In psychology, there’s this thing called a “compassion fatigue”, where you’ve just been caring too much about other peoples’ problems that you just.. can’t anymore. you reached your limit.
Did you know it also function when being someone’s caretaker? It’s not only mentally supporting friends and family through their own problems, it can be physically taking care of someone too.
Now I can’t say for parents, as i’m not one, though i’m sure it can happen aswell. I can only speak of my experience: You guys know I love my mother. I’ve been caring for her for decades- Since she got on dialysis when I was 17, I was taking care of cleaning her wounds and bandage her 3times a day, clean her skin of the surgeries’ dye.. (related: The power of love \\ Sharing my story of taking care of my mother)
She’s my world. Literally I’m almost always with her when i’m not working. I know there’s certain things she can’t do like bandage her feet with ointments, apply her nail fungus’ ointment on her toenails … and yet, sometimes it feels like alot.
I’m here to tell you it’s okay. It’s normal to feel this way at times, it’s already hard to take care of ourselves most days- you’re not a bad person for feeling like this. If you can take a few days to rest and settle only on yourself that’s even better- as with anything it can worsen up. But that’s a relatively normal emotion to feel.
In my case, sometimes it feels like i’m taking care of one more child (counting my three animals) without meaning to.. I don’t want kids for myself, and yet i’m still taking care of another being; although she has more autonomy than say, a toddler. It’s a giving-giving relationship deal: I take care of her and she take care of us, she still cook for me and do my laundry aswell as caring for my pets while i’m at work.
Arguably, I should’ve stop at two dogs- the cat wasn’t planned. But while I can’t fanthom living without her or even move town leaving her behind, in a way sometimes I haven’t really choosed this path. I didn’t opt-in, neither can I opt-out.. As a teenager, my job was to go to school and take care of my mother while my dad was making the household’s money. It’s insane the amount of people telling us that I was brave to bare that weight and “oh my son could never!”, but did I really had a choice?
Working in service industry isn’t helping me here- as i’m already working all day serving people’s coffee, which on rare occasions have bad customers giving me a hard time.. I don’t really wanna serve someone else at home aswell when I come from work 😅 mixed with my mother saying things like “well it’s YOUR dogs!” when at the same time we both knows she wouldn’t want me to take them away with me if I were to move out, and i’m also taking care of her being …
Ofcourse i’m not saying mistreat them; all i’m saying is, it’s okay to feel exhausted sometimes. You’re probably doing most than most people.. it’s okay to not being able to do all the things. It’s okay to have bad days.