Caregiver Resolutions for the New Year

The holiday season is beginning to wrap up and the New Year is on the horizon. As a family caregiver, your days have probably been filled with many different tasks and responsibilities. With this new year ahead, it’s a great time to reflect on the year you have had and think about any new resolutions you have. While these resolutions can tie into your role as a caregiver, they don’t necessarily need to directly. These caregiver resolutions for the new year will ultimately help you in other parts of your life, including caregiving, even if they are not obviously connected.

4 Caregiver Tips for the New Year

1. Work on Your Mental Health.

Many of us forget and neglect to take care of our mental and emotional health throughout the year. We often don’t realize how much toll caregiving can really take on our mental and emotional health. It’s often a taxing job for many reasons. Whether you are a family caregiver or not you may be watching the decline of the person you care for. This in itself can be emotionally difficult and taxing. You should consider caregiver support groups. These support groups offer a great outlet and even advice to others who are also caring for older adults.

2. Adjust Your Physical Lifestyle.

We often neglect our physical health because of all of the other duties that we have. We can put it off or assume it’s not as important as other things in our life. But, in reality, neglecting our physical health affects all areas of our lives. Not only can regular exercise with energy levels, but it can also drastically improve mental health.

3. Think About the Positives instead of the Negatives.

Sometimes the change we need is as simple as thinking about all the positive things we have in the upcoming year. And this can be things as small as being able to see your family or enjoying the upcoming days of good weather.

4. Keep Learning.

You should continue to seek out knowledge about every subject that you can. Whether it is about caregiving, health information, or other things you are interested in. You will find that when you continue learning and enriching your life by understanding new things you will find more meaning to things.

Why it Matters to Take Care of Yourself

As we’ve mentioned, long-term care and home care for your family members can be tough. Everyone’s situation is different. You may be caring for someone with Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. You may be caring for someone with physical impairments or something else. Whatever the case, you may be taking on tasks that seem very difficult at times. But, taking care of yourself not only makes the tasks easier, it makes it so that you can continue to enjoy the work that you do. If you don’t continually take care of yourself you may run into caregiver burnout.

Your caregiver responsibilities may be many, but on the list definitely includes taking care of yourself. You can guarantee that your family and friends also want to see you taking care of yourself and sticking to resolutions that you have. Neglecting the things you want and need for the year will not be doing anyone any favors. As mentioned above the things that you need to do to take care of yourself will be inadvertently making it so that you are better equipped to also take care of others. So, if you think for a moment that you should put those things on the back-burner, think about the positive aspects they have on everyone else as well.

Conclusion

Whatever you decide your new year resolution, really try and dedicate time to it. Beyond the positive aspects your resolutions can have for you, they can also inspire your family members to do the same.

We at Homecare Powered by AUAF know that caring for aging parents and family members is no easy task. We want our caregivers to know how to take care of themselves in the process.

If you have any questions for us, give us a call at 773.274.9262.