Advice to caregivers: Judgment, Part 1: Don’t expend precious energy judging yourself.

Jack Paar once said, “Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, with me as its chief obstacle.” Like him, many of us are our own worst enemies berating ourselves for our real or imagined mistakes that have been compounding since the days when we were students writing essays:

• In biology today, we digested a frog.
• A molecule is so small that it can’t be seen by the naked observer.
• Our biology class went out to explore the swamp and to collect little orgasms.

We all make mistakes. Yet happiness and self-esteem must come from within, from accepting ourselves as we are. Remember that if you worry what people think of you, it means you have more confidence in their opinions than your own.

Avoid these self-criticisms:
Mind-reading. Last week I borrowed a colleague’s office to make a phone call. When she walked in on me, she gave me a withering look. Thinking I was reading her mind, I started to apologize for invading her space. Instead she told me she was late coming in because she had just been through “banking hell.” Blaming ourselves for others’ discomfort is usually ridiculously self-centered.

Viewing a negative event as a never-ending pattern. Just because your loved one has fought attending day care for three weeks straight does not mean she will never adjust or that you were wrong to send her there. Many a person has left the dock just before his ship came in.

Fortune-telling. “Getting him to bed tonight is going to be a disaster.” If you’re going to predict the future, at least make it positive. If you cannot help worrying, remember that worrying cannot help you either.

Perhaps the most important key to taking yourself lightly is to move on. Charlie Brown once said, “I’m still hoping yesterday will get better.” It’s amazing how many of us keep trying to improve the past, when we can’t even count on doing well in the present. As Josh Billings noted, “Experience increases our wisdom, but it doesn’t reduce our follies.”

The toughest kind of mountain climbing is getting out of a rut.

(Excerpted from Wiser Now Alzheimer’s Disease Caregiver Tips)

A message to caregivers

A few years ago, my daughter and I had the tremendous experience of riding mules deep into the Grand Canyon from the North Rim. The mule team leader, easily seeing my inexperience, assigned me to a mule named Maude, a gentle creature who chose her own pace. She was particularly immune to prodding on the return, uphill trip, and I soon stopped caring that I was causing the last three mules to lag behind. But that’s when I also learned she had been misnamed. To put this as delicately as possible, she ought to have been named Tooter. She was not in the least discreet – indeed, there were times when she sounded like a trumpet in a John Phillips Sousa marching band. The mule path was also shared by hikers, and she startled quite a few of the adults. Children found her hilarious, of course. (Frankly, so did I.) One hiker thought she might be pregnant. She was momentarily quiet as we passed, so I didn’t enlighten him to the true cause of her distended belly. However, when we finally returned to the stables, she gave a whole new meaning to “running out of gas.”

The young woman on the mule behind mine showed infinite patience (but tended to keep her distance) at one point saying, “Whatever gets her up the hill.” The life of a caregiver is often stressful. Any caregiving book worth its salt will admonish caregivers to take good care of themselves: eat a balanced diet, get enough sleep, exercise regularly, surround yourself with cheerful friends and keep a positive attitude. But the reality is that sometimes caregiving is a steep journey with a heavy load. Sometimes the unhealthy comfort food or the foregone exercise class is what gets us up the day’s hill. Remember Maude, set your own pace, and make no excuses.

(Excerpted from Kathy Laurenhue’s Alzheimer’s Basic Caregiving – an ABC Guide)