Topic Tuesday// Calling all Carers! // Tuesday 28th March 2023 5:30-7PM AEDT

Welcome @Snowie2000. Great to have you here with us 😊 Feel free to share any thoughts and/or ideas you have as we go. We'd love to hear your contributions!

• Knowing when things feel too hard before you start to feel overwhelmed.
• Letting the person, you care about know that whilst you are there for them as much as you can be you also need to take care of yourself.
• Seeking your own supports often as when you are caring for someone you can be walking on eggshells with them (because they may already feel very overwhelmed etc so you may tend to walk gently with them) so having someone you can talk around what is going on in an honest way. I found it better to talk to a friend because it was too much talking to family as they were emotionally involved and on occasion made things worse.
• Learning and accepting that guilt may be part of caring and that’s okay. Guilty that you don’t have enough time for the person you care for, you don’t have all the answers, you don’t have enough time for your family, your friends etc. It is impossible to be everything to everyone.

Hi all, I'm not sure how this discussion works. I'm just reading the posts so far. I am here to try to get advice re boundaries. Partner and 3 kids all have autism and variations on depression/ anxiety/ ADHD/ etc etc. I am desperate to get some counselling and time to exercise. I don't know how to arrange that with 24/7 demands on me.

Welcome! @Snowie2000 Thank you for joining us - you're welcome to read along and reply to anything you want to, and ask any questions you may have 🙂

hello @Bunniekins , @Krishna

Learning and accepting that guilt may be part of caring ---- I have found this one is my big one @FloatingFeather

A little tip I’ll share on boundaries just in case it might be useful for anyone else reading this is around diagnostic labels. Something I've found super helpful for myself is being able to attribute behaviour that might otherwise be super hurtful or upsetting for me personally to the diagnosis, because this allows me to separate the person that I care about/ love from the issue that they live with and in so doing, depersonalise it a bit. It’s not necessarily them- it's the issue that they live with impacting them and causing this to occur.

Hi @Snowie2000 @Appleblossom thank you also for joining us tonight and sharing with us. It is really nice to have you with us as well 🙂

Hi @Shaz51 Oh guilt 😞 Damned if I do damned if I don’t when it comes to the only care I can provide these days being financial. Guilt for sending money not really knowing where it’s being spent and guilt if I don’t send it in case my girl really does need it for food.

How might you prepare yourself to step into your caring role?

@FloatingFeather

Welcome! @Krishna Thank you for sharing this discussion with us 🙂