Caring & Delegating

The world can feel quite stressful sometimes and it's really important to find ways of not making things worse for ourselves.
One of those ways is to learn how to let go of some things and find the best ways to delegate.

Transcript

Caring & Delegating 0:00

Hey, there you happy Friday time for a bonus public episode. Quick reminder that if you like these short episodes every Friday, there are longer episodes on Mondays on Patreon to help keep your mental health topped up. Along with all my weekly hypnotherapy sessions. I once worked out that there's the equivalent of about a hundred hours of therapy content always available, which for six pounds a month is a bit of a bargain if you ask me, and we can get to chat then as well, which is always nice. Someone asked me on Patreon once, how can I balance looking after myself with looking after both my children and my ageing parents? And I thought, oh, that's our funny old sandwich being stuck in the middle like that. And more and more of us are gonna go through this all because children are stopping at home a little bit longer than they used to. People having kids a bit later, we are living longer. And having both kids and parents to look after used to be called the Sandwich Generation back in the 1980s. And back then it was about people in their thirties and forties, and it's now more about people in their fifties. There was a study a couple of years ago actually that showed that on average, a quarter of people aged 20 to 34 are still living with their parents. So we've got a lot of folk in the mid fifties, maybe, looking after kind of a 30-year-old at home, maybe two of them also trying to look after a pair of 80-year-old parents who aren't as nimble as they used to be. And on top of that, we've gotta look after ourselves as well, haven't we? And it's tiring. It's exhausting. So how do we manage this? Well, first off, you need to remember that you are not alone. Delegate if you have to, instruct if you have to, but you don't have to be doing everything otherwise you'll end up dropping everything because you can't cope. Can your children do more than you think? Especially if they're adults still living at home. And even if they're not, they can pull their weight if they're old enough, if you've got siblings, but they're not local, so it's always up to you to look after your parents if they need anything. Well, what can those siblings do remotely? Can they pay a bill? Can they arrange an Amazon delivery or a food shop delivery? Yeah, they probably can. But if you need help, be specific. When you need help with something, you can't be vague. You can't just say, I need help. You lot need to pull your weight. Because they might end up doing a lot of things that don't need doing. There was a study a few years ago into social support and caregiver distress, they called it, that tried to explain some of the inconsistencies in some previous research that had been done during the nineties, I think. The government looking at ways to help support carers but couldn't figure out why sometimes support helped and sometimes it didn't. It's quite obvious really. It was 'cause the support people need varies from person to person. No one support package is gonna fit everyone. So don't be vague. Ask specifically for the type of help that you need. And here's the important part. Let them do it. Don't micromanage it. Don't get involved. It might not be done the way that you would do it. It might not be perfect. Tough. Release. The responsibility. Having a job not done as well as you like is still gonna feel better than the feeling of resentment you carry around for not being supported. One thing with remembering is something that we call unified detachment. It's a phrase that comes up in couples counselling a lot and it's used really as a way of helping people to see things from someone else's perspective. So that when arguments happen, it's not that it's you versus them, it's the two of you versus the problem. And we all need that attitude at times. If your kids can't get motivated to do their homework, 'cause it's a nice day after a weird drizzly week and the sun comes out for a few hours and all they want to do is kick a football in the park, then it's not you against them, it's you and them versus the homework. So phrase it that way. Ask the people involved, what can we do about this? How can we make it easier? How can we support mum with dad's dementia and her knackered hip? You can come up with solutions together that way. Right then. I need to love you and leave you for today. Look me up on Patreon if you want to support what I do or you want to chat. 'Cause if people don't, then this podcast series doesn't happen. 'cause there's no way I am putting adverts on it and you can flipping well quote me on that. Enjoy your weekend folks. See ya.