Season 4, Episode 9: The mental and emotional toll of caregiving
Caregiving can be one of the most meaningful roles we take on, but it can also be one of the most demanding.
Registered social worker, Camille Kim explores the mental and emotional toll of caregiving. Whether you’re supporting an aging parent, a partner, or a child, caregiving often comes with a complex mix of responsibility, love, stress, and exhaustion.
Camille shares how burnout can show up over time, what happens to our nervous system when we’re constantly “on,” and why so many caregivers struggle to balance their own needs with the needs of others. We also explore the wide range of emotions that can come up, and why all of them are more common (and more normal) than you might think.
Learn practical, realistic ways to care for yourself while caring for someone else.
-
Katherine Hurtig
Welcome to Living Fully. Each episode is a chance to talk about mental health in a way that's simple, honest, and helpful. We'll share stories, tips, and tools to help you feel supported and feel your best. I'm your host, Katherine Hurtig.
Whether you're caring for an aging parent, a partner, a child with medical or complex needs, or supporting someone through a serious diagnosis, caregiving can be meaningful, and loving, and also exhausting. It can bring up feelings of stress, guilt, frustration, grief, and even resentment—sometimes all at once.
In this episode, I'm joined by social worker Camille Kim. We talk about the many ways that caregiving can be mentally and emotionally challenging, and how to realistically take care of yourself while you take care of others.
Today I am talking to Camille Kim about the mental and emotional toll of caregiving. Thank you, Camille, for chatting with me today.
Camille Kim
Thanks for having me, Katherine.
Katherine Hurtig
So, it's been a little while since you've been on the podcast. Tell our listeners about yourself. You've been with Calgary Counselling Centre for quite a while now.
Camille Kim
Yeah, I have been with Calgary Counselling Centre since 2019, and I'm a Master of Social Work, and I absolutely love being part of supporting the community and mental health.
Katherine Hurtig
Amazing. And yeah, we're doing this interview remotely. So, you're based out of B.C., is that right?
Camille Kim
So yeah, I am currently in Victoria, B.C., and working remotely for Calgary Counselling Centre and Counselling Alberta.
Katherine Hurtig
Awesome. So yeah, let's get into it, Camille. We're talking about caregiving and that can be stressful. There can be a lot going on there. So, when we talk about caregiving, you know, whether that's for aging parents, or maybe a partner, or a child with special needs. What do you think people often misunderstand about that experience?
Camille Kim
I think often people have, you know, really high expectations for themselves. And what might be challenging is misunderstanding how burnout can happen.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
Overall, and sort of missing some of those cues.
Katherine Hurtig
And OK, you said the term burnout. In this context of caregiving, can you kind of explain what that would mean, what that would look like?
Camille Kim
Yeah, the term burnout I use to generally describe a higher state of stress over a longer period of time, the nervous system being quite activated. And people tend to get exhausted, rundown. Overall, just a sense of not being able to function and a feeling of overwhelm.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. You know, this ongoing stress in those situations, I mean, it doesn't always look big and dramatic from the outside. So how would you kind of describe that day-to-day emotional load that these caregivers might be dealing with?
Camille Kim
It really can depend on the situation, whether it's a temporary, shorter-term situation or longer term. But one thing that's common is the person that is the caregiver trying to balance care to the person needing it, but also to a number of other people in their life, be it work, their kids, their other family members, their partner, or even care for themselves. And so, day to day, just finding that balance sometimes can be really challenging.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. Yeah. Because it's I mean, more often than not, it's probably not just that one person that the caregiver needs to look after. It's a family. It's like you said, a job. And of course, themselves.
Camille Kim
Yes, exactly. And it just can feel like too much to bear at times.
Katherine Hurtig
Like, when talking about burnout, you did talk about or mention the nervous system. What happens to someone's nervous system when they're kind of in that constant state of, you know, responsibility and obligation and always trying to anticipate the next need or crisis?
Camille Kim
Probably most people have heard of the term fight, or flight, or freeze, with the nervous system. And I also describe it as the body moving into a survival mode, and it's feeling like there's some threat to their survival. And that can even happen when it's a threat to loved ones. So medical situations, etc. And so, what often happens is people are heightened in their stress levels, whether some of the signs can be increased irritability or impatience, anxiety or anger. There also can be complete numbness. You know, people feeling quite numb.
