Help for family caregivers is very important. When someone has a long-term illness, or is in the final stages of his or her life, many care tasks often fall on the shoulders of the caregiver. Helping with dressing, washing, shopping, housekeeping, watching over medication and all kinds of other tasks can have quite an impact on the informal caregiver's life. This is also in addition to the worries the caregiver may have about his or her loved one (family member).
Mantel caregiving, then, can be doubly stressful. Stress from the time it takes to complete all the tasks and stress from the emotions you feel for the person you care for.
Psychologically, then, caregiving is also a tough job, and it can be a cause of burnout[1]. Problems that informal caregivers may experience are namely:
- Emotional overload
- Physical Overload
- Reducing feeling a connection to the person you care for
- No longer feeling satisfaction from caregiving
- Financial stress
- Lack of free time
- Family Conflicts
- Depressive symptoms
- Substance abuse
Female caregivers often experience more pressure and are more likely to suffer from burnout than male caregivers. The age of the caregiver does not matter for the likelihood of burnout.
Having a job in turn protects against burnout, so quitting work for caregiving is not always the best choice. Working can actually distract from the problems of caregiving and cause you to recharge precisely through work (especially if you enjoy your work).
However, if you also work in healthcare, this can again increase the risk of burnout because you also care in your "free time."
Hypnosis for family caregivers
Hypnosis can be used by patients and caregivers to deal with the stress of the situation. It helps to look at the problems in a positive way and it helps with relaxation[2].
That relaxation may seem unimportant, but burnout occurs because of an imbalance between energy needed, and being able to recharge that energy. If you then have a kind of "turbo relaxation" with hypnosis, it still helps you tremendously to keep your resources in order in a complicated life situation.
With hypnosis, you can also learn to reframe a situation positively , which in turn protects against burnout (source 1). If people find it difficult to do this, a hypnotherapist can help with this.
In the process, the negatives of caregiving can overshadow the positives, which in turn can contribute to additional stress. A hypnotherapist can then help the caregiver by shifting the focus from the negative to the positives.
Thoughts about how well you can care for others also play a role in getting burnout as a caregiver. The separate thing is, if you think you know what to do as a caregiver and feel you can do it, you are more likely to get burnout. So a little less confidence in your caretaking abilities may protect you (source 1), probably because you are more likely to ask for help.
So a hypnotherapist can help strengthen your sense that it is okay to ask for help, even if you think you can do everything on your own, and encourage caregivers to really ask for help. Indeed, support from social and professional circles can do much to reduce stress and pressure on the caregiver.
This sense of being able to ask for help also makes a caregiver feel more like the caregiver is a choice, rather than something that happens to them.
Always worrying about caretaking doesn't help either, so in that regard it is again important that a hypnotherapist does provide enough confidence that that is not a problem.
Indeed, feeling like a choice also protects against burnout.
In addition, boosting intrinsic motivation for caregiving can also help prevent problems caused by caregiving.
They can also look at the bond and dynamics of the relationship the caregiver has with the patient, as poor bonding or dynamics can contribute to the development of burnout. For example, a caregiver may think that their own problems are seen as less important, when that is not the case. In doing so, it is also good to emphasize that informal caregiving is temporary (source 1), either someone gets better and then it is no longer needed, or someone is in the palliative phase and then eventually it is no longer needed either.
In addition, (self) hypnosis helps caregivers for setting boundaries, taking good care of yourself, increasing your inner strength and resilience [3].
Research on hypnotherapy with self-hypnosis in patients with ALS and their caregivers shows that for caregivers, it caused them to suffer less anxiety and depressive symptoms[4].
Self-hypnosis for family caregivers
When a caregiver goes to a hypnotherapist, they can also be given homework in the form of self-hypnosis. A person is then often given an mp3 with an audio recording to take home that they can listen to at home in bed or on the couch. On those audio recordings are then recordings made by the hypnotherapist that help to achieve the hypnotic state, promote relaxation and solve the problems they are struggling with.
For example, certain suggestions given during hypnotherapy can be repeated in such a self-hypnosis recording to reinforce and hold the effect of that suggestion.
Techniques to help family caregivers
Now that you know that hypnosis helps and what kinds of things a hypnotherapist can look out for, we'll go a little deeper into techniques.
Preliminary interview
Before any therapeutic treatment, you have a pre-interview. In this pre-interview, the caregiver can talk more about the effect of caregiving on his or her life. This conversation gives a therapist tools to act on with smart suggestions to reduce the negative effects and to increase the positive effects.
During or after the preliminary consultation, a hypnotherapist explains what hypnosis is and asks permission to put the caregiver into hypnosis. After the induction of hypnosis, the hypnosis is often deepened with a relaxing visualization.
Visualization to relax
Before a therapist suggests "Imagine you are on the beach." Is it always good to double-check that the beach is a nice place for the caregiver. After all, you never know if someone has experienced something nasty in a particular location.
You can also keep the suggestion of a relaxing place very general. Then you can then say something about relaxing in that safe place and include all the senses in the suggestion, so that the caregiver's imagination is stimulated in such a way that this also helps to relax.
Discovering beliefs
In the preliminary interview and during hypnotherapy, a therapist can also ask questions. For example, asking why the caregiver thinks he or she "should" do something. In fact, the answer gives an indication of beliefs the caregiver has about the world and how he or she is supposed to function in it.
If this is a belief that causes extra stress during caregiving, you can change the belief. There are a variety of techniques for this, such as regression to the first moment when that belief arose.
Then, when the caregiver's mind is on that first moment, you can do all kinds of things with that moment to change the belief. For example, the person can empathize with other people who were there at the time. This can already provide many new insights. Because usually beliefs arise in childhood and we don't reevaluate them, but so with a regression you can do that. This can already give an awful lot of relief.
Making a video
Sometimes it is an unpleasant event and then you can change the unpleasant emotion it evokes by making a video of it. This video helps to disconnect the emotion from the memory. The caregiver then gets a clear signal that the situation at the time is over. That there is now a completely different phase of life with other problems that therefore need a different solution.
The Inner Child
Especially with attachment problems, a conversation with the inner child may be necessary. This can also improve the bond between caregiver and the person he or she cares for. By starting the conversation with the inner child, the caregiver can experience more of a sense of security and start to care more from his or her strengths.
Learn Hypnosis
Whether you are a caregiver, a coach for caregivers or otherwise want to help people, knowledge of hypnosis can be very helpful.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and what you can do with it? Then come to the free online master class.
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