Why Is Self-Love So Challenging As A Caregiver?

Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others.  It's shifting our focus inward not outward.  But why is self-love so hard to practice as a caregiver?  

In this episode, we're breaking down

• What is self-love?
• Why self-love is so challenging as a caregiver?
• The benefits of self-love
• How to practice self-love?
• Suggested self-love practices

For the complete transcripts, got to https://www.cathylvan.com/episode149

Transcript

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Well, hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of the Caregiver Cup Podcast. Today we're diving into our third episode on self-care. But I want to tell you that this one is my favorite when it comes to self-care. Because once you understand all the parts of self-care, you will better see your personal path. And if you remember, the last two episodes were about self-worth and self-compassion. And I used this statement, and I'm going to use it in this episode and the next episode, because self-care is personal. It's your own personal path. It's your thoughts and feelings, which are self-worth in episode 147. It's being kind to yourself, which is self-compassion, which was the last episode 148. And today's episode, it's growth and taking action, which is self-love. And then next week we'll talk about your beliefs and your purpose and who you are. And those are your values. Because when you combine all four parts of these, you really are really strategically doing what you need to do when it comes to self-care. And so many times people say, Are you taking care of yourself? Or don't forget to take care of yourself or fill your cup. And yeah, you can do things, but when you don't think about your thoughts and your feelings and being kind to yourself and thinking about self-care as a growth and taking action, and it lines up with your beliefs and your purpose and who you are, it's really not your own self-care. And so today it's all about taking growth and action so that you can go ahead and create your personal path. So I want to start out by talking about my running that I used to do a lot. And when I turned 45, I decided I needed an outlet, I needed something new to challenge me. And I thought running was really, really cool. And I wanted to see if I could really do it. And so I bought running shoes. I signed up for some running events. I got my running shirt and my gear and learned all I could about running. And I found that I really enjoyed it. But people would say to me, What are you crazy? Why are you doing this to yourself? Because it required a lot of time. I would get up, I would run three days a week. I'd run like Monday, Wednesday, and weekend, and I would even run four days on occasion. And when you're training for, I ran nine half marathons. When you're training for a half marathon, it takes you weeks. Usually it's a 12-week plan, and you go ahead and run small amounts at the very beginning, and you keep building your endurance up. And what I really found out though is that running brought me joy, it gave me a feeling of accomplishment. And the most important piece, it gave me alone time to think. Because when you're running by yourself on the roads or in the trails or on sidewalks, you have your earbuds in, but there's nobody else but you. And you know, you would run, I would run sometimes four miles, sometimes ten miles, and you'd have to go ahead and find your own thoughts and feelings, and you get really good at really figuring that out. But maybe running isn't your thing. Maybe walking is, or maybe doing a craft is something you enjoy. But today I want to talk about self-love and what you do to yourself to love yourself and take care of yourself. So before a person is able to practice self-love, they first have to understand that we we all need to understand what self-love actually means. And it's really is a state of appreciation for yourself that grows from actions that you do and supports your physical and your psychological and your spiritual growth. Whatever you want to grow, you're taking action to grow that and so that you can love yourself. Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and your happiness, putting yourself first and finding ways to go ahead and love yourself. I know what you're you're thinking. I can't do this right now, right? Or I how can I do this when my loved one needs me? It sure, it, it sure is, but it is also it also means protecting you from this long journey ahead of you. What I'm trying to get at here is self-care. I mean, not self-care, caregiving is not a sprint and funny that it used running. Caregiving is not the short-term thing, usually. Caregiving, when you commit to caregiving, it's usually for the long haul. You're caregiving for a parent. Well, you're usually caregiving for a parent as they age and get through it, or you're caregiving for a loved one who has a serious chronic diagnosis, and hopefully they get better, but maybe they're not getting better. So it's not usually just a short-term thing. So you have to go ahead and think about yourself. Can you sustain this pace, this stress, this energy that you have to give? You may not be able to have the same self-care right now that you used to do in the past and self-love choices that you used to do in the past. You