Excerpt from ‘The AARP Caregiver Answer Book’

Whenever caregivers do become exhausted, the potential costs are clear. You may struggle to get out of bed to face another day of caregiving. You may be irritable toward others, including the person you’re caring for. You may suffer burnout and depression and no longer perform well as a caregiver. You may even reach the point that you must quit entirely because you have nothing more to give.

Barriers to Self-Care

Considering the costs, why do people deny themselves what they need to replenish their energy? When asked, caregivers usually bring up one of three common barriers to caring for themselves: lack of time, guilt, and fear of judgment.

GUILT

Whenever I take time for myself, I feel like I’ve done something wrong. Shouldn’t I feel guilty?

In short, no. But caregiving and guilt seem to go hand in hand. Most care- givers experience at least some guilt, with some consumed by it and in constant torment. We too struggled with guilty feelings during our stints as caregivers and know it can make caregiving much harder.

You don’t want to do a bad job, obviously. Most caregivers define doing a good job as providing for every need of the person they’re caring for. That includes fulfilling the many roles listed in Chapter 1, including serving as companion, coach, driver, home health aide, and more. If you cannot or will not always meet your relative’s or friend’s every need, you might beat yourself up.

Imagine feeling guilty because you decided to replenish yourself by going away for a weekend and not taking your relative along. Or maybe you felt guilty because your relative had to spend those few days in the company of a home health aide who didn’t already know their needs and preferences. Both thoughts can be boiled down to the same damning self-indictment: I neglected my relative, and that was wrong.

That kind of harsh self-criticism can be hard to take. To avoid it entirely, many caregivers won’t go on that weekend trip. They also might not go to lunch with their spouse or friends, or hire a home health aide, or attend an exercise class at the local gym, or do anything else that could be considered self-care. They justify this to themselves by saying they will sacrifice their own needs for now because caregiving won’t go on forever. It’s understandable to want to avoid feeling guilty during caregiving or being wracked by regrets that they didn’t do more. But how long can you go on if you deny yourself the care that replenishes your resources?

MANAGING AND PROTECTING TIME

How am I supposed to find time for self-care? I’m already so busy.

We recommend time management and protected time. Neither creates more hours in a day than the 24 you have. Nor will either prevent unforeseen events, such as a care receiver’s emergency, that can crash your care- fully planned schedule. But both can give you a bit more control over time.

Time management is about improving your efficiency to make the most of the time you do have. That may be the last thing on your mind if you are frantically juggling multiple caregiving and other responsibilities, but it’s our best solution for getting more done. Here are typical time management strategies:

The AARP Caregiver Answer Book

AARP

Set priorities:

1. Figure out where your time is going by keeping a log for a week of how you spend your days hour by hour.

2. Use the log to make a master list of the tasks you need to complete most days.

3. Most time management experts recommend you use something called an Eisenhower Matrix to categorize each task you have as Important and Urgent, Important and Not Urgent, Urgent and Not Important, and Not Important and Not Urgent. Your highest priority — the tasks you will schedule first — should be those that are Important and Urgent. Next will come those that are Important and Not Urgent. Please consider delegating the tasks in the last two categories — Urgent and Not Important and Not Important and Not Urgent — to others (if that is possible) or putting them off for a while.

• Use a planning tool. This could be something as simple as an online, smartphone, or paper day planner to help you better organize your time.
• Avoid multitasking. You may think you’re using your time more efficiently if you’re cooking, cleaning, and talking on the phone to your relative’s health insurance company at the same time, but research has demonstrated that doing too much simultaneously will make you less, not more, productive. Your performance will suffer. It is just not worth it.

Protected time is exactly what it sounds like — identifying time that you will use for self-care that no one — not the care receiver or others — can take from you. (Obviously, protected time would instantly become unprotected in a true emergency.) For example, we had a client who left her house each week on the same day and time to attend a pottery class regardless of whether her family wanted her to stay or thought she should take care of them instead. Another client went into her home art studio to work on her current watercolor painting at the same time each week. It provided her with uninterrupted times away from caring for her children and husband.

RESPITE

The social worker at the adult day care center where my husband goes keeps telling me I should take respite. I was too embarrassed to admit I’m not sure what it is. What’s it all about?

Respite is a just a fancy way of saying “taking a break.” The ARCH National Respite Network and Resource Center defines it as “planned or emergency care provided to a child or adult with special needs in order to provide temporary relief to family caregivers.” It is considered a key form of caregiver self-care.

Respite can vary in duration and take the form of in-home or facility-based respite. Having a family member, friend, or home health aide from a home care agency come stay with your husband in your home so that you can go to the hair salon, have lunch with a friend, and pick up some groceries is an example of a short, in-home respite. If your husband instead goes to an adult day care center from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. several days a week, you receive short, facility-based respite that frees you up to rest, get chores done, see friends, and so on. Respite is also available for several days or a week or more in which the care receiver usually stays in a skilled-nursing facility while the caregiver rests at home or goes on vacation for self-care.

If you are interested, you can learn more about respite options in your community by searching the ARCH National Respite Locator Service or contacting your regional Area Agency on Aging, a local outpost of the Administration for Community Living of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which can be found at eldercare.acl.gov. There is a cost for respite care services that is usually totally or partially covered by the care receiver’s health insurance plan.

​Excerpted from The AARP Caregiver Answer Book. Reprinted with permission from Guilford Press, copyright 2025.