You find out that you have been experiencing a caregiver burnout, when you are about to get as bad as someone that you’ve been caring for, as exhausted, as mentally and physically drained, that just a little bit more, and you’ll need to be cared for also.
Here is a typical story of a caregiver calling Fresh Start:
“Recently I have lost my appetite due to extremely high anxiety and depression. Eight years ago I discovered that I am lactose and gluten intolerant, so my diet became very limited. I manage to stay on a healthy diet, then fall off the wagon. I gained 35 lbs recently and am not comfortable with the extra weight. I have reached a point where I can barely eat at all. I have lost most of my friendships, and my relationships with men never work. Recently I had a discussion with the man I am seeing, and he suggested that I send my son to live with his father. I had been complaining to him that my son has a developmental disability, and he has become angry and aggressive towards me. He said he’d been holding back his feelings about the situation to avoid hurting me, but when he said those words, it really hurt me. I was thankful in the beginning, then I realized I felt threatened. For 18 years I have been a mother and spent almost every day with my son. The truth is: I am exhausted and I need a huge break, because doing everything by myself is not working anymore. We have both lead extremely isolated lives, and the reality of the dilemma we are in is becoming more and more obvious and impossible to deny.
My relationships never work, and I need to figure out why, so I can move on and find happiness. I am learning to rely more on family and friends, so things are improving, but I have no energy. I can’t concentrate, and all I want to do is sleep and spend time with my boyfriend. Nothing is working in my life, and I have hit rock bottom. Once my son moves out of the house, I don’t know what I will do, since I have been focusing on him my whole life. I can’t even begin to think about my future, but I know I have to face reality. Subconsciously, I know I have been trying to protect him from being judged and bullied by keeping him in the house, but it’s not serving him or me. He is high functioning and needs support, just as I do.
I hope to work through the emotional baggage such as shame and guilt that I feel. In many ways I feel like a failure, and life feels meaningless. I have felt like giving up so many times. Lately I realized that giving up isn’t an option. The only way I can lead a healthy life is to face the fear head on. I’d like to become happier, both mentally and physically.”
Caregiver Burnout Symptoms
- Extreme exhaustion: you feel drained physically and emotionally, you cannot do anymore what you did before with ease.
- Feeling overwhelmed: you feel that you are not able to meet the demands of your life and people around anymore.
- Compassion fatigue: you absorbed a lot of trauma and emotional stresses of those you care for. At times you feel indifferent or numb; you know you care, but you do not feel it anymore, and you do not feel your own feelings either.
- Insomnia: you wake up in the middle of the night, your sleep patterns are disrupted and erratic, you do not remember when you got a decent sleep last time. You are in a constant alert state.
- Hypersensitivity: you may fly off the handle from a small thing, and you break into tears whenever your feelings get hurt, though often no one meant to offend you.
- Getting started: a loud noise makes you jump, and bright lights hurt your eyes.
- Internal anger: you are feeling resentment towards life and overwhelming responsibility that’s on your shoulders, which alternates with the feeling of guilt and self-blame for being insensitive.
- Loss of interest in activities: your libido is non-existent, you abandoned your hobbies, and your life became dull.
- Difficulty to concentrate: you feel slow, like a turtle, it takes you time to figure out what you need to do or what someone is saying, you are often indecisive.
- Aggravation of health symptoms: you feel like you start falling apart.
Why Do You Deserve Being Cared for?
Caregivers often tell us about internal obstacles of feeling guilty to do something for themselves, about taking time to take a breath or improve their own health.
We worked with parents that have been raising two handicapped children, wifes who looked after the husbands post-stroke, single mothers that were raising autistic children, and social workers looking after those with Alzheimer’s, dementia or quadriplegics.
Reasons to consider giving yourself time and space to heal your burnout, before you get back to the “trenches” of continuing after looking after the ones you care for:
- You have a responsibility to look after yourself… while you still can. That way, by caring for your health (physical and emotional), you will not become a burden to both yourself and people around you.
- Other people will help you to take a break – they clearly understand that if you do not look after yourself, sooner or later, there may be two people to be caring for, instead of one.
- You do have a right to feel good… if you take the time to look after yourself, otherwise, there is the consequences are inevitable: overexhaustion, overextending yourself and then hitting the rock bottom… as we have seen in multiple cases of caregiver burnout. Just imagine how much better you may be able to feel for having given yourself much needed time to restore yourself.
How Does Fresh Start Help You with Caregiver Burnout?
1. Giving a total life break
No phones ringing, no being on a watch, no requirements and expectations of you. When you are burned out, more than anything, you need to be able to leave your environment and be in a space, where you can be away from day-to-day worries, communicating with others and feeling responsible.
2. Feel the Care
At Fresh Start you’ll feel cared for, will not need to prepare meals or come up with a schedule. Everything is laid out for you. Our semi-flexible schedule allows for plenty of opportunities to relax, get a nap or go for a slow walk. You need to slow down that pace and feeling loved.
3. Replenish your body
While at Fresh Start, you will receive enhanced nutrition and rehydration. This will allow your cells begin to regenerate and rebuild themselves, and to start recharging. The meals are portioned, so you’ll be able to savour your aesthetically prepared meal, in perfect amounts and combinations, prepared specially for you.
4. Emotional Release
Sometimes you just need to have an opportunity to unload your heavy load, those pains and traumas of people whom you care for, mixed with your own pains and traumas. Talk therapies and trauma release via body and energy work will help you.
5. Connection
When we are tired, the last thing we want at times is connecting with others (or opposite, we may be craving for it). On a deep level, we are social creatures. When you are in a nourishing environment, surrounded by caring people who are going with you through the same journey, who become vulnerable like you, who have struggles, like you, you feel nourished and supported, and most likely will naturally start opening up and talk.
6. Restoring Emotional Resilience
Hydrotherapy energy work, aromatherapy and other powerful treatments will assist you in restoration of your energy levels and emotional capacity.
7. Meditation and Breathing Techniques
During your stay you will learn a lot of stress-management techniques to take home, how to calm your mind and to get in touch with your body, soul and feelings.
8. Nature Therapy
Feel the ocean breeze cooling down your head, step on the grass with your tired feet, see the eagles above your head, feel that peace while listening to the soothing sound of waves. Let your nervous system calm down and restore.
9. Get Moving
Stretch your body, connect to it and enjoy feeling of health, as you move during a gentle fitness or dance class.
10. Improve digestion and hormonal health
Our program has a major focus on those two systems, and most people feel a great improvement in both areas by the end of their stay.
11. Physical Health Restoration
We have a variety of additional custom protocols, from adrenal support, to nervous system tonic and sleep enhancing supplements, which we may include in your individual plan, if needed, as determined by the health tests, done upon your arrival.
12. Reframe Weight gain
A caregiver knows that those extra pounds just keep creeping up, no matter what they do. There is a logical explanation to it.
Whenever we are in a very stressful environment, especially when handling trauma of other people or grieving, our body will start building a protective shield, sort of a wall around us. This wall is made of fat cells. While we see it as a bad thing, fat helps protect us, physically and emotionally, from being harmed by toxins (physical and emotional). In a sense, it becomes a buffer for us.
In our society we have extremely high standards for ideal weight. In fact, our ideas of what is norm have changed over the last 100 years, moving from a plum country girl to a slim, pale and almost unhealthy looking beauty, constantly preoccupied with counting calories and protein.
While healthy weight is an essential ingredient of health, it is important that we understand that body is not designed just for looks, but for functional purposes.
Instead of desperately fighting with persistent inches and pounds, it is important to start taking care of ourselves, learn how to release negative emotions and stresses of the day, to take care of our body, and it will bring our weight into balance itself.
Trying to lose weight using stimulants is like beating a tired horse: you can get it going, of course, but the price will be high. You can diet yourself even into more exhaustion, adrenal burnout and nervous system disorders. As a result, you may get a slim body, but energetically become even more exhausted, which may result is sagging wrinkly skin on the face and a host of physical problems, like low blood pressure, low iron and hormonal issues.
Health should come from the inside out, so consider your physical and mental health restoration first, weight loss – as their side effect.
However, due to detoxification protocols and quality nutrition, most people lose about ½ lb. per day naturally. Let your body do what it can at the moment.
Listen about Melody’s Caregiver Burnout Recovery:
Disclaimer:
Though many of our guests receive wonderful results, Fresh Start cannot guarantee health recovery from any specific disease or symptom, or degree of its improvement, as the healing process is individual, gradual, multi-layered and depends on many factors. Please be realistic in expectations as there is no such thing as quick fixes when it comes to healing.