may have to adjust it and tweak it and make it different for yourself. Another example that I think about is when my dad in 2017 was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. They gave him two to 11 months to live. And I wanted to spend as much time as I possibly can with could with him. And I also knew my mom needed that moral support and really um just some companionship, knowing that he was getting worse as the months progressed. And so I made the commitment to try to be with them on weekends, and it was they lived about two and a half miles away. Um, I'm not two and a half miles, two and a half hours away. Oh, I wish it was two and a half miles, two and a half hours away. They were living in their cabin in the northern part of Wisconsin, and that's where my dad wanted to be. And it was quiet, and he loves the woods, he loves hunting. There were deer and wildlife all over the place. And so during that drive, I would drive on Friday evenings or Saturday mornings, depending on what I had going on. I would stay overnight and usually come home sometime on Sunday, late afternoon or early evening. And so I lost like five hours a weekend. And I was thinking about what I could do to go ahead and take care of myself and love myself. And remember, self-love is action that you can do and the growth that you can gain when you're trying different things and taking action, right? Because in the first few weeks, I'm like, oh my gosh, okay, load up with caffeine, get my sugar. There's a McDonald's halfway in a gas station, so I have to go to the bathroom. Since I'm driving into McDonald's, I might as well grab some fries or a shake or something. And then I would go ahead and wonder why I was so tired and fatigued and all of that kind of stuff. And so I learned pretty fast that I had to find things that and make the best use of my time. Most of the time, my husband couldn't go with me because he was recovering or he was in the his stage four diagnosis of cancer and fighting and going through chemotherapy as well. And so I would, I figured out that I could listen to uh music, and so I uploaded music on my phone so that that would go ahead and just kind of keep me in a great mindset. I learned too that I could um grab my speaker phone and call a friend and catch up with a friend. So the socialization helped me a lot. I learned deep chest breathing and apps that you could go ahead and, you know, kind of go ahead and do some tapping or deep chest breathing and still drive the car. And then instead of going into the McDonald's, the gas station was hooked, uh, the McDonald's was hooked onto the gas station, I would still use the restroom, but there were picnic tables in the back of the um the gas station. And so I'd pack something healthy like carrots or uh cucumbers or a healthy snack or a sandwich or something instead of going and grabbing the bad food. And so I just kind of learned as I went to try to go ahead and really focus in on it because you can imagine how I felt at the end of the weekend, because there was a lot of stress and energy providing care. And so my my car ride was a car ride that I had to go ahead and figure out how to sustain or boost my energy. So that's an example, but self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others. It sounds really hard though, when you're a caregiver. You have to take care of your own needs and not sacrifice your well-being. So that's hard. We practice self-love by being kinder to ourselves, being gentler to ourselves without indulging in that inner critic mindset or without judgment, because right away our mind wants to go to feeling guilty, feeling worried, feeling shame for going ahead and taking care of ourselves first, right? In other words, self-love involves shifting our focus inward, not outward. And it's a it's a definitely a mind shift for women, especially because we are the givers, we are the carers, we are the ones that as moms, as women, as daughters, as whatever, we are the ones that put everything above all else. But that's a huge, huge cost. And so when you learn to love yourself and shift your focus inward with trying different things, you're gonna see that it works. For example, setting healthy boundaries you might not be used to setting. And so, you know, could a healthy boundary be, I need, you know, 30 minutes to go ahead and take my lunch break, or I need an hour in the morning for myself, and figuring out how to fit that in. Another one is no longer denying your innermost needs when you're in your mind and your body are telling you that you need to go ahead and get some rest, or why am I going ahead and feeling so stressed out and adopting this new perspective that you need to go ahead and put yourself first? You need to remove those stories in your head that are dependent on the actions and words of others. And sometimes they're untrue thoughts. But if you are a people pleaser like I am, I'm a huge people pleaser, and I'm trying to um detox from that, but I was a huge people pleaser at the very beginning with my mom's care and really burnt myself out really, really fast. And it's hard to kind of back out of that once you've gone ahead and and and built that for lack of a term, that monster of people pleasing. It all it also um it also is about doing acts of self-care for yourself. Think about the actions that