Caregiver Guilt

For weeks, friends and colleagues have said I should write about caregiver guilt. Since it was first mentioned, I've noticed the common theme as caregivers speak about their experiences with their care person (care person = person needing care; I've stopped assuming that "loved one" is an appropriate description for the relationship between the caregiver and the person needing care, hence, I've adopted the neutral term "care person" to describe the recipient of the care).

How can these people feel guilty? I ponder. It is an oxymoron in the face of reality. While caregivers definitely vary widely in the actual time committed to caregiving tasks, it is my opinion that caregivers give much of their emotional energy to the fact of caregiving, and that they give all that they can, given their individual emotional, financial, and physical capabilities. Guilt should be far from their repertoire, and yet, there it is. Guilt is an entity that makes itself known and felt in broad strokes through families as they make their way through life.

From the daughter who spent 8 hours straight at the side of her dying mother, "I shouldn't have left to have dinner, she wouldn't have died alone."

From the long distance son, "I should have moved mom closer to us; I would have been able to spend more time with her."

But, there's: "when I moved dad to the city where I live, I wasn't able to spend as much time with him as I intended. Work and family took precedence, and I ended up feeling guilty that I moved him away from his familiar neighborhood and friends."

We can never anticipate everything that we might feel guilty about later. It seems we're very good at creating guilt no matter what our actions have accomplished.

The next time guilt starts taking hold, try imagining the life your care person would have had without you. Start listing the things you have done that have made a difference to someone else. Be grateful for the opportunity to be a caregiver; what a marvelous and blessed role it is.

Take care.

~debra