Episode 229: Breaking Free from Holiday Pressure: A Caregiver's Guide to Realistic Expectations with Roberta Schneider

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Show Transcript

Charlotte Bayala: We have the holidays coming up. I think that the issue of help and being overworked and overstressed because we are asked to do extra things, especially when you're a caregiver, is. Complicated. And I know you have a little bit more insight than a lot of people because you wrote a book about caregiving and the holidays.

So what would you say, are maybe four of the things that, caregivers should really consider or try doing to make it possible for them to consider enjoying the time instead of being stressed in overwhelmed with it. Absolutely. 

Roberta Schneider: I mean, the holidays can be such a positive time, but they can be so fraught with emotions you, may be grieving the way you used to be and how you used to celebrate.

You may be grieving the loss of a loved one. You may be dealing with what's going to be happening next year. Do I have cancer? Do I have an illness? Does grandma need to go into a nursing home? There's so many emotions on top of the, I am supposed to feel this way because. The commercials are playing and the music is on and I should have a smiling face and my, my tree decorated perfectly.

We only have so much to give and the love and worry we have for others takes a lot of that emotional energy too. We have to be able to honor that. I think it's really important that we as caregivers and, and truthfully, anybody, I don't care if you're caregiving for a young child or a parent or a loved one.

We need to take care of ourselves so we can help fill others. I mean, we only have so much to go for. And so we need to look at ways that we can kind of keep a cap on our stress during the busy holiday months. I think one of the first things we could do is really work on, managing our expectations. Think about what's non negotiable for us, you know, and how do things need to be adjusted. If cookie making is the thing that you need to do because you always used to have a huge cookie baking weekend and grandma just doesn't have the energy for that now. 

Do you host it at your house? Do you just say, Hey, we're going to bring the cookies over to grandma's house and we could decorate. How do we repackage it in a way that's still meaningful and you still have the memory that's associated with it, but you're not putting all the pressure of does everything have to be perfect, 

Charlotte Bayala: You're not saying that this tradition has to stop. It's how can we make this tradition work for everybody who's involved? 

Roberta Schneider: Or you look look around your house. You know, we're getting ready for Thanksgiving right now as we're hosting this year, which she's caregiving and hosting. You think about what makes the most sense, doesn't make the most sense to have the clean and welcoming kitchen, or does it make sense to have your bed? 

What do you want to show? What do you want to have part of, you know, manage those expectations, let people know what your visitors can expect. So, you know, having my dad visit, a few weeks ago was a great eye opener to say, these are the realities of what my husband's dealing with now.

I know you probably have seen, he disappears for a while, you know, periodically through the day or whatever, but this is his mobility issue that he's dealing with too, that maybe you weren't fully aware of the effects. Maybe you need to explain that. Like in his case, maybe certain foods couldn't be tolerated, or he needs a dedicated bathroom to go to, or, you know, maybe grandma needs a place to take a nap in the afternoon because she is just, Not going to make it past two o'clock without resting and recharging.

I think we need to do that, not only from a physical perspective, but from a mental perspective too. Because, dealing with a chronic condition or of any kind or an illness, it does take a lot of new mentally to whether, whether it's. There are not it's still playing in the background.

If you need to have that room where I'm gonna take it out An hour in the afternoon read a book away from 16 of my family members Set out that safe space where this is your quiet area and you know, that's your phone room That's your reading room. Whatever you need to do we just need to be able to have a space to recharge and for us to be our best selves because Ultimately, this is about wanting to have A happy time and, and making memories with her and not because we have to go to a certain meal at a certain time.

Charlotte Bayala: Right. And, you just have to look at what is possible in my life right now. Don't expect that to change. If your husband, can go to a family member's house for a get together for a holiday and usually that get together lasts eight hours. Um, but you know that their, health state will require them to just go back home.

Either because being around people, for a long period of time is stressful or, you know, the mental, toll that it takes on a person who might not know that it's okay for them not to look like they're having fun all the time. Because that's the expectation when you're around family over the holidays that it's okay for you to maybe even have a safe word or have some kind of clue.

If you know ahead of time and you're prepared to set that boundary and you talk to that person and you say, all right, so what sentence or what word are you going to come up and tell me or ask me about. So that I know that we need to start segwaying into leaving. Because you also don't want to say, all right, we're going to be there at 12, two o'clock, we're going to leave.

It doesn't matter if we've eaten or not because that puts too much of a rigid rule on trying to have fun with people. But just knowing, maybe it's before two o'clock and you're like, you know what? I'll just, I'm going to take him home and then I'm going to come back, pack up some food so that we can eat at home. Just being okay with that, being okay with just leaving in the middle, because that's what the other person needs and not being upset about it.

