Your Time Matters Too

Caring for someone doesn’t mean every arrangement needs to revolve around their preferences. Medical needs, mobility, illness and emergencies sometimes dictate what needs to happen. There will be times when you drop everything and go. Other situations leave room for choice.

Your loved one might prefer you to drive them. They might prefer a certain appointment time. Other family members might prefer you to handle something because you’re good at it. Their preferences matter. Yours matter too.

Being the carer doesn’t make your time less valuable.

Here Comes The Guilt

Setting the boundary is one thing. Holding onto it when guilt turns up is another.

You say no, then start questioning yourself. Was I too harsh? Am I being selfish? Should I have agreed? Am I letting them down? You know you need the time, yet part of you still feels guilty for taking it.

Guilt also comes from other people. A disappointed reaction, a comment from a family member or someone questioning your decision can leave you wondering whether you should give in.

Sometimes nobody needs to say anything at all. We put enough pressure on ourselves.

You might even have the time to help and still choose not to. That one is hard for many carers. Having two free hours doesn’t mean those two hours automatically belong to someone else. You might want to see a friend, go for a walk, spend time with your family, sit down with a coffee or do absolutely nothing.

You don’t need to earn the right to have time for yourself.

Feeling guilty doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes guilt appears because you’re doing something different. You’re changing an old pattern, protecting your time and no longer saying yes simply because saying no feels uncomfortable.

The guilt might still turn up.

You don’t have to let it make the decision for you.

What If There Really Is Nobody Else?

Some carers have siblings, family members or friends who share the responsibility. Others have little or no support at all.

Being the only person available changes everything. There is nobody to share the appointments with, nobody to make the phone calls, nobody to step in when you’re exhausted and nobody to say, “Leave this one with me.” Every new problem comes back to you.

There is another reality we need to acknowledge. Sometimes you put boundaries in place and circumstances keep breaking them.

This happened when I became the primary carer for my mother-in-law. As her health declined, caring for her became a full-time job. I tried to put boundaries around my time and responsibilities, but her needs kept increasing. An unexpected health problem, another fall or a change in what she was able to do meant those boundaries had to move again.

I had promised her I would do everything humanly possible to help her remain in the family home. We arranged in-home care and services to support her and keep her safe. I was also clear about one thing. If we reached the point where I believed she was at risk, we would need to look at residential aged care.

She agreed.

Within a relatively short period, we both recognised things couldn’t continue as they were. I was exhausted, and she needed more care than we were able to provide safely at home.

This is where advice about boundaries needs to be realistic. Sometimes the problem isn’t that a carer has failed to set enough boundaries. The level of care has become greater than one person is able to provide.

For a carer with little or no support, boundaries might mean deciding what needs attention today and what has to wait. Formal services might take over some responsibilities. You might stop expecting yourself to do everything. At some point, setting a boundary might involve acknowledging that the current caring arrangement no longer works.

That is a difficult boundary to face because the consequences are much bigger than saying no to an appointment or protecting an afternoon for yourself.

Some carers are doing more than everyone else. Some are doing everything.

No matter how committed you are, one person still has limits.

Boundaries With Family Matter Too

The person you care for isn’t always the person you need to set boundaries with.

Other family members bring their own expectations. This becomes difficult when someone wants a say in your loved one’s care but leaves most of the work to you.

They want to be involved in important decisions, but they aren’t available for appointments or conversations with doctors. They question decisions you’ve made, even though you were the person who gathered the information, spoke with the medical professionals and dealt with the situation firsthand.

Sometimes they expect you to do more, then make you feel guilty when you say you’ve reached your limit. They have reasons why they aren’t available, yet struggle to accept why you aren’t available either.

Then there’s the expectation of being kept informed.

When you’re the primary carer, you already have enough to organise. Keeping everyone in the loop about appointments, test results, changes in medication, health concerns and care decisions becomes another job.

I learned I needed boundaries around this too.

Family members are entitled to care about what’s happening. They’re entitled to ask questions and express an opinion. But wanting a say doesn’t mean someone gets to make the decisions and leave you to do all the work.

And being the primary carer doesn’t make you the family information service.

If someone wants greater involvement, greater involvement needs to include some responsibility too.

The Expectations We Help Create

This part takes some honest self-reflection. We need to look at how our own actions and responses have shaped what other people expect from us. If you always say yes, always make yourself available and always step in, people get used to you doing so. If you continually rearrange your plans to suit everyone else, they start expecting you to be flexible. If you take responsibility for everything, people start assuming you’ll continue to handle everything.

I'm not too proud to admit I was guilty of this.

Some expectations were also placed on me because of how other people viewed my life. When I first became a carer, I had two young children. My husband worked long hours in a national role and travelled for work from time to time. I wasn’t in paid employment, so I was often viewed as “not working”.

The assumption seemed to be that because other family members had paid jobs and I didn’t, I had more time. I was available. But I wasn’t sitting at home with nothing to do. I was raising two young children, running our home and managing everything that came with family life. My time still had value.

Women taking on much of the caring responsibility isn’t something I’ve only seen within my own family or heard from other carers. Australian statistics support it. Almost 68% of primary carers in Australia are women.

Daughters taking on much of the care of ageing parents is something I know well from my own experience, and I’ve heard the same story from many other women. Often, daughters step in and start doing what needs to be done. Appointments are organised, phone calls are made, shopping gets done and problems are dealt with. Over time, they become the people carrying much of the day-to-day responsibility.

An interesting family dynamic sometimes develops around sons. I don’t think they necessarily make a conscious decision to leave the caring to their sisters. In many cases, I suspect they give little thought to how much their sisters are doing because things are getting done. At the same time, some sons become more involved in helping their wives care for ageing parents on their side of the family. Their wives might ask for help, or they see their wife struggling and want to support her.

Meanwhile, their own sisters continue caring for Mum or Dad.

Nobody necessarily planned for the responsibilities to fall this way. Nobody sat around a table and decided who would do what. The pattern developed over time. Once established, those expectations became much harder to change.

Looking back, I also see how my own behaviour reinforced some of the expectations placed on me. I kept stepping in. I made myself available. I rearranged my plans. We sometimes help create the expectations we later become frustrated by. Other expectations develop because people make assumptions about our time and responsibilities.

Recognising our part in the pattern gives us somewhere to start. We’re allowed to change how we respond. People might resist or question us because the old arrangement worked well for them.

Saying no or standing your ground might feel uncomfortable after years of saying yes. The old arrangement no longer works for you. You’re allowed to replace it with one that does.

Here's What I've learned

Setting boundaries as a carer is difficult because you’re dealing with people you love, often during vulnerable periods of their lives. Of course you want to help. There will also be times when circumstances change, health declines and the boundaries you worked hard to put in place need to change too.

I’ve learned that setting boundaries isn’t about doing less for the people I love. It’s about being clear about what I’m able and willing to do, recognising when I’ve reached my limit and accepting that my time and needs matter too.

Sometimes my answer is no.

Other times I say:

“Yes, I’ll help. This is what works for me.”

I don’t need to apologise for that. I don’t need to feel guilty for having limits, and I don’t need to make my life endlessly available simply because I’m the person everyone relies on.

Caring needs to fit within your life. It shouldn’t continually replace it.