Three Ways to Care Well for a Caregiver

Be present. Here’s how humans work: we must feel safe in order to care at all about anyone else ¹. It sounds harsh but it’s a part of survival. Only when people feel reasonably secure that all of their needs are met that they are able to care for others. Caregivers are doubly cursed in that they are required to give the performance of a lifetime in the caregiving act, but they are likely feeling somewhat to totally less than safe because their partner is compromised.

So basically, people need to feel safe to be great caregivers and when your partner has cancer, it’s the least safe you can feel ever. This is where a great network of friends and loved ones can care for the caregiver which will trickle right on down to the patient.

As a caregiver to a caregiver, you don’t have to do anything but be there. You don’t have to offer solutions or advice. You don’t have to be the rescuer or the ultimate pain eraser or fixer. You just have to be present. Sit with them. Hang out with them. Talk with them. Your presence allows for connection to occur, but mostly it just creates a sense of safety for the caregiver…and safety really matters.

Be a witness. Caregivers need social support to hear the things they are experiencing and have someone willing to witness their experience. Feeling strong emotions actually triggers a need to share with someone. It’s also evolutionary to make sure we stay safe and connected and get all the things we need. Turns out, our biology compels us to reach out to others when we are our most vulnerable because that’s where we get the best results.

Simply, people in stressful situations need to tell stories, but storytelling is complicated, especially if the storyteller wants to gain psychological benefit from the story.  The best benefits of sharing are dependent on having a good listening partner.

To have a storytelling experience that is beneficial, the listeners have to allow, attend, and acknowledge the story ².  Basically, as a listener you need to ask the caregiver to share what’s happening to them, you need to pay attention to what they say, and you need to reflect on their story showing that you heard what they said.

Doing this is what is called a communal response—which means that your listening skills help a person feel loved, accepted, and understood which, in turn, helps them to regulate their emotional distress.

Communal responses are vital because they help a person experience compassion that is emotionally regulating, but they are also vital because a person can’t do this on their own. No matter how strong, capable and heroic a caregiver might be, this is a resource that they absolutely cannot provide for themselves. They are relying on a network of other supporters to provide this necessary social experience.

Be ready. Helping caregivers (or any human, really) requires a communal response—which means that you let that person know they are loved and cared for, but it also requires an resourcing response—which means you help the caregiver reflect on the way they are thinking about their experiences and the resources that they have to deal with their experiences ³.Resourcing responses sound like telling the person they are competent or effective and reminding them that they are doing great at a very hard task. It can also sound like asking the caregiver to think about how they are going to respond to the stress and what tools they have to conquer their struggles. This is where the listener becomes the coach that reminds them that they’ve made it this far and need to keep going.

The resourcing response finishes the work started by the compassionate response. By listening with compassion, you allow the caregiver to feel more positive, but the resourcing response is necessary for emotional recovery. In other words, just providing a compassionate listening ear is a good start, but the finish is to help the caregiver recover from their emotional experiences by reminding them that they are strong and capable and can persevere.