Because you at least were able to go there to, to have fun for a little bit of 

Roberta Schneider: time. Everybody loves their traditions and this is the way we've always done it. Yeah. One of our family traditions is ever since we were married, we would alternate one Thanksgiving with my family and then one family.

Christmas with his and then we flip and you know, obviously people have scattered over the years. So that's adjusted, but we still kind of keep that same schedule so that my side always gets together at one holiday. So even as things have changed in our lives and people have moved and my mother's past and we still went to dad's, which became.

Kind of stressful in its own way because he's not used to planning for people and he's not used to having bodies in the house. It became very stressful for him, even just from the planning perspective. Now we add on the layer of. We're traveling with somebody with chronic medical conditions, right? During a time when you may not be able to access.

Services because quality travel you've got questionable weather too. You never know what you're going to be dealing with. So there's a lot of variables up in the air. We actually took a step back and said, okay, what could be different? And we decided that this year we, we put it out there and we hosted.

At first my family was a little like, are you sure about this? Because, you know, we, we do need to clean the house. We do need to, do this stuff. But I'm like, our house is bigger. You have a place to, to go and disappear to. You've got your own space, and we can do things in a way that works for our family too.

The really freeing thing for me, I'll tell you this Charlotte is, when I put it out and there, there wasn't necessarily resistance, but it was like, oh, okay, well this is different. And they had to think it through and what that meant, what came back, what it meant to them was not what I thought it would mean to them.

Suddenly they were okay with, I'm fine with driving down that day and coming back. I never would have even gone there. You know, and thought that even put that in my head as an option, because when I would be cooking or I would be doing this, you know, I was thinking I needed to have this long extended visit for it to be meaningful.

Maybe it doesn't have to be, maybe it's not about the hours, but it's about the moments that you make within those hours. And it's not a timestamp about it, that if we do three hours, but not four hours, it's not enough somehow. I think it's more about like, what do we get out of those three hours that we had together?

Right. 

Charlotte Bayala: Yeah. Let's take this as an example, because now this is a change and hosting at your own place is completely different than being able to go to a person's house. When someone hosts, especially when they're caregiving and in your case, There are specific things that have to be available, have to be able to happen all the way through.

 How do you, reduce stress in figuring out how Thanksgiving is going to work? You 

Roberta Schneider: know, what really, helps me out is, is looking, for shortcuts. Figure out the way that take things off your plate. You know, we developed a family tradition over the years. It started out when our kids school did pizza sales , and we pull them out of the freezer and that's what we would eat.

Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. We didn't have dishes. We just, we just popped in the oven. We were done and we didn't have to think and, and everybody was happy. And so that's a little shortcut, you know, having the paper plates on hand. I know I keep going back, but you know, saying it's okay.

We're going to have the nice dishes and we're going to get out the grandma's China for Thanksgiving lunch. But you know what, we recognize that people are going to be trickling out over the day and they may come back and get snacks or maybe one person needs. A different time zone than the other because we've got multiple time zones in our family and having paper plates for whatever your grab and go dinner is, that's a little bit of that stress and that back and forth and an extra round of dishes and just kind of whittling away those small little things.

Another thing is just, minimizing what you're going to cook. I had a rule a few years ago. I said, what is the one dish you can't live without? And everybody put in their one dish that they couldn't live without, but it doesn't all have to be served at the same meal. It doesn't have to be a Thanksgiving lunch.

You can make green bean casserole. It's made up in three minutes and you can have that ready for for whatever you have with the cold cuts of dinner. You know, so just making sure that, you don't have to have the extra stress of, Oh my goodness, have I timed everything for this perfectly laden meal that not everybody's going to eat a single bite of everything anyways, break it up over smaller, more manageable, not only from a.

Cooking perspective, but a cleaning perspective and you know, you're gonna feel better because you're not stuffed either. You're still enjoying those food memories But nobody's gonna care if it was lunch or dinner or even, you know, Saturday afternoon 

Charlotte Bayala: Right, and you know those read those Single use, baking pans go along with finding that shortcut with the, the paper plates and things like that.

And, you know, sometimes I think the shortcuts that you need to do because, you know, as we're talking, it's very clear. There are some choices you have to make. Is not washing dishes going to give you the time? That you would like to have to just sit and play a game or the energy to be present with the people that you're there.

I mean, it's washing dishes, which is more important, right? I mean, this is an issue for almost anybody who has a holiday that they're hosting. There's this perception that, well, then I'm giving in, right? That I'm, buying or getting a pre made pie instead of making it.

You know, all these things that we know , make sense. There are things that are readily available to us that will make the holiday easier. And because the purpose of the holiday should be enjoying the people that we're with. enjoying good food. It doesn't matter what it's cooked in.

Doesn't matter what you eat it on. And letting go of that, perception that, changing it in that way, where you could just throw things away instead of having to have five people in the kitchen, cleaning everything up, makes sense and it's all right. Unless you have a person who just really loves to wash all the dishes and that brings them joy, then, you know, come to my house.