Katherine Hurtig
Is all that kind of typical in what you've seen working with your clients?
Camille Kim
Definitely. When people are caregivers—and it does depend on the situation.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure.
Camille Kim
But if somebody, say, got a cancer diagnosis or something like that—a loved one, and it looks like it's going to be a two-year journey of multiple treatments, etc. That can definitely send someone's nervous system into that survival mode. A long-term effect of that isn't great and can really impact the body and the mind. People can experience a difficulty with foggy head, they describe. But overall, it just really runs down the body as well and can be challenging.
Katherine Hurtig
So, when you work with clients, how do you recommend they take care of themselves if they're going through a situation like this?
Camille Kim
Such a good question. I think one of the first things is noticing what our nervous system is doing. And so, if we're noticing that we're having a hard time making decisions, we might feel foggy, might feel numb, might feel those things I mentioned—irritated, impatient, or anxious. Those could be signs of not having a regulated nervous system. So, noticing that first is important. And then people can take a lot of—there are a lot of really good tools for helping calm the nervous system and move out of that. So, we're trying to increase relaxation and calm.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And one of the biggest tools that people can try is something called box breathing.
Katherine Hurtig
OK.
Camille Kim
And this is really just helping us take some deeper breaths. It can be like a deep inhale at a count of five. Then someone would hold that, hold their breath for five, and then exhale for five, and then hold the breath for five, and then continue that cycle.
Katherine Hurtig
Thank you for explaining that. About how long would that process be? Like, for someone to kind of feel some benefit there, is that a couple minutes? Is it longer?
Camille Kim
I've tried it myself and I find I can only do maybe four cycles of that.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And so, it doesn't have to be a lot to be effective. It's interesting how... and it doesn't have to be fancy. It can be really just sitting down and taking a few deep breaths.
Katherine Hurtig
Well, and I would think that works in a couple different ways, because obviously you're slowing down your breathing and your heart rate there. But also, just focusing on that breath, it takes your mind off everything else that's going on and kind of puts you in that present moment.
Camille Kim
That's correct. You'd be sitting. You'd be somewhere calming. Perhaps, you know, put a blanket around yourself. And doing that breathing does just bring you to this calm, present moment. Very similar to the impacts of meditation or visualizations, people bringing them to a sense of calm.
Katherine Hurtig
I'm sure there's a lot of feelings, a lot of different emotions that come up when you're a caregiver. I mean, I witnessed my mom having to take care of my dad for many years. And yeah, there's a lot of different feelings that come up. Like, what are some common ones that you've heard people experience through the process?
Camille Kim
I've heard that—and I have experienced it myself too. When my father was diagnosed with cancer and was visiting in the hospital after days of work. And some of the feelings people can have are resentments towards the person that they're caring for.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, and that must be just a difficult feeling to carry. Yeah, it would be different for everyone obviously, but I'm just like picturing, like putting myself in those shoes and like you can't help that feeling if you do feel the resentment, but there must also be a feeling of guilt there. Like, well, you logically know that this person hasn't done anything wrong.
Camille Kim
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
But there's still that resentment, you know?
Camille Kim
I think it's important to normalize that the resentment isn't coming from a bad place. It's coming from a place of having challenges, managing all the stressors. And just like we sometimes resent our work or resent our chores, it’s similar. And often people will feel bad about that. They'll feel guilt. I think when I work with clients, it's helping to normalize that there might be some resentment, even anger. There might be feelings of guilt about that and just allowing people to recognize those feelings are normal.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I think that always helps because it just kind of layers on another level of difficulty if you feel something and then also feel the shame around that feeling.
Camille Kim
That's right. That's right.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And it's tough, it's not easy to not feel those feelings.
Katherine Hurtig
No, for sure.
