They Want Us to Change; We Need Them to Change for Us
Apps, services, programs focus on changing us. We’re fine as we are.
Over the past 10 years or so, I’ve watched app after app go belly up. The app developers want us to pivot from using our binder to using their app to organize our caregiving experience. The problem, of course, is we want our binders.
Our binders hold hospital discharge papers, lab results, doctor’s notes, our caree’s medical history. Our binder works in every health care system we encounter. We don’t need a password or a link or permission to access. We control it.
We want to bring our binders to our caree’s doctors appointments because the binders even the playing the field in that little exam room. Our binder (and sometimes binders) shows the doctor we mean business.
Our binders represent our hard-won battles, our effective advocacy efforts, our ability to manage tons of intricate details. Our caregiving experience can feel invisible in our families and our communities. Our binders show what we do.
An app developer looks at our binders and thinks, “There’s a better way.” We look at our binders and think, “I love how I’ve organized all this information in the way that works best for me.”
A large health care company released one of the first apps to replace our binders about 12 years ago. I connected with one of the app developers a few years after the app’s release, which never gained traction despite a really fabulous marketing campaign. The developer shared that family caregivers just didn’t want to upload information from their binders into the app. Who could blame them?
We don’t want others to change us. Rather, we want others to understand us. I thought about our desire to be understood as I read about Walmart’s announcement this week that it teamed up with BetterUp to offer a coaching app for family caregivers.
When I read what we get from their service, I felt a bit of a pull that they want me to change. The press release gives us a glimpse into the experience:
The product offering is the first of its kind to-date, designed by PhDs and behavioral scientists to deliver measurable improvement in resilience and life satisfaction. Members will experience live group programming, community support, and a wide array of on-demand solutions, including drop-in workshops, Coaching Circles™, tailored self-guided programs, and personalized assessments – all created to improve resilience, energy, and social connection.
After completing life coach training in 2004, I used one skill (a communication strategy) over and over with family caregivers. Although I learned several coaching strategies and tools, I only use this one communication because it worked. It relieved stress, it created space for the family caregiver to think out loud, it allowed the family caregiver the opportunity to hear her own solution.
In my 30 years of interacting with family caregivers, I found they just need one experience from us. They don’t want to discuss SMART goals or have a coach call them out when they miss a work-out.
Bottom line: Family caregivers want to be understood. They want a compassionate listener to hear about their complicated, complex, heartbreaking, backbreaking days. We want to be understood because often time we can’t understand what’s happening and why this can be so hard. A caregiving experience is different than other life experiences. It’s why the caregiving experience needs a solution unlike any other.
Family caregivers want to connect to someone who gets it because they’ve lived it. Family caregivers immediately know whether or not another understands because they have had so many awful experiences with these who don’t. I hope the PhDs and behavioral scientists at BetterUp have studied the caregiving experience. I hope they took time to recreate the frustrating hospital discharge process, the family meetings with the narcissistic sister, the awful experience of trying to get the doctor to return a phone call, the loneliness of the holidays, the overwhelm of too much when we have too little, the stress of trying to find help that really helps, the grief about our losses and the terrible days when we show up for work after getting awful news.
Just like we don’t want to give up our binders, we don’t need to connect with a service that wants to change us. We’re tired of the changes. We’re managing the unmanageable. That’s why we need to be understood. That’s why we deserve to be understood.
We just want a solution that allows us to be.
(Image by SaadiaAMYii from Pixabay.)
Resources
Our solution for caregiving support, The Caregiving Department, is free! Take our assessments, ask Certified Caregiving Consultants for help and support, join our monthly planning meetings. Join us in The Caregiving Department, part of CaringOurWay, our community on Mighty Networks.
The Caring Awards honor those who make a difference in the lives of family caregivers. We’re currently accepting nominations for these categories: Event or Conference, Product, and Work of Art. Your $10 entry fee will be added to our Family Caregiver Relief Fund in order to send $500 to help a family caregiver in need. Details.
We’ll be announcing our first 15 Virtual Caregiving Town Hall meetings in the next few weeks. We’d love for you to host a Virtual Caregiving Town Hall for family caregivers in your community. Join our Caring Advocacy and Awareness group on CaringOurWay.com to learn more.
Registration is open for The Caring Conference: Our Treasured Transformations. Join us on March 25 for this free day-long event to gain insights into your transformations. When you join us, you’ll be entered into a chance to win free enrollment in our Certified Caregiving Consultant training program, a $3,000 value. What’s it like to win? Patty Sherin, who joined our November conference and won free enrollment in our CCC program, shares about her experience. You’ll also meet Christine A. Smith, who attended our November event and will present during this month’s event.