When You Are the One Holding It Together
For anyone looking after someone who needs a great deal, on the weeks it is all invisible. It puts your own name on the list, asks for help in a way people can actually answer, and makes room for the resentment.
Caregiving · Caregiving · Burnout · 8 items · once a week
The checklist
- Name what only you are doing — The appointments, the worry, the decisions made alone all count as work.
- Ask for one specific thing this week — “Can you sit with her Thursday?” lands where “let me know if you need anything” never does.
- Put your own appointment on the calendar — The dentist, the checkup, the haircut; caregivers postpone these for years.
- Eat one real meal sitting down — Standing at the counter between tasks does not count as eating.
- Take twenty minutes outside — Not an errand and not productive; twenty minutes that belong to you.
- Let something slip on purpose — Choose what drops rather than finding out when it breaks.
- Say the resentment out loud somewhere safe — Loving someone and being worn out by them sit together fine.
- Find one person in the same boat — A support group or a friend who gets it beats explaining from scratch.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it once a week, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.