This is Brockman's second book, emphasising the importance of self-care for the legions of people supporting and taking care of others. This includes paid professionals including nurses, counsellors/therapists, social service workers, paramedics, hospice workers as well as teachers and other high-intensity relaters. Additionally, the target audience includes the more than 78 million American baby boomers who are now taking care of their ageing parents or a loved one at home with an illness such as cancer or Alzheimers disease. Special features: This book addresses the issues of unconscious empathy, the characteristics of the helper personality, inconsistent or insufficient boundaries and the subtle energy consequences that can occur from inadequate self-care such as illness and adrenal fatigue, resulting in secondary traumatisation and compassion fatigue.
Do you often daydream and muse on how wonderful it would be for someone to regularly be attending to YOUR needs? Do you spend a large part of each day helping others to feel better? This book may challenge your old patterns of thinking but following Brockman’s Primary Directive to take care of yourself first, your life will start to transform and your health and well-being will begin to shift in a healing direction. Howard Brockman, LCSW has written his second book, this time emphasizing the importance of self-care for the legions of people supporting and taking care of others. While there are books that have been written about the challenges to professionals such as social workers, nurses and psychologists to becoming burned out, Brockman’s book is written also for the millions of untrained non-professionals who are being recruited daily to care for their elderly parents. Do you fit into either of these categories? He describes the many influences that lead to compassion fatigue and becoming “infected” by the feelings of others. This is all about how unconscious empathy can take sensitive caregivers down a never-ending spiral to adrenal fatigue and depression. In Chapter 2, “Characteristics of High-Intensity Relaters,” Brockman describes the primary personality of those helpers whose currency is relationship and who easily fall prey to subtle energetic influences that erode their vital force. Externally referencing to others’ needs first tends to be one of their traits. Chapter 6, “Prevent Self-Sabotage,” is filled with practical ways to stay focused and positive while overcoming old, repetitive and negative inner chatter. Confronting your tyrannizing inner critic is never easy—Brockman tells you how. He identifies different types of “energy drainers” that use our energy to enliven themselves and deplete ours. He does a good job explaining how to create secure and persistent energetic boundaries with difficult and demanding people and other disruptive environments. This is perhaps the most important theme woven throughout the book, for the helper personality tends to not know how to say NO to requests from others. Learning how to establish reliable energetic boundaries is incredibly important for protecting against the interpersonal hazard he refers to as psychotoxic contamination that can become cumulative over time and generate serious long-term health consequences. Dark and heavy energy can settle into and invade the body to wreak havoc with one’s health and emotional stability. The good news is that you can effectively create these boundaries and more importantly, learn how to sustain them amidst the ongoing demands of the people you are helping. He spends a chapter on how to use specific energy psychology techniques for emergency self-care, providing fascinating case examples to illustrate how to prevent post-traumatic stress from building up to become PTSD. Brockman spends some time explaining the importance of optimizing your self-care by managing your chi, and how plants, the natural world and flower essences can support helpers to maintain their inner balance and overall harmony. In Chapter 11, “Making It Happen From Within,” you will discover well-described and powerful imagery techniques for manifesting positive self-care outcomes for yourself. Brockman then teaches you how to connect to and work with your inner guides for reliable personal and professional guidance. The power of a caregiver’s presence is highlighted in the concluding chapter, discussing how “being the blessing” actually creates collective coherence in the immediate caregiver’s environment and thus positively affects those who are being cared for. For readers who would like to measure and determine the degree of their own present health and well-being, there are two self-assessment checklists for high-intensity relaters in Appendix 2 that can also be downloaded from his website, www.DynamicEnergeticHealing.com.
Take care of yourself as you care for others with this accessible, easy-to-follow self-care guide to relax and rejuvenate. It’s been said that there are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will become caregivers, and those who will need caregivers. Chances are you or someone you know is taking care of a loved one at home. If you do, you also know that caregiving—however fulfilling—is also hard on the caregiver’s mental and physical health. Self-care is vital to caregivers maintaining stamina and a positive outlook for both themselves and the people they care for. But being so busy caring for others can make it hard to find time for yourself. In Self-Care for Caregivers, you’ll find short, easy-to-read—and often easy-to-do—ways to replenish your mind, body, and spirit, including: -Practicing mindfulness by focusing in on your five senses -Remembering to HALT to check if you’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired -Making a gratitude list of at least three things you're grateful for -And much more! Full of practical advice and reminders to have a quick snack, call a friend, create a sanctuary, write in a journal, and more ways to take care yourself—plus resources for caregiving—this book will go a long way towards making your caregiving experience a happier and more healthful one for you and the people you care for.