you can do for yourself and trying it, resting, pampering yourself. It could be just putting on a facial mask, or it could be just putting your feet up, or participating in activities that improve our mood or bring us joy. I just got back, I'm recording this on Monday. I just got back from bowling with my girlfriend. We couldn't do the bowling on Wednesday night because the weather's supposed to be really bad. But just doing an activity that's going to boost your mood, or maybe it's drawing, or maybe it's coloring, or maybe it's doing your hobby like knitting or painting, whatever it would be. Another act of it, it's also about doing acts of self-care could be, but it's important to think about what can fuel you versus the opposite. When I talked about it's it's important to remember that self-love isn't self-indulgence, meaning an excuse to let yourself off the hook. Or I'm gonna just have an extra glass of wine today because it's just been a terrible day, or I'm gonna just eat a whole bag of cook cookies on the way home because my dad's getting worse each and every week. Trust me, I did that. And it may feel good right at the instant, but it feels horrible after you eat that whole bag of cookies. Um, not only the stomach pain, but knowing that, you know, you you didn't treat yourself right. You can take steps to fuel your self-love rather than allowing the negative thinking to feel a self-persperception that isn't very loving. So taking baby steps. Self-love means not settling for less than you deserve. And you deserve to go ahead and have some time. You deserve to love yourself enough to go ahead and do what's best for you. But why? Why, why is self-love so so challenging as a caregiver, right? It is. Well, if you haven't heard and heard about my Sunday fun days, I'm gonna share that with you. Bear with me if you've heard the story already. But when my mom first um moved into her um senior living apartment after my dad passed away, she lived with us for a little bit and then realized she needed to have her own space. And so when she moved into her apartment, it's all this brand new honeymoon stage, right? And Kathy, come over and help me hang up my pictures, and Kathy, come over and help me, you know, figure out this, and um, I I want to show you this. And can you take me here? And it was really fun for a while. And so I would come over after work, I would fit things in during the day, but after a while, if you if for me taking care of my mom every single day was exhausting, and I was finding out that you know it was just way too much, and so I proposed to my mom saying, you know what, why don't we dedicate a day that we can get together and we'll call it Sunday fun day. We'll do some fun things, we'll do some errands, we'll go ahead and do your bills, we'll go up for dinner, we'll make it a Sunday fun day, right? Well, that lasted for a little while, and then realizing I was spending eight to ten hours on a Sunday with her. It was fun at first. We were going to craft sales and flea markets, walking the mall. We would think of a new thing each and every day, every each and every Sunday. After we did that, we would come back and I would go ahead and do anything. Well, we would do her grocery shopping stuff, then we would come back to her apartment and I would help her unload her groceries and we would do her bills and anything else that we needed to do. Then we would turn around and pick up my husband and we would go up for dinner. One thing that my mom didn't do is she didn't eat a lot. She was a skinny little runt, and I needed to eat, but I wasn't eating during the day, and so my blood sugars would go down, I would get dizzy, feel all out of sorts, and then if there was a cookie somewhere, I'd grab it and shove it in my mouth, trying to get something in my mouth. It was just too much. By the end of the day, Sundays, I would come home, I was so exhausted, I couldn't do anything. Weeks go by, I became more and more drained, then I became angry because I was taking my whole Sunday, and then eventually I became resentful. And I was in this burnout Sunday fun day, and it was not good. And so I needed to go ahead and figure out how I should love myself more and not be doing this to my body and my mind and even you know, overall self. And so I had to go ahead and and backtrack or reverse this process that I created. I created this animal for my mom, which she was excited because then she had the rest of the week to relax up and then we were back at it again. And so I had to decrease it and shorten the hours. And you know, it we we didn't go all day. I come over at noon or one o'clock, and it was a little bit better so that I could go ahead and take care of that. Now it was a hard, hard conversation to have with her, and I felt guilty and I felt worried, but I had to do it for my own health and well-being. And eventually she understood, and I had to be okay if she didn't understand that I needed that. So it helped my resentment and anger. So the reason I tell you this is sometimes you are pushed into a corner, but there are ways to go ahead and figure it out. There are many, so there are many reasons that it can be difficult to practice self-love, right, in this caregiving world. And I want to talk about some of these reasons that it can be difficult that stem from a misunderstanding