Mindful Approaches When Caring For A Loved One
How to Show Up With Presence When You Feel Helpless
When You Feel Urgency to Do Something — But You Don’t Know What
This can be a common underlying and ongoing feeling for caregivers. Especially looking after loved ones who are moving toward the end stages of life.
Feeling torn in many directions, competing obligations, wanting to help but not knowing how. Feeling the tension of urgency in your body and mind, the need to want to make it better and the overwhelming desire to do something about ‘it’. But you don’t know what.
Understanding and putting into practice The Two Wings of Mindfulness can help us manage our own anxiety, increase self compassion and take better care of ourselves and our loved ones.
Learning to discern the difference between what is urgent, what can wait and where the sense of urgency is coming from can help bring us back into the room with our loved one — instead of being in our head, miles away.
What Mindfulness Offers
We can gain insights off the yoga mat or meditation cushion. We all have something to teach each other by sharing our own experiences. What I’ve continued to learn – especially following my dad’s passing is that mindfulness is an invitation to welcome all emotions like a special guest to the table. Not denying any of them. To embody and be present with all emotions as if they are welcome. As carers, we may shove a lot of what we feel down so we can get on with caring and coping. At times we flee because we don’t know what to do. Other times we fight because we are scared. Your mind miles away thinking of the uncertainty ahead, and you’re not really there with your loved one — even while they’re sitting right beside you. You get caught in fleeing, fighting, needing to know — often without realising it. You can start to crumble inside – this may have so many different outer manifestations.
An Unusual Lesson In Mindfulness – What Tom Jones Taught Me – Thanks to my StepDad
I was visiting my mum and stepdad. We are all lovers of music. My stepdad showed me a clip of Tom Jones singing on The Voice UK — a beautiful ballad he had written for his wife Linda as she was dying of cancer. “I Won’t Crumble If You Fall.”
The audience was silent. The other judges were in tears. I had a lump in my throat. You could hear the strength and power in his voice — and at the same time, the vulnerability and grief. All in one song, together.
My stepdad looked at me and said: “Strong man to be able to do that.”
We are all so vulnerable when we face losing those we love. The strength it takes to stay present with that vulnerability — without crumbling, without falling into a heap — is a real challenge. After watching this I was reading over some of the suggestions passed down by the yogis to help relieve worry – worry can effect the functioning of our stomach and other vital organs. The yogis suggest singing, humming, or ‘om-ing ’ – is a powerful and healing way to transform our worries. It doesn’t change death and dying – however it can change our physiology, our nervous system and most importantly how we are toward ourselves and our loved ones.
Mindfulness of Compassion
- Remember to Connect to What Brings You Steadiness & Ease. Ram Dass taught that you can’t embody the “loving rock” if you aren’t taking care of yourself — eating nourishing food, listening to music that soothes you. When you’re steady, the person you’re caring for has the chance to settle too. Our deep breathing can help others around us; nervous systems respond to each other. Our breathing can have a significant ripple effect on those around us. If we begin to take long slow deep breaths and get grounded – the people we are with have an opportunity to do the same. Everything is felt by our nervous systems.
2. Be Present — Notice the Urge to Be Productive or Make Yourself Busy
Caregiving at its core is about being. One of the most precious moments I shared with my dad was a little walk in the nursing home courtyard, just standing there while he touched the flowers.
Sit quietly nearby. A hand on their shoulder. Breathing. Sometimes what people in crisis need most is for you to be an unhurried, regulated nervous system at their side. Although I have taught many students and teachers practices that strengthen our ability to ‘just be’ — to put down whatever we’re doing and ‘be here now’ — we may come up against what is really there: grief and all its manifestations. Fear, sadness, worry, regret, anger — including anger at yourself.
Making ‘being’ there more important than denying your emotions is the very challenge of what it means to be human.
Inhale — Be here. Exhale — Now.
3. Let Them Lead — While Building Your Own Reserves (Inner Resources)
“Let the person you love (who is dying) lead the way. Don’t get caught up in thoughts that separate your connection.” You follow their pace and needs. And you protect your own sleep, food, and support — because depleted caregivers maybe able to show up physically – but perhaps not be truly there, present.You won’t crumble if they fall. You’ll stay present with them and care for yourself too, so you can be there. We need to have these conversations with our loved ones while we can – support each other so we can draw on those conversations to reassure us in the face of wondering what we should do. As Tom Jones wife said to Tom – ‘Don’t crumble if I fall’ – that was their conversation. If you have an opportunity to discuss the often ‘Tabu’ topics in this culture – perhaps this is the way you can allow your loved one who is nearing the end of their life to lead.
4. Urge Surfing — A Practice
When you feel the urge to fix something and you don’t know what: check in to see if it is your own anxiety, sadness, overwhelm – or theirs. This can help us be with emotion and let it move through you. This practice is a way to stay as clear and as present as we can. It’s also a way of taking care of ‘transference’ – where how we are feeling may get projected – which is normal in times of grief and loss. This is why compassion is a practice that is important and useful to help ease any further suffering.