Camille Kim
And so, I think normalizing them. And I've even given people sometimes the tool of scheduled feeling. In other words, you know, when they're all day long—we're sort of compartmentalizing our own feelings. We're often as a caregiver trying to, quote unquote, stay strong.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And that's because we don't want the other person to be upset. And we're sort of trying to give them the best of ourselves. And so, one of the things that people can do, and I've worked with clients in this way, is they can do something called scheduled grieving, scheduled feeling. Which is, find a time at night in the evening when it's comfortable, and you have the space to do it, and set your timer on your phone for ten minutes. You can take a moment to go internal and move towards the sadness, the pain, the hurt. We can usually find it fairly easy inside of ourselves because we've been pushing it down for most of the day. And to kind of lean into it and allow ourselves to feel that difficult feeling and just be with it. Just breathe into it. Sometimes people will cry. They'll sometimes just sit with the thoughts or the feelings. And then the timer will go off, and that allows us to compartmentalize it again, which is helpful.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, like in my conversations with you guys, that's come up before about if you don't resist a feeling, it makes it not as intense. And like in my head, it seems counterintuitive, but it's true. Like, if you let yourself sit with it and you let it pass, yeah, it's not as intense. It's not as all-consuming. So, you can't push those things down forever, for sure.
Camille Kim
It's true. We definitely need a time to feel our feelings and give those feelings space. And most of us are very good at compartmentalizing it and putting it aside, but we don't always come back to it.
Katherine Hurtig
So, that's important to set aside that time.
Camille Kim
That can also give us a scheduled time when it's not going to interfere with the person we're caring for, because people often don't want the person they're caring for to be worried about them.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I mean, for sure. There's lots of feelings that they're experiencing as well. I mean, in these caregiving situations, not all, but I think a lot of the time is for someone that you love. It's like I said, it's a parent, a partner, a child. So how do you help someone hold those feelings of both love and frustration at the situation at the same time without getting too hard on themselves, without judging themselves?
Camille Kim
I think it's important to have a lot of supports, have people you can talk to.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
Counselling is definitely one aspect that is possible and helpful sometimes for tools around coping and relaxation. But having someone in your family, or your friends, or your community, that you can call and talk to about what you're going through is going to be really important. Like, support for the caregiver is something caregivers don't always think about.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, if this is something you have to keep dealing with, you have to get help yourself as well.
Camille Kim
That's right. And I think it's hard to ask for help. And part of getting through those times of caregiving is to know when it's time to delegate, to know when it's time to have a bigger team or reach out to people when you need that support.
Katherine Hurtig
Camille, I would imagine in, I mean, certain caregiving circumstances, there could be a sense of helplessness. You know, if it's like we've said, a cancer diagnosis, or illness or something like that. How can that impact mental health?
Camille Kim
There's a lot of ups and downs with caregiving, especially if there is a cancer diagnosis. There's a lot of times of waiting on test results and there's a lot of ups and downs. It can be just an emotional roller coaster. It is important to build hope, to have ways to build hope for the future, and to imagine a positive outcome for this person. Some of the ways to build hope can be focusing on the positives, imagining them better. Another way to build hope can be talking to people that have gone through the same thing. And a lot of people I talk to, they use their faith community to help build hope because there's such a high level of uncertainty and not knowing of the future. The other thing is staying in the present. So, focusing on the positives for the loved one. What's going well?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And also, you know, just focusing on being around them. Their laughter, touching their hand, the sound of their voice, those moments together.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, directing your thoughts to that instead of the things you can't control—the helplessness, yeah.
Camille Kim
That's right. Moving away from helplessness and towards hope. But again, I want to normalize that sense of helplessness and powerlessness because when these things happen, it's really challenging. And that would be a normal response as well.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Yeah, we touched on this. So, with a lot of caregivers, there's this sense of duty with obligation. I mean, I definitely saw that with my mom when she's taking care of my dad. Yeah, just a big sense of obligation there. How do you help someone sort through that? You know, what they're obligated to, what's love, what might be an unrealistic expectation for themselves. Like, maybe working through some of those boundaries to set?
Camille Kim
Such a good question, Katherine. I would say that sometimes overall people set quite high expectations for themselves, and including the caregiving, and how it needs to look. And often people take on more responsibility than they need to. So, this idea of delegating or asking for help, or welcoming in family members, or even other caregivers as part of the medical team as well. So, in terms of obligation, there's times when maybe we might ask ourselves, do I need to be doing all of this?
Katherine Hurtig
Right, yeah.
