Caring For The Carer

Nycole Lloyd

• Publisher: Nycole Lloyd
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780648688839
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Mental Health & Wellbeing

You could be a professional carer or someone who’s ‘fallen into’ the role - caring for a loved one who’s at the end of their life, an ageing parent, or a family member or a friend who’s living with a disability.  
You’re looking after them, but how are you looking after you?  
This book is NOT the definitive guide to caring.  Nope.  I couldn’t cover all the aspects of being a carer within this small publication.  The role of a carer has many variations and I don’t know it all. This book IS a great framework for you to start with. I’m drawing on my experience as a carer, counsellor, coach, and doula to give you some practical ideas with a mix of emotional support.
This book will cover four main areas:

•    Self-awareness, acceptance, and resilience
•    Not losing track of who YOU are within the caring journey
•    Practical ideas to develop support networks
•    Further development of self-awareness to know when to ask for help and how to support yourself.

This book is for you.  It’s about acknowledging that you matter, and it’s about putting your needs as a high priority on the list of things to take care of.  YOU.
Testimonial - Wendy McGuigan
Absolutely wonderful!  I wish I’d had it to read ten years ago. Asking for help is the hardest part, and Nycole covered this perfectly.
Author Bio
Founder of Living, Loving, Dying, Nycole Lloyd, is an end-of-life Doula who is committed to improving end-of-life literacy.  
She is a Counsellor and Strategic Intervention coach who works with people to ensure their deaths are logistically and administratively ‘easy’.  
Nycole supports families and their loved ones understand how to support each other and grieve well.  She specialises in: family and carer support; grief and bereavement support; end-of-life education; doula services; and family-lead funerals.

Chapter 4

The Emotional Scorecard

Don’t panic, this isn’t a judgement of your emotional performance. This is, however, a very simple system that was developed to help you check in with yourself and articulate where you are on the spectrum of ‘okayness’. Really, it’s about how you’re doing.

This is a way to observe your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviours – when it’s all good, when you’re going off track, and then when it’s really bad for you. It can be a useful tool to help identify what your triggers are, when you need to rely on the support systems that we’ve discussed, and how you de-escalate the issues causing you most concern.

This system helps you to better identify how an imbalance in your internal emotions shows up in your body, your mind, and your behaviours. This whole system is based on regular traffic lights, or traffic signals, that you see when you’re out driving a car or at other intersections.

The Emotional Scorecard looks like this:

Green Zone – It’s All Good

In terms of your emotional spectrum, the Green means you’re going along fine; you’re able to respond to life and the changing environment. It means you’re coping well. You’re in control of your life; you’re eating well, you’re participating in the things that bring you joy, you’re sleeping well, and you feel as though your stress levels are low. All the things that feel good.

Amber Zone – Caution Ahead

In the Amber Zone, things are probably not so good and you may have shifted within your ‘okayness’ spectrum.

It can be a warning that if you continue along this path then you could be heading for trouble. You can still take corrective action here, and this is the area where if you’re not aware what’s going on then you might get into trouble, but if you work out what you need to do (for yourself or with the help of others) then you can stay safe and emotionally okay.

Red Zone - Stop

The Red Zone is usually a sign that you need to stop. Something is definitely not okay.

This is when you’re not coping, and you need to take immediate action. Generally, by this stage you’re going to need help from outside sources, whether that’s your friends and family or professionals around you, but, generally, assistance is going to be required.

Let’s consider this from the perspective of having a known and manageable medical condition.

For example, if you know that you have diabetes then you know what it feels like when everything is healthy and well and your blood sugar is balanced. You know how it feels in your body when it’s in the Green Zone.

If you haven’t eaten for a while and your blood sugar drops, you would know the signs and symptoms of that. You might feel confused or dizzy, and you might start to feel a little shaky. This is what you would call the Amber Zone. When you start to feel unwell, you know there are steps that need to be taken in order to change your blood sugar levels. Whether that’s eating food, taking medication, drinking water, or actually stopping and sitting down and resting, you would know what steps you need to take in order to halt the progression of the blood sugar issues.

If you don’t take corrective action in this Amber Zone, you are heading towards potential trouble. This is the Red Zone. For a diabetic, you might experience sweating, chills and weakness. Now, this would definitely mean getting outside help. You would want someone to ring an ambulance and possibly get you to hospital. This is the, ‘You’ve tipped over the edge and you are really in trouble now’ area.

Most people who are living with a medical condition have learnt how to manage it. They understand what it feels like in each of those areas: when it’s all good, when there’s warning signs, and when to stop.

In the emotional scorecard system, it’s not too dissimilar. The main difference is, for most of us, you don’t always have clear indicators; you don’t always see the signs and symptoms quite so easily. This is why it’s good to develop some useful observational skills and self-awareness by learning to look out for your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

Remember section one, when you did the breathing exercises? Those exercises are a great tool to help you connect with yourself and check in on how you are doing.

To help develop your observation and awareness skills there are three types of questions to ask in each of the different zones:

1.Thoughts - What is going on in your mind? What kind of thoughts are you thinking?

2.Body - What’s going on in your body? How is it feeling?

3.Behaviours - How do you treat yourself and others? How do you act towards or react to people and circumstances?

Let me give you some examples.

GREEN

1.When you’re in the Green Zone, what’s your natural style of thinking? You might be thinking, ‘Hey, I’ve got this. This is a challenging job that I’ve taken on, but I’m really proud of myself for what we’ve managed to achieve so far. I’m really honoured that I’m able to look after my parents”.

2.In terms of what is going on in the body, what feels ‘normal’ and comfortable? You might be smiling and be feeling energised. You would probably feel healthy and well, getting plenty of sleep, and generally feeling good.

3.When you look at how you would be treating yourself and others how does that show up? You might feel that you are creating opportunities to enjoy the things you love. You would be eating well and looking after your physical and mental health. Most likely your self-talk is positive and you’re patient and helpful to those around you. You treat yourself and others with respect.

AMBER

1.In the Amber Zone your thoughts could be more like, “I’m not sure that I can do this, this is more challenging than I thought”. Often this is where you start to have doubts and concerns creep in. For example, “I don’t know if this is the right decision I’ve made. I’ve got all this information and it’s really hard to discern which is the right answer”. Those thoughts might feed back into what’s happening in yo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Dear Carers,
• Self-awareness, acceptance and resilience
• You and Them… Not You for Them
• Practical ideas to develop support networks
• The Emotional Scorecard
• That’s a wrap…
• Author Bio
• Back Cover