Written by: Eleanor Silverberg, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The rewards of your job include fulfilling the role of providing for your family. Your vital family role is amplified when the need arises to support an aging parent, disabled, or chronically ill family member.
Due to the shortage of human resources, family is the backbone of the healthcare system, carrying out most of the responsibility in providing daily care for members who can not manage independently. As a family member, you are expected, by obligation rather than by choice, to step up. This is a challenge that no one signs up for. Some appear to take on the challenge willingly. For the most part, whether willingly or not, family members are most likely to step up with firm commitment to assure the members in need are receiving the best care possible.
“I am NOT a caregiver” is a statement that I, as a healthcare professional, have often heard from those providing care for close relatives. People caring for children with disabilities, aging parents or caring for family members with illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, and stroke see themselves more as dutiful parents, daughters, sons, nieces, spouses, and so on. Although true, what potentially gets missed is that they have taken on a job that can become increasingly demanding over time.
Family caregivers of the disabled and chronically ill are at risk of burning out, becoming ill themselves if they do not maintain their resiliency. They are providing care while witnessing the debilitating changes occurring due to illness, which can unquestionably result in a depletion of the family caregivers’ energy and well-being. Maintaining resiliency involves acknowledging that the care they are providing is a job.
The above paragraphs are from the introduction of my book:
Keeping It Together: How to Cope as a Family Caregiver without Losing Your Sanity
featuring the 3-A Coping Framework: Acknowledge, Assess, Assist®
The book starts off by addressing the family members, who are helping loved ones, to consider their role as caregivers. It appears that identifying as a caregiver could be helpful for:
validation,
inclusion,
advocacy,
support,
coping ability.
It is not a bad thing when using the term 'caregiver' legitimizes and validates the role, acknowledging it as a valuable job. Coming together as a group of supportive family caregivers makes it easier for collective advocacy, perhaps for obtaining funding. Identifying with the role can also be empowering, acknowledging the family members as an integral part of the healthcare team, especially when doctors, nurses, case managers, social workers, personal support workers, etc. refer to the family members providing care as caregivers. It is part of the healthcare jargon. It is also not a bad thing acknowledging the job family caregivers do, assessing how much time and energy it takes and assisting them to cope, prevent burnout, thus assist in keeping it together.
The book Keeping It Together serves caregiving readers as a cocoon in the form of a book, offering potential personal growth and strengthened resiliency. Like butterflies in their transformation who must break free from the cocoon by their own efforts so that they may fly, the content aims to provide its readers with refuge, insight and the assisting tools so you may transform on your own to a place of enhanced strength.
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Eleanor Silverberg, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Eleanor Silverberg, founder of Jade Self Development Coaching, is a social worker, author, speaker and grief specialist whose intention is to help adults move forward stronger through diverse life-altering situational losses, applying the innovative 3-A Coping Framework she developed. Her specialty is assisting family caregivers of the chronically ill to cope and prevent burnout. Her mode of practice stands out as she combines existing grief models with conventional and practical strategies, featuring them in her books “Caregiving with Strength” and “Keeping It Together”. She has also created a modified mindfulness program in her book “Mindfulness Exercises for Dementia”. Eleanor holds a BA in Psychology, Master of Social Work, Certification in Bereavement Education, extensive training and practice in Mindfulness and over 20 years of Independent Grief Studies.
