DARE to be Happy - Go Ahead & Step out on the Limb (Where the Fruit Is)

Happiness can be an elusive concept if you’re not consciously working toward it.  Quick – ask yourself when you last felt happiness?  Hopefully, you can identify something that made you laugh, or a warm conversation that boosted you one afternoon.  However, if you feel as though you’re unable to lift your spirits doing things that usually make you happy, and nothing makes you smile anymore, those are signals you may need professional help for dysthymia or depression.

Let’s shift back to happiness.  Are there times as a caregiver when you don’t feel it’s okay to be happy?  Do you ever feel guilty or pause and tell yourself that someone else has it worse than you do?  It’s important to not compare ourselves with others, and undeserved guilt can hold you hostage.

Caregivers are often so hard on themselves that even when time becomes slightly more available, you don’t dare to be happy. Well-being is an intentional shift to more positive thoughts and fewer negative ones.  While easier said than done, happiness really is a choice. Did you know that when you learn to redirect your thoughts to the positive, your brain will physically develop new neural connections?  With time and practice, happiness can become your default mindset.  The Happiness Advantage book by Shawn Achor is a great reference and easy to read. 

Happiness can be promoted by eating properly and ensuring your body has sufficient Vitamin D, obtained through food, supplements, and synthesized from sunlight.  Millions of people are Vitamin D deficient and during the winter, lack of Vitamin D is linked to SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. 

Exercise is a classic boost for endorphins and feel-good hormones, and a great step toward more restorative sleep.  The American Psychiatric Association has found exercise very helpful even when used as a stand-alone therapy for depression! Combined with talk therapy, there is value in the physical activity, and for the accomplishment.  

As you dare to focus on yourself and the potential of happiness, we come once again to a powerful means of viewing life with a brighter perspective:  appreciation and gratitude.  Consider the people and situations you’re grateful to have in your life.  Keep a gratitude journal, note thoughts on your smartphone, and recall that “how you feel is how you see the world”.  The head follows the heart, so it’s important to share thoughts of appreciation and thankfulness. 

Take time to consider how you fit activities, connections, or moments into your life.  Dare to be happy, and recognize that caregiving is only part of who you are.  In changing your mindset, it’s very possible that you’ll positively influence others around you.  Take a chance, and dare to be happy -- then make it a habit!

Linda Kreter & the

VeteranCaregiver Team

Caregiver Self-Identity: Who Am I Now? It's YOUR Choice --

A caregiver wrote VeteranCaregiver recently saying, "I used to be a marketing executive before becoming a full-time caregiver.  But I've lost my identity and don't feel accomplished or even know myself anymore?"

Such a good question; our self-identities can be swallowed whole by caregiving.  It can happen gradually over time, but you are not alone.  It's very easy to get lost in the daily grind, completing tasks, becoming more and more tired, and tending to everyone’s needs except your own.  You are last on the list.

Truthful statement:  only you can carve out time for you.  If you have become accustomed to putting aside everything that once gave you joy, does that help your situation at home?  Does it help you feel good, or like a martyr.  A therapist once said this:  “You need to choose, are you a martyr or a victim?”  Neither of those labels felt good, and were rejected.  How dare she say that?! 

But, if we make the conscious choice to set our boundaries, set aside a small portion of the day, and refuse to relinquish ourselves to others’ needs entirely, we will be better caregivers and individuals.  You haven’t lost your gifts and talents, and those unique traits are inside you – you just need to take the tarp off and give yourself permission to claim them.  

There will always be those who complain, and complaining is fine if it leads to possible solutions, but of little value if not.  No judgment here, but only you can help you begin your personal growth or to beef it up.  Best of all, you have now learned new skills, some of which you may take for granted.  Did you ever think you’d be able to direct the medical care of a loved one, or wade through bureaucracy with determination and purpose?  These new skills have made you a stronger, more accomplished version of yourself if you’ll stop to recognize it! 

Take the time to write down your skills; what are you good at, what are your new talents, even write a resume.  Add notes on your smartphone, and read them to yourself or post it on your mirror to remind you that you are worthy, smart, savvy, and you matter.  Create a LinkedIn profile because in doing so, you’ll realize your skills are valuable, and you'll have an identity outside of your daily role.  Then Follow other people of interest and start learning anew. This is Post Traumatic Growth.  Many caregivers find new skills and experiences give them new capabilities, and IF they consider them, new self-confidence.  You are "more" than your daily caregiving!

With introspection, time spent thinking about you - yes, you - you will see ways to reinvent yourself, recall your strengths, and take back you.  You are worth it - take the time to believe it!

Linda Kreter & the
VeteranCaregiver Team

Moral Injury & PTSD - One Story

Greetings,

We will be talking Tuesday with two cutting edge researchers on the American Heroes Network about Moral Injury:  PTSD and Suicide in the U.S. Military. This term is not often heard, but the stark truth written below may help with greater understanding of our troops' sacrifices and invisible injuries that linger after they return home.  This story was written in 2005 and rings true today (link: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0615-08.htm.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

IT WAS STILL DARK...

