Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[Smc]

I'm not officially a "full time carer" anymore but as well as being on call for our adult daughter, I'm trying to get my parent's affairs and "worldy goods" in order, now that they're in aged care, and trying to support the rest of my family under high stress circumstances. The parents live a long way from here, so I'm travelling up to their end and staying for a week once every 4-6 weeks, which is a lot of extra strain.

I see a psychologist regularly myself as backup, but I'm finding that over time I'm really wearing down. I'm sleeping badly most nights, depressed, sometimes anxiety kicks in too. The housework is the first thing that shows the struggle. We can live in a messy house as long as the pots and plates are clean, and the food on them is healthy, but it's a bit of a nasty, self feeding situation. Messy house = hard to find things and do things = extra anxiety and depression = difficult and depressing to tackle messy house...

The trips to help my parents are getting harder to do all the time. I get very knotted up about doing the packing and end up doing it all at the last minute. This isn't helped by the fact that youngest in the family and husband are missing me badly while I'm away (it's mutual...) and sometimes the older daughter has had a significant crisis point shortly before I've been due to leave. It's hard going away not knowing whether she'll be safe while I'm gone.

Our youngest has recently started seeing a psychologist too. Thankfully, she has generally good mental health, but she's under a lot of strain and we figured being proactive about getting extra support for her was better than trying to pick up the pieces when it eventually got too much to cope with.

Ironically, because I'm not "full time" in any of these multiple caring roles, I don't qualify as a carer for government purposes. I do qualify for Newstart with a job search exemption due to being too mentally unwell to look for a job... not that I've got time to do one anyway?

[Faith-and-Hope]

I am a full-time carer for a disabled adult daughter, but my husbands "hidden" mi has caused me to become a carer for our whole family dynamic .... in a roller coaster here, but the loops have been getting progressively smaller for the last year or so .... but as one seems to improve, another one goes down .... sigh ... 

Gotta just keep swimming .... 🐠🐠🐠

@Smc @jayskette @Former-Member @KJW @Shaz51

Hi ..... 👋🏽🌷💕