Extreme Chronic Stress

One of the kind people who recently responded to the Caregivers' Survey wrote about how her BBS adult child had just been admitted to a psych ward for suicide attempt, and how she, the caregiver, worried about her own mental health. This is an all too frequent family problem when the family is dealing with extremely stressful situations over a long period of time. Some of the family begin to feel helpless and hopeless, others feel guilty thinking it's their fault that things seem to be going so badly.

30 years ago that was right where I found myself. Helpless, and feeling hopeless, guilty, and wanting all the emotional pain to end. I attempted suicide several times, but fortunately the final time I ended up on a ventilator having had a "near death experience," that changed my life.
30 years later I've been married for 25 years to a man who loves me, have 2 homes, and although my life is not perfect, (whose is?) it's light-years better than I could have dreamed of back then when I thought all was lost and the world would be a better place without me.
I underwent several years (I'm a slow learner!) of therapy with many good (and some not so good--dropped them and found good ones) therapists, determined to never let myself get to that hopeless/helpless place again.

THE MESSAGE: Chronic, severe stress changes one's ability to make good judgements that enhance one's quality of life. Folks suffering under chronic severe stress can make decisions that are self-defeating, although that is not their intention. These people get blamed for not getting their life together and for creating drama. Talking with family/friends about the obvious stressors helps, but is not enough in most cases, to make things really better when dealing with chronic severe stress.
Misuse/abuse/dependence on alcohol, prescription, and illegal drugs do actually help in the short term, but are disastrous in the long run, making what is already a difficult situation so much worse. Misuse of these chemicals affect the brain at the cellular level making it more difficult to make good decisions. Chronic stress affects the body's ability to fight off viruses and can make us sick.
Chronic severe stress drains the body of energy, and makes us feel tired all the time.
It causes stomach problems and high blood pressure and contributes to a host of other serious ailments. All good reasons to honestly evaluate what level of stress we're dealing with, ask ourselves whether it is chronic or situationally short-term, and take a hard look at how it has been affecting us. If it becomes painfully clear that you've been working hard and doing your very best and yet you're suffering under the symptoms of severe chronic stress it's time for a change... for the better.
WHAT WORKS: Supportive individual and family counseling, with empathetic and caring therapists who are trained in how to deal with families under extreme, chronic stress works. If you know of a family that is under this level of chronic stress, and exhibit the symptoms it causes, be supportive, and suggest counseling. There's every likelihood that your suggestion will be rebuffed initially, because few people want to admit that they can't "handle" the stuff that life sends them. But with consistent caring support, they may at some point agree to make an appointment and get some help.
We all need to help when we can, and know when to suggest that professionals could help, too.
It may not always feel that way, but you caregivers, family members, and BBS folks are heroes!

REMINDER: If you haven't taken the Caregivers Survey, PLEASE do so now. We have 15 respondents so far & need lots more in order to get good data. Only takes 5 minutes or less.

Click here to take survey

FALL IS HERE

You'd think my daughter would have less on her plate now that fall is here. Our BBS child, Ian, is in residential school during the week, and his brother is done with fall baseball, but my daughter is very busy. She's created a lovely necklace business that is in it's infancy, for moms who have kids in sports, and for grandmoms with grandchildren's names and their birthday crystals. Lovely. She is also working 30+ hours a week - more until Christmas, with holiday promotions needed by her employer - Nintendo. She loves her job, and her kids, and her husband, and their home, and she does so much.
I'm back in our home in Blue Ridge VA now, after 2 months at our Nebraska home, and although I only left 3 days ago, she's already feeling the loss of someone to help out - the things I love doing: picking up Thomas from school when she has to work late, driving Ian down to his school in Nebraska City early on Monday mornings and picking him back up on Friday afternoons. I love spending that time with the boys, and then going shopping and out to lunch with my daughter.
It takes more than just the parents of BBS kids to care for them, as your responses to our BBS Caregivers' Survey shows. (If you haven't yet taken the survey, PLEASE take 5 minutes to do it at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BBScaregiversurvey)
And, being the grandparent of BBS and non-BBS kids is so very rewarding, but I don't need to tell y'all that, do I!

CAREGIVER SURVEY

Reminder to take the BBS Caregiver Survey:
Click here to take survey

ENERGY DRAIN?

I think about folks who are caregivers for BBS kids a lot. I see my daughter take on more and more responsibilities, projects, and tasks. Sometimes I wonder if she even considers asking for help. She seems so self-reliant, so smart, so creative, and so energetic, but at some point something's got to give.
So my blog today is about asking for help. On little things, on big tasks, whatever.
And we as the parents of these caregivers don't always know when to offer help, what kinds of things to offer help for, and how best to help. And when to insist that our kids ask for help even when they don't think they need it.
I'm getting older, have had some medical issues over the past few years that left me debilitated for several months, and as a result I have less physical strength and stamina than I did 5 years ago, even factoring in that I'm now 5 years older. So I can't help my daughter's family in some of the ways I'd like. And most of the time I live a thousand miles away from them.
Here's a short wish list for my daughter: a housecleaner who could come in once a week to do deep cleaning; someone to help with lawn care, winterizing & gutter cleaning, and snow removal. Someone who could do their laundry once a week.
What is your wish list?

Caregiver Survey

I'm starting to get some responses on the survey, (see previous post below) and am gratified to see interest so soon! When I developed the survey I had some assumptions about what stresses would be noted by most caregivers, and happily, I was wrong! I say happily, because I've never developed a survey that completely validated my assumptions, which means I was able to learn something.... Yaay!!
I'll be reporting to y'all on the results to each of the questions after we get a bunch more caregivers filling it out. (Maybe even include some graphs, if I can configure the software correctly). It is so kind of folks to take the time to fill it out, and some took a few extra minutes to add notes, that are also very helpful and gives me information for future surveys and blog posts.
More Later,
Teresa

BBS CAREGIVER SURVEY

Please take the Caregiver Survey by going to the link below.
I'll publish the results in a future post.
Thank You!
Click here to take survey