psychologist, family therapist and health care consultant, is coauthor of Love and Meaning After 50: The 10 Challenges to Great Relationships — and How to Overcome Them and AARP Meditations for Caregivers. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.