30. That's not way to speak to yourself!

ONE DAY AT A TIME
Meditations for Carers
 
30 That’s no way to speak to yourself!

Romans 8.1

Guilt. It lurks, waiting for the inevitable: you get exhausted and say something less than kind, do something unfriendly. You find yourself blaming your loved one for your feeling of being trapped. You get cross with him/her for being uncooperative or just plain nasty.

You feel guilty that you’re not doing this caring as well as the person you met at the carers’ group – or as well as you’d like to. You feel guilty because you’ve handed over your responsibilities to a paid carer who comes in to help and seems to be doing so much better than you. You feel guilty because you just can’t cope any more and you feel it’s really time for your loved one to be cared for in a residential home. You feel guilty because you’re actually enjoying the freedom and time off during your respite break.

There is so much we can feel guilty about – from our distaste about some of the tasks caring involves (see 33 ‘The messy stuff ’) to our fear of what may be round the corner. Secretly – and maybe not very deep down – we think we’re selfish, failures, bad, even...


Taken from One Day at a Time: Meditations for Carers by Dorothy M.Stewart