When Things Don't Resolve The Way Caregivers Expect

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He knows. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. 877-655-6755.

That's Gracie singing from her record, Resilient. And you can get a copy of that today if you wish. Go out to Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Just click on the record or click on the donate button. Whatever's on your heart to give to the Standing with Hope, which is the overall presenting sponsor of this show. We'd love to have you participate in that and we'll send you that copy of that CD.

It's a great CD. What it does is you help us with our two program areas for the wounded and those who care for them. And for the wounded is the prosthetic limb outreach that Gracie founded to her fellow amputees. And we just we just finished up our time and I just give a shout out to them at Metro Davidson County Correctional Facility. John, they're changing over their systems over there and CoreCivic ran that but they're not going to run it anymore. And we had a workshop there with the inmates and they recycled prosthetic limbs for us. And we just finished that up and moved everything now to Arizona and they're going to be doing it at that facility with CoreCivic. It's one of their many faith-based programs.

And then we also purchased resin to send over because that's something that has to be done to use to make sockets for prosthetics. And then we also sponsored a leg just recently for a guy we've been treating for 12 years just just this week. And so a lot of things going on with that and you can help be a part of that. And then for the wounded and for those who care for them, that's what this show is all about. And if you like what you're hearing, if you feel like this show has value to what you are going through or somebody you know is going through, you want to share it with them. Help us do it more at HopeForTheCaregiver.com.

Just click on that donate button. All right, John, we're talking about some things. You had some things you wanted to address today, so fire away. Well, I did. We kind of talked about it a little bit just a second ago, and that was the generalizing the lesson.

I want you to want to wrap that up real quick. My grandfather taught me a lot of things, but one of the things was put the tool back where it goes. Everything has a place and the same way that you were talking about this with your downsized living situation.

But that sort of thing, to be able to do that in an emotional way or if there is a way that can help the caregiver out. And there are, to generalize that lesson, like, oh, all of my silverware goes back in the silverware drawer when I'm done. So what do I do with, say, certain emotions that I have that maybe have outlived their usefulness in this situation? You've got this long tail of something. How do I effectively resolve that dissonant cord that the immediate situation has passed, but I'm still feeling these things about a particular event or something along those lines?

And how do we generalize those lessons? I don't know. Are you tracking with me on this one? No, I get it because two things come to mind. One of them is my piano professor, John Arnn, who played at our wedding and played at our son's wedding.

I just love him, and I just talked to him last night. And he said everything is 2-5-1 in music. In fact, when he retired, he just held up two fingers, five fingers, and one finger. 2-5-1. Everything's 2-5-1.

And let me explain. So when you're doing music, you've got to go to something like... That's 2-5-1. That's resolving. A minor 2 chord, the 5 chord, 1. But in that, you can extend it. 2-5, minor 6, or... And you just keep stretching it out. 2-5-1. But I take it 2-5-1 in another key, and then I throw in that one, step down. And so you keep stretching it out.

Everything is 2-5-1. And what that means is some emotions are not going to be so cut and dry like... Some of them are going to have a lot more texture to them. And some situations aren't going to resolve as easy. So you're going to... And it's not going to resolve quite as clean or as neat, but it doesn't mean it's not good.

It's just more texture. So that's a musical application that I learned from him. And that kind of fits with this. How do we end up doing that? I suppose it's not that I have an answer to that question or whatever, but it's just a way of thinking about our emotions and maybe the negative ones that we have. The ones that feel like dissonance. The ones that feel like, where is this going?

What's going to happen? And there's that sense of, am I going to demand that it resolve in this way, or am I willing to possibly accept a different resolution? And I think when it comes to conflicts and so forth, so my ear, if I'm not schooled very well in music, my ear is going to want this. My ear is just going to want that because it sounds right. But the more I get into it, and then I throw in this A minor 9, and then throw in some upper structure chords, and all of a sudden my ear is expanding and I'm realizing I can accept other things that may not be exactly what I thought it was going to be, but I can accept it and still find beauty in it. And this is what happens with our relationships as caregivers.

I really like that. When things are simple, and they almost never are, but there are times when we walk up, there's a problem, and then we come up with a solution and it gets solved and we move on. Those are the easy, that's the regular 2-5-1 sort of deal, and it might be something minor. The insurance company says they won't cover something, you call them, they say, oh, we made a mistake, they cover it, and it's done, and that's it.

That's resolved. If you're dealing with, say, an intrusive family member who has all of the ideas, a family member who has many ideas about how things should go, or maybe you're in a caregiving situation and they're just another node of chaos in your life somehow, and it's maybe unrelated to your caregiving situation, but say they're giving you a lot of ideas about how things should be, and you're having to deal with that and still maintain your relationship. The symphony of life, they're the tambourine. Well, but occasionally, you can lean into that tambourine. Not necessarily all the time. I know, I know, I know.

Sparingly. If the tambourine happens, we can't go back and un-ring that tambourine. You can hear it over a nuclear blast.

Absolutely. So you end up having to use that, or having to adjust, and if they really do change something about the symphony that is being played, then you have to work with it, and maybe the path is changed ever so slightly, but a new resolution opens itself up because of the long tail of maybe, I hesitate to say mistakes, but that's what I'm talking about when a tambourine is in effect. But you use the word tambourine, a mistake is often in play.

