Help for family caregivers: What you can do as a hypnotherapist

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.

From a psychological perspective, informal caregiving is therefore a demanding task and can be a cause of burnout[1]. Problems that informal caregivers may experience include:

1. Emotional overload
2. Physical Overload
3. Reducing feeling a connection to the person you care for
4. No longer feeling satisfaction from caregiving
5. Financial stress
6. Lack of free time
7. Family Conflicts
8. Depressive symptoms
9. 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 healthcare providers to cope with the stress of the situation. It helps people view problems in a positive light and promotes 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.

Hypnosis can also help you learn to reframe a situation positively, which in turn protects against burnout (source 1). If people find this difficult, a hypnotherapist can help.

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 provide care also play a role in developing burnout as a caregiver. The interesting thing is that if you think you know what to do as a caregiver and feel confident that you can handle it, you’re more likely to experience burnout. So having slightly less confidence in your caregiving abilities can actually protect you (source 1), likely because you’ll be more likely to ask for help sooner .

A hypnotherapist can therefore help reinforce your sense that it’s okay to ask for help—even if you think you can handle everything on your own—and encourage informal caregivers to actually ask for help. Support from social and professional circles can go a long way toward reducing stress and pressure on informal caregivers.

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.

Constantly worrying about informal caregiving doesn’t help either, so in that regard, it’s important that a hypnotherapist instills enough self-confidence to ensure that this isn’t 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 set boundaries, take good care of themselves, and increase their 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 an informal caregiver visits a hypnotherapist, they may also be given “homework” in the form of self-hypnosis. They are often given an MP3 with an audio recording to take home, which they can listen to while in bed or on the couch. These audio recordings feature the hypnotherapist’s voice, which helps the client reach a hypnotic state, promotes relaxation, and addresses the issues they are facing.

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

Every therapeutic treatment begins with an initial consultation. During this initial consultation, the caregiver can share more about how caregiving affects his or her life. This conversation provides the therapist with insights to offer thoughtful suggestions for reducing the negative effects and enhancing the positive ones.

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

During the initial consultation and throughout hypnotherapy, a therapist may also ask questions. For example, why does the caregiver feel that he or she “must” do something? The answer provides insight into the caregiver ’s beliefs about the world and how they believe they should function within 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 in cases of attachment issues, a conversation with the inner child may be necessary. This can also improve the bond between the caregiver and the person they are caring for. By engaging in a dialogue with the inner child, the caregiver can experience a greater sense of security and provide care more from a place of strength.

Learn Hypnosis

Whether you are a caregiver, a coach for caregivers or otherwise want to help people, knowledge of hypnosis can be very helpful.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and what you can do with it? Then join the free online masterclass.

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