There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes with caring for someone you love. It is not just physical, though it is often that too. It is the quiet, accumulating weight of being responsible for another person’s well-being — for their medications, their appointments, their meals, their dignity, their hardest moments — while still trying to be a partner, a parent, a sibling, an employee, and a person of your own. We want you to know this: whatever you are feeling inside this role is allowed. The grief, the love, the resentment, the guilt, the tenderness, the anger, the exhaustion — they can all be true at once, and feeling any of them does not make you a bad caregiver. It makes you a human being doing extraordinarily hard work. You are not broken. You are bravely showing up for someone you love, often at a cost no one else can fully see.
In sessions, we walk alongside you as you make room for the parts of caregiving that rarely get spoken aloud. We work with the practical weight of the daily work and the deeper currents underneath — the anticipatory grief of slowly losing someone who is still here, the loss of your own life as it used to be, the changing relationships within your family, and the question of who you are when so much of your time is given to someone else. We also help you build the support, boundaries, and small acts of care for yourself that can make sustaining this work possible. Common areas we work with include:
- caring for an aging parent — at home, in their home, or coordinating from a distance
- caring for a spouse or partner through chronic illness, disability, or decline
- caring for a parent or spouse with dementia or Alzheimer’s
- caring for an adult child with mental illness, addiction, or a disability
- caring for a child with chronic illness, disability, or significant medical needs
- the “sandwich” season of caring for both children and parents at the same time
- caregiver burnout, compassion fatigue, and the physical toll of long-term care
- anticipatory grief — the slow, quiet grief of losing someone before they are gone
- guilt over what you cannot do, want a break from, or feel about the person you are caring for
- family conflict about the division of caregiving and decisions about care
- the strain caregiving can put on your marriage, friendships, and work
- end-of-life caregiving and the days, weeks, or hours that surround a loved one’s passing
- the grief and identity loss that often follow when the caregiving season ends
You do not have to wait until you are at the end of your rope to reach out, and you do not have to justify why you need this. We would be happy to walk through it with you. Step by step, you and your counselor will move toward a way of carrying this season that honors both the person you are caring for and the person you still are.