The sub-title to my book The Cqregiver’s Choice is Find Strength and Serenity by Changing Your Mind. Sometimes, as I read that sub-title, I think it sounds too easy–as if changing one’s mind were as simple as changing one’s shirt. But it’s not simple to make changes in the way one thinks; it’s a lifelong job, and I’m still working on it.
One of the problems with mind-changing is that the main tool required is total honesty. Do you really want serenity? Or are you thriving on the drama of family upsets and your sense of being put upon as a caregiver? Do you get a higher charge out of negative energy–constant griping, little feuds, gossip, gloomy scenarios–than you get out of positive energy? Most of us do. One summer, I decided that for the space of thirty days I would not say one negative thing. I monitored my words and reported only positive, constructive happenings in my life. I could tell by the end of the month that the people around me were bored stiff with me and my positive conversation. To prove to myself that it wasn’t a personal thing, I then spoke to the same people in a different way, telling them of my little dramas and failures and the injustices done to me. My listeners perked up right away, glad to hear my sad stories and to tell me of their sadder ones. We love a good sob story. Negative charge is quick and hot and interesting.
But when I was in the midst of caregiving, I didn’t have enough emotional stamina left to expend it in dramatic battles with myself, my patients, or the medical community. Negative energy no longer gave me a lift. I began to desire deeply a different way of dealing with the turmoil of life. But I can’t give you that desire. Noone else can give you that desire. Only you can change your mind. Yet if you truly want to calm the burning in your stomach, to sleep at night instead of re-running the day’s tragic moments, to find the peacefulness that allows you to deal with caregiving in a sensible, productive way, you can do it.
First, be honest. Examine what’s in your mind. Because my conversations with other caregivers have shown me that relatives can be a huge negative problem to caregivers, I suggest that you begin with your perception of your relatives. In your stubborn desire that they should help you in the caregiving, have you overlooked situtations in their lives that preclude helping you? Are they too far away, too broke, too emotionally or physically fragile? Was their relationship with the patient unpleasant or more difficult than yours? Maybe it’s true that they can’t help you. But even if the truth is just that they won’t help you, can you change them? Be more honest. Would you rather keep up the old exhausting pattern of fighting with them than to change your mind?
Or take your patient. If your loved one has a terminal disease such as my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease or my husband’s cancer, will it do you any good to deny that the patient is truly ill, to refuse to accept knowledge of the condition and its likely outcome? Denial is like a dense smog that prevents your seeing how to take practical, loving action in the present. There is something wondrously calming in saying, “What is IS.” When you can see the problem clearly, you can begin to see realistic things you can do to deal with it. When you accept, for instance, that the doctor isn’t ever going to be immediately available to answer your questions, you find other ways to get information from him, and you learn what you can do on your own to aid your loved ones. No point in dialing the phone again and again, feeling exasperated and neglected, if your doctor is at a clinic on the other side of a mountain pass (as our doctor often was.)
There are tricks to reforming one’s own mind. If you deeply desire to be more serene, your mind will finally help you, but you have to dig different channels for it. Notice when you start down a rut of negative thought. Stop. Picture something that brings you pure pleasure–an object, a person, an activity. See yourself stepping deliberately out of the rut and following the object of peace and pleasure. If your mind wants to veer back to the rut–the chasm–and it will, deliberately stop it again and renew your positive picture. Every time restate your desire to feel peaceful. Finally, your mind will be moved by your desire and it will respond to your re-channeling. All of the good things about positive energy will be your reward. You’ll sleep better, be more creative, be more productive. But I can’t do this for you. The powerful truth is that you are in charge of your own mind.
