
What to Do When Your Best Efforts Aren’t Good Enough
My neighbor George is not a daughter but he’s certainly part of the daughterhood. You see, until a year ago, he spent most of his time taking care of his parents in the home they shared.
Now, from my perspective, he was the best kind of son any parents could hope to have and he fully embodied the spirit of honoring your mother and father.
But from his perspective, he was constantly failing.
Once he relayed a story to me about how he was in the kitchen one night making dinner for his parents – both bed bound in different rooms upstairs. As he’s running the food trays up and down the stairs, as he did for every meal, suddenly his mother calls out, “Come sit with me.”
So he sat with her for a little while. The problem was that, there was no amount of sitting with her – short of staying there for the entire evening – that could have fully alleviated the boredom and loneliness she was likely feeling. It was an impossible situation — but only one of the many that he faced every day.
Daughters, sons, spouses and other family members face situations like this all the time… working hard, doing the economic equivalent of $500 billion worth of caregiving (that’s a lot of hard work my friends) and yet feeling as if they’re never doing enough.
It’s human nature to “failure-ize” what we do and who we are — to take any accomplishment and identify how it could be better. But, there are some very good reasons that caring for aging parents puts you especially at risk for failure-izing.
First of all there’s your biologically and socially conditioned childhood desire to please your parents and make them happy. You don’t cast that off just because you’re grown up…… which is why it really stings when you aren’t meeting their needs.
The second problem is that your parents’ declining physical and mental ability is an unavoidable — and largely unfixable, unwinnable problem. That’s not saying that the comfort George provided his mother didn’t make a huge difference — but it wasn’t going to fix the fundamental root of her anxiety…that she was nearing the end of her life.
And, finally — and it’s something we talk about a lot here at daughterhood — there are a lot of larger systems (healthcare, workplace, economic) working against you, that you have to wrestle with all the time.
Mix all of these things together in the same pot and you have a wicked failure-ization stew and the feeling that even your best efforts aren’t good enough.
The only antidote to this feeling is to address your own mindset…. To begin to replace failure-ization with a new way of seeing things.
Here are 3 effective ways to do that.
Acknowledge That the Personal Is Universal. Caring for an aging parent creates a lot of situations that feel very personal. For example, when my friend Mary’s mom yelled at her for cleaning a bunch of junk out from underneath the dining room table, it made her cry…. even though she rarely ever cries. Just like when she was little, her tears were about being yelled at by her MOM — for doing something she thought was helping.
What Mary needs to realize is that she has not personally failed — she’s actually just experienced a very normal part of the adjustment process when parents and their adult children start to shift roles. It’s not a personal failing — it’s a normal part of this life phase.
The paradox here is that this very personal exchange — fraught with a complex collection of feelings and history — is 100% UNIVERSAL. Some version of this is happening in practically every family that’s dealing with a frail older adult.
Put Your Contributions in Perspective. If you fly to retrieve your difficult father from his home, and then host and care for him in your home for six weeks, should your response to this situation be pride in what you’ve done or guilt because you couldn’t fly back with him (even though you’ve made sure that there are others ready and willing to help)?
The problem is many daughters focus on the one thing they can’t do; instead of the many, MANY things they’ve done and will do in the future. So rather than feeling satisfied with their performance, they judge themselves as failures.
It’s a simple matter of perspective. First, take a mental inventory of all that you have done. And, second, give yourself an internal high-five. If you can find a good friend to help you with this, great! The key here is learning to reassure yourself that your efforts are good enough.
Recognize that It’s Okay To Choose You. Or, in other words, it’s okay to set boundaries with your parent(s). In fact, it’s critical…. Because, when you bend your personal boundaries out of guilt, the price is high and the relief is very temporary. For example, you fly back across the country with your Dad as he requested and then he wants you to stay two weeks. There will always, always be a point where you’ll have to say no. So say it when you want to say it, not after you’ve bent yourself into even more of a pretzel.