Camille Kim
Is there anywhere I could cut back, and it wouldn't make a huge difference? So, for example, I would go and see my dad every single night at the hospital after work. And there were times I could just delegate it to my brother, or we would alternate. Or I would even just tell my dad I couldn't come at times just because it would be trying to balance the self-care.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure.
Camille Kim
And that it's not the end of the world if we can't provide that care at that moment sometimes. It really depends on the person's situation, though.
Katherine Hurtig
It does. Yeah. I mean, it's a broad thing, and we want to give people relevant tools and tips. So yeah, it does for sure depend on the situation there.
Camille Kim
I have a few more tools for relaxation and calming if you'd like.
Katherine Hurtig
I would, we would love to hear that. Yeah.
Camille Kim
OK. So grounding is an interesting relaxation tool. Grounding is this idea of going outside, taking off your shoes and socks, and putting your feet on the grass, on the earth preferably over concrete, and imagining this connection to the earth as a way to stabilize our nervous system. And that can also be done in a chair, in a building and just imagining sort of our feet connecting to the earth. But in that moment, it's a little similar to the breathing. It gets us focused in the now, can be very relaxing. Another tool is the power of music.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
So, you know, music can be incredibly calming. It's a frequency. Our bodies respond to it, our minds. Many times, when I talk to clients, they tell me a lot of their resilience is through using music.
Katherine Hurtig
OK. Like just listening or is this like, do you have to play an instrument kind of thing? Is it just something that is accessible to anyone?
Camille Kim
Yeah, I thought about the listening, so people can put uplifting music on to feel hope. Sometimes they'll be in their house or apartment, dancing or singing to that music. And singing is also really opening and helpful. Sometimes people will tell me they just listen to it on their headphones and they walk, and that helps them. It's just this idea of being inspired to kind of keep one's energy up.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, energy. Because I mean, this caregiving can be so draining.
Camille Kim
Exactly. Another tool is connecting with nature or animals, such as pets.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And so even just a small walk in nature and focusing on the trees or the birds, or whatever someone is seeing, is a really great way to calm the body a little bit and increase the sense of relaxation. If people have pets at home, there's a lot of research that shows just petting an animal really calms the nervous system.
Katherine Hurtig
Oh, yeah?
Camille Kim
Yeah, it's similar to a hug from a loved one.
Katherine Hurtig
Oh, that's great.
Camille Kim
So, getting hugs and touch from pets and friends is also going to really help.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I like that because it's not like—You're giving lots of options for people to relax and calm themselves. It's not kind of a one-size-fits-all thing. You've got lots of options if something doesn't quite resonate with you.
Camille Kim
Yeah. Another one is using water, hot or cold water. So of course, we're made up of water, and we respond well to water. Hot baths are incredibly soothing. But sometimes even putting an ice pack on our forehead or cold water on our face, people are pretty familiar with cold dipping right now because it's all over the internet.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
That also kind of calms the nervous system in quite a dramatic and helpful way.
Katherine Hurtig
OK.
Camille Kim
So, these are techniques people have been using for years, and many people already have a lot of these self-soothing tools that they do.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's just a matter of being intentional with it and setting aside the time for yourself, even if you have to take care of someone else.
Camille Kim
That is the key, is setting aside that time. And maybe this is a good transition into self-care.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
Because that's a challenge, prioritizing self-care, for sure.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. I mean, if your support system is limited, if caregiving is very time consuming, that can almost—I could see that self-care might also, or trying to incorporate it, might just be another added level of stress. But I mean it is important to do that, hey?
Camille Kim
Well, and a lot of times people consider self-care as something quite large.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And my message to people is that something as small as breathing intentionally in a quiet moment is self-care, so there are ways to implement small tools that make a big difference.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't have to be an hour walk. It doesn't have to be something expensive or yeah, whatever. It can be built into your routine.
Camille Kim
Exactly. I also consider self-care just sticking with the building blocks of life, like eating. So, nutrition, hydration, sleep, and movement.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, it's wild how just getting those basics in order can really help your mood and how you function.
Camille Kim
Absolutely, they're the building blocks of wellness. And so sometimes just noting, ‘Oh, wow, I'm not drinking enough water.’ So, taking a water bottle perhaps with you as you're caregiving. If you're waiting for something, you could take a moment of prayer or meditation, or relaxation in your mind.
