Mom & Me Five Archive

...alleviate caregiver burnout.
    How do I know this? I've been hunkering through a fairly prolonged spate of caregiver burnout for a couple of weeks, now. But, I'm not depressed! I'm considering this an extremely interesting observation: That caregiver burnout is not depression, although, admittedly, it can, and often does, lead to depression.
    What is caregiver burnout like when it isn't accompanied by depression? Well, it's much easier to delineate the anger, frustration and emotional exhaustion that fuel caregiver burnout. Caregiver burnout is, as well, a lot more active and a lot less helpless and hopeless when it's not accompanied by depression. It's enlightening to know this.
    Before medicating myself with St. John's Wort to take the depressive edge off my current life experience, I, frankly, thought caregiver burnout was a depressive state. I thought that the psuedo fugue state I previously experienced, which often led to a sort of physical paralysis in which I simply couldn't find the energy to do much of anything except those things that absolutely had to be done, was caregiver burnout. It's not.
    Over the last few weeks of this episode of caregiver burnout I've been unusually active, mentally, emotionally and physically. My desire and willingness to involve myself in a variety of activities and considerations that have nothing to do with caregiving has surprised me. My dreams (yes, I'm dreaming again, or, I guess I should say, I'm remembering my dreams, again) have been unusual in that they haven't been suffocating, even as they tend to linger over some of the same ground my previous caregiver burnout dreams traveled. I am much more willing, as well, to avoid, without guilt, as many classic caregiver activities as I can, and, as it turns out, I'm able to do this. I compare it to being able to settle into the eye of the storm instead of remaining in the tempest to be whipped about by the winds and rain. I'm still in a storm state, but I'm not wreaking havoc on myself or my environment. It's refreshing to know that there is a place in which I can take a vacation even as I can't take a vacation.
    I'll probably cover more of this later, when I'm ready to fully hoist myself back into the caregiving "saddle again", but that may not be for a few more days. Why, though, you may be asking, am I pleased that caregiver burnout can't be alleviated (yet, anyway) by a pill or supplement? Because it shouldn't be. Because it's a societal condition, rather like slavery, that should be addressed through our living arrangements and attitudes toward life, work, caring, and the value of individual humans within the collective of humanity. Because if we figure out a way to diminish caregiver burnout and its attendant anger, frustration and emotional exhaustion with a pill or with "happy talk" (which we continue to try but, thank the gods, at which we haven't yet been successful), we will also have figured out a way to sap even more dignity and stature from those of us who find ourselves in caregiving circumstances.
    The anger, frustration and emotional exhaustion, I've discovered, are always there when one is caregiving. Always. Burnout happens when they rise to the top, refusing to be ignored. Depression keeps the caregiver from remembering (as caregivers tend to know when they aren't burnt out) that anger, frustration and emotional exhaustion are inherent in caregiver circumstances at this time and in this society. Depression takes these states and turns them inward, into fornlorn, illegitimate guilt. We need to guard against this.
    Thus, I am now prepared to say, treat the depression, definitely, but don't touch the anger, the frustration and the emotional exhaustion, let's continue to allow these to smolder and occasionally flame, until we in this society are prepared to face them down and come up with solutions that will dignify each of us and defend all of us from the current devastating indignity of what has become the caregiver's plight.