Being a caregiver is certainly serious. After all, it’s the things you do for your aging relative that allow them to continue living in at home. They improve the senior’s quality of life and keep them healthier. But, just because caregiving is serious business, that doesn’t mean you can’t laugh and enjoy the time you spend with the older adult, too. In fact, finding the humor in being a caregiver can help you to ease some of the emotional strain that comes with the role.
Humor Helps Both the Caregiver and the Care Recipient
Humor has many emotional benefits and even some physical ones. It can improve the lives of both caregivers and the people they are caring for. Some of the ways that humor can help are:
-Improves Mood: When caregivers and seniors can find things to laugh about together, it makes them both feel better. Humor can redirect attention from the difficulties of having a chronic illness or the challenges of caregiver tasks.
-Coping with Emotions: Humor helps people to cope with the negative emotions they may have about getting older, being ill, or having to care for an aging relative. In fact, in one study of people with recurring cases of cancer or with terminal cancer, 75 percent of them said that keeping a sense of humor was just as important as being free from pain.
-Health Benefits: In a study conducted by cardiologists at the University of Maryland Medical Center, researchers determined that people who find reasons to laugh aren’t as likely to suffer from heart disease.
Ways to Add Humor to Caregiving
Admittedly, it may not always be easy to find reasons to laugh during caregiving. However, if you open yourself up to it, you may find plenty of reasons to laugh with your older family member. Some examples of ways other caregivers have found humor are:
A caregiver running late for an appointment with her mother joked that they were going to speed up and move so quickly that they’d have to take the corners on one wheel.
One caregiver suggests laughing along with the things your aging relative finds funny even when you don’t feel like laughing. Responding positively to their attempts at lightening the situation may encourage them (and you!) to continue to look for humor in situations.
Another caregiver shared the story of her mom accidentally putting the caregiver’s sweatpants on instead of her own. The sweatpants she wore were a few sizes larger than she needed. When the caregiver asked her about them, she said she thought she’d lost a lot of weight, then pulled her shirt up to show that she had pinned them to her bra to keep them up! The two enjoyed a hearty laugh together.
Sometimes caregivers worry that they are being disrespectful when they laugh. As long as you are laughing with the older adult and not at them, it’s not. In fact, when you’re able to find the humor in a situation, it may encourage the senior to laugh more, too. That can fill your time together with laughter and new memories instead of making it feel like a chore.
Sources Dailycaring.com Aarp.org Huffpost.com
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