Short answer: Much of the pain caregivers feel comes from the story attached to an event, not only the event itself. Your mother says you never visit. That is a sentence. “I am failing her” is a story. Write the two apart on paper, then ask whether you can prove the story. You may find some of it holds up and some of it does not.
You are sitting in the driveway with the engine off. Twenty minutes ago your mother looked past you at the TV and said, “Your brother always makes the time.” You said nothing. You folded her towels and put the pills in the Tuesday slot.
Now you are gripping the steering wheel, and that one sentence is playing again. Each time it gets a little longer. By the time you start the car, it has become: nothing I do is enough, and she knows it.
How do I stop negative thoughts when I am caring for a parent?
Epictetus was born enslaved in the Roman Empire and was lame in one leg. He went on to teach, and a student wrote down what he said. One line from those notes:
“Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.”
Why this hits differently when you are a caregiver
Epictetus makes a simple split. There is what happened, and there is what you decided it means. Most of the time those two arrive so close together that they feel like one thing. Your mother says a sentence, and the hurt shows up as if the sentence carried it.
Epictetus says the hurt is riding on the meaning, and the meaning is the part you can look at.
A caregiver’s stories are rarely made up out of nothing. You really are tired. You really did cancel Thursday’s visit. Your brother really does call less than you do. So when the story says “I am not doing enough,” it has real evidence to point at, and arguing with it feels like lying to yourself.
There is also no one checking your work. A job has reviews. School has grades. Caregiving often has one person giving you feedback, and that person may be sick, scared, in pain, or confused. Their words become the only grade you get, even when those words came from the fear and not from a fair look at what you do.
And the stories run at the worst hours. You think them in the car, in the shower, and at 3 a.m., when you are least able to test them.
So Epictetus is not asking you to feel nothing. He is not saying the story is always wrong. He is asking for one small step. Pull the story apart from the event and look at each one by itself. Some stories will hold up, and those tell you what to fix. Others will not, and those are the ones costing you sleep for no reason.
One thing you can do today
Split the sentence. You need an index card, or the back of an envelope, and a pen.
Think of one thing someone said or did this week that is still bothering you. Draw a line down the middle of the card.
On the left side, write only what a video camera would have recorded. “Mom said, ‘Your brother always makes the time.'”
On the right side, write what you told yourself it meant. “She thinks I do a bad job. Maybe I do. Nobody sees what I do.”
Now go down the right side one line at a time and ask, “Do I know this is true, or does it only feel true?” Put a small check beside anything you can prove. Circle anything you cannot.
Last, look at the left side again. Is there anything there that needs a real response? Maybe it is a phone call to your brother. Maybe it is nothing at all. Either answer is useful.
When it gets hard. The right side will keep coming back, often at night. You do not have to win an argument with it. Write the word “story” next to it and go back to the left side.
And if a line on the right turns out to be true, say you did cancel Thursday, move it over to the left as a fact. Then pick one small thing you can do about it this week. A true story is not an attack on you. It is information.
Sit with this
Which story about yourself as a caregiver have you repeated so long that it now feels like a fact?
Going deeper with this lesson
The card above is one of four practical tools in this lesson. The book gives you the other three, along with a full written reflection, a journaling prompt, and a worksheet page you can fill in.
