There’s one piece of advice caregivers tell me, over and over, that they wish they’d known sooner.
I’ve realized they’re wrong about that. They did know it. Most of them knew it from the moment caregiving took over their lives. They’d heard it again and again. They just didn’t do it, because it didn’t seem possible, or it didn’t seem important enough.
I saw exactly why it matters at a talk I gave recently.
“I’ve Tried Everything to Get My Husband to Stop Driving”
At the end of my talk, a woman raised her hand and said, in front of the whole room, “I am really trying to get my husband to stop driving. I don’t think he is safe to drive anymore.”
This comes up all the time. And she’d already heard the standard advice: take away the car keys, disable the car, move the car out of sight, become the chauffeur yourself. If those work for you, fantastic. But with dementia care, generic tips often don’t work for everybody. We have to tweak them. We have to personalize them.
She told me, “I’ve tried all those things and they do not work.”
So we started talking it through, and then time ran out.
Afterward, people were coming up to chat. I was about to leave when she walked up and said, “Oh my gosh, I have the solution.”
Here’s what she’d worked out. Her husband mostly insisted on driving to make sure the battery stayed okay and to check the fluids. He didn’t really have anywhere he wanted to go, and when they went somewhere together, he easily let her drive.
Then she remembered something she’d completely forgotten. A while back, one of the firefighters in their town had asked: if you ever sell this truck, can I have first dibs at making you an offer?
“It’s time to sell the truck,” she said. “The firefighter wants it, my husband would feel really good about that, and he’d have this extra money.”
I said, “Wow, you just thought of that now?”
“Yeah. I just remembered the conversation. It wasn’t until I started brainstorming and talking out loud to you that it even came back to me.”
That’s it. Bingo.
Why Generic Dementia Advice Doesn’t Work for Everyone
Before she found her answer, we’d been asking different questions. Why does he drive? Where does he want to go when he drives? That’s how we discovered the battery. That’s how we discovered the fluids. We could have built an intervention around those too.
This is why generic advice is generic. It has to be applied to your own situation. And that only happens when you approach the problem with openness and curiosity, instead of closing down into criticism, pessimism, and the feeling of “I’ve already tried everything. It won’t work.”
It’s so easy, especially in support groups, to get on the complaint train, where we just talk about the hardships and what’s not working.
When you switch it, you still have the same problem. But instead of focusing on everything that isn’t working, you’re asking, okay, what other options are there? What else is out there?
The Caregiver Advice You Already Know: Put Yourself First
So what does a truck have to do with the advice caregivers wish they’d known sooner?
Here it is. Start prioritizing your own needs, your own desires, your own heart. Start prioritizing your own life.
Caregivers tell me they wish they’d done it sooner. They knew it. They just didn’t do it until it felt absolutely necessary.
If you’ve watched any of my videos, I’m begging you, start today. This is the time to do it.
How Caregiver Isolation Shuts Off Your Best Ideas
Here’s how the two connect. What she and I did that day was problem solve together. We talked something through, and we came at it with curiosity and openness.
Where do you get that? From friendships. From connection. From really great support groups.
And that’s what she said to me next: “I just realized I’ve been so isolated. I had nobody to talk to.”
Yes.
We’ve all heard how important it is to have people to talk to… friendships, connections, support groups. But how many of us are actually doing it? How many of us are doing it with an open heart, and finding other like-minded people who also want to find ways to improve?
Small Ways to Put Yourself First, Starting Today
Like I say in my book, everything doesn’t have to be better for you to feel better. That’s the whole premise of it.
So I’m asking you: what can you do for yourself, starting now, with the resources you actually have? Limited time, limited money, limited social connection, no family, whatever it is. We know the reasons. We know all of the obstacles and the roadblocks.
What could you do? Explore it with openness and curiosity. Is it:
- Protecting 10 minutes of your morning before you leave the room, to meditate, to pray, to put lotion on, to listen to good music?
- A 10-minute phone call with a friend, where the two of you have a deal: “When I call you, we don’t say the D word. We don’t mention dementia at all. Tell me what you’re watching on TV. Tell me something that happened in your life. Tell me a good story.”
Careblazer, take control of what you can take control of.
If you want more ideas that fit into a packed day, here are some self-care hacks for caregivers that work even when you’re short on time or money.
Become Your Own Best Resource
I just said generic advice often doesn’t work. So how could I write an entire book of tools, The Dementia Care Toolkit: Real Help for Challenging Behaviors and Caregiving Overwhelm, and expect it to help you?
Because besides giving you my top tips and strategies (just the essentials, because I know you’re limited on time and energy), it teaches you how to be the person who is resilient, creative and open.
There’s also a workbook of over 200 pages to help you apply it to your own situation. You can write in it or type in it. You can note, “This strategy really worked. This one didn’t.” You become your own best resource and advocate. You can order your copy here.
Keep going to your support group and your appointments. That’s important. But you can also learn to look within yourself for the answer, just like that Careblazer in the audience who said, “Oh my God, I just thought of the answer.”
You Can Turn Your Mind Back On
There is so much wisdom inside of you. But we shut it off when we close ourselves off, and keep telling ourselves the story that “I have tried everything and nothing works.”
I know caregiving is difficult. I know it is hard. I know it is not easy.
But do you know what else is hard? Not learning how to apply strategies. Not learning how to manage your own mind and your own thoughts. Not learning how to rely on yourself, and realizing you have answers and wisdom inside you that you can reach.
Stress, fatigue, overwhelm and limited resources have quieted that part of you. They’ve shut off your mind. I’m here to tell you we can turn it back on.
The hardest thing she said to me that day was that she’d had nobody to talk to. Inside the Care Collective, caregivers talk through problems like hers together every week in our support rooms. Not just what isn’t working, but what else you could try, and how to take care of yourself while you do. You can learn more here.
