Dec 19, 2019
Care Work is Hard, and Going it Alone Isn’t Easy: Two Reasons to Rethink Asking for Help
We are ending a year, and a decade, which for me is providing a double impact on the reflection one generally does at this time of year. At Theora Care, many of us are currently and were carers, too, and we think about the people we love who passed away, people who have recovered, and people who are on longer journeys. This year, the caregiving I have personally experienced has run the gamut. I have seen some wonderful older folks who need no help to stay in their own homes, such as my beautiful aunt who at age 94 just needs some check-ins from the family; another beautiful 86 year old aunt who does need additional help and hired a part-time caregiver; a friend whose brother died from ALS; a friend who was lost to cancer; and one friend for whom everything just pear-shaped just recently and is in the midst of a full-blown caregiving crisis.
In all these cases, I’m reminded of the times I was a carer and how hard it was for me to ask for help. Death, even when expected at the end of a terminal disease like ALS or cancer, is traumatic. And it’s only in retrospect that you realize the toll it takes on your mind and body. A colleague of mine is convinced that her mother’s premature death was caused by caregiving for her father and refusing help. Everyone says you need to ask for help, but in the thick of it, we often don’t. So here is some new information I discovered and hope will be valuable for all caregivers, wherever you are in your journey:
- People who give you help actually get more from it than the actual help they give (backed by research)
- How you ask for help is simpler if you think about a few specific things that make it easier for you and the person you’re asking.
Why people who help may get more out of it than you think
There have been numerous studies and books written that show that people help not only for altruistic reasons, but also because we receive positive physical feedback when we do. A friend working on her PhD in sociology brought this to my attention. “The pleasure of altruism is sometimes described as a ‘warm glow’ derived from the process of giving itself.” The intrinsic motivations of care work can be rooted in “the pleasure or sense of accomplishment a worker gets by doing the work itself*.”
For those of us (like me) who need a refresher on motivations, there are two types – extrinsic and intrinsic – and “These types of motivation are distinct but often work in concert, as when a care worker takes a job for pay (extrinsic motivation) but also out of a desire to help other people (intrinsic prosocial motivation)**. However, we believe that prosocial motivations are most relevant to explaining why people engage in care work and describing how well they perform in care jobs.”
In other words, people actually get a physical, positive feeling when they help others. Think of it like the endorphins you get when running. So, as carers, we need to remember we’re giving our friends and family the gift of a heck of a good feeling when we let them help us while we caregive!
And now let’s simplify how to ask
It’s so hard when people say, “Just let me know if you need help.” Though well meaning, it’s too broad and as carers, we’re often in over our heads we don’t know where to begin to ask, so we don’t even try. We just buckle down and do the hard care work ourselves.
There is a business management technique that I acquired along the way that I think will help caregivers to ask for help. I’d like to recommend that we apply the SMART methodology for goal setting to asking for help. Here’s the business definition, and with just a little tweaking, we can use it for asking for help in caregiving. What is a SMART ask for help? It’s:
Specific – ask for something you need, large or small, not a general request
Meaningful – think about who you are asking, and have the help request be something meaningful to them to give them the most pleasure from doing it for you
Achievable – make sure you ask someone for something they can easily do. We all have our superpowers, leverage your friends’ and families’
Relevant – again, more pleasure for the giver when they can see the difference their help made because it was on target
Timely – let them know when you need it done, so they can easily succeed, or pass if they can’t help when you need it.
So, let’s apply the SMART method to one of the caregiving situations I previously mentioned. In the ALS case, my friend asked me to speak to his brother with ALS about planning for the changes that would happen as time passed (Specific). I was honored to do it as I had gone on that journey with my late husband who died of ALS. This friend was my late husband’s friend, who had come and helped us many times during my husband’s illness. I was thankful to be able to help him in return. (Meaningful). I was also eager to do it as I wanted to share the many learnings I had from that journey (Achievable). This knowledge was not what they tell you about the progression of ALS as a medical disease, but focused more on the day-to-day things that would happen and the importance of planning ahead for them (Relevant). And, my friend asked me to call his brother within the week (Timely).
I had several conversations with his brother, the last one was hard because the progression of the disease had affected his speech, but I believe I brought a measure of comfort to him. Easing his last months is something I still feel very good about to this day – intrinsic prosocial motivation is long lived, I can personally attest that the sociology is correct.
In the case of my friend who was lost to cancer, the family knew it was in for a long fight. They used an online website to coordinate their “asks” and it was so interesting to see their extended helpers sort themselves out by volunteering their talents and what was meaningful to them (SMART). In addition to all the wonderful meals,visits, dog walks and rides during chemotherapy, one friend made homemade stocks to help the stomach recover more quickly after chemo. Another friend decided that a reward was in order after every chemo, and brought a beautiful orchid every time. Sometimes, you receive things you didn’t ask for, but adore. Everyone to their superpower!
Asking for help is hard, but if you remember that the helper will get tons of good feelings from it, and you can set them up for success using a SMART ask, there really isn’t any reason not to. Try it once this month and see how it goes. If this works for you, please use these techniques again and share them with another fellow carer.
Our hope is that you and your care recipient will have a little bit of respite that you always need. This is my biggest holiday wish for all the wonderful caregivers and care recipients I have met this past year – a 2020 filled with wishes granted and asks fulfilled.
Happy ask-filled holidays to all.
Written by Shelley Symonds
*For Love or Money: Care Provision in the United States, edited by Nancy Folbre
** Ibid