Pause. Notice the urgency in your body.
Take seven deep breaths — ask that part of your body – what do you need me to hear, I’m here, I’m listening.
Reminding yourself of what’s most important. Invite the mind to be with you and your loved one as best as you can right now.
Ask: Is there something urgent that needs doing right now? A call to make? Medicine to administer? Food to prepare?
If yes — do that. Know you are breathing in. Know you are breathing out while you do it.
Is there something more urgent than becoming present to all the small things – opportunities to savour – the way the light hits the flowers in the room, or just holding their hand.
If no — let the urgency move through you. Sit with your loved one instead. Be still. That presence of being is not only for their sake — it will be what you remember when they’re gone. Those moments of truly being there with them in ‘all the small things,’ just like the song goes.
Taking Care of Your Fears of Death & Dying
After my dad passed, every time I leave my mum’s house, my throat tightens. I well up. It’s hard to swallow – the knowing that it is inevitable that we will be facing this again in some way shape or form. It’s the thought of losing those you love that tightens your throat, however it is the breath that reminds you right now they are still here – you are still here.
Getting Out The Door Is The Hardest Thing – You Are Not Alone
During this chapter of my life – I notice carers a lot more – barely making it through the yoga studio door. Myself included when I was right in the thick of losing my Dad. Getting there is absolutely the hardest part, and I take my hat off to anyone who makes it to the mat. It’s precisely why we need yoga. What helps is knowing you are not alone in it. A safe space where you can release the tension of holding back tears when you wanted to cry but didn’t in front of your loved one because you wanted to be strong for them. A place where stretches and breathing let go of what’s stuck, where energy flows freely again. It’s like coming back home to yourself. I remember sharing a Retreat with someone who had spent the last six years of her life being a devoted carer for her Mum and had lost herself completely in that devotion. Being able to take an hour out of your day or week helps you to stay connected.
Carers walk out a little more resourced, a little less overwhelmed than when they walked in. Their nervous system had permission to settle. And the most valuable thing of all — time, time just to be with themselves. Giving that time to yourself helps you remember how powerful this resource of time ‘just being’ really is. It’s transferable to the bedside.
I found more of Ram Dass’s work about caring for those dying after my dad had passed. I wish I’d discovered it sooner. Not that we get that time again, but there will be other moments when we need these skills. Mindfulness – especially one of its wings of ‘Compassion’ offers a softer landing. The sciences help us understand why sometimes we can’t be present, why we feel we could have handled things differently. And wisdom from those who’ve been there reminds us we’re not alone.
We Are All Walking Each Other Home
Caregiving is walking alongside someone in the garden, seeing and being with what is there. Some of the most meaningful moments happen in silence. In presence. Just being with each other. Enjoying every last mouthful of food, the sweetness of a sip of tea or hearing your favourite music.
When you can release the need to know what is going to happen next, or how you or your loved one will cope if things take a turn — you become available for what’s actually needed: your loving and kind attention and presence. Your strength to stay standing when everything in you wants to crumble. Our Yoga Mat and Communities, can be a space to piece ourselves back together again with compassion and give us the space we need to practice discernment.
A Mindful Love Note — An Offering
If you’re in the middle of caring for someone, you’ve been busy doing all the doing. Presence is your care. Your regulated nervous system, your deep breath, your ability to see into the eyes of your loved one and smile back — that is your care. Your self-compassion if and when you do flee or take a break is also a very important part of this. Doing it all isn’t always the best form of care – “being” – just may be.
Sometimes we teach to help us remember what we need to learn most. You are not alone in this. And there’s always something you can do — and quite possibly, while they are still with you. Learning to be and do nothing – is quite something.
Reach out for help if you notice the inner critic arising, trauma responses, feelings of hopelessness or helplessness or burnout.
Be compassionate with yourself – it is one of the wings of Mindfulness.
The other wing of Mindfulness is Discernment – a way to practice it so that we can actually be present for our loved ones – maybe to stop and ask –
‘Does this really need doing – can it wait so we can just be together? Is the urgency to need to do – my anxiety or theirs?’
– just incase that point needed a little reminder (for me it often does)
I believe a great way to return home – to be present – regardless of the answer to those questions above is to sing or dance together or if you cannot physically do that, perhaps remember times when you did – what a beautiful way to ‘walk each other home’ . We all need ways to anchor back home to the moment, to our bodies so we can be there for each other.
If your moments are limited and the person in front of you is precious to you – how do you choose to be with them in that moment?
– practice that on and off the yoga mat.
The light in me acknowledges and sees the light in you.
Namaste
Tammy xox
This blog draws on lived experience, the sciences of how our nervous systems work, and wisdom from those who have walked this path before us.
→ Mindful Mentoring Program — 1:1 support for carers and families
→ Mindful Cancer Care — specific support for those caring for someone with cancer
→ Yoga Energy — yogaenergy.com.au — restorative classes on the Sunshine Coast
