Carer burnout isn’t a personal failing; it’s a predictable response to carrying “too much, for too long, without help.” This blog combines practical insights we’ve shared on the Carer’s Notebook Facebook page with expert advice from Carers NSW and Carer Gateway to help you spot burnout early and take action.
More than one in two Australian carers reported high or very high psychological distress in the National Carer Survey 2022 (Carers NSW). While that was a few years ago now, given what is happening in the world and with the demands on Carers, we don’t believe this number will have improved! You can try & ignore that distress or hope that it just eases off in time but do that, and you’ll likely find distress turns into burnout … chronic emotional and physical exhaustion that hurts both you and the people you love. Burnout isn’t always dramatic. In the “What I Wish I’d Known” series on our Facebook page, we highlighted that the early clues to burnout were deceptively ordinary:
- Forgetting routine dates
- Skipping meals
- Feeling numb rather than sad … like you have just switched off
- Snapping at small things, then feeling guilty
- Dreading phone calls from a school, GP or specialist
If some of these feel like things you experience, you owe it to yourself to pause and acknowledge that you might be running on empty. Burnout can creep in when a heavy caring load stretches on ad nauseam without adequate help. The sandwich generation, an increasingly large proportion of the population, is especially vulnerable because tasks multiply across two generations … think homework and medication charts, power of attorney paperwork and weekend sport demands, geriatrician appointments and speech therapy work you need to complete between visits. If you’ve been the default carer for longer than you can remember, and all the tasks & responsibility is on your shoulders then reducing some of those demands gives you a chance of slowing the trajectory towards burnout. Ask yourself: are there some tasks that you can delegate, automate, share?
Carer Gateway’s Dealing with Stress module adds practical worksheets on recognising your personal stress signals and choosing coping skills that fit your lifestyle. You can find a link to that module here: skills.carergateway.gov.au.
Here at Carer’s Notebook we believe that using a tool like our app can help Carer’s take back some control over the caring process, and can help provide some structure in the chaos. We are Carer’s ourselves so the app was built from our lived experience and it helps us:
- Centralise medications, therapy tasks, appointments, contact details for all the medical professionals.
- Set reminders so that the app (& not our frazzled brains) has responsibility for remembering schedules.
- Share real-time updates within the group of people in our caring circle.
Burnout steals the very compassion that makes you a brilliant carer. But by spotting the early whispers (missed meals, forgotten dates, numbness) and taking steps to look after yourself, plus by putting simple systems in place (eg using Carer’s Notebook), you protect both your loved ones and yourself.
If today feels heavy, start small:
- Breathe for two minutes.
- Off-load one task into Carer’s Notebook.
- Call a friend or Carer Gateway.
With the right support, you don’t have to reach burnout before you reclaim balance.
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