How Do Caretakers Feel?

What most people with little to no real knowledge about mental health don’t know is how many caretakers actually feel.  Many times the focus is so much on the patient that the caretakers needs get lost.  Yes, most caretakers are family members and they for the most part do love the persons they care for. . . But they also have very real feelings about the very persons they care for.  Most of these persons are kind enough not to voice them to their care receivers, but it may be evident in other ways such as their behaviour, body language or things they may say to their close friends or relatives.

The drive down the road to recovery
 can be a long one, to not only
the patient, but to the willing caregiver.

Many times caretakers although they love the persons they care for feel embarrassed.  Embarrassed even when the recipient is acting quite normal.  Embarrassed that this person they are with acts different even when on medication. Embarrassed to be with this person that appears to be crazy.  I am a person whom has been on both sides of the fence.  Once again I straddle the tightrope and balance between knowledge of past and present.  I’ve been the ‘care receiver’ and also the caregiver.  And although while I was the care receiver persons who looked out for me never made me feel their embarrassment, from my experience as the caregiver I can relate. 

A caregiver feels stressed, because this caregiver has to manage their own life and now has to manage their recipient’s life as well, and might I add, generally with great opposition from the very receiver.  You as the caregiver have to do what’s best for the receiver, even though they may not believe it’s in their best interest.

A caregiver has to remind themselves not to over extend themselves to the point that they are of no use to themselves.  After all you can’t help anyone else if you can’t help yourself. 

The caregiver feels uncared for, especially in the case of a child.  Many children of mentally ill persons take on the caregiver’s hat at an early age, to become the parent, to their parent and they themselves feel uncared for.  They have to be the ones cooking dinner, cleaning the house and making the household work, all the while still a child.

Neglected, like this house
so long forgotten.

The toll of stress weighs heavy on caretakers and at times they feel unable to cope.  I remember being at school at a meeting where counsellors came in to talk about depression and suicidal thoughts with teens, and there right in front of my whole class I cried.  I left the room and a counsellor followed me to try and aid me, but I kept tight lipped I didn’t tell a word of what my family is going through.

As I got older, my mom got well; but it was still evident that she was different.  I felt duty-bound to protect her from persons’ that wanted to treat her negatively.

Later in life I prided myself as to being responsible by helping her.  Time passed, I got older and was financially able to take care of myself, and although I was in Canada, and my mother now lived in the West Indies, I was grateful to help in ways that I could.  I would send her gifts of fancy dress scarfs on the regular for a time.


And soon enough I was also living in the Caribbean with her and my contribution to her life was now a labour of love.  She had come very far from the woman I once knew.  Now she was working to support herself and always taking her medication.  Our relationship now had changed.  She was able to take care of herself and now we were not just mother and daughter, we we're friends.

Rebuilding our relationship
 on an old, solid foundation.