Additional Resources Mentioned
Happy Healthy Caregiver website here
20 for 2025 Funsheet here
Self-Care at Sea cruise here
Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast here
Just for You Daily Self-Care Journal here
Takeaways
Tip 1: Give Yourself Permission
One of the biggest barriers to self-care is the guilt that comes with taking time for yourself. Many caregivers feel it’s selfish to focus on their own needs when their care recipient is struggling.
Tip 2: Think Broadly About Self-Care
Self-care encompasses much more than just physical health. Elizabeth identifies eight key categories:
– Practical self-care (like organizing your desk)
– Emotional self-care (therapy, journaling)
– Social self-care (connecting with others)
– Spiritual self-care (following your spiritual path)
– Intellectual self-care (learning new things)
– Financial self-care (budgeting, planning)
– Professional self-care (career development)
– Physical self-care (exercise, nutrition)
Tip 3: Prioritize and Schedule Self-Care
The best self-care strategy is simply putting it on your calendar. Elizabeth recommends creating a “20 for 25” list—twenty things you want to do this year that bring you joy, energy, or peace of mind. These can range from small activities like learning a new game to bigger plans like taking a vacation.
Tip 4: Give Yourself Credit
Instead of focusing solely on to-do lists, create a “ta-da” list celebrating what you’re already doing right. Remember that self-care includes basic activities you’re already doing:
– Getting sleep
– Preparing meals
– Basic hygiene
– Managing finances
– Taking breaks
Read More in This Blog here
Full Episode Transcript
Nancy Treaster
Are you exhausted by the constant advice? Don’t forget to take care of you. I mean, it sounds overwhelming with everything that you’re juggling. Seriously? In today’s episode, Sue and I are talking with Elizabeth Miller, founder of the Happy Healthy Caregiver, about the realities of self-care. Everyone, let’s get started.
Sue
Welcome, Elizabeth, we are so glad to have you here and glad that we’re all here in person to be able to share this. I am going to begin by reading for you. I’m pointing, but they don’t know who that is, okay. For our listeners, I’m going to begin by reading you Elizabeth’s bio and then I’m gonna introduce Elizabeth as I know her. So Elizabeth, you are a family caregiver.
You’re a caregiver advocate, a speaker, an author, podcast host. You’re a certified caregiving consultant, which is a lot of work to become that. And you’re also a certified senior advisor. You really know what you’re talking about because your personal experiences include you’re caring for your aging parents with chronic and terminal illnesses, as well as for a sibling with developmental disabilities.
These are what inspired you and it’s now been nearly 10 years. This is your 10th year with the Happy Healthy Caregiver. So welcome and now I’m gonna share with the audience who I know and who I know you from the very first time I’ve met you is someone who really is passionate about helping all of us. Your messages come from your head and your heart. You’ve thought through all the things that you’re doing. You’re very intentional about giving messages that help us remember that there is joy in our lives and to look at the entire person, to look at holistically what we’re doing. You bring that, you’ve created a variety of resources. I’ve been using your journal for years. And you walk the walk and you talk the talk and we are so fortunate that we’re gonna have you talk about one of the topics that you are so masterful with, which is self-care. So let’s get started.
Elizabeth
So sweet, thank you so much. You’re welcome. What a treat that we can all do this together.
With Happy Healthy Caregiver, I essentially created what I wish existed for me as a family caregiver. I know this is what has inspired you all to create the caregiver’s journey. And I’m learning from caregivers every day. I think the caregivers are the experts in caregiving. And so you all are spotlighting what you have learned and sharing it with the world and what to, you know, be, do a similar thing, just make it make somebody’s journey a little bit, a little bit easier. I resonated with what you said, Nancy, in the beginning about, you know, how annoying it is when people say you take care of yourself. And it’s hard because that is what I talk about all the time. I talk about self care and I certainly don’t want to do it in an annoying way. I felt similar in that I felt like people were “shoulding” me. You should take care of yourself. And yet so frustrated that I didn’t understand what that could really look like as a person who was in a sandwich generation caregiver, caring for older adults, raising middle school kids working a full-time job and feeling like I was on a constant treadmill. So what did that really look like?
