Looking After Yourself When You Look After Everyone Else

People in caring roles tend to put their own needs last, whether they look after children, relatives or clients. It usually begins as kindness and settles into routine, so tiredness goes unnoticed until it starts to affect sleep, patience and health. The six ideas below are small enough to fit around a full day.

Why your own needs slip down the list

Time is the reason most people give, but writing down everything that stops you taking a break often shows that some barriers are self-imposed, such as feeling selfish, while others, like having nobody to cover, are real and need a different solution. Sorting the list into facts and beliefs is quick to do and shows which problems to tackle first, and which ones someone else could take off your hands.

Support for people in full-time caring roles

Organised support makes a full-time caring role easier to sustain, and it's worth finding out what's available locally. Foster carers, for example, can use the regular support groups, training courses and round-the-clock advice offered to foster families by Foster Care Associates Fife, and relatives who care for a family member can look for a local carers' group in the same way.

Small breaks that fit around the day

Five minutes with a hot drink and the phone in another room, a walk to the end of the road or a few stretches before the school run all count as a break. They're easier to keep up when they're attached to something that already happens, like the kettle boiling or the bus arriving, because then they need no extra planning and happen without a decision.

Letting other people take on small jobs

Offers of help tend to be vague, and so are most replies to them. A friend who asks what they can do finds it easier to help when you give a clear task, so it works better to say yes to every offer of help and answer with a specific job from a short list, such as:

• cooking a meal or dropping off the shopping
• gardening or housework
• sitting with the person you look after for an hour
• taking the children out for an afternoon

Saying no to extra requests

Decide in advance which requests you'll turn down, including extra hours, favours that swallow a whole evening or events that leave you drained, so you're not making the call while someone waits for an answer. A short, polite reply that doesn't over-explain, for instance "I can't manage that this week, but ask me again next month", is usually enough, and having the sentence ready beforehand means you're not inventing an excuse on the spot.

Noticing when you need more help

If tiredness has lasted for weeks, or you've stopped enjoying things you used to look forward to, talk to your GP or someone you trust rather than waiting for a quieter month. Pick one idea from this list and try it for two weeks before adding another, so each change has time to become a habit, and hand over one regular task permanently if you can.