Who Cares for the Carers? Therapy for Caregiver Burnout

You finally get an hour to yourself, and then you find it’s hard to turn that time and space into something that’s actually nourishing. You might be so overwhelmed that you just numb out. Rest might be what’s needed, and that’s fine. But instead of resting, you could end up on your phone or computer, scrolling around for an hour, and come out of it feeling worse. Or maybe you found your way here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about caregiver burnout, and what folks need in order to thrive.

So many people who care for others — whether that’s children, or aging parents, or another loved one, friend, or family member — can ignore their own needs and get to a place where they’re exhausted, burnt out, and maybe even lose track of themselves. It’s easy for them to forget what they desire for their lives and what they need to feel like themselves again.

The work that doesn’t get talked about

Caregiving asks a lot of a person. People don’t tend to talk about how challenging it is, and how much work it is. There’s a lot of joy involved, of course, but the hard work of it doesn’t get shared so much.

Parenting in particular involves a lot of invisible labour — especially for mothers, but for both parents really. You’re entrusted with another person’s twenty-four-hour care. Kids are very capable, but they also have needs they aren’t able to fulfill on their own for a long time. Human childhood is very long. Kids need to be fed and clothed, and then they also have needs for learning and emotional development. Their bodies, hearts, and minds need to be nurtured.

The stress and worry and hard work of parenting can become another full-time job, or more. This is especially true if your child is neurodivergent, or marginalized in any way. There can be challenges at school, perhaps involving bullying or learning differences. And if your child has trouble sleeping, that can lead to years of sleep deprivation.

Caring for an aging parent or another vulnerable person carries its own weight. There are a lot of decisions to make. There may be medical concerns, legal issues, personal belongings to deal with, a move (or several) involved. It can bring up complicated family dynamics and past traumas. And there’s the timeline: if you’re caring for someone at the end of life, the uncertainty can be overwhelming. Anticipatory grief can add to the burden.

What gets redirected

You may have had time previously to focus on your own work, your likes and desires, hobbies, connections, relationships. Now, a lot of that energy gets redirected toward another relationship of care.

The isolation many caregivers feel isn’t a personal failing. It’s only in the last hundred years or so that we’ve ended up in this setup, where parents are so solely responsible for their own kids’ or elders’ care.

And if you have a particular kind of kid or parent, they may not easily accept care from others — it’ll take them time to get used to someone new. Living in fairly isolated households, as we do for the most part, there may not be a lot of other people who can step in. That can mean years of feeling like you don’t have the freedom and agency you had before.

For people who work freelance, or have less delineated work schedules, this can be even harder. Where do you put the boundaries? You don’t have external structures telling you what your work hours are, and maybe you’re working in the same home where you’re also doing all your caregiving. Things can get blurry and messy and complicated.

How it shows up in the body

Caregivers experiencing burnout have different ways of responding somatically. Some tend toward tiredness and sleepiness — or a kind of shutting down and numbing out. Others get wired: insomnia, worry, anxiety. And some find they get angry, irritable, short-tempered. All of these are natural responses to stress. The body is trying to send a message that it needs care and attention too.

What we might do together

Being aware of your situation and acknowledging what you’re going through is the first challenge. Awareness is the first step towards healing.

This is quite individual, so I hesitate to give too many examples. It comes with listening to your story, figuring out what you need, and finding ways to move toward that.

We can start to see whether there are possible solutions. There may be obligations you can defer. Spaces you can make. Ways to turn energy back toward yourself and to nourish yourself. We can also look at where the energy is really leaking — what parts of the care work are genuinely draining you, and whether you can delegate some of it to others.

I have both lived and clinical experience with caregiver burnout, and I bring that with me — it informs my practice. Through therapy we can work together to find solutions that will work for you and your situation. As Dr. Melissa Moore says, we can find solutions where the ideal meets the real. This might mean gaining access to more resources or practical support, or finding greater self-acceptance. Sometimes a perspective shift can allow the burden of care to feel lighter and to make space for creativity and play.

What the arts have to offer

Expressive arts therapy offers different avenues of expression for what you’re going through. I want to be careful about how I put this, because you may just want to talk, and that’s completely fine.

There’s a story I heard about Paolo Knill, one of the founders of expressive arts therapy. Somebody asked him how to add art into a session, and he said: never add art. You do not add art. The conversation can also be the art. The art has to emerge organically from the session.

That’s how I think about it. Whatever emerges is the art that we work with — whether that’s talking, or moving into another modality. I’ve known people whose therapy has mostly looked like walking and talking, week after week, with no artwork made in any conventional sense. That was what needed to emerge for them: being outside, moving their body, having someone to talk to, making space for themselves.

Expressive arts certainly offers somatic and other art-based resources that can be of use. But maybe what it really has to offer is the possibility of the emergent. And if you’re a caregiver who doesn’t feel like there’s space for anything to emerge anywhere else in your life, that matters.

Getting in touch

Feel free to reach out if you think therapy might help you find your way back to yourself. And please pass this along to anyone who might need it. I work with caregivers in Toronto and online across Ontario.

If you think this work might be a good fit, I offer a free 20-minute consultation.

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Ready to begin?

Bee offers a free 20-minute consultation to anyone considering therapy. It's a chance to meet, ask questions, and decide together if this feels like a good fit.

or email bpallomina@gmail.com

Bee Pallomina, RP

Expressive Arts Therapist

Toronto, Ontario | Online across Ontario

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