Yes, I have evolved my definition of what self-care is over the years. I, where I am today, feel that my definition of self-care is anything that is going to provide me emotional or physical energy, anything that is going to provide peace of mind, and anything that offers just pure joy.
Sue
Elizabeth, would you please say that again? That is so powerful and impactful.
Elizabeth
So put everything through a filter if this is going to help you. Is this self care for you? Does it give you emotional and physical energy? Or does it provide peace of mind? Or is it just pure joy? love that. a wonderful definition. It really is. And it has evolved. And I think one of the things we learn as caregivers and people hear a lot in the caregiving community is that we need to put the oxygen mask on ourselves before we care for other people.That frustrated me because I felt like you know when we’re in an airline situation in a crisis, it’s going to be obvious, right? There’s gonna be flashing lights, the masks are gonna come dow. People are gonna be telling us. Hey, now’s the time. That’s not reality when we’re on this treadmill of life
There’s no flashing lights and things coming out from That would be so helpful actually. Yeah, it would be good. Flash, flash, you’re not practicing self-care. Yeah. So it doesn’t work that way. So I had to figure out a different analogy that worked for me. And one that I have landed on and share is that it’s like feeding a nest of hungry birds and your birds are representing your job, your kids, your pets, your home, your relationships with your spouse, your care recipient, if they’re a different person, all of that.
And we know when we see that nest of hungry birds that they’re never just peacefully in there. There is someone always needing something. And that’s definitely what it felt like as a caregiver that somebody is always needing my attention. And yet it clicked for me that if I did not fly from my nest and figure out how to nurture myself with that energy, that joy, that peace of mind, that I wasn’t going to keep showing up and being able to nurture my nest.
Nancy Treaster
And that’s so true. I’ll tell you one of the things that I kind of figured out over the long haul is that you’re at the doctor and you get your care receiver gets a dementia diagnosis and at that point, you’re a caregiver. You don’t even know it. You don’t recognize the term, but caregiving is not just for the care receiver.
It’s for you as well. So you are a team that needs to be cared for. So yes, you’re providing a lot of the caregiving, as the primary caregiver. But both of you need to be cared for. And so you’re responsible, not just for caregiving for your care receiver, you’re responsible for your own caregiving as well.
Sue
And I know what it looks like when you don’t do that. In my professional career, I just was like doing more, doing more, doing more, doing more. That’s what I was used to. So when I become a caregiver and I’m like, well, I can shave off going to the gym every day. I could shave off an hour of sleep, get the things done I didn’t get done during the day and I can do a little of this and a little of that. And then one day I fixed my husband lunch and I had him a nice little sandwich and some potato chips and all of a sudden he picked up the potato chip and drops it on the floor. A potato chip, no big deal. And inside I just went nuts like, seriously?
You can’t even be responsible for eating a sandwich. And I’ve been working so hard all day. got up before, blah, blah, blah. All those things. Now, fortunately, that stayed inside. It did not come on the outside, because I had a little grace of space that what came here didn’t have to come here. However, that’s nothing I would even normally even think. And it was a silly potato chip. I gathered myself, put more potato chips on the plate, said, honey, I’ll be right back. And I went in the other room and I sat down and I was literally shaking. And I was like, what on earth happened? And what had happened was, I was not practicing self care and I just kept shaving off, shaving off thinking it was okay. And I also had not gotten something very valuable, which is an accountability partner who can hold me to practicing self care. And I did fine. You’ve got to do it. Well, I think your story,
Elizabeth
Sue, thank you for sharing that first of all. Like I think we have to be vulnerable in order to kind of get unpacked the stuff. And we hear sometimes about the analogy of the frog boiling in water. Like you wouldn’t have jumped in if the water was boiling, but it’s a slow boil over the months and the years. And we all kind of have that potato chip moment. I had my first panic attack as a caregiver. I didn’t even know I was having a panic attack, but I mean, at one point they even in a doctor’s office, go went and got like an EKG machine for me to check things out. it’s, we all kind of get to that point where enough is enough and hopefully we can have this conversation here with you all today so that say, let’s help you not get to this point. Let’s help mitigate burnout and teach different strategies that maybe you can try on that will help make this sustainable for you. And learn from the three of us because each one of us has that story of when it finally clicked that this is not working.
