Home > Chronic and Serious Illness > Caregiving

Caregiver Communication Issues: Another Road to Travel

By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

If you and your husband have celebrated anniversaries for a quarter century or more, you have undoubtedly survived a few crises along the way. When your spouse is diagnosed with a serious illness, from stroke to cancer, you may realize that this new situation is something you didn't want but, like those other crises, you will face together. If you are newly married, you have had the rug pulled out from under you just as you're beginning to adjust to one another. If you recently started what you hoped would be a good friendship with someone who now has been given the diagnosis of a disease with an uncertain outcome, the difficulty in building a deeper relationship under these circumstances may tempt you to withdraw.

No matter how long your relationship has lasted, it is not surprising that the diagnosis of a life-challenging illness creates distress precisely because it threatens the physical and emotional foundation of a relationship on which you depend for nurturing love and support. Nevertheless, while you may not appreciate it at this time, these illnesses often provides a catalyst for working on issues that would otherwise get shoved under the rug. In fact, the Chinese character for crisis, as you may have heard many times, contains symbols both for "danger" and for "opportunity." You can choose to view this crisis either as a threat to your relationship or as an opportunity to strengthen it.

Therefore, in many ways the experience you are going through is like a journey that requires your relationship to take a detour, to travel along another road. There are, of course, detours in almost all relationships, although in this particular one the road may be a bit rough. However, when you must go someplace you didn't plan to go, sharing the trip with someone you love not only helps, it can also enrich and expand your life in ways you never expected.

As you first begin dealing with the reality that illness has intruded into your life, your attention is focused on decisions and arrangements for starting treatment. All your energy goes into adjusting daily life so you can take care of what must be taken care of.

After a while, however, unfinished personal business and differences of opinion start to intrude. Imagine, for example, that a timid woman who, shortly before her husband's diagnosis of colon cancer, was just beginning to be assertive. Now she feels she doesn't dare state a counter opinion because she is afraid her "negativity" will distress him. It may not be many months, however, before her resentment in always "giving in" builds to the point that either she blows up inappropriately or turns her stress inward and develops a physical problem.

In other words, after the initial phase of treatment is past, you will discover that you and your partner or friend are pretty much the same people you were before the diagnosis. You each carry your personality styles, coping skills and individual temperaments wherever you go. If your loved one tended to be quiet and submissive prior to illness, you may need to encourage him to stand up for his rights as a patient. If he was stubborn, argumentative and loud, you'll probably need to smooth the waters when he gives the doctor and nurses an unnecessarily rough time.

There will be many problems that will need to be dealt with before, during and after treatment revolving around the illness itself. However, during that time other issues will arise that have nothing to do with illness. Consequently, sometimes you will need to adjust your reactions because of illness and others times in spite of it. The trick is learning to recognize the difference.

In this regard you are fortunate if you have had a good experience with a counselor and know the value of talking out your issues with a professional or trained peer counselor. An objective therapist, especially one who knows the dynamics created by life-challenging and chronic disease, can help you sort out your feelings so you don't either get buried under a not-uncommon load of caregiver's anger, anxiety, guilt, blame, fear, resentment, bitterness and regret—or dump all of that on him.

Be sure to also read Balancing Hope and Realism and You and Your Loved One Aren't Mind Readers.

© Copyright 1997, Revised 2002, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT