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Transcript

Episode 2 Care Companion: You Can Love Them And Still Feel Worn Out · Holding It Together (Kinda)

• 0:00
  Michael Mackniak: Hello everybody, welcome to this midweek unpack for Holding It Together Kinda.
• 0:05
  Michael Mackniak: I'm Michael Makniak.
• 0:06
  Michael Mackniak: On our full weekly episodes, we bring on experts, advocates, and frontline workers to break down the heavy stuff.
• 0:13
  Michael Mackniak: Legal mazes, medical systems, messy realities at caregiving.
• 0:17
  Michael Mackniak: But on these short midweek sessions, it's just gonna be you and me.
• 0:21
  Michael Mackniak: Today we're gonna step back to an episode that cuts right to the heart of what so many of us carry in silence, which is caregiver grief and the pain of loving someone who has changed.
• 0:34
  Michael Mackniak: Uh, with uh my friend Dr.
• 0:35
  Michael Mackniak: Joanne Schaeffer.
• 0:37
  Michael Mackniak: We've talked about ambiguous loss, like that quiet, unacknowledged pain of loving a person who's still sitting right in front of you, even though you feel like they're lost.
• 0:46
  Michael Mackniak: Uh their memory may be gone, your memories of the person that you love so much, their personality may be gone.
• 0:54
  Michael Mackniak: Their role in life, your role in their life has completely shifted around.
• 0:59
  Michael Mackniak: So if you've been with us for a while, you know that this conversation really at home.
• 1:05
  Michael Mackniak: Uh if you're new, this is where again we peel off a lot of the armor.
• 1:10
  Michael Mackniak: When we aired that episode, we didn't have our camp our pamphlets uh ready yet, but you know, I went back and built one specifically for Caregiver Caregiver Grief, and it's available to you right now.
• 1:24
  Michael Mackniak: Again, this is not homework, this is not to add anything to your to your plate.
• 1:29
  Michael Mackniak: They're just short little synopses of the episode and a review of the worksheet to help you to uh break down some of the messages that were contained in that episode uh so that you can go back and check it out.
• 1:46
  Michael Mackniak: And if you want to do the the work and have uh the timeline because it resonates with you, then that's fantastic.
• 1:54
  Michael Mackniak: So, like for instance, on page one in this care uh caregiver grief companion guide, the core truth is that caregiver grief can begin long before the death of your loved one.
• 2:08
  Michael Mackniak: Grief, love, anger, exhaustion, tenderness, resentment, and relief, they all can coexist and they don't necessarily have to cancel one another out.
• 2:19
  Michael Mackniak: I love that saying two things can be true at the same time, right?
• 2:24
  Michael Mackniak: As we go into page two, I want you to just discuss or describe how ambiguous loss is impacting you, asking you to name what it is that you're missing about the relationship, but still honor what's meaningful to you now.
• 2:46
  Michael Mackniak: So, again, we're gonna talk about holding two truths at the same time.
• 2:51
  Michael Mackniak: There's statements on page four that go into um you know, statements that can be true and you don't have to feel bad about feeling them, such as, you know, I love my mom, but I'm exhausted.
• 3:05
  Michael Mackniak: I feel tenderness toward my father, but I also feel a little bit of resentment toward them.
• 3:10
  Michael Mackniak: Right?
• 3:10
  Michael Mackniak: These are these are real raw emotions that are important.
• 3:15
  Michael Mackniak: A lot of times caregivers uh have a real heavy emotion when re you know they finally get relief that comes in and it and it replaces the scythe of grief.
• 3:27
  Michael Mackniak: It reminds us that feeling relieved when a crisis cycle ends is not proof that you loved somebody any less.
• 3:34
  Michael Mackniak: It just means your body is finally leaving survival mode, that fight or flight mode.
• 3:41
  Michael Mackniak: Um, I say that emotions are information.
• 3:46
  Michael Mackniak: Emotions are not proof that you're a bad caregiver or that your love is false.
• 3:52
  Michael Mackniak: So when I sat down and looked at it this week, I thought about how many caregivers are judging themselves using impossible standards.
• 4:01
  Michael Mackniak: We convince ourselves that if we feel angry, uh, if we feel trapped or exhausted or burnt out, it means we failed.
• 4:10
  Michael Mackniak: Or maybe it even means that, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to do because I'm a caregiver, I'm supposed to feel this way.
• 4:15
  Michael Mackniak: You know, and and that kind of makes us feel human.
• 4:20
  Michael Mackniak: But at the same time, we need to evaluate this and say, is this how I want to feel?
• 4:25
  Michael Mackniak: Is this how I should go on feeling?
• 4:27
  Michael Mackniak: Is this how my loved one would want me to feel?
• 4:31
  Michael Mackniak: You know, and and at the end, you'll get a, you know, what are you gonna do over the next seven days?
• 4:36
  Michael Mackniak: Write down a loss that's been real to you.
• 4:39
  Michael Mackniak: Um sometimes other people don't see a loss as being real.
• 4:43
  Michael Mackniak: They don't recognize it as a loss even.
• 4:46
  Michael Mackniak: You can think about two conflicting emotions that that both exist um in contradiction to each other, right?
• 4:56
  Michael Mackniak: Neither is right or wrong, it's just they're there.
• 4:59
  Michael Mackniak: Maybe give your brain somewhere to land at night so you can actually rest.
• 5:03
  Michael Mackniak: Wouldn't that be nice?
• 5:06
  Michael Mackniak: So, anyway, go back, check out the Caregiver Grief episode, and um grab this free Caregiver Grief listener action guide.
• 5:16
  Michael Mackniak: Uh the link will be in the description.
• 5:20
  Michael Mackniak: Um, and you can always go to carecoalition.org and find it there.
• 5:24
  Michael Mackniak: And until next time, keep holding it together, even if it's just kinda.