Gratitude Journaling: The Habit That Reduces Caregiver Stress

 Do you want to hear the ONE habit I started one month into my caregiving journey that has made a huge difference in my caregiver stress and mindset.  I truly believe I am able to cope with challenges and struggles better. No matter how hard things are, I have trained my brain and can shift my mindset.    In this episode, I’m sharing my personal daily habit I do each day.  It’s simple and impactful. 

After a month of worry,  sleepless nights,  negative thoughts and feeling depressed,  I made the decision to take control of my thoughts.     

The practice was pretty easy….  Each day write down 5 things you are grateful for.  

• When - determine time of day
• Where - find a quiet space
• Writing it down 
• Results will come but with commitment, persistence and patience

Incorporating the Journaling gratitude habit has helped my caregiver stress and mindset.   It takes 5 minutes each day and has an amazing impact on my mood, outlook and day-to-day stress levels. 

The second thing I did was reach out to a caregiver community.  It was so valuable to speak with other caregivers who are going through similar experiences, stressors and challenges.   That’s why I created The Caregiver Cup Circle.   

Transcript

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Well, hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of the Caregiver Cup podcast. Do you want to hear the one habit I started just one month into my caregiving journey that has made a huge difference in my caregiver stress and mindset? I truly believe I'm able to cope with challenges and struggles better now that I've incorporated this habit. No matter how hard things are, I have trained my brain and I can shift my mindset. In this episode today, I'm sharing my personal daily habit. It's simple, but it's impactful. So grab your cup of coffee, put your earbuds in, because I know you'll be able to go ahead and take this habit and work it into your routine. Or if you're already doing it, you'll be able to go ahead and just get reinforcement or maybe a few extra tips. So in the last episode, which was episode 133, we talked about the benefits of gratitude and the whole neuroscience behind it. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, why don't you hit the pause button and just go back to the episode 133 first and then come back and listen to it because that they'll progress right into each other. Before I get into my practice though, I want I want you to know that my practice is simple, but it is also, it also takes time to train your brain. It takes time to go ahead and work through this habit. Meaning you can't do it for a week and think that you've already now trained your brain and it's going to always work. Your brain needs a daily practice to reinforce it. It's a constant routine. Well, you have to do that each and every day to continuously keep the cavities away and take off, take away all the food and the plaque buildup. It also reminds me of a health eating healthy. You can commit to healthy eating and clean eating, and after a month, you feel great. And then you think, well, I'm just gonna fall off the wagon. I want that chocolate cake or I want that pizza. And guess what? You start feeling different and sluggish and bloated or loss of energy and maybe even sick if you continue to eat bad again. So you have to keep on top of it and keep practicing it and keep doing it each and every day to keep getting that those positive effects. So let's get into it. Again, remember I said I started, it started one month into my journey. It was September of 2017. I became a sudden caregiver. My dad was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, and then just um and and the prognosis was two to eleven months he had to live. And so we had to go ahead and work through and work with my parents and trying to figure out what's the best form of treatment for my dad and what were his wishes. Then two weeks later, my husband was diagnosed with stage four uh lymphoma. I was numb, I was shocked. But the worst was the worst thing for me was the nighttime when every everybody was in their places and I stopped racing around and being the caregiver. I'd lay in bed at night and I couldn't sleep. I know you can relate to this. You've probably had this happen to you. I kept thinking, my head kept spinning, and the two most I kept thinking, the two most important men in my life were going to die. Those that negative thought just raced into my head. I would cry myself to sleep thinking about it. I couldn't think anything else at night because I think I was fatigued and exhausted, and I just couldn't get the worst out of my mind. It's normal and the most common reaction we have to uncertain situations. Our brain interpret interprets, say that fast, our brain interprets uncertainty as danger, which is why in our minds, a simple mistake, like let's say maybe our mind, a simple mistake at work. Maybe we had a typo on a paper, or we turned in a paper at school, or whatever it would be, and we're worried, like at work, if I turned in a uh a research paper at work and there was a typo in it, the worst thing that my brain goes to is oh my god, I'm gonna get fired. I'm gonna get fired. Or what are people gonna think? I'm not, I made a mistake, or you haven't heard from a friend, maybe is another example. And what do your what does your brain do? You assume they no longer want to spend time with you, you assume you you did something wrong and you can't figure out why they're not reaching out to you, right? Well, we can thank our ancient ancestors because our ancient ancestors would have they they designed our brains to expect the worst. Think about it. If you go back in years when early humans were wandering the earth, they would underestimate what was around the corner. And they would think about what's in the forest, what's in the bushes, could it be deadly? This is why the most primitive parts of our brains take on the better be safe than sorry, or the fear and the flight, the fight mode and the fear mode approach to uncertainties, both big and small. You