Exactly. Send them over. But also, you know, having that ability to. See the emotion that comes from the decision that you're making, right, because emotions are raw over the holidays. Sometimes for some people, they're just really sucky times of the year, and they feel like they're meant to enjoy them or.

You can have a year where your caregiving is not, full grown. It's not like 100 percent you being a caregiver because there's a lull in what's happening. But then that gives you enough time to have anticipatory grief where you're asking, well, is this the last Christmas for us like this? You know?  When is this year going to drop? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So. What do you think caregivers should keep in mind when it comes to their emotions and the holidays? 

Roberta Schneider: I think it's really important to realize that it's okay that traditions change and things change and life changes.

And that's a fairly trite, but, living in a pandemic, if you remember, We all shut down and everything was upended. You didn't go to your son or your Christmas Eve service. You didn't get together with your loved ones. You didn't do this. And somehow we all found a way to make it work and it was still meaningful.

 It was unique in its own special way. I love that, you know, we read the Christmas stories in front of the Christmas tree. That's what, that's how we did it instead of, the way we had done it, the way my mother's family had done it growing up. So, knowing that it's different and it's okay and it's one day out of a lifetime.

 I know we attach so much meaning and emotion to the idea of this is Thanksgiving and this is our day together or this is Christmas or this is New Year's and this is our big thing. But then we're putting pressure on ourselves to make it this magical thing that it may or may not be. Right. And it's okay just to be able to say, you know, it's not perfect.

It's not great. Life is messy, but I'm sitting here and I'm able to have a conversation with my loved one. Even if my loved one doesn't remember who I am, they know that there was somebody that loves them. Right. And that's enough. We're going to be dealing with that this holiday, we're seeing my father in law's in a nursing home and is dealing with dementia and being able to say, you know, kind of preface ourselves and prepare ourselves that, you know, he probably won't remember me.

He probably won't remember the kids. They've changed since he's seen them anyways. And he will know that he's with somebody who loves him. And that, is enough. That is, that is, truly at the end of the day, that's 

Charlotte Bayala: enough. Yeah. No, that's really good to keep in mind. I mean, we all have an idea of how, we are emotionally, how our mental health might change at the end of the year, during holidays , or big times of the year that commemorate something.

You're at the end of the year, and it's been a really crappy one, and you're just overwhelmed and burnt out. understanding how holidays generally affect you. Taking out the caregiver role, especially if this is your first year as being a caregiver. This is your first caregiver holiday. How do you normally feel during the holidays?

Are you usually stressed out? Are you, exceptionally joyful, but then crash at the end, right? What do the holidays look like for you? Because being under stress amplifies emotions. Having caregiving in your life makes things harder. And the worst thing I think is you try to do everything and you don't take into consideration your emotional state and you end up being the person who just loses their crap at dinner at the dinner table because your aunt asks you a question that gets at you in like a way that it, it like.

Just pokes you just enough in the place that you've been poked at all year long that you just lose it and it doesn't have to 

Roberta Schneider: even be anything major. It was no, you know, my, my dad noticed that when my tires were as low and it, he came out of genuine concern and that is 100 percent my dad, he would notice those things.

I was like, this is an indictment of all the things I can't do right as a parent, as a mom, as a whatever. And I. First in the tiers at a friend's house over it. Because it's just, it's just feels like one more thing and the holidays shouldn't be one more thing.

It should be a time of joy, you know, but it's okay to even take a step back and say, you know what, this is the year. I'm not doing it this year. You don't have to write a Christmas card if you don't feel the need to. Nobody says that you have to send pictures. Nobody says you have to do whatever. Just because you went to the concert last year doesn't mean that you can't livestream it in your PJs this year.

You know, do what makes you happy and brings you joy in that moment. And if you decide in that moment that it's not even working, it's okay to step back and say, this isn't the right time. That's hard to do. It's really hard to do because we put these huge expectations on ourselves. Yeah.

Not only that, what we think should be perfect, but we think that other people are thinking that we should be doing. Exactly. And it's just this, this huge load of expectations. And when really we can just take a step back and say, what really works for me, what works for my family? You know, it doesn't even have to be like when you're in acute caregiving situation, you know, one of the things we realized

early on, as the kids are starting to get more involved with sports and schools and, there are certain seasons that, they would start sport seasons in December. I said, I'm not doing any team that starts in December. There's too much going on with, school programs and that kind of thing.

I don't need to add an extra layer. So it doesn't have to be even in a type of family crisis. Right. It's just what is going to give and take in your day to day regardless. Exactly. Because holiday seasons adds a lot of. Great times and some great activities and great memories, but it's also that time and we only have infinite amount to give.

So, you know, what, what makes the most sense for you in this moment in this, in this year? Yeah.