As much as you would like to have a fantastic relationship with your aging family member, not every relationship is that great. You and your senior may have had trouble with each other for years and now your help is necessary for her.

Here are some tips that can help.

Relationships Have History

All relationships have history to them and sometimes that history isn’t as pretty as you want it to be. You and your aging adult might both have reasons for your feelings and those reasons aren’t likely to change now. But if you’re holding onto that history now, it’s going to get in the way of what you’re trying to do as a caregiver.

Assess Your Reasons

Take an objective look at why you’re being your senior’s caregiver now. Many caregivers go into these sorts of situations because they feel obligated to take care of their family member. There’s nothing wrong with heeding that sense of necessity, but if that’s your only reason, you might need to rethink things. Often realizing that you would want someone to help you can be enough of a reason for you to try to work through what you’re experiencing.

Don’t Expect Things to Change Magically

One mistake that you don’t want to make is to believe that if you take care of your senior that it will magically all be much better. This is a transactional sort of belief and it isn’t realistic. If you’re going to continue to take care of your senior even though you don’t get along with her, you need to be able to do so without the expectation that you’re going to get something in return.

Practice Detachment Along with Compassion

Detachment is a technique that can allow you to let go of expectations and anxiety around situations. With your senior, detachment allows you to compassionately provide care without being attached to a particular outcome. Home care services providers can help you to learn how to care for your senior using detachment. Home care services providers are also instrumental in allowing you to create space for yourself within caregiving, especially when you’re not detaching as well as you would like to.

Remember to take care of yourself in this situation. You have an obligation to yourself to ensure that you’re okay when everything is said and done. If you can safely be the primary caregiver for your aging family member, then that’s something that you might want to explore with extra help. If you can’t, there’s no shame in finding another solution.

For Home Care Services in Atoka TN, please contact the caring staff at Personal Care Services MidSouth today!