Coping techniques for caregivers to reduce stress and restore hope.

Attitude is like the foundation of a building: it doesn’t matter how well the building is designed, built, or maintained; it will fail if the foundation isn’t sound.

As you live out your caregiving responsibilities there will be ups and downs, successes and failures. Your attitude will determine how you handle them, and how you handle them will determine your happiness and the happiness and comfort of your patient.

Basically, attitude is about choices and expectations. First, let’s talk about choices. Everything you do or say is a choice; there is always a choice. The only thing that you truly have to do is die. Everything else is a choice. Make good choices and you’ll get good results; make bad choices and you’ll get bad results. Considering that your attitudes determine your choices and your choices determine your results, it is clear how important your attitude is.

Sometimes you think you don’t have a choice but you do; it’s just that all of the choices except one are so repugnant that you wouldn’t even consider them so it seems like there is no choice, but there always is. Always. Paying taxes, for example, seems like a no-choice situation, but you could choose to go to jail instead of coughing up the dough. Why you would make that choice is beyond me, but it is still a choice.

Attitudes affect more than your choices, though; they affect your expectations. I am a firm believer in the old axiom “Things tend to happen the way you expect them to happen.” If your attitude affects your expectations, and your expectations affect the way things happen, then your attitude affects the way things happen. Either consciously or subconsciously we do things that tend to sway the outcome of any given situation to match our expectations.

For example, if you are dreading a procedure for your loved one, you will concentrate on the pain rather than the benefit and will undoubtedly reflect those feelings in your words and actions, resulting in more real discomfort for your patient. After all, if you are concentrating on the pain, so will they.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this: attitude is the single most important element of success in your caregiving and your life.

It’s time for an attitude check. Yours and your patient’s. Is it making things better or worse? Think about it; it could mean the difference between success and failure.