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Coping Strategies for Caregivers
- Reinforce your identity separate from the patient's identity.
- Always move from your center, not the patient's center.
- Tap into your unused, unlimited inner strengths and resources.
- Continually acknowledge all feelings - both positive and negative. Reinforce positive feelings.
- Be responsible and take control.
- Get information and get help.
- Work out your own plan for surviving whole.
- Accept what cannot be changed.
- Eliminate the words "blame" and "excuse" from your vocabulary.
- Make not promises about the future.
- Explore and face the worse possible events in your future.
- Use respite care regularly for extended blocks of time.
- Develop an emotional detachment from your caregiving tasks.
- Train yourself to be pro-active rather than reactive.
- Enjoy humor regularly. Humor assists the immune system.
- Get a support system that works for you.
- Be flexible, willing to learn, to adapt, to change and grow at any age.
- "Regroove" your brain with positive reinforcement.
- Develop an exercise regimen for both the body and soul.
- Look for the small joys.
Source: Lela Knox Shanks, 1994
Compiled by the Lincoln/Greater Nebraska Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association, 1999.