think about it. So most of the time our brain goes to that. So today it might be easier to think of it this way. Your brain is like, here's another example, your brain is like a smoke detector. Imagine that you're sitting at your desk. Maybe you are in your home office, or maybe you're taking a shower, or maybe you're doing something, and all of a sudden you hear the smoke alarm going off. What's your first reaction? Oh my god, the house is on fire, what's going on? When it might be something as simple as the toast getting stuck in the toaster, or in our previous house that Dennis and I had, if the steam from the shower, if somebody opened the shower door and or shower the bathroom door and the steam was really hefty and they didn't use the exhaust fan, it would start off the smoke detector, or maybe even uh you preheating the oven and you're you did something in the midst of it, and the pizza melted the night before on the burners, and now the smoke is coming out of the oven and it sets off the smoke detector, right? Well, in your caregivering life, think of uncertainties are like the smoke in a smoke detector. We right away think about fire. We think about the worst thing that could potentially be happening. It's actually called catastrophizing. Oh my, why can't I say that? Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often it involves believing that that you're in a worse situation than you really are and you're exaggerating the difficulties you face. You know, you think about it, think about if like I have a ring at my door, you know, one of those doorbell rings, and so it tells you when somebody's at your door. Well, if the ringer goes off after dark and you're home alone, what's the you're like, oh my gosh, somebody's at the front door. Oh my gosh, right away you think of the worst. Or maybe, and I've had this happen to me before, where you do your your daily or your weekly exams of your breast, and all of a sudden you feel a lump on your breast. And right away you think the worst. And just as a sidebar, mine were all like cysts that were not, but I went through the process. But your brain automatically goes through that. So catastrophizing causes anxiety and stress and depression and fatigue if you keep doing that catastrophicizing or thinking the worst. My favorite, one of my favorite quotes is from Wayne Dyer. He says, I cannot always control what goes on outside, but I always can control what goes on inside. You think about it. You can control what goes on inside, you have that control. And so a lot of us, and I know you and I are facing those challenges of our loved ones all the time, or they we're wait- you're we're we're waiting for the results of a test or a biopsy, and right away our brain wants to go to the worst. Well, I'm gonna go back now to that that first month, after a month of worrying, I and sleepless nights, and those negative thoughts and feelings and being depressed. I made the decision to take control of my thoughts. I started Googling and researching and looking for resources to find what's best for me. And there's so much out there. And I started listening to podcasts, trying to figure out how do I get rid of my sleepless nights and right away thinking the the negative thoughts that most were they they were somewhat reality, but why and why was I going to that when sometimes they weren't true? Because my spouse is here now after five plus years of fighting cancer. He wasn't dying, you know. Right away, you think about the grim things, and I was the person, and if you are one like me, I was the first person googling their their diagnosis, looking at the grim research on it as well, you know, and that just added to it. And something happened, I don't know if the stars aligned or it just was the right time. I listened to Rachel Hollis's podcast, and at that day she was talking about her practice of journaling, her practice of journaling gratitude. She actually does two things, but I took the practice of journaling gratitude. I said, Oh my gosh, I think I want to try this. What the heck? I'm gonna try this. I need to try something. The practice seemed pretty easy. And it basically was each day you'd write down five things that you're grateful for. And I'm like, I'm in. How could that not be something that I could focus in on? And she talked about it, like I talked about in the last episode in episode 133, about all of the neuroscience behind it and how it really does when you start focusing on what's going right, all the positive pieces, your brain then starts looking at those and doesn't go to the grim dark side all the time. So the first thing that you want to think about is when should I practice gratitude? First, you want to start with when you do this. I feel morning is the best for me because if I say, oh, I'm gonna wait until tonight when I get done with work, or I'll wait until later in the day, I'll forget about it, or I'll be too tired, or I'll think of another excuse. So I feel morning is best for me. I try to do it first thing in the morning and try to add it to another thing that I'm doing. It's called habit stacking and trying to do it. I journal gratitude with my green smoothie or with my cup of coffee. Maybe if I if I um am doing yoga in the morning or meditation in the morning, I'll journal gratitude right after that. The big thing is to fit it into a habit that you're already doing. Kind of like when you brush your teeth. Uh, for me, I wash my face and then I brush my teeth, or I make my bed and then I get dressed. Whatever it would be, you kind of do some things together and fit that journaling into your daily morning routine. And what's really neat about it is you start starting your day with gratitude is a positive way. Don't look at your phone, try to journal gratitude first. And so another thought is to do it where you can really go ahead and focus. It's also important to think about where is the best place to journal. If your if your mornings are too crazy due to your situation, maybe you have to find a quieter place at lunchtime, or if it doesn't um take a lot of time, but you you want to have what I'm