of what it means to do so. You are dealing with, as a caregiver, competing priorities, right? You're caregiving now, wearing multiple hats in that arena, you're taking care of your home life. Some of you are, are you working your job? Are you working your business? You know, you're trying to balance a lot. And most importantly, your brain has a hard time justifying the benefits of self-love, of taking care of yourself. Your brain's probably saying, Why is it important to put yourself first? How can I really put myself first when my loved one is is the the priority? And you know, you're going through all that. You may feel that it feels wrong to go ahead and do this. It feels wrong to go and do something yet you feel joyful and happy doing, or it feels wrong to have time by yourself. But if you don't, there are so many reverse effects. We've talked about burnout, we talked about health issues. Your inner voice, when you start thinking and figuring out the self-love, your inner voice starts criticizing. I call it self-criticism. It criticizes your decision to make those self-love choices and changes. Uh, but you want to show up with more energy and less fatigue, right? You want to show up with more joy and less anger. And the ultimate solution is taking care of yourself. But reality is the more you resist self-love, the more you're likely to remain in the same space or worse, your health suffers. And it breaks my heart, but it also makes me extremely angry when people say it is what it is, nothing will ever change. Yeah. It won't change unless you change. You can control things. It might be really, really tiny bits of self-love, but you can figure things out. My simple daily routine is what comes to mind right now. It is it is simple, but it's not easy. I know them that morning walks are what does it mean. For me. My dogs need the three-mile walk. Yes, three miles. I have two big Labradors that are over 70 pounds. They need to walk. But this morning, I didn't want to get up in the 20-degree weather, get all bundled up and walk them. I had to put on two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, uh, my parka, my walking shoes, hat, and mittens. You know, I didn't want to do that, but I know how important it is for me when I go ahead and feel that sun in my face, the fresh air that I'm breathing, and I walk those miles. It boosts my energy, it improves my mood. There's so much science behind the sunshine and the fresh air that reinforces that I am getting what I need. That's my self-love. Now, again, you may not be the person that finds that component, your self-love. Maybe it's a cup of coffee on the patio in the sitting in the sun, or maybe it's sitting by the window in the morning and reading your book, or maybe it's journaling. But when you shift perspectives, we can see the value. You will be able to see the value and the benefits of self-love choices. It will affect your caregiving in a good way. It'll affect when you are energized and you've done something for yourself, you look at things a little bit different. Your mindset and your emotions are better, your productivity may even increase. How great is that? So, how do you practice self-love? These are just some of the things that I've thought about. The very first thing is you have to buy into it. Needed to take a drink here because I'm getting so excited. You need to buy into your self-love. You have to see the benefits that they're giving to you. And then once you buy into self-love, you have to make whatever you're doing a non-negotiable. Think about it. Brushing your teeth for most of us is a non-negotiable. You brush your teeth. If you're a faith-driven person, church is a is a is something that you know benefits you. You buy insurance, you need that for the financial security. That's a non-negotiable for you. So self-love, whatever that practice is or practices are, you have to buy into it. You have to understand the benefits of it. And you need to see when you don't do it, what happens. Another thing, since we're talking about non-negotiable, you have to build a habit and form that habit and make it a priority and part of your schedule. It's not something you can do the lat put last on your to-do list or do the last of the day. You have to make it a priority that you're going to go ahead and take care of it. For example, you need to hydrate yourself or you need to eat. You make that a priority. I think about employers that run, you know, production lines and have hourly workers. Taking breaks is a mandatory law. And they have to make that a priority. And so those breaks are priorities for them. Even like thinking about truck drivers that are driving on the roads, they have to pull over and they have to rest. They can't continue to drive without any sleep or any breaks. They have to record those breaks, and that's part of their job. So making and forming a habit of whatever your self-love practices are. Another thing is you have to find what works best for you. Nobody can tell you what you need and what benefits you. You have to figure out that. And you also have to think about what season you're in. Because if you're in a really hard season, it you might have only certain things that you can do, but you can figure out things because when my mom was in hospice care, I had to figure out I could walk down to the