Holiday Help for Family Caregivers ...

Family caregivers spend endless time and energy caring for loved ones who are ill, disabled or frail and are often unable to participate in the usual traditions and activities of the season. Thoughtful assistance and gifts from those who love them can make all the difference to the quality of their holidays.

Here are some ways you can help the family caregivers in your life:

1. Ask what's needed or wanted before you shop, bake or make plans. Every caregiving situation is different and the needs of each caregiver are different as well. I remember receiving several lovely packets of bath salts and oils one Christmas while caring for my husband. They would have been wonderful to use had we had a bathtub!

2. Consider that while the gift of an afternoon's concert, play or special event might be much appreciated, it needs to come with the second gift of someone qualified to stay with the care recipient so the ticket can be used.

3. Gifts of food can bring real relief from the monotony and fatigue of cooking, but remember to ask, first, regarding personal preferences, allergies and dietary restrictions. We frequently passed on to others casseroles whose salt content was too high for my husband to eat. (Including a copy of the recipe can help to reduce anxiety in this regard.)

4. Try to avoid gifts that need assembling, that are outside the caregiver's previous experience or that are very complicated (technological devices with multiple functions) unless the caregiver has asked for it, specifically. (Impaired cognitive function is a hallmark of caregiver stress and most caregivers find it hard enough to remember where they put their keys , let alone how a new device works.)

5. Avoid giving anything that will need special care - this includes anything from a delicate plant to "a nice pet to keep you company". Now is not the time to inadvertently add to the caregiver's burden.

6. Consider safety in all gift giving. eg No glass figurines, knife sets, or barbecue lighters for caregivers of children with aggressive or impulsive behavioural disorders, unless there is safe storage space that is out of sight.

7. Consult with the caregiver before buying gifts of perfume or other scented materials that might aggravate allergies or respiratory conditions. (Their own or that of the care recipient.)

8. Consider gifts of your time and presence - "gift certificates" for mowing the lawn or shovelling the walks on a regular basis or for sitting with the care recipient so the caregiver can get out for errands or respite, or for short biweekly or monthly visits for a chat and support. (But be sure that you can follow through with whatever you promise.)

9. Offer to buy and put up the Christmas tree or other decorations - but be sensitive to the loss involved in changing a holiday tradition. Check at each stage in the process to see if that step is something that the caregiver would rather do alone. Perhaps you could buy and set up the tree and lights and then leave the decorating to them or perhaps they will want you to do the whole job. Just keep asking.

10. Offer transportation to shopping malls or to doctors appointments. Return library books or DVD's.

11. Offer to do the caregiver's holiday shopping or wrapping or to help them to navigate shopping on the internet.

12. Talk about plans for holiday dinners well in advance. But be prepared to change plans at the last moment if the care recipient is ill or the caregiver is too tired. Ask what will make life easiest for the caregiver - to have you make and deliver a meal on plates then leave, to eat altogether at your house or theirs, to have a pot luck or share the cooking, to go out for a meal?

13. If you're "going home for Christmas", ask if it would be easier if you stayed in a nearby hotel.

These are just a few possibilities. Please add your own ideas to the list. The important thing is to be thoughtful, empathic and accepting in the face of the caregiver's stress, indecisiveness and desire to hold on to the things that have meant the most to them.

For Those Who Love a Helping Professional ...

This week I read a blog post that touched my heart. It was written by Clarke Cayton, the Crisis Chaplain of the Ozark Crisis Response Unit in the US and it goes like this:

My wife has been an Emergency Room nurse for two years now. She works 7 pm to 7 am, 3 nights a week. For about the first year of this arrangement, I always found it interesting that, for the most part, I could tell how my wife's shift went by how much noise I heard coming from the kitchen when she got home. The clanking of pots and slamming of cabinet doors was a good indicator for me that I had some quality listening time in my future. Sure enough, after the kitchen was spotless and the neighbourhood wide awake, she would come to me, throw herself on the bed and either burst into tears or swear to me that she would never go back to that dreadful place.

Lucky for me, I am a Crisis Chaplain and professional stress management consultant specializing in Field Traumatology and Compassion Fatigue, so I have all the answers and know all the tricks. Ha ha, right. I would typically just hold my wife and let her cry and vent. Not much else I could do. Or so I thought.

We have been married for 5 years now and have learned a lot about what it means to put one another first, and in many ways we make a pretty good team. This being so, there are times when I find that what I am hearing from her isn't always what she is saying to me. So I have made a commitment to listen to my wife a little sharper. And what I have heard has changed my life. And hers.

What I began to hear was not that she hated her job or despised the abuse of the emergency health care system, but that through her passion to help people and her commitment to nursing excellence, every night she would put herself on the line and give it all she had. This level of investment requires an immense amount of commitment and sacrifice because, to be honest, the environment of the ER is rarely wholesomely rewarding. She was coming home physically and emotionally exhausted every morning, completely spent.

Oh, and the clanking in the kitchen? Yeah, that was my fault. See, my wife had spent the last 12 hours going above and beyond: wading through blood, vomit, bad attitudes, and verbal abuse. All because she cares about people. This is the definition of compassion, and by morning her fuel is just gone. So what happens when a fatigued wife comes home to a less than spotless kitchen after busting her tail tending to all the needs of everyone else but her own?

Exactly.

So, I tried something. I decided that if she was going to lay it on the line for the sake of others for 12 hours, I could probably take a couple of minutes and wipe down the counters, hang the towel back on the rack, and clean the junk off the kitchen table. Guess what? She doesn't come home in a tirade anymore. Because her reaction wasn't one to an especially bad night, since most nights are bad nights. Rather, it's a reaction to being in an environment where she constantly bore the responsibility to fix, help, care and make better, only to come home to an environment that needed more of the same.

When I've asked her about this, she tells me, "You have no idea what it means to me to come home and know that everything is done. It's all put away, it's all clean, and everything that I feel responsible for, you have already done for me. All that stress is just released because home is now my shelter and my rest."

Here is the key: When home is a refuge and a place for recovery, the fuel of compassion gets refilled and the courage to face the world, no matter how ugly, is replenished.

Want to be able to support your responder spouse when they are worn out from serving others?

Just serve them.

Listen to what they are really saying. And grant them rest.

This is stress management.

It's also called love.