Katherine Hurtig
I just want to pause for a second and say, Camille, I really like how you give that, I don't know what the term would be, kind of like holistic take on these conversations. Like you said, spirituality and that connection to nature. That is really important for a lot of people. So, thank you for always making sure to include that.
Camille Kim
It makes sense, you know, we're body, mind, and spirit. And so, it makes sense to tend to all of those pieces.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And mentally, you know, focusing on the positives, coping with the uncertainty, staying in the moment, building hope—Those are all things we can do inside of our mind, mentally.
Katherine Hurtig
Camille, I want to talk about caregiving and maybe the identity around that. Like, how can taking on this role of caregiver, how can that change the way someone sees themselves?
Camille Kim
I hear from people that they sort of lose a sense of self at times. They're so focused on taking care of someone and the higher stress of that, that with identity, if we put maybe some of the things we used to do, like if someone used to go to practice with their band or, you know, yoga class. And they tell me, well, you know, they're not doing the yoga class right now, or they postponed the band, or they put these things off because of necessity. And that in itself means that they're losing pieces of their community and their identity with those shifting activities. So sometimes finding ways to continue those activities, but perhaps in a smaller amount or with a smaller amount of time, but keeping some of those pieces up that remind us who we are and connect us to our communities, if possible, is helpful.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. I think identity, like our sense of self, it's a tricky thing and we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket, I guess, you know? Because yeah, like if one part is taken away or changes, it can be really upsetting. I mean, it's definitely not the same as, you know, caregiving, but years ago I got really into running and then I got a stress fracture, so I couldn't for months. And that was really hard because it's like, well, that's what I did. I was a runner. That's what I did to take care of myself. Now I can't. Yeah, I think it's important to have a lot of different ways to take care of yourself to define who you are.
Camille Kim
I like that you're bringing up that example, because it's a really good one. When people have injuries and they can't do the same thing they could do physically themselves as a caregiver, like you're saying, running, etc. And this is when it's hard, but we need to shift our expectations about what we're capable of doing. And often we're focused on what we can't do, and that feels sad or difficult and frustrating. When we make a shift to adjusting our expectations, maybe you can't run, but maybe you can walk or maybe you can do push-ups, or something else that works a different body part, that when we shift to focusing on, ‘OK, what can I do still?’
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Camille Kim
It helps a lot.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. And I like that, I don't know, coming back to your example, if caregiving has taken someone away from, like you said, a band practice, maybe that they can incorporate that love of music into their caregiving and play for that person that they're looking after. Or, yeah, like you're saying, you got to be flexible.
Camille Kim
I love your idea. It makes me think of when my dad was in the hospital, we sang a lot. We played a lot of music.
Katherine Hurtig
Did you?
Camille Kim
Yes.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And the other thing that's sometimes in a hospital that may or may not be of interest to listeners, but I want to mention it, is there's often a chaplain, or a ministry, or an all-faiths location somewhere in the hospital. And I found that really comforting to visit. It's just a place of calm and peace.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
That might be a resource people don't know about.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. Yeah, and like you said, they're typically all-faith, so it's not like you have to be following a certain faith or religion to find benefit in that, for sure.
Camille Kim
Yes, yes. It's meant to be, you know, a calm, relaxing space for people to connect to whatever their faith is.
Katherine Hurtig
Camille, how can caregiving affect our relationships? You know, whether that's marriages, friendships, relationships with siblings, that kind of thing.
Camille Kim
You know, I think what I see the most is people's energy is so focused on the person they're caring for, for good reason.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
That those relationships can sometimes go on the wayside. Or people might not be in the mood for happy social engagements with their friends or a romantic dinner with their partner. They just might not be in the mood as they're dealing with these difficult situations and emotions. And that can be challenging for the person on the receiving end of that other relationship that is maybe longing for their friend, their partner, their sister.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. I would think there's another example of how we kind of have to shift our expectations of how much we can give of ourselves, of how much we can ask of others, that kind of thing.
Camille Kim
Yeah. Although it's very hard to do, I recommend to people to talk to their loved ones, to explain what they're going through, to express their limited capacity.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure.
Camille Kim
And their love for that person. Because sometimes we assume other people know. But it's really our words and our conversations that kind of clarify that with the people around us.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. That's so important because I'm sure, yeah, there's going to be a lot of assumptions. I mean, well-intentioned assumptions like, ‘Oh, I know that you're going through this. You must be feeling this, this and this.’ But yeah, it's important to communicate what's really going on.
Camille Kim
Definitely. And people might feel feelings of guilt for, you know, not being as present with family or not being as available to their partner. And that's a difficult thing to manage. I think sometimes counselling can help with that, can help give people an arena to just talk about their concerns in that way and get some support in that area around how to maybe communicate that or manage that. I thought of something else I wanted to add.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, please.
Camille Kim
Often the person who is the caregiver also becomes the fan-out communicator. Like they'll get bombarded with a lot of like every family member, like, ‘Oh, how did the test results go? How is this going? What happened with that? How are you?’ It can feel so overwhelming. They suddenly become this, you know, the communicator of all the information. And so recently I was working with someone where we decided on a standard response that they could give, you know, ‘How are you doing? How is so-and-so doing?’ They could give a standard response. You know, ‘Things are going fairly well. We're just waiting. So far, so good.’ Or, ‘I'm doing OK. So-and-so is doing OK. Thank you.’ Just so that they had something, so they didn't have to think every time. And perhaps—
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, taking off a bit of that mental load of having to come up with the answer. Yeah.
Camille Kim
Exactly. And then coming up with some way to fan-out information that makes it easier.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
Perhaps instead of responding to every person about the results of that test, there could be an email, or a post, or a group chat text, or some way of making it easier for the caregiver to share that information to all the people that are wondering and loving that person.
Katherine Hurtig
I can totally relate to that. In November, my husband ended up in the hospital for a short stay. He's fine now. But I mean, at the time that was stressful and scary. And everyone wants to, you know, out of care and concern; they want to know what's going on. But it was just like, ‘Oh, this is a lot.’ And you're right. It's like kind of answering the same things the same way. So, I mean, I reached out for help. I asked my husband's sister, I'm like, ‘I'm going to update just you and then you update the family if that's OK.’ And that was a big help, yeah.
Camille Kim
I love that. Maybe that's a way to delegate is to just have one person you update, and then that person is in charge of sending out that info. I think that sounds really helpful.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
I also want to speak to grief and loss, if that's OK?
Katherine Hurtig
Totally.
Camille Kim
A lot of times, like we've talked about feelings of guilt, feelings of resentment, feelings of stress. I think often when we're in it and we're in a go, go, go, do, do, do mentality. Like, I need to do this, and I need to do that, I need to show up here. We forget that there's a big period of grief and loss going on. Perhaps loss of that relationship, loss of our own lifestyle for the moment, loss of our own identity, loss of this other person who's dealing with challenges. And some of those grief and loss can go unnoticed. And that's something I just wanted to mention.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. So, what do you mean by they can go unnoticed? Just because you're not—that's not top of mind because you're focusing on somebody else?
Camille Kim
That too. And just to specify a little bit that when I'm talking about grief and loss, I'm thinking about feelings of sadness, feelings of helplessness, feelings of anger, sometimes a sense of denial and a sense of loss. And you're right, when we're putting a lot of our feelings aside to attend to things, some of those things get put aside as well.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
So similar to the other feelings, being able to acknowledge that we're in a process of grieving.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. And I think still a lot of people think that grief and loss is just about, like you said, the loss of a relationship, the loss of a person. But it can be, speaking in this caregiver scenario, like you said, it can be grieving the loss of what your life used to look like. It's a big change and that's really hard.
Camille Kim
That's exactly it. People have plans, you know, they have goals, they have plans, they have things they want to do.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
And sometimes when injuries happen, or diagnoses happen, or things like that, it changes those plans. And there's a lot of loss with that. And that's where it is good to talk to a family member, friend or a counselor around navigating that because it can be a long process.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
I like this idea of the oxygen mask and it's a good one to keep in mind. It’s the metaphor for, you know, putting on your own oxygen mask first and then the person you're caring for. We don't always think about that.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, it comes back to that.
