Whether it’s a family member you are caring for or you are a paid caregiver, you need to understand the importance you play in the person’s life you are caring for.
The person you are caring for is fragile, vulnerable, and needs your help.
Think of them as you would a baby, in that they need tender gentle loving care, and treat them as such. We understand it can be hard at times, because adults can be grumpy, they may not agree with the way you see things, and some may even argue with you, but it’s your job to take care of them the best way that you can.
A lot of the people that require adult care are older, and it’s possible that their mental health has deteriorated over time, so sometimes they can be a pain to work with. Which is probably one of the hardest areas most adult care workers face, is the mental challenge of trying to help somebody that doesn’t treat them how they want to be treated.
It’s comparable to going into work every day and doing a fantastic job with your work load, but at the same time your boss keeps on telling you how much of a bad job you are doing. This would make you feel under-appreciated and give you low confidence when it comes to job performance.
We wanted to learn more about how some of these adult care providers handled the stress of their job, so we decided to interview a few of them to get a feel of some of the techniques and strategies they implemented in their work to help them perform their jobs.
One of the first people we interviewed was a lady by the name of Mary G. She was not a paid caregiver as she was caring for her mother, because her mother came to the age where she could no longer take care of herself. She said that while the job is hard to do, whenever she feels that it’s to the point where she feels frustrated or stressed out, she simply reminds herself about the love she has for her mother, and at one point in her life her mother was the one caring for her, and that makes the negative feelings and emotions just go away.
Another part of Mary’s job which makes it even harder is she needs to foot the expenses for a lot of the care on her own dime. Meaning food, medication, and other necessities come out of her pocket. She penny pinches on food by shopping sales and clipping coupons, and for medication she shops discount drugs Canada to help cut back on medication expenses.
This is just one story of the thousands of people that care for their own family members and it really goes to show you the time, dedication, and effort they put into their responsibilities.