mailbox. I could go ahead and make myself my spinach shake. And I know I'm going to get some protein and energy from that. I could take power naps. I had to figure out what my self-love was for that time versus now it's totally different that I'm only caregiving for my husband and he's in remission right now. You may have to try things and ease into them as well, or try things and if they don't work, try something else and do a baby step, especially if you are starting this as a new concept. The whole purpose of self-love is to take care of yourself and fill your cup each and every day. Almost think about a cup having water in it, and you don't ever want that cup to be empty. You're a wait staff person that's always filling the water cup and keeping it full. You're trying to keep your self-care and the things that are going to benefit you full. Another thing is figure out what your healthy boundaries are. What do you need from a boundary perspective and communicate that? If you need rest time, if you need your, you know, your hour a day, whatever it would be for, communicate that. Figure out how you're going to do it, talk to your loved one, which might be a hard conversation, and then commit yourself to it. And you know what? Once you can figure out what that is, you're going to be a better caregiver. Think about that. So here are just a few suggestions that I've tried in the past. And this is not a foolproof uh list at all, because I didn't even get into like having hobbies and doing you know fun things that way. You could add that to your your list. But I'm hoping by just sharing a few things with you, it's gonna spark some ideas. Because, you know, one of the best things you can do as a as a caregiver in a chronic stressful situation is finding meditation, finding a meditation practice that can cultivate your self-love. If you Google caregiver self-love or self-love meditation, there are tons of different practices out there. Remember, meditation can take five minutes, 10 minutes, but it can take an hour. You're gonna find whatever works from you by shutting down the world and putting on some calm music and just sitting with yourself. That's gonna be something that may just spark and cultivate some things for you. Another thing is give yourself gratitude. Express gratitude to yourself. When you go ahead and compliment yourself and be proud of what you're doing and be grateful that you are taking time for yourself and finding these little things to do for yourself, you're gonna realize that you are taking care of yourself. We are connecting with the things we value about ourselves. Self-appreciation is one route to self-love. Whether you say these things to yourself quietly, or you keep a list in your journal, or you practice and acknowledge your strengths and your achievements, it will go ahead and just keep filling your top your cup. Because self-love over time, it just keeps building and you keep value validating it inward. So if you took a nap, tell yourself, I'm glad I loved myself enough to take a 10-minute power nap. I'm glad I went ahead and drank that extra uh glass of water, whatever it would be. Another component that you've I've talked about already, but move your body, it can clear your mind, it can release your stress. You can listen to music while walking, you can dance away negativity. Just, you know, just dance it away. Uh, you can get caught up in your garden and let go of your worries. You can get into a yoga pose and be proud of each stretch and know that you're making a stronger, you're making yourself stronger physically and mentally. You know, think about what you could do. I, you know, I'm the Joes are just a few. Um, maybe another suggestion is you sit down and eat your lunch. You block off your calendar and you actually sit down and eat your lunch. Maybe you sit in a you sit outside on a picnic table with a great salad, or in the morning you find your little nook where the sunshine's coming in and you drink your breakfast coffee. You're fueling your body and your mind and sitting a bit, that may be self-love to you. Self-love may be asking for help or connecting with a family or joining a community. You don't have to do this alone. And when you give yourself support, when you ask for help, you are giving yourself the best self-love ever. I've seen this so many times with the Caregiver Cup Circle, which is opening back up next week. We're opening the Caregiver Cup Circle up, the registration for March again. And it is so important to go ahead and recognize that you are not alone, that by having community, you can go ahead and be reminded of some of the things that will make you a better caregiver. But think about this too. Um, when I was a waitress, I was a waitress in my late, late teens and early 20s. And when I worked at this restaurant, we all had assigned sections. And that was our section we did the, we did the wait staffing for. The host would bring the table of guests to their table, and I would go out and take their orders and serve them and that sort of thing. Busy times we would rotate. Busy times are when you have a table that just sits forever and then they all leave at one time, and then it's super busy and everybody's taking the orders at one time, but when they all leave, the tables are all full, right? And so as a team in the restaurant, we would help each other in our sections. I would help somebody clearing off tables, or I would go ahead and help them. If I had a slow little lull, I'd bring out and follow them with their orders. Even think about when you have a party. You know, when you get a team of people to help you clean up, it's so much easier. And asking for help is not a bad thing. Asking for help means you're loving yourself enough that you're not stressing out and doing it all by yourself. So to kind of conclude today, I have a few more thoughts here. Now I want you to hold your heart a minute and tell yourself you deserve love. You deserve self-love. You deserve to be treated with care. No one cares more about you than you. No one knows yourself more than others than you do. No one, you know, you know when you are tired, right? You know when you are stressed, you know when you are not yourself. Your body and mind signals you of when and tells you when you are you are in pain, when you are struggling, when you are just an emotional mess. So how you are taking care of yourself and how you're listening to yourself is going to go ahead and give you clues of what you need to take better care of yourself. You know, let's go to the flip side. The same goes when you feel joy and you feel happiness and contentment. You want to listen to your body there and recognize what did I do to make myself feel so great? And fill yourself with more of that. Because it again, you you gotta just keep paying attention to it. Self-love is action and growth and growth and action. It's a constant thing. I was joking with one of my clients today, as well as my husband. I'm like, I have never done so much self-growth and self-development in my last five years than in my entire life. And being a caregiver is truly taught me tons of that because you have to make choices and you have to take control of who you are and take care of yourself so that you can go ahead and sustain this. But I want to share one of my ultimate favorite quotes and really one of my favorite um actresses, and that's Lucille Ball. She's a past. But when I grew up, my mom and dad would always watch Lucille Ball, the Lucille, the Lucille show and Desi Arnez. And just it was just great. It was good old fun entertainment. But when I actually watched her biography, and I think Nicole Kidman played her, it was really interesting to go ahead and see how strong of a person she was. And this quote reflects it, and it's a good reflection on the topic today. She quotes, love yourself first and everything else falls in line. This sentence alone says it all. Love yourself first and everything else falls in line. But she goes on to say, you really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. And so how true is that? Because as a caregiver, if you keep going and going and going and don't take care of yourself, you're gonna not get things done. You're gonna find yourself sick or just stressed to the max. And so today, just wanted to end this episode by saying caregiving is hard. But giving yourself love makes it a bit easier when your emotions and body feel feels good and feels better. And so when when I reflect back on on the whole topic today, we talked about what is self-love, right? And that's the state of appreciation that grows from actions that you support in your group in your physical, psychological, and spiritual growth. And self-love means having the highest regard for your own well-being and happiness. And really, we talked about you know being kinder and gentler to ourselves by shifting our thoughts and focusing inward versus always outward. We talked about why it's so challenging to be a to to go ahead and stay true to this. But the the biggest win that you can take away from this is finding what you can go ahead and do from a self-love perspective, finding what works for you and buying into it and working in it into a habit that you have so that you can go ahead and be the best caregiver that you can be. Because if you don't take care of yourself and you don't take care of the self-compassion and the self-love and the self-care and uh the self-compassion, and next week we'll talk about your values. What happens is it leads to that caregiver stress turns into caregiver burnout, and then it turns into compassion fatigue, which all result in adverse effects on your health, but it also affects your overall care of your loved one. You become angry, you become resentful. So, my hope to you this week is that you go ahead and think about am I loving myself? What's my body and my mind and my soul telling me? And if it's giving you warning signs that things aren't the best for you, what can you do from a self-love perspective? I would love to hear it. Taking little steps so that you can be the best caregiver that you can be. So thank you again for listening. If you think this is something that um has been of benefit for you, I would love for you to go ahead and drop me a review on your favorite podcast site or give me a five-star, drop me a uh direct message on Instagram at Kathy Lynn Van. If it's something that would be of help to somebody else, please share it with them. The more we can go ahead and share this with other caregivers, the more we can make this caregiver world a little bit better. So until we meet again, friend, have a good rest of the week. Bye for now.