trying to say is you want to have five or ten minutes in a place away from distractions and stress. You don't want to be journaling gratitude while you're listening to a podcast, or you don't want to be journaling gratitude while the news is on, or you don't want to be journaling gratitude if you're trying to get your um loved one's breakfast ready. So you want to dedicate time so that you can have it quiet and you can kind of enjoy it. That's why some of my client uh jerk uh clients they have like they sit at their kitchen table and have their cup of coffee and they journal gratitude or they grab their favorite chair in the summertime. I love to go out and have a cup of coffee and watch the sunrise come up and journal gratitude. Now, some of my clients like to journal gratitude in the evening because it's quieter and it's the last thing they do before they sleep. And that's another way to go ahead and do it. Better yet, meditate first, journal gratitude, have that gratitude journal right by your bed with a pen. If that works for you, that's a great piece too. But I found that I cheat more or I forget about it if I don't do it in the morning, and it's now part of my morning routine. So why some people challenge me and a lot of my clients like, well, why can't I go ahead and you know just say them out loud? Why can't I electronically put it in my phone? You can put it in your phone electronically, but there is science behind writing it down and physically making the time and slowing yourself down and writing it out and then being able to look back on it if you are having a bad day. But by what by writing down what you are thankful for, it can make you feel more optimistic because you are choosing to see more of the positivity in your life. It gives you less power to get into those negative emotions. While these positive aspects of your life may be floating around in your in your brain, writing them down makes them concrete and real. It actually makes me feel good when I say I am grateful for. Like when I first started out, it was really hard at first because I'm grateful more for my kids. Well, yeah, that's good, but getting more specific and really thinking about what are you what are the things that you're grateful for? Are you grateful for somebody honking and waving at you while you're going for your walk or that person letting you in line in front of them, whatever it would be. But results will come, but you want to be thinking about really like being committed to it, persistent, and being patient with what you're writing. Like I said, make this part of your daily routine and really just stick with it. When you stay with it, you will find yourself noticing that gratitude instead of trying to think about it. You're gonna notice things and you're gonna you're gonna smile at things more and really kind of appreciate it. You might see somebody squatting down, looking at a child and talking to a child, and you just smile, thinking, wow, that person took the time out of their day to say hi, or you might might see a beautiful sunrise with the clouds that usually you're too busy to go ahead and see. You're gonna it it's amazing when you start seeing spit the specific things. Start seeing things that you've never seen before. Now, I'm recording this on Saturday evening. You're gonna get this on Tuesday, uh, but last night was Friday night, and I went ahead and we got to see my granddaughter's uh play. Her name is Christiana, and she is a sophomore. And last year she started with the play and the drama department, but she had too many things on her plate, and she decided she couldn't really do it and commit. Well, this year she was all in. She's been working in on rehearsals and singing and dancing and practicing and all that for weeks for this play. And we got an invitation, my husband and I, and we were so excited to go down there. I could write in my journal book. I'm proud of Christiana because I know she put in so much practice and so much time. But as I get really into being grateful, I found 10 things I was grateful for as I was sitting in that art auditorium last night. I was so grateful that my spouse and I are healthy enough to be sitting in that auditorium because at the beginning of this year, I didn't think he would be even sitting with me, you know, through that. I was so proud to be sitting next to my son and how he's raised such beautiful, creative, energetic, smart, intelligent girls. Uh, I'm grateful for Christiana's self-confidence and beautiful voice. Now, this is just a proud grandma speaking, but I sat in there thinking, oh yeah, this is her first year. She's gonna be, you know, kind of behind the scenes and and doing things. Within the first five minutes, it was act 1.1, and it was it was the elf the musical, and she was, I don't know what they're called, but they were the Santa's Helper Elves, but she played multiple roles, but they were doing I'm happy, I'm happy, and they were singing a happy song, and all of a sudden she sang a solo by herself, and I was like, I was grateful to be able to go ahead and live in that moment. Tears were running down my eyes. I was so grateful to be a grandma, and it was just a joy. I could I could be focusing on yesterday. I'll just tell you, yesterday, the weather was horrible. We drove down from Green Bay to almost to Milwaukee, where they live, and it was about 90 minutes of a drive. It was downpouring rain, that was foggy, the windows in the car kept fogging up. It was scary, you couldn't see. I could be focusing in on all of that, or I could just focus in in the auditorium. And be grateful. And that's what I did. So I think you're going to find the results of doing this so impactful for you. So impactful. You're going to eventually start feeding your brain with more gratitude, which equals more positivity, which equals more optimistic thoughts. Not saying that, you know, you're going to have hard days and it's not going to take the replace the crappy situation you're in, but it's going to go ahead, like Wayne Dyer says in his quote, you can control what's inside of you. You can control your thoughts. You can control