Sue
This episode is to try to help you go through some strategies to keep that from happening. Let’s go ahead and then get started with tip number one of our four tips. Elizabeth?
Elizabeth
Tip number one is to give yourself permission. It’s counterintuitive, right? We’re taking care of everybody else. So we don’t feel like we can take care of ourselves. And why that is maybe, we feel like we’re guilty about it. We feel it’s selfish, we feel like this person is having such a tough time at life, how dare us go out and experience. far, none of these are anything that serve us. Yeah. So it is counterintuitive. And yet in order to make caregiving sustainable, hopefully get to that point where you figure out that you do need the permission to do that because you do have the diagnosis for many of you who are dementia caregiver. This is not a short term thing. Average caregivers, four and a half years of caregiving, some from dementia caregiving, I’m sure is closer to 10. So how do we make this sustainable? And the first thing is to give yourself permission.
Nancy
You know, I actually needed someone to physically tell me I had permission. How about that for interesting? So it’s a concept, give yourself permission, because we don’t, because we feel guilty or what would other people think? That’s another thing. But I went to a therapist after a couple of years into my husband’s diagnosis and was talking to her about what was going on and about my feelings and all that goes with that. And she said, well, I am giving you permission to do what you want to do sometimes and to take care of you. And we had a long conversation about that. And I got home and I realized, well, I really needed her to tell me I had permission to do it. So literally she used those words, but I needed to hear that. You have permission to take care of you.
Elizabeth
Do you think it mattered that it was a professional or could it have been a close friend or somebody?
Nancy
I think it was the word permission that really stuck with me because I thought, I’ve got permission to do this and it made perfectly good sense. You know what? We’re all professionals. We’re giving you permission.
Elizabeth
We’re giving you permission. We give you permission.
Sue
Permission granted. Yes. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about tip two because I think self-care is a term that everybody has their own little definition of and you have some good advice about how to think about it a little more broadly.
Elizabeth
Yes, think about it broadly. So when I was first on this journey with Happy Healthy Caregiver and starting to try on different things, almost like we try on clothes, right? To see what’s going to fit because all of our self-care for each other is going to be different on what’s going to hit the energy, the peace of mind, the joy. We’re not a one size fits all. I was very super focused on physical self-care initially. was eating right and exercise. And it made sense because as a caregiver, the people that I was caring for made poor lifestyle choices. And so I was so fearful of reinventing that same cycle again for my kids that I did not do that. So I went all in on physical. And I think that’s a little bit of what the media does too. Also like that we need to spend a lot of money in order to have self care. We got to have weekends away and nights on the town and wonderful trips, which are great. But as a caregiver, I had to figure out what was realistic as far as someone who worked full time with kids and caregiving. So trying on different things, I have over the years fallen on that all of the content that I share on Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast and on the website falls into eight categories of self care. So we’re gonna name those out for you. Practical self care. Sometimes it’s just cleaning off your desk.
Emotional self-care, sometimes going to therapist for me, was journaling, social self-care, we’re doing it, we’re together right now. Spiritual self-care, whatever your spiritual journey looks like for you. Intellectual self-care, learning something new, trying something new. Financial self-care, budgeting, what are you gonna do for charitable things, could be a broad type thing, how are you gonna pay for some of the things that are expensive with caregiving? We don’t think about that as self-care, but that’s gonna offer us peace of mind when we figure that out.