Camille Kim
Right? But it kind of comes back to that.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, it comes back to that and the idea of self-care. And yeah, as a caregiver that's what you want to do, you want to take the best care of this person that you can. You can't do that if you're not also caring for yourself.
Camille Kim
Yeah. And when that gets difficult, it's important to ask for help.
Katherine Hurtig
And that in itself can be really hard for people, hey?
Camille Kim
That is really hard. It's really hard to ask for help, actually. People interpret that as, ‘I'm not doing a well enough job.’ And...
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why that is. That's so—Yeah, we want to think that we can handle everything thrown at us by ourselves, but we can't, and we shouldn't have to.
Camille Kim
Definitely. I mean, we're—people are generally really independent and a lot—
Katherine Hurtig
Which is great, yeah.
Camille Kim
Yeah, it's really great. And a lot of caregivers are women. Women and girls, a lot of the times.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Camille Kim
Not always. But a lot of the time they're used to being really efficient in this area of caring for people. They're really good at it. They have high expectations for themselves. And so, they might perceive asking for help as a personal flaw, but I'm here to say it is not. No one can be expected to carry all of this. And reaching out for help is actually a really good sign of recognizing when we need that.
Katherine Hurtig
And how do you work with your clients on that to help them get over that uncomfortableness of asking for help?
Camille Kim
So, I often ask them, you know, what their message is to self around that and shifting or reframing what that message is, almost giving themselves permission. So, an example might be shifting from, ‘I have to do it all myself. I don't want to ask for help because it somehow reflects negatively on me.’ Shifting to, you know, ‘It is normal to ask for help. I'm doing an amazing job. I'm going to need more hands in this. And it's now my duty, and helpful for me and the person being cared for, if I do start asking for some other people to step in.’
Katherine Hurtig
I love that shift. Yeah. Anything else, Camille, that we should leave our listeners with about this challenging process of caregiving?
Camille Kim
Yes. I always like to tell people that these tools, these ideas, they're not a one-and-done. They take a lot of practice. It takes daily practice over time. And so, what I like to tell people is if they try a tool like box breathing, and it doesn't seem to help one time, to not give up on that, to keep trying. Because it might work at another time.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, and it's like anything new. If it's new for you, it's not—I mean, most of the time it's not going to feel comfortable immediately. You've got to keep trying.
Camille Kim
That's right, and these are tools we use all the time. A lot of people use them already in their lives. And to just keep practicing, to just keep trying, not give up, and do the best you can.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. And one last thing Camille, for someone listening who feels exhausted, isolated, or overwhelmed in their caregiving role, what would you want them to hear?
Camille Kim
You're normal. You are not alone. There's a lot of people out there experiencing the same thing. People care about you. People love you. People want to help you know that you're not alone.
Katherine Hurtig
Beautiful. Thank you, Camille.
Camille Kim
Thank you.
Katherine Hurtig
You've been listening to Living Fully, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Thank you for tuning in. This episode was produced by Luiza Campos, Jenna Forbes, and by me, Katherine Hurtig. A special thanks to Camille Kim. Tune in to our next episode on May 19th. We'll be answering your questions about what it's like to start counselling for the first time.
Does someone have to be, kind of, in crisis to go to counselling? Is that the best thing to do? Or can you go if things are just feeling off and you're not really sure what's going on?
Laura McNeil
Yeah, I think that's another common misconception when it comes to counselling is that maybe you do have to be in crisis, but you really don't need to be. I know that at the centre, I've heard counsellors and people kind of use the car maintenance metaphor, right?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Laura McNeil
Where you typically don't wait until like, your engine completely fails, and you're on the side of the road, right? You want to if you notice a sound or an engine light goes off. Or just the regular maintenance, right, of coming and making sure things are OK.
Katherine Hurtig
To stay up to date on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe. We're available in your favourite podcast app. Living Fully is a production of Calgary Counselling Centre and recorded in Calgary on Treaty 7 Territory. Living Fully podcast is not a substitute or alternative for professional care or treatment. Calgary Counselling Centre and Counselling Alberta provide effective counselling to anyone in Alberta with no waitlist and no financial barriers. Find us online at calgarycounselling.com and counsellingalberta.com. For help across Canada and the United States, call 211. If you are outside of Canada and the U.S., seek help from your general medical practitioner.