and focus in on what things went well today. Now, the other thought I have is if you forget a day, which it's going to happen, then just jump right back in. If you forget a week or two, you're going to notice that the positivity muscle or the gratitude muscle kind of goes away. And you have to go ahead and retrain that brain again. Another thought, too, is you're going to have, when you put this on paper, when you write those words on paper in a journal, you're going to be able to, on those hard days, on those crappy days, you can pull out that gratitude journal and look at some of the gratitude pieces. Or you might go ahead and say, well, today's a challenging day. I'm going to write an extra gratitude. Or I'm going to force myself to write 10. It's more important than ever now in these challenging times to journal and be grateful. I remember carrying my journal with me. There were days where I didn't have time in the morning because we had to go right away to Dennis' chemotherapy, or some of those days, it was chemotherapy for my dad and then chemotherapy for my husband. And so it was really busy. But you know what? That small little journal, I could stick in a bag with me and I would journal in the waiting room, or I would journal while waiting for a lab results, or if my loved one was sleeping in the chemotherapy chair, I could journal whatever I needed to do. So kind of a couple thought food for thoughts here at the end today. I can't tell you enough how this simple practice has changed me. It's changed my life. It's really done that. This is a simple five, maybe 10-minute practice each day, but it has an amazing impact on my mood and it will on your mood, the outlook that you have. And it even tackles those day-to-day stress levels. Because when I'm having a really hard day, I'm grateful that I am aware of my stress. I'm grateful that I can see that today is challenging. And you know what? I really journal that I can go ahead and take a break. I'm grateful that I can see it. And when I'm really struggling, like I said before, I pull back out some of those hard days and reread those. So my hope for you today is that you find yourself a notebook and a pen and just start. It can be going to Target or Walmart and buying a spiral-bound notebook. I've pulled done that. Or if you want to find a fun journal that makes you feel it makes you feel special and go ahead and journal that. After about seven days, you start it start becoming an easier practice. In two weeks, you start really feeling the effects of positivity. And then it just keeps building and building and building. And if you really stick with it, it really does build upon it. So in today's episode, then I shared the first habit I incorporated into my daily routine that helped me with my caregiver stress and mindset. I can't, I can't believe that it's just something as simple as that. It is, it is simple, but it's something you have to commit to. But it was probably about six months into it, I did the second best thing, and that is finding a caregiver community. And it was so valuable to speak with other caregivers who are going through similar experiences and stresses and challenges. Uh, because you can talk to your family and you can talk to friends and you can talk to people, but if they haven't been a caregiver, they don't get it. If they're not going through the challenges similar to you, they really don't get it. And you start feeling alone. You you start feeling lonely, you start feeling like you're stuck. So that's why years later, I created the Caregiver Cup Circle. I created it this year in 2022, and I'm excited to go ahead and tell you that we're relaunching the Caregiver Cup Circle really soon. So if you're listening to this in real time, it's going to be the first week in December. We're going to go ahead and start up the Caregiver Cup Circle. So listen for some upcoming uh ads. It'll be in my podcast episodes in my intro or the intro part of it or the very end part of it. Uh, you'll also be able to, if you are a part of my email community, you'll see that some things coming up. Or if you want to know right away, direct message me at Kathy Lynn Van on Instagram and I will get you signed up for it because I'm going to go ahead and limit the enrollment or the registration so that we have a good size group, but it's not too large. And so if you want to be part of this community, uh definitely let me know. Um, and I'll put in the show notes, I'll put in my direct message and I'll put some extra notes in there. But in a nutshell, the Caregiver Cup community is uh for a small fee, you meet two times a month, and we do this via Zoom community, and you jump on the Zoom, you can be on camera, you can listen, whatever works best for you. And then in addition to that, as part of the community, you'll get once a month, you get a workshop from me uh that is free to you that will get into the details. One of them definitely will be getting into gratitude in a lot more detail than um maybe I talked about today, but we'll talk about some of my practices, some of my habits. Um, and so those workshops will be uh beneficial for you as well. So I'm going to end today because I feel like I could talk more. It's Saturday evening. I'm drinking a decaf cup of coffee that feels like it's caffeinated because podcasting just lights me up. Uh, I want to end today by saying, I know how hard caregiving is for you. I know I've been there, I'm in it, I'm out of it. It's kind of like a Richter scale for me. Um, but I know how hard it is, and I truly get it. But the one most important piece that advice that I can give to you is find some time to fill your cup each and every day. That's why I call this uh podcast the Caregiver Cup, is because you can't just fill your cup one time and let it go empty. You want to have that cup filled a little bit every day so that you can go ahead and sustain your energy and be the best caregiver that you can be. So you have a good rest of the day, and I look forward to talking to you again next week. Just remember I'm here for you and feel free to reach out if you need anything. Bye for now.