Professional self-care, we all deserve to make a living and do something professionally. So what are the skills and so forth that we need there? And then physical self-care. And I intentionally kind of put that one last because I think it gets too much attention. Yeah, you’re right, it does get a lot of attention. It feels like, yeah, that’s the thing you’re missing. Yes. I think what is helpful for me with those is it gets me out of the single thread, like you said, for the physical part and helps me be open to considering what could self-care look like?
Sue
And it could be as simple as, for example, when I go out to water my plants now, I get great joy and I celebrate what they look like and things like that.
Nancy
I don’t celebrate what they look like in my house. do.
Elizabeth
That social self-care, they take on- I like it. She socializes. And yet it makes me feel good. So it can be any kind of a thing. Nothing is too small. Not if it brings you joy.
Nancy Treaster
And you can combine them. So I told myself that I felt like I was missing something. I mean, something in my life outside of all the caregiving responsibilities, but there was, I was really trying hard to take vacations and to do things, but something still felt like I was really feeling like I was missing something. And I decided it was going out at night. Normal people go out at night. And I don’t think I had done that for months and months and months. So I decided that once a month, I was gonna go out at night. I was gonna get a caregiver and go out at night. And so I would go to a cooking class, which is a combination of which two.
Elizabeth
Intellectual and social.
Nancy
I learned how to cook something new. Yeah. And I socialized with a friend or a group of people that I didn’t know.
Elizabeth
That’s another sort of thing to think about is that you can certainly call. I love a twofer. We all have a buy one, get one. So, we’ll go back to the guilt thing. Like, oh, playing words with friends. I used to feel guilty, like this is a waste of time. No, I’ve reframed it. is intellectual self care. And it is also social social self care because I’m playing with my, you know, 80 year old aunt, you know, and some other relatives and friends from high school even. So yeah, we can reframe that stuff. If it brings you joy, keep doing it. And these categories are listed somewhere that they can find them? Yes, underneath the resources on happyhealthycaregiver.com, you can find the different self-care categories. So if you feel like you want to kind of dive deeper into any of these, you can certainly go there. Sounds good.
Sue
Well, now we’ve given ourselves permission and we have started to think more broadly about it. Now, let’s prioritize it.
Elizabeth
I like that. Yes. I mean, sometimes people ask me for my best self-care tip and it’s really not, you know, earth shattering. It’s basically scheduling it, scheduling and making time for yourself so that it can be put into motion because we can talk about it all we want. One of the activities that I love to do and I want to invite the listeners to do is something called the 20 for 25. This is 20 things in this year that bring you joy, bring you energy, bring you peace of mind, all of that. Nothing is drudgery on here. This is all stuff that you want to look forward to doing. One of the things on my list is to do the self-care at Sea Cruise in October. So I’m going with some fellow care advocates. We’ll link to that here. Hopefully, so we invite you all to go because you can come for the respite, but leave with the community and the resources. So some of them are big things like travel, but some of them are little things. Like I would love to learn how to play mahjong. There you go.. What’s something, I invited you all to do this, and Nancy. What did you have on your, with something on your 20 for 25?
Sue
The first one I put is to re-engage my spiritual jewelry, something I used to really invest a lot of time with chose to not prioritize for a period of time and now it’s time to prioritize it again. And I’m very excited about it. actually went back afterward and I added a heart to it.
Elizabeth
That’s good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it.
Nancy
You know, so I put walk outside as one of my top ones because I tend to feel compelled to be on the treadmill to be in the house all the time. And so, you know, every now and then take the chance and go outside instead.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I’m curious how you’re gonna, that’s gonna make you feel.
Nancy
Well, not till April.
Elizabeth
Okay. I find a lot of energy by being outdoors. Like it is definitely one of my go-to strategies. and getting sunlight. to get back into it. There’s a big world out there. I know, get out there.
