Emotional Support for Carers

 Adam McLean, Counselling Co-ordinator, Carers NSW

 Relinquishing care

“You begin with all this compass/on but as time goes on, my nerves have dried up and I’m on a tight wire, ready to go off at any moment”. A carer speaks of caring for her son. As time goes on she is left wondering how long she can continue, and what alternatives there are. The compassion she began with has eroded and she finds that she is fearful as her own health begins to fail. She can’t afford to get ill. She is getting older, more tired and is exhausted. She is fearful of the future - will she be able to continue doing what she is doing indefinitely? Relinquishing care is not an option as she has committed herself to see the care of her son to the end. Her son has lived longer than expected - a great and wonderful validation of her love and care that she has provided.

 But what happens when the carer is no longer able to continue caring.

 Relinquishing care is not an easy decision for anyone to make and is often absent in discussion with carers. It can mean different things to different people, such as, being judged as a person who is not able to cope, of letting the person you care for down, being selfish and punishing the person you care for.

 The Macquarie Dictionary provides the following meaning of relinquish:

 ‘to renounce or surrender, to give up, put aside or desist from and to let go’

 This concurs with the sense of what carers say about what relinquishing care means to them -‘I am letting the side down and giving up on...’. Also, along with the sense of letting go or giving up, is the aspect of bereavement. Again the Macquarie Dictionary provides some insight to the meaning:

 ‘to deprive ruthlessly especially of hope, joy and to take away [violently], become obsolete’

 Again this aspect of renouncing the person you care for can feel like a psychological attack on the carer, that to consider this seems almost violent and the carer is left feeling obsolete – no longer in use, being discarded.

 Who wants to put themselves through this myriad of emotions. One carer describes it as being like a “roller coaster and you can’t get off unless you hold on tight and pull the breaks” and often the outcome is to stay with it and not let it enter your mind – “it feels too awful to consider as I would never forgive myself”. For carers making that decision is extremely difficult and more often very painful and agonizing.

 “Often the decision is made under very difficult circumstances  and at a time when the carer is exhausted and stressed”