Claudia Dressel

Thinking about the four-year-old, you know, because you are also a sandwich caregiver.

And so the commitment part is the work of actually figuring out not only what you ideally would like in terms of your relationship, for example, with your mother-in-law, but also what practically you could do in terms of steps to move into that direction.

It becomes urgent for you almost.

And you find yourself explaining over and over again.

So there might be a way that you can be effective while having these kinds of thoughts.

But here, we also want to make sure that if you're saying you shouldn't be doing this and it needs a professional, is it tenable or not?

Would you like to give direct care?

You are giving direct care.

Bedtime routines, night awakenings, those are direct care routines.

Many family caregivers don't give direct care because it's just too much.

caregiving has a lot of different kinds of aspects.

You can be a caregiver who does direct care.

You can be a caregiver who checks in with people.

You can be a caregiver who just monitors and supervises or manages.

There's different ways of caregiving.

There's a multitude of ways that you can actually show caring for somebody.

And the question is, what is actually right for you?

What is it that you would like to do and what is it that matters to you?

Well, I don't know if it's your constitution, but the question would be, it has more like to do with willingness.

What can you see yourself do in the service of what matters to you?