Read This: 5 Lessons in Setting Boundaries that Every Caregiver Must Learn
I was just at a Caring Across Generations conference, in a room filled with dedicated family and professional caregivers who had traveled at personal expense to contribute to a national movement to transform how we care in this country. I was blown away by these folks… their dedication and intelligence. And several times, I heard the same thing…. “I feel guilty for being here.”
I wanted to jump up and down and yell, “It’s okay to choose YOU sometimes.”
But the truth is, It’s more than okay —- It’s essential.
Well said, as usual! One year after my mother’s death, I still wrestle with fustration over how the healthcare system often works against elders, focusing instead on maiximzing profits / collection of the elder’s hard-earned Medicare dollars. As a lawyer, the infuriating thing to me is how often they were wrong about what Medicare provides.
Always grateful to see your wisdom in my in- box! I am coming to the end of my journey with my mom– I’ve taken care of her for 5 years while she lived an “independent” life – I planned her social outings, met her medical needs and her emotional needs. I became her short term memory with constant reminders and her walking support. Yes, your wisdom made me look at what I did do and realize that I provided a Herculean job for those 5 years as she slipped down the slippery slope of “elderly-ness.”
Now I sit at 4:30am and watch her breathing – wondering if I need to apply more hospice meds to avert a crisis that is happening so often I am losing count. In this battlefield, that will end with a loss, I feel like a failure. When I told my mom she could go back home under hospice care and be in a calm and peaceful setting – I over promised! Her body isn’t cooperating with calm and peaceful– and I meet her pleas to “get someone” with phone calls to people that are just voices on a phone. The home health aides are starting to arrive- people tell me once a plan is in place this stage will get easier. I am grateful for the hope but, just as my mom was happy to grab on to the “calm and peaceful hospice promise”… I hold out for “the plan” that will make life easier.
This is the hardest job in life- taking care of an elderly parent. I thank you for walking along side us with wisdom and encouragement.
I love this word…failurizing. We are so afraid to do this as caregivers. We’ve let our loved one down is what plays out in my head. Now what I say to myself…”I did the best I could and that’s good.” And I can get up, brush myself off and give myself a pat on the back. Next. I’ve been caregiving for over nine years…if I didn’t learn how to do this I couldn’t survive.
I was talking to one of the nurses that runs the Adult Day Care where I take my mother sometimes when I have appointments. I was feeling like a failure for taking her there and I said, “Sometimes I feel like I am doing this all wrong.” That lovely, kind person smiled and said, ” Caregivers aren’t doing it wrong, they’re doing it!” I have cherished those words and remind myself often that I AM doing it.
Your blog posts seem to speak directly to my heart. Caring for my Mon who has become more and more immobile, and my Dad who with all good intentions is trying the best he can to help, I constantly struggle with thinking I can do more. There is no time to devote to my own well being, and trying to ensure I make time for my sweet and understanding husband only adds to the pressure and guilt. Thank you for the reminders that we are not alone as caregivers. 💕
I’m an elder reading these comment’s. My goal is to try to understand why m
y daughter hold’s a grudge against me, stems from when she was eight years old, and I hurt her feelings pertaining to her weight, which the idea was imprinted in my brain from my own mother. Sad. All of my daughter’s and my argument’s all seem to end up how I made her feel at 8 when she started to gain weight. Our arguments aren’t about weight to begin with. It seems she loves to argue. She’s in a virtual intimate life on her PC. She screams at this guy day after day. She wakes me up at 5:30AM’ I have only been in bed since 2AM. I really think we are both sleep deprived. Makes for conflicks. Yes?? She thinks I should leave her residence. I am 78 Years old, she is 55 years old. I really think she’s in the throws of menapause, maybe post. I, for 18 years or more have been a professional care-giver, CNA, CHHA, this is why I have been reading here, to help our relationship be better. I imagine she is tired.She asked me to sign over my finances to her, and I asked if she is trustworthy to share with her two brothers. She flew off in a rage. Financially, I’m not able to rent anywhere. I will be homeless. My son’s,I don’t know, if they would be willing to help.