How To Balance Work Stress While Caring For An Aging Parent

Caring For An Aging Parent

0:21 SPEAKER_01: Welcome to WorkStress Anxiety. Today I am joined by Janice Goldman to talk about the second job nobody applies for and that's caring for an aging parent while the rest of the world carries on. It's quite interesting because we explore why your mind doesn't pop off after caregiving when your paid work begins and why vague offers of help can create even more work for you. Remember to follow the podcast at follow thepodcast.com work stressanxiety so that you don't miss this conversation and all of the hidden gems that are to come.

1:05 SPEAKER_01: So let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to Work Stress Anxiety podcast. I'm Cheryl Parris, your host. I hope you are doing well. I hope that you have come today to learn something new and insightful, we hope. But guess what? I have a guest with me today. I have Janice. Welcome, Janice.

1:30 SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Cheryl. So happy to be here with you.

1:33 SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for your time. It means a lot to me, Janice, that we are doing this.

Why Vague Help Adds More Work

1:38 SPEAKER_01: So let's just dive straight in. You know, one of the things I have found, if people sometimes say to me, just tell me if you need anything. But when you're already managing, maybe an aging parent, even work what need or what you need to ask for can sometimes feel like a second job. So what is happening inside the person, do you think, who's looking capable enough to cope with everyday things, but no longer really has that mental space to organize that help?

2:15 SPEAKER_00: I think what happens is when everything is, I'll use the word crashing down, because when you're caring for a loved one, it doesn't stop at 9 a.m. and then you go to work and then you don't have to think about it, and then at five o'clock you pick it back up. It's still in your in your mind, even if you're not in that physical space. And to think about everything that you need in that moment, sometimes you don't you don't even know. When someone says, Hey, what do you need? And and your mind says, I don't even know.

2:46 SPEAKER_00: Just do something to help me because this is a lot on my shoulders, and I'm not sure in this moment what the best thing to do is. It would be more helpful if you say, Would you like me to go shopping? Would you like me to pick up your dry cleaning? Would you like me to leave some food? Would you like me to check in on your parents? Whatever that is, for somebody to give you some cues that it will at least help you figure out, all right, this is what would be helpful right now.

When Grief Becomes Cumulative

3:18 SPEAKER_01: Okay. You know, I recently had to go to another funeral. Okay. Now I am no different to anyone else, but I think for me, what it was I had to do another eulogy. And I think it was my sixth since the pandemic. And usually, you know, I'll go to funerals, and of course I'll feel sad, and you know, the usual emotions when someone's passed away. They almost hit me like a ton of bricks.

3:49 SPEAKER_00: So, really, I think what that comes from is that grief can be cumulative. When you have experienced grief once and then twice and then multiple times, a lot of things happen. One is that that vulnerability of life is not unlimited. It's very stark. It becomes very evident that we have no idea when the end of our own life is gonna happen. And it makes it a reality, especially when you've suffered a lot of losses back to back. You you can't recover from one and then another one comes up. And so your body is going, I don't know if I can do this because I'm not done with the first one, or you know, I still have residual from that one, and now somebody else has passed away.

4:38 SPEAKER_00: And it really does hold up a mirror to our own vulnerability. We don't know, we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. We don't know when you cross the street, you know, are you gonna make it across the street? Nobody knows. And we're not taught how to deal with grief. That is another thing that I think makes it even more challenging. These are things that we're not taught how to deal with. You're just supposed to somehow know, but we don't always know. Or we think, I'm gonna put on that brave face, and that's how I'm gonna get through it.

5:10 SPEAKER_00: And then the facade starts cracking because over time you can only put on that brave face enough times, and then the reality from uh inside hits and you just don't know how to deal with it. So it's not surprising at all.

5:25 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'm being very selfish here when I talk about my own grief because I know that there isn't there isn't a moment that where you stop caring. Do you know what I mean? You stop being who you are at nine o'clock in the morning when you're supposed to be, you're supposed to be at work. And, you know, I've wondered about the moment when caregiving actually begins.

How Caregiving Slowly Takes Over

5:50 SPEAKER_01: Is there actually a moment, or do people kind of discover maybe after several months, you know, a few phone calls, a few favors, it's become this second job that they've sort of acquired. And I'm just wondering, what's your feelings about that, Janice?