Nancy Treaster (
I’ll tell you another thing that goes along with this and just thinking about the cruise as a topic.
I intentionally schedule two vacations a year I have for the last probably five years. Well, post COVID, almost five years with my sister. And these are travel vacations. And I thought, what will people think? I mean, I really, the first time I thought, cause I did have to get somebody to come care for my husband. And I thought, what will people think? And the strangest thing is that all I have ever gotten is,”my goodness, that’s so wonderful to hear.” “Good for you, good for you.” “I’m so glad to hear you did that.” “That’s awesome.” I’ve never gotten anybody to even give me a funny look. People truly, when they give you that advice that’s so annoying, they really mean it. And so I only got positive feedback for making the effort to go on vacation. So the cruise sounds wonderful and I may actually go.
Elizabeth
I love that. love that.
Nancy Treaster
All right, so on that note, I’m giving myself credit for scheduling vacations and actually going on them. I think we ought to go to tip four, which is give yourself some credit.
Elizabeth
Give yourself some credit. I think, you know, we talk a lot about to-do lists as caregiver. Let’s talk about a to-da list. Yeah, let’s talk about the things that we are doing right. You know, I think sometimes we can tend to just gravitate towards the negative of things, but we’re doing a lot of stuff that is working right. And so there are things I guarantee that each of you listening are doing that is self-care right now in one of those eight categories. If you are sleeping, if you are making a meal, if you’re brushing your teeth, if you’re paying your bills, all of that is self-care. that’s a starting point and then ta-da, that we should celebrate that.
And then, you know, I think, and then inviting people to think about, okay, what else is missing that would particularly energize me or give me peace of mind or joy and putting that in there.
Sue
But definitely give yourself credit. And it’s, be proud of yourself that you are doing that and celebrate teeny tiny little things. You’re not mentioning huge things. Well, the cruise is a huge thing, but a lot of the other things we talk about, they don’t have to be a big moment there. It’s just you are doing something and the more that we become aware of these things, the more we start to doing the things that we’ve been talking about. Elizabeth, this has been wonderful with your tips. Let’s go ahead and summarize and share with us any final comments you’ve got.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I’m excited. I could be doing this, by the way, all afternoon. There’s, I mean, there’s a lot to unpack on self-care because we need examples from other family caregivers of what is working for them and what we could potentially try on that might also work for us because we need to figure out how this is gonna be sustainable or we’re all gonna burn out. And so I invite people to stay connected through happyhealthycaregiver.com. You can learn about the cruise. You can check out the podcast, which only spotlights real family caregivers. can get your 20 for 25 fact sheet. Yeah, fun sheet. can get your fun sheet. It’s not a worksheet, it’s a fun sheet.
Sue
You can check out the journal.
Elizabeth
This is, you know, I want people to have an easy way to try journaling. The Just For You Daily Self Care Journal. And then I also will do a weekly newsletter. So every week I send something happy, something healthy, something care related. And I have heard from people that even beyond caregiving, they like to stay subscribed because it just gives them new ideas.
Nancy
I like it. That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for joining us today to talk about the realities of self-care. We talked about four tips. The first tip was give yourself permission. The second tip, think broadly. The third tip, give self-care the right priority. And the fourth tip, and my favorite, is give yourself a pat on the back. Celebrate what you are doing that’s self-care.
Now, if you have self-care tips that you think other people could take advantage of, please go out to our Facebook page, our Instagram page, and put those tips out there so other people can see them. If you like this podcast, please follow it or subscribe to it and rate it or review it. We really appreciate that. Everything we talked about here that is a resource that you can get to will be in the show notes and
Sue
Elizabeth, I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed just spending time today talking about self care. It makes me feel so good when you think about the things you can do for yourself. And hopefully it energizes people. Like you said.
Elizabeth
Yeah. Hopefully. Thank you for having me here. You’re very welcome.
All three
We’re all on this journey together.
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