For those serving as a caregiver for a loved one, the authors of this down-to-earth, encouraging book can help you make the most of the experience without losing yourself in the process. Are you one of the growing number of people who serves as a caregiver for an aging or chronically ill friend or family member? If so, you probably struggle to meet both their special needs and still find time and resources for yourself. But now there is reason to take heart. The authors of this down-to-earth, encouraging book can help you make the most of the experience without losing yourself in the process. Using the Twelve Steps as a guide, the authors conduct readers through the pitfalls of caregiving--the emotional snarls and strains, daily struggles, competing needs, and questions about confronting pain--providing hope and tangible suggestions on how to stay strong and sane while providing healthy support and love. Self-Care for Caregivers offers sensitive and sensible guidance for the family caregiver. "This is a little book with a big message: how to take care of yourself so you can take care of others." - Connie Goldman, producer of the public radio special Hardship into Hope, The Rewards of Caregiving; co-author of Tending the Earth, Mending the Spirit and Secrets of Becoming a Late Bloomer "This book is an uplifting treasury of hope. The authors gently direct the reader with comforting, practical text that offers empowering caregiving strategies and avenues for emotional and spiritual growth." - James and Merlene Sherman, author and editor of the Caregiver Survival series.
Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.
"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/
Inspiring, encouraging, comforting...this self-care guidebook gives readers practical, no-cost solutions for their problems with caregiver stress. Stories, professional advice, questionnaires, activities and discussion questions help guide readers on their caregiver journey.
Therapists and other helping professionals, such as teachers, doctors and nurses, social workers, and clergy, work in highly demanding fields and can suffer from burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary stress. This happens when they give more attention to their clients’ well being than their own. Both students and practitioners in these fields will find this book an essential guide to striking an optimal balance between self-care and other-care. The authors describe the joys and hazards of the work, the long road from novice to senior practitioner, the essence of burnout, ways to maintain the professional and personal self, methods experts use to maintain vitality, and a self-care action plan. Vivid real-life examples and self-reflection questions will engage and motivate readers to think about their own work and ways to enhance their own resilience. Eloquently written and supported by extensive research, helping professionals will find this a valuable resource both when a novice and when an experienced practitioner.
Self-care interventions are among the most promising and exciting new approaches to improve health and well-being, both from a health systems perspective and for people who use these interventions. The World Health Organization (WHO) uses the following working definition of self-care: Self-care is the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health worker. The scope of self-care as described in this definition includes health promotion; disease prevention and control; self-medication; providing care to dependent persons; seeking hospital/specialist/primary care if necessary; and rehabilitation, including palliative care. It includes a range of self-care modes and approaches. While this is a broad definition that includes many activities, it is important for health policy to recognize the importance of self-care, especially where it intersects with health systems and health professionals. Worldwide, an estimated shortage of 18 million health workers is anticipated by 2030, a record 130 million people are currently in need of humanitarian assistance, and disease outbreaks are a constant global threat. At least 400 million people worldwide lack access to the most essential health services, and every year 100 million people are plunged into poverty because they have to pay for health care out of their own pockets. There is an urgent need to find innovative strategies that go beyond the conventional health sector response. While "self-care" is not a new term or concept, self-care interventions have the potential to increase choice, when they are accessible and affordable, and they can also provide more opportunities for individuals to make informed decisions regarding their health and health care. In humanitarian settings, for example, due to lack of or limited health infrastructure and medical services in the crisis-affected areas, self-care could play an important role to improve health-related outcomes. Self-care also builds upon existing movements, such as task sharing, which are powerful strategies to support health systems.
The number of Americans 65 years of age or older is projected to more than double to over 98 million by 2060, making them 24% of the overall population. Women constitute more than 50% of this group. Most clinicians who provide primary care for older women receive minimal training about their unique health issues and needs during residency however, and few resources exist to guide them regarding these issues in practice. This book provides user-friendly, evidence-based guidance to manage common challenges in healthcare for women during menopause and beyond, filling a huge and growing unmet need for primary care clinicians. Edited by a multidisciplinary team with content expert authors from family medicine, oncology, urogynecology, obstetrics and gynecology, psychology, and more, this text provides clinically relevant information about important conditions impacting the health of older women, including suggested guidelines for management and helpful resources for patient counselling and care. The first half of the book covers general topics such as menopause, bone health, depression and grief, cancer survivorship, and obesity. The second half focuses on issues below the belt that are difficult to talk about, such as incontinence, vulvar pathology, and sexual health after menopause. While there is copious literature about the menopausal transition, few resources for clinicians exist about caring for women beyond the 6th decade. Challenges in Older Women’s Health: A primer for clinicians provides focused, evidence-based information about high-yield topics for a too often neglected group of patients.