6:08 SPEAKER_00: So I would say it can be one of two streams. Sometimes it is a slow progression. You see one sign and then another, and then you're thinking, oh, that's not normal. What's happening here? And then you start seeing an escalation of small little things. I'm actually writing a whole series on LinkedIn called, Is it a sign? Because sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just a thing. Somebody forgets the name of a restaurant or somebody doesn't go shopping, and so their fridge is empty. It doesn't mean anything in isolation.

6:43 SPEAKER_00: It's when these things keep happening over and over and over, and more signs and more signs that you start to realize, oh, something's going on here, and I might need to step in more to see how I can help out. So that's one way. The other way is there's an incident, there's a crisis, somebody has a major stroke, somebody has a heart attack, somebody has some other catastrophic thing happened to them, and then all of a sudden, there's no preparation, there's no warning, you are in it, and that's much more challenging because you're going from everything's fine to you know going 100 miles an hour of wow, what what am I supposed to do now with absolutely no preparation?

Managing Work While Waiting On Calls

7:32 SPEAKER_00: The thing that I that I really believe so strongly is that we need to have these conversations about what would you want if something happened? And you know, what what kind of things do you have prepared long before we even have any thought that something could happen, that this is part of normal conversation. And that would make it so much easier when you become a caregiver of whatever kind to know, oh, we've had this conversation, I know something, at least I've got some insight. So it is a challenge, and there's no moment where the switch flicks and goes, Oh, today I'm not a caregiver, tomorrow I am, unless it does come through some kind of um, you know, a crisis that occurs.

8:22 SPEAKER_01: Okay. One of the things that I think is really interesting, what you've been saying is that whatever happens, whether it's something that's been progressive or something that's, you know, you've literally been thrown into that situation. What's really important is to have these conversations almost before these things happen. Yeah. And I know, you know, you could be sitting in a meeting, you know, you're at work, and at work we're all expected to perform, right? I uh the reason why I'm laughing, right, is because I know what it says on the poster.

8:58 SPEAKER_01: On the poster it says, we are a caring employer, you know, we understand that you have, you know, outside responsibilities. But I often have seen uh with the people that I've worked with that they might be sitting in the meeting answering questions while another part of their mind is actually waiting for their phone to buzz. Right. So they've kind of they're kind of dividing their attention, but because they're doing that, they know that their work is suffering because they're constantly, you know, it's almost like they're waiting for that phantom phone ring, you know.

9:38 SPEAKER_01: And I was wondering, how do you think are one of the best ways for people to navigate that, knowing that the phone could ring at any moment and they have to, they still they're there, they're having to perform their job, you know, the the job that pays them money, right, um, that they're expected to perform at 100% all the time, and yet they know they've got this other hidden second job. How do you think about that? How do they navigate that, the split in their mind when they're almost half outside the door of the time?

10:12 SPEAKER_00: In a perfect world, you would have the ability to go to your employer and say, Look, this is my situation. I have an aging parent. I'm going to be here, I'm gonna do my best, I'm gonna focus to the best of my ability. But right now, I know that there might be some health issues that might come up, and I might be distracted or I might be called away. I might be sitting in a meeting and my phone buzzes and says, Your father just fell. It's a reality. And in companies that understand that this is a possibility and have plans in place and ways of dealing with it, it's much easier because they will understand where you're at.

10:54 SPEAKER_00: And you might be able to make accommodations, you may be able to change your work hours, you may be able to work from home, you may be able to take time off, paid time off as a caregiver if you know that you know things are happening at a certain point. That's in a perfect world. Very few companies right now are at that point to help their employees to that degree. There's little parts that they may have in place. And I know that they're trying because it's becoming more and more of a reality given the demographics that are happening.

11:28 SPEAKER_00: The baby boomers are getting older, and the reality of their staff dealing with multiple things is more likely. They're more used to having their staff deal with problems with their children when their children are young and they're in school. Oh, yes, we understand kids get sick, we understand that. But now it's a shift of now it's not the kids that are getting sick, it's the parents. And they have to wrap their brain around that, that that is a reality for their employees. As the employee, you have to figure out in the best way you can how to be as focused as possible.

