Elder Care: Trust your instincts

One of the main premises of this blog is that we all are experts in our elderly parents' care. All we need to do is acknowledge how much we know and can apply to the elder care situation from our other life experiences. And we have to become willing to find the inner strength to rely on ourselves a bit more. Not that specialized experts don't have their place. Clearly they do. It's just that evaluating what those experts say, and then making judgments and decisions, has to come from within us. It's not up to any geriatric expert to decide what's right. The expert's job is to share information. From there, it's up to each of us to weigh all the factors and make the decision.

Betsy posted a wonderful comment recently. I highly suggest you read it in its entirety. Just click here to link to it. Her comment speaks to the heart of what I'm getting at. She highlights three things that she found invaluable during the last year of her elderly father's life:
1. Trust your gut feeling.
2. Develop a sense of gratitude for what others do for you and be willing to ask for help when you need it.
3. Be creative--think outside the box especially when you are faced with what seems like an intractable problem.

Here are just a few reasons why I think Betsy's comment is so important:

1. When you learn to trust your gut feeling, and are willing to act on it, you move from being a victim to being in control.

2. Being grateful is a good emotion. It removes the guilt many feel when having to ask for help----guilt which is negative and energy-sapping--- and replaces it with a sense of connectedness and support, all of which is positive.

3. Creativity is your greatest ally. When you are not constrained by what others says is the right thing to do, when you begin to allow yourself to come up with seemingly outrageous options, you'll find that your boundaries are suddenly wide open with possibilities.

What do you think? To post a comment in reply, click on the Comments link at the end of this post.