In cultures like that of India, being a caregiver could not have been less cared for. Here, having a family elder sick somehow necessarily translates to undermining your needs and diverting all your attention towards looking after the said person. While the expectation isn't irrational or unacceptable, the attached demands can be overwhelming for the caregiver.
Being a victim of other biases like sexism (a woman must prioritize family over her career), ageism ( for someone pursuing a career/studies at a non-normative age), classism ( "help is for the rich, others must manage by themselves") or other personal biases or prejudices while making crucial decisions regarding caregiving can be all the more crushing and may feel like a heavy burden on your chest.
Read on to get a whole picture of what caregiving really means.
1) What is Caregiving: What does a caregiver's job entail? Are you a caregiver without even knowing it?
A caregiver is someone who looks after somebody else. This could be by buying groceries, cooking, cleaning their house, doing laundry, or doing the dishes for them. Caregiving can also include helping them get dressed or take a shower.
In cases where the help needed is more, a caregiver takes care of the person's personal(food, clothing, sleep), social(taking them places, attending their phone calls, attending to their guests) as well as medical needs. Right from moving them in and out of the bed, giving medicines, following a medicinal schedule, or even helping them to and from the washroom.
A caregiver may also make appointments with and drive them to the doctor. Talking to the doctor, nurses, managing a healthcare schedule, and other numerous tasks can be a part of a caregiver's routine.
2) Factors that determine the scope and behaviour of caregiving.
i) Type of Illness:
Nature of caregiving changes with the type of illness and needs of the person requiring attention. In the case of age-related diseases, the caregiver might have to attend only some part of the person's life.
In some cases, however, old age can mean 24*7 nursing. Attending a child could be a bigger challenge for some.
In general, attending someone with mental health problems can be one of the most difficult things the caregiver has had to do in their entire life.
The duration of the illness also plays a major role in the caregiving approach. Short-term will, most of the time, prove to be easier than long-term attending.
ii) Long-distance vs Short-distance:
With regards to caregiving, it is considered to be long-distance when the caregiver lives a minimum one hour away from the caregivee, friend, or family member that requires attending.
In the case of long-distance caregiving, the situation can get worse due to everyday transit, managing appointments on calls, and constant check-ups via other mediums that may prove to be inefficient in times of dire need.
With Short-distance, one saves time and efforts comparatively and therefore may look more doable.
iii) Urban vs Rural setting:
Urban setting inherently provides you with more convenience due to better infrastructure, better transport modes, developed medical facilities, and anything you'll need within a 4-5 km radius.
Rural setting, other than the logistics criterion, can also be more difficult for the caregiver due to its social aspect. Attending someone in a rural setting can come with the additional baggage of attending to their visitors, which is very common in countries like India.
iv) Paid vs Unpaid:
When taken upon as a paid job, factors like detachment with the caregivee, fixed timing, formal relationship with them and their family, aid the caregiver to maintain a balance between their work and personal life.
Being a caregiver for someone you know is almost double the mental effort because of emotional attachments with the patient and their family which sometimes might even be yours also. Along with this, fear of loss, anxiety, failure to keep a balance between caregiving and personal relationships doesn't make the work easier. We will talk about these feelings ahead.
v) Different Cultural approaches:
Country, community, family, and other such social and cultural backgrounds indirectly and sometimes directly affect your way of caregiving.
For example, in cultures like that of America's, hiring help is not a taboo. But in a country like India where younger members of the family are considered for granted to take up the responsibility, the person might feel pressurized; to help themself instead of hiring help, guilty; if they are unable to cater to the expectations, or simply an inability to express their concerns and stress in case they come off as incompetent or selfish.
Societies, where women are still considered as the primary caretakers of the family, a woman choosing herself over family responsibilities is considered to be nothing less than a sin.
3) Common adversities in a caregiver's way:
While reading this title it may have seemed that it talks about problems that come a caregiver's way, but really these are all brought to them by themselves due to inability to balance their personal and caregiver's life. Mostly new caregivers with no prior experience fall prey to these more quickly.
Not getting enough sleep: Being a caregiver means being on time from your side but being ready to be late every day due to numerous reasons that the patient could need you for. With such a demanding job, a person may find it easy to look over the importance of sleep.
Poor Nutrition intake: Looking after the patient's dietary requirements and medicines, one may underestimate the effect of poor food choices, due to time constraints or other factors like stress on their health (physical as well as mental).
Absence of or inadequate effective body movement: Do notice the mention of "effective" in the title which signifies body movement that results in you feeling fresh ( like yoga, gyming, other types of workouts) and not that which makes you feel tired ( running around doing chores, travelling for supplies, helping the patient with their basic routine exercises, etc).
Failure to stay in bed when one needs it: While taking care of a patient, especially when it is a friend or family member, one may feel obligated to place the patient's needs above their own. This results in a disrupted sleep schedule, unhealthy lifestyle, and eventually sickness that needs more time off at once than the little you could've given yourself daily. Some people may even then find prioritizing their own health difficult wanting to not feel inadequate or selfish.
Giving very less importance to health issues of one’s own: Looking after the smallest of hiccups in the caregivee's day to day life, overlooking your body's little signs of illness feels almost natural but is not. One may get into the habit of postponing seeing the doctor or even smaller signs from their body like acidity, cough, cold or just feeling tired.
4) A spectrum of emotions you may feel while caregiving.
Worry, Fear, Anxiety: The most common feeling amongst caregivers is that of worry. Worry of the caregivee not getting better, of one not being good enough a caregiver, fear of loss, anxiety due to the anticipation of loss, fear of detachment during the process of caregiving if you’ve known the person since a long time, are a few of the numerous shared reasons amongst the caregivers' community.
Grief, Sadness, Disappointment: Another common emotion is that of grief, especially if the caregivee doesn't live long. This feeling is strong due to all the time that both of them spent together. A bond is formed and it is difficult to accept the loss. One may also feel disappointed in themselves for not having been able to better the caregivee's condition.
Guilt: When you spend more than half of your time with someone, especially if you've known the person since way before, a connection is bound to be made. In such cases, the guilt of not curing/ making the caregivee's condition better eats one up. The caregiver might also feel the same way towards the remaining family. It's also very common to find them blaming themself for the death of that person and reason for their family's sadness. On the other hand, some caregivers might feel guilt towards their own family for not being able to give them enough time and attention, especially if they have kids in the family.
Anger, Resentment, Frustration: This one is the least talked about but according to me the most prominent and common one. Feeling angry towards the caregivee is almost natural because a caregiver's entire life might have been disrupted and lost its entity because of the sudden delegation of responsibilities. This does not necessarily mean that the caregiver is angry towards them. It is mainly the frustration of not being able to live their life the way they planned to. Feelings of resentment of having accepted the responsibility might also arise.
Conclusion:
A caregiver's job is not an easy one. They are attending to one more life than non-caregivers. Caregiving doesn't necessarily have to be stressful or frustrating. There are a lot of people who truly enjoy what they are doing, just as there are many who don't feel that great about it. In any case, being a caregiver is a heavy job and needs to get more credit and attention from us as a society.
We talked about different types of caregiving, factors that affect the nature of it, obstacles that are likely to occur on a caregiver's path, and different ways your mind can react to caregiving.
In part II of this article, I will talk about ways to prepare yourself for caregiving and lessen your burden, how to ask someone for help, and most importantly, how to take care while being a caregiver.
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