12:04 SPEAKER_00: And again, I go back to planning and preparation. The more you know you've got supports at home, even though you are not at home, the easier it is for you to, I don't want to say split your mind, because that's not real. You never do. But to know, okay, while I'm at work, I know I can focus on this because I've got health at home or I've got resources, or whatever that is, the more you have support for yourself, the easier it's going to be to be able to focus on work while you are at work.

12:38 SPEAKER_01: Right. Now, this may seem like a really strange question, Janice, but you've worked with a lot of people, you've seen a lot of things, and what comes to my mind is if you think back over like say the last maybe 15 years, yeah? Let's use that time frame.

Planning Supports And Employer Flexibility

12:54 SPEAKER_01: Is there anything that you have learned that has significantly you've significantly changed your mind about? In terms of what the work that you've been doing. So maybe you've had a view about something and then something's happened and you've completely changed your mind about it.

13:13 SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know if I completely changed my mind. I think I've got to understand that what I learned in school about aging is theory. Nobody fits the theory. Nobody, every person, every family, every situation is different. I can tell you this is how to deal with a dementia patient. This is what's going to happen. The reality is, no, it isn't. Every person is different, every person's disease progresses in a different way, every family deals with it in a different way, every dynamic is different.

13:51 SPEAKER_00: And so what I learned is the theory is great as a theory, but so much of caregiving, it's gonna sound so weird, is by the seat of your pants. What is happening this moment? What is the best thing I can do right now in this situation, given what I know and the supports I have? And that's all you can do sometimes. Sometimes it's just let me get through the next hour because I don't know what I'm doing. I need to figure something out, I need to take a breath, I need to walk away, whatever that is. And that's not what I learned in school.

14:29 SPEAKER_00: It's not, but that is the reality. It really is. And I think actually it's a good thing because it allows people to let themselves off the hook.

Why Caregiving Defies Theories

14:39 SPEAKER_00: I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to do this in a way that is going to be the way that everybody else does it. I might do it differently or I might think differently. So I think that's really what it is. Is that for lack of a better way, is it's grace. It's giving yourself grace to try. If it works, that's great. If it doesn't work, try something else. Ask for help. What can you do differently if it's not working? What do you continue doing if it is working? And just go step by step.

15:12 SPEAKER_01: Now, before we go, what I'm particularly interested, because I know that sometimes, especially when you're caring for someone else, there's a lot of emotional weather going on inside your head. You know, sometimes you feel uh dread, you know, grief, irritated, you know, confused, guilty. You know, that's just I'm just sort of reciting some of the feelings I've had over the last few weeks. But I'm curious, what do you think is or which part is often missing when people are counting what caregiving is costing them?

15:51 SPEAKER_00: I think people, for lack of a better way to say it, they want to look like they've got it together. They may be feeling a whole bunch of things, but I can't tell you that I'm angry at my parent because I have to care for them. I can't tell you that I'm angry at my siblings because I'm the one doing everything. I can't tell you that I feel grief because I know that my loved one is not the person they were when I was younger. They're not my parent. Now I'm doing the parenting and I'm grieving that relationship.

16:25 SPEAKER_00: You know, I can't say that I am so overwhelmed that some days I don't want to get out of bed because how does that gonna make me look? So I think the biggest issue is we have all these feelings, and sometimes there's no outlet for them. And so we internalize it and then we become sick. And that's the biggest problem is that caregivers, if they're not taking care of themselves, if they're not having the ability to just unload, they become sick themselves.

16:56 SPEAKER_01: So, Janice, I just want to thank you for your insights with us today. It's been really interesting for me, especially what I've been through recently. So I just want to thank you for your time. Thank you, Janice.

17:08 SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Cheryl, for allowing me to share and for hoping that having other people realize that when you do your best, it's all you can do.

Giving Yourself Grace To Try

Making The Invisible Load Visible

17:18 SPEAKER_01: So before you rush back into the day, you might take two minutes to make that invisible load more visible to you. Maybe write down the worries, decisions, and things that you've been monitoring for someone else. Not to solve them all of them, but to stop pretending that there's no pretending that they can take no space. I want to thank Janice.

The Emotional Costs People Hide

17:47 SPEAKER_01: You'll find all her relevant links and resources in the show notes, along with more from WordPress Anxiety. Bye for now!