Resilience and Coping Strategies in the Face of PSP & CBD
Donna Schempp, LCSW
- Resilience
- Learning to cope with stress and adversity and sustain well-being
- The act of rebounding or springing back after being stretched or pressed or recovering strength, spirit, and good humor
- Not just surviving
- What works
- You can modify the negative effects of adverse life situations
- Relationships that provide care, support, love trust, and encouragement
- Capacity to make realistic plans, having self confidence and a positive self image, developing communication skills, and the capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses
- Making realistic plans – you can’t do this 24/7, you need time away so you can comeback refreshed and energetic
- Caregivers – you cant get through this alone.
- Success comes from
- Feeling competent when feeling under stress, using problem solving skills
- Support from family, friends, faith, community, neighbors, and professionals
- Using community resources and professional counselors
- The ability to cope with stress without hurting yourself
- Believe that there is something one can do to manage your feelings and cope
- Not keeping secrets
- Take care of yourself so you can take good care of someone else
- Ways to build resilience
- Avoid seeing illness or stressful events as unbearable problems
- Accept circumstances that cant be changed
- Develop realistic goals and move towards them
- Take decisive actions in adverse situations
- Look for opportunities on self discovery after struggling with loss
- Develop self confidence, even though you are not perfect
- Keep a long term perspective and consider stressful events in a broader context, particularly day to day stuff
- Maintain a hopefully outlook, optimism helps
- Take care of your mind and body exercise, eat right, sleep, laugh
- Pay attention to your own needs and feelings
- Have a sense of purpose/meaning
- Accept your own strengths and weaknesses
- Sense of control and power/ability to affect change
- Grief and Loss
- Accept brief episodes of the blues
- Grieving is necessary and important
- Ambiguous loss
- Loss of future, who you or someone else was, relationship as it was, roles, and independence
- Challenges: Common stressors
- Resistant, angry caregiver, difficult feelings
- Physical care needs
- Change and uncertainty
- Poor/ineffective medical care and money issues
- Legal matters
- A need for a move to more supportive housing
- Care supervision needs
- Life, health, safety concerns
Depression
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- 50% higher for caregivers than non-caregivers
- Acknowledging that you’re depressed is very important
- Anger
- Frustration is normal, how you express the anger is the biggest issue/point
- Have to learn forgiveness
- Feelings
- Self monitor your emotions, write about them
- Change negative self talk
- No one can help me, I can’t do it all, it’s not fair, etc.
- Developing a help network: Never pass up an opportunity
- Always accept offers of assistance from family, friends, neighbors, etc.
- Have a mental list of jobs ready
- Ask for help, and receive help when its offered
- Find out your stress relievers
- Importance of touch and laughter