How Caregiving Can Change Your Personality
There’s no getting around it: being a family caregiver is bound to impact how you think and who you are as a person. Taking on this high-stress role that is both physically and mentally demanding can be transformative, especially when you consider that the average duration of caregiving is 4.5 years.
Some members of the Caregiver Forum worry that their personality changes are largely negative. Certainly, stress, exhaustion, and overwhelming responsibilities can take a serious toll on one’s physical and mental health. Caregiver burnout is notorious for sneaking up on even the most organized and level-headed individual. But, if you learn to manage caregiver burden instead of letting it consume you, the risk of developing lasting negative traits like anxiety, depression, and agitation is greatly reduced.
In fact, many proactive caregivers notice that they’ve developed some beneficial attributes and coping methods thanks to their experiences in elder care. How your personality might change throughout this journey depends, of course, on your unique attitude, your openness to change, the feelings you have for the person you are caring for, and the state of your own physical and mental health.
How Caregiving Affects Different Personality Types: The following examples illustrate how certain personality types can be transformed, both negatively and positively, by caregiving.
The Take-Charge Personality: For people who instinctively seek control in most situations, caregiving can either turn them into frustrated tyrants or help them mellow out.
It can be very easy to adopt a “do as I say” approach to communicating with aging parents or an ailing spouse. Even if your loved one still has their faculties, it’s usually less of a hassle…
Continue reading on Agingcare for thoughts on how caregiving can change our personalities:
Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories. “For anyone having to walk the last segments of life with a loved one, read this.” …Delores
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