--by Sgt Zachary Scott-Singley

 

It was still dark. I got dressed in that darkness. When I was ready I grabbed an MRE (meal ready to eat) and got in the truck. I was going to go line the truck up in preparation for the raid we were about to go on. The targets were three houses where RPG attacks had come from a few days prior. Sitting there in that darkness listening to the briefing on how we were to execute the mission, I let my mind wander from the briefing and said a prayer. "Just one more day God, let me live one more day and we will go from there..." It was the same prayer I said every day because every day I did the same thing. I left the base. With a small team I would go out each day on different missions. I was their translator.

There were different people to meet each day. There were some who would kill you if they could. They would look at you and you could see the hate in their eyes. I also met with people who would have given me everything they owned. People, that were so thankful to us because we had rid them of Saddam. Well, this day was not really much different from all those other days so far. After the briefing we all got into our assigned seats and convoyed out to the raid site. I was to go in directly after the military police that would clear the building.

The raid began without a hitch. Inside one of the courtyards of one of the houses, talking to an Iraqi woman checking to see if her story correlated with what the detained men had said, I heard gunfire. It was automatic gunfire. Ducking next to the stone wall I yelled at the woman to get inside her house, and when the gunfire stopped I peeked my head around the front gate. I saw a soldier amongst the others who was pulling rear security by our vehicles. This soldier I saw was still aiming his M249 (a fully automatic belt fed machine gun) at a black truck off in the distance. His was the weapon I had heard.

I ran up near his position and overheard the Captain in charge of the raid asking what had happened and why had this soldier opened fire. The soldier kept his weapon aimed and answered that he was sure he had seen a man holding an AK-47 in the back of the black truck. I was amongst the four (along with the soldier who had fired on the black truck) who had been selected to go and see what was up with that truck.

We were out of breath when we got to the gun-truck nearest to the black civilian truck (a gun-truck is a HUMMWV or sometimes called a Hummer by civilians, with a .50 caliber machine gun on its roof). There was a group of four Iraqis walking towards us from the black truck. They were carrying a body. When I saw this I ran forward and began to speak (in Arabic) to the man holding the body but I couldn't say a word.

There right in front of me in the arms of one of the men I saw a small boy (no more than 3 years old). His head was cocked back at the wrong angle and there was blood. So much blood. How could all that blood be from that small boy? I heard crying too. All of the Iraqi men standing there were crying and sobbing and asking me WHY? Someone behind me started screaming for a medic, it was the young soldier (around my age) who had fired his weapon. He screamed and screamed for a medic until his voice was hoarse and a medic came just to tell us what I already knew. The boy was dead. I was so numb.

I stood there looking at that little child, someone's child (just like mine) and seeing how red the clean white shirt of the man holding the boy was turning. It was then that I realized that I had been speaking to them; speaking in a voice that sounded so very far away. I heard my voice telling them (in Arabic) how sorry we were. My mouth was saying this but all my mind could focus on was the hole in the child's head. The white shirt covered in bright red blood. Every color was so bright. There were other colors too. The glistening white pieces of the child's skull still splattered on that so very white shirt. I couldn't stop looking at them even as I continued telling them how sorry we were.

I can still see it all to this very day. The raid was over there were no weapons to be found and we had accomplished nothing except killing a child of some unknowing mother. Not wanting to leave yet, I stayed as long as I could, talking to the man holding the child. I couldn't leave because I needed to know who they were. I wanted to remember. The man was the brother of the child's father. He was the boy's uncle, and he was watching him for his father who had gone to the market. They were carpenters and the soldier who had fired upon the truck had seen someone holding a piece of wood and standing in the truck bed.

Before I left to go back to our base I saw the young soldier who had killed the boy. His eyes were unfocused and he was just standing there, staring off into the distance. My hand went to my canteen and I took a drink of water. That soldier looked so lost, so I offered him a drink from my canteen. In a hoarse voice he quietly thanked me and then gave me such a thankful look; like I had given him gold.

Later that day those of us who had been selected to go inspect the black truck were filling reports out about what we had witnessed for the investigation. The Captain who had led the raid entered the room we were in and you could see that he was angry. He said, "Well this is just great! Now we have to go and give that family bags of money to shut them up..." I wanted to kill him. I sat there trembling with my rage. Some family had just lost their beautiful baby boy and this man, this COMMISSIONED OFFICER in the United States Army is worried about trying to pay off the family's grief and sorrow. He must not have been a father, otherwise he would know that money doesn't even come close... I wanted to use my bare hands to kill him, but instead I just sat there and waited until the investigating officer called me into his office.

To this day I still think about that raid, that family, that boy. I wonder if they are making attacks on us now. I would be. If someone took the life of my son or my daughter nothing other than my own death would stop me from killing that person. I still cry too. I cry when the memory hits me. I cry when I think of how very far away I am from my family who needs me. I am not there just like the boy's father wasn't there. I pray every day for my family's safety and just that I was with them. I have served my time, I have my nightmares, I have enough blood on my hands. My contract with the Army has been involuntarily extended. I am not asking for medicine to help with the nightmares or for anything else, only that the Army would have held true to the contract I signed and let me be a father, a husband, a daddy again.