The emotional toll from caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease can have dire consequences on your own health. Managing your emotions as a caregiver is critical to your long-term survival.
By now in life, I’m sure you have experienced every emotion at one time or another. Typically, however, we don’t experience a wave of various emotions on a regular basis.
Meaning, on a given day, we don’t experience guilt, joy, sadness, grief, resentment, anger, followed by more of the same. Unfortunately, as an Alzheimer’s caregiver, that is likely to change.
If not managed properly, this roller coaster of emotions will without a doubt lead to health problems. As my friend Lynne Smith states, “When you hear that 85% of Alzheimer’s caregivers are on anti-depressants, you pretty much know you MUST do something to help yourself.” And, I’ll add, if you don’t, you will likely end up a statistic.
But there is help. You just need to take it seriously and invest the time to be helped. I have found a wonderful resource that I wish to share with you. At HelpGuide.org, they have an Emotional Intelligence Toolkit (you can find the link at bottom of this article).
At first, I had no clue what this meant but in the search to find you good resources, I investigated.
This toolkit includes short videos (3 to 4 minutes) coupled with articles. This content is aimed at helping you recognize your emotional situations and take control. I know that when we are in the throws of a tough situation, keeping our wits is not easy.
Counting backwards from 10 has never helped me. But according to the toolkit, I haven’t yet discovered the thing that does help me cope. I believe with awareness and effort, over time you (we) can improve.
Let’s introduce you to the toolkit by having you watch their 4 minute introductory video.
1. Emotions Matter — HiRez from Helpguide.org on Vimeo
Hopefully, you found this worth your time. If so, I highly recommend that you continue with their program. It will take some time, so break it up into smaller pieces but complete it and live it!
Going forward, I will continue to search for tools to help you manage your emotions as well as other caregiver issues, because we are all Together in This.
Help Guide’s Emotional Intelligence Toolkit
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Do you have questions, comments, or perhaps other ideas? In the comments below, I would love to hear from you.
This is a wonderful page. You are so right! It is a roller coaster journey “filled with experiences of guilt, joy, sadness, grief, resentment, anger, followed by more of the same.” We don’t always get to choose WHAT we go through in life, but we can always choose HOW we go through it. Tools that help us become aware and manage our emotions are empowerment fuel (such as you present here).
It is important to realize that while everyone involved goes through range of emotions, thoughts, feelings … they don’t necessarily mirror one another. One person in the mix may feel anger while another may feel sadness, at the exact same time over the exact same situation. One is not right and the other wrong – they are simply individual responses. Acknowledging and supporting differences, as well as similarities, helps everyone maintain a healthier outlook.
That’s a really good insight about how the emotions people feel don’t necessarily mirror one another. Thank you Maryann for your comments. Together we can slow the ups and downs through educations, tools, and love.
Thank you so much for this article and the link provided, Mike. I had an inner emotional meltdown yesterday with my MIL who I care for 24/7 so I’m looking forward to going through this toolkit. I’m also sharing it with my friends on the FB group of Caregivers Connect
Thank you again!
Please let me know what you think about it, or if you discover something else that might benefit others. Best wishes, and thank you very much for sharing with others.