When the caregiver needs help …
Supporting a parent, spouse, child, friend during their illness is the difficult role of the family caregiver. Healing, advising, reassuring, finding solutions requires a great deal of energy and sometimes helps the caregiver to forget himself. However, he too feels the need for support: sophrology can then be of great benefit to him.
The needs of the caregiver: fight fatigue, stress and manage emotions
The caregiver draws on their energy to support the dependent person, which can lead to occasional or chronic fatigue, or even exhaustion. This fatigue can be physical (washing, carrying in a bed, giving meals, pushing a wheelchair, …) but also intellectual. The thread of thoughts can seem uninterrupted as the number of things to think, organize, secure, anticipate is sometimes important. Added to this are sometimes difficult emotions to experience: grief, anger (against the other, against yourself), fear (for the other, for yourself) and painful feelings, such as guilt or repulsion. Self-esteem (“I do not do enough”), self-confidence (“I get it wrong”) and life can also be affected.
What can sophrology bring?
Become aware of your limits and learn to listen to yourself
Sophrology teaches you to hear what your body is expressing, which is a necessary prerequisite for deciding to ease off or “do otherwise”, before having too much resistance.
Become more aware of what is happening to us and how we react
Sophrology develops the ability to step back, allowing new solutions to emerge, or another way of doing things.
Avoid unnecessary tension and fatigue
To relieve muscle tension, feelings of oppression (knotted throat, a lump in the stomach, painful shoulders, etc.) and fatigue, sophrology offers muscle relaxation and body comfort exercises, which allow to install lasting inner harmony.
Finally, sophrology allows us to get back into a positive dynamic to gain serenity and to regain consciousness of the forgotten capacities that lie dormant in us to act more effectively on a daily basis. Combining bodily relaxation and techniques for developing awareness and positive psychology, sophrology will provide a global response to caregivers who choose to practice it. They will draw from it a lasting bodily and mental balance which will allow them to assume their mission more serenely.
Virginie Delaboudinière