But it's, no, I think for caregivers, I think that we have in our mind, this is the way this song should end. And it just doesn't, we don't get to script all those things, and that doesn't mean that there's not going to be beautiful music there. It just means it's going to be different than what we expect, and we can resolve it if we can get to the most dissonant of chords. And one of those is, you know, when you have a diminished chord like this, there's only three of them. That's a very diminished chord. I mean, very, very unresolved chord.

It feels funky. And then you go to this, a flat nine chord. But then when you end on this. And all of a sudden, you've got beautiful music that you didn't expect from a situation. And as caregivers, I think we find ourselves in that situation with family, with friends, with our loved ones, that this is not feeling good.

This does not sound good. But if we could take a step back from it, take a deep breath, and this is where I learned another lesson across, what did you call that, general? Generalizing lesson, you know, in the ice. But this is what I learned from martial arts. And because in my martial arts class, one of the things they said, well, what would you do to somebody if somebody was coming to attack you?

And my martial arts instructor, these are all master level. They said, I don't know. It hasn't happened yet. I'll see what they give me.

And I thought, wow, what can I learn from that as a caregiver? What are you going to do about this? Well, I don't know.

It's not here yet. I'll see what they give me. In the meantime, I'm going to keep training and be prepared and condition myself so that I'm ready. Right. And you end up, you know what I'm going to, what are you going to do if somebody attacks you?

Well, hopefully I'm going to have a very large skill set and a big bag of tools that I can draw on. Well, this is the extreme example. But yeah, it does fit. And there is, we talk about this on the show quite often. You are not here to tell people how to caregiver. That is, you know, you and the audience.

I have no expertise at that. Yeah, we don't know your situation or your loved one even close to as well as you. But what we do have expertise in is the heart of somebody who is going through this. And not being a patient, but being a caregiver.

We understand the dumpster fire that's in a caregiver's heart. Oh, yeah. But you know, this, this music, staying with this musical lesson, you know who I heard this from? Here's another one of not trying to overthink it, but just letting it come and then having to be able to just to just get in the moment.

To be like water. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Oh, okay. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. They were on stage live with Led Zeppelin, and they're trying to mimic each other's solos. So Robert Plant would do a big, now for those of you not Led Zeppelin fans, forgive me, indulge me for a moment. But, you know, Led Zeppelin, iconic rock group from the 60s and 70s, never had a number one hit, even though Stairway to Heaven was this huge standard.

I mean, classic, but it never went to number one. But Robert Plant is one of the, I think, one of the best rock and roll vocalists out there, period, of all time. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Jimmy Page is one of the best rock guitarists of all times, you know, and but so here they are.

We're going to get some hate mail on this one. Here we are dueling though, here they are dueling on stage, and so Robert Plant throws a lick, Jimmy copies it and adds to it, and then they're having a fun time, but it gets higher and higher and Robert's like straightened, you know, he was telling the story. And the point of this is, that's when music becomes very exciting is that you don't have to overthink it and over plan it. And as a caregiver, I think that I have been so guilty of overthinking and over planning.

Let it just come, just like my martial arts instructor said, let it be there. And when it comes, you'll find that you can be more peaceful as you deal with the craziness, because there's going to be craziness. Yeah. And another way to put this would be you cannot plan for every eventuality. And this kind of loops back around into what some people call luck. And it's, it's not luck is luck is just opportunity plus preparedness.

That's, that's all it is. And you need to be prepared for, you know, lots of different eventualities, but you can't prepare for any one specific one. Well, often, I mean, there are some things that are always going to happen, death and taxes are always going to happen. So we know that we can plan for the taxes ahead of time. And usually in that order. Yeah, usually. Actually, I think taxes come both before, during and after.

Death is a tax sandwich. Yeah, yeah. Oh, write that one down, ladies and gentlemen. But, yeah, we can't, I mean, yes, there are certain specific eventualities that you could pick out exceptions to this rule that I'm putting in quotation marks, but that really, you can't plan for specific things like, nobody plans for a stroke, or especially a specific manifestation of a stroke or something like that. But you can plan for all manner of physical incapacities or whatever, or you can, you can, you can have those things in your mind and have the skill set necessary to do all that. But really, which is looping back to what we were really talking about today, to have the toolbox necessary to deal with the emotional issues that you experience and whatever those end up having, you know, coming unbidden. For me, one of those ways that I plan for it, and those of you watching as we stream live on Hope for the Caregivers page, you tell me, but one of the things we learned in martial arts was to stop trying to, stop the natural inclination of reacting and instead start training to respond. Respond rather than react.

And that works pretty much across the board in every situation, in relationships, in music, in martial arts, name it when you respond to something because you're, you're paying attention, you're in tune with it, and you're in tune with your own heart. And that's something that it takes some time to cultivate that and we're so busy in a caregiving situation dealing with such drama that we react so much. And my hope for you as a fellow caregiver is that you will learn from this faster than I did.

That response time for you won't be as long as it was for me. This is Hope for the Caregiver 877-677, what is the number John? 877-655-6755.

This is Peter Rosenberger, we'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger and in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope.