Caregiver stress has a way of derailing your best-laid plans. Like many people whose elderly parents fall ill, Jennifer Beard found herself catapulted into a caregiving role a couple of years ago, when her mother was sent home from the hospital with a feeding tube.
Beard, an associate professor of global health at the Boston University School of Public Health, was living in Boston; her mother was in Ohio. While her mom wanted to live independently, she couldn’t manage the feeding tube on her own, and Beard had no choice but to step in.
“On top of the lack of preparation,” Beard says, “there was a total, overwhelming time commitment — plus the psychic demand” of trying to run her own life and her job from about 700 miles away.
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Caregiver stress relief is possible
The sudden loss of control over your life, the unpredictability of your parent’s needs, the struggle to find reliable support — these are the key ingredients of caregiver stress. According to the 2024 Family Caregiver Annual Report from SeniorLiving.com, 72% of family caregivers experience emotional strain; two-thirds have a tough time balancing caregiving duties with other responsibilities; and over half are stressed about money.
Yet even though there are reams of advice on how to alleviate this stress, much of it misses the point. You can’t ask people who are already doing too much to do more things. Hire an aide. Try respite care. Eat better. Make time for yourself. Unless you have the bandwidth to make the 37 calls to set up respite care (and the money to pay for it) — or conjure up some ‘me’ time — you need a different set of tools.
Following are battle-tested strategies from family caregivers and caregiving experts on the frontlines. Some ideas will suit you, some won’t. That’s OK. Just as your worst stress triggers are particular to you, “Stress management is unique to each person,” says Amanda Krisher, associate director, behavioral health, with the National Council on Aging (NCOA) Center for Healthy Aging, “You have to find what works for you.”
1. Sieze small victories
Given the immensity of the burden on many caregivers, it’s tempting to dream about a solution that could eliminate a big chunk of stress all at once. Maybe your difficult sibling will show up and do their part. A rich cousin might whisk you away to a spa. Needless to say, those scenarios rarely occur.
This is a game of inches.
“It’s less about the big self-care moves — like taking a vacation, or even a yoga class,” Krisher says, “and more about doing small things that help, and doing them consistently.”
Some readers may remember that several years ago, Dan Harris’s best-selling book 10% Happier delivered a compelling message that broke through the sea of self-help sameness: Maybe the goal isn’t to be capital H Happy — but just a little happier across the board.
That perspective can be a game changer for caregivers as well. You can’t whack all the moles. But you can rack up small wins, again, by focusing on the things within reach that make a difference. For example:
2. Take more time
Time is the Holy Grail of caregivers everywhere. What wouldn’t you give to break free of competing priorities for a day?
For those who can manage the unpaid aspect of unpaid leave, the Family Medical Leave Act does provide eligible workers with up to 12 weeks of time off to care for a family member — including a sick or elderly parent (not just a new baby).
Paid time off could be within reach for some caregivers as well. If you live in one of 10 states — CA, CO, CT, MA, NJ, NY, OR, RI, WA, IL — or Washington D.C., you may be able to get paid time off for your caregiving duties. Starting in 2026, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota will join that list.
Do these options require paperwork and phone calls? Sadly, yes. But if you’re going to add an annoying task to your To Do list, at least taking advantage of unpaid or paid leave could yield real windfalls of time and sanity.
3. Breathe
Breathing as a stress-management technique tends to get overplayed. But Krisher has a different take. Her top recommendation for time-pressed caregivers is to take 30 seconds — when you’re in the shower, sitting in the car, or listening to your mom recite her medication list (again) — and try box breathing.
Box breathing, or square breathing, is supposedly what Navy Seals do to keep calm, so it could well apply to caregivers, who work at least that hard.
- Breathe in for a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of four. Breathe out for four. Hold for four. Repeat.
Just a few rounds of box breathing will enable you to slow down, even a little, which in turn can lower stress hormones. The added oxygen is also beneficial and can help you relax, Krisher says. “It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you do it consistently, the impact is incredible.”
4. Change your mind
During the relatively short time that Jennifer Beard was caring for her mom before she died, she was able to employ a lot of the classic self-care strategies: taking long walks, doing yoga, and so on. What also helped mitigate some of her stress, Beard says, was knowing her mother wasn’t the source of the pressure: “It wasn’t my mother who was putting this psychological demand on me, it was the system.”
By this, Beard is referring not only to the systems of Medicare and Medicaid, which offer little or no support for family caregivers, but the wider system of caregiving norms that define what a ‘good child’ should do for their older parents. (Beard wrote a harrowing essay, The Good Daughter, which inspired me to contact her for this story.)
Reframing a situation may not seem like it would do much to ease the palpable burdens of caregiving. But removing an emotional source of frustration between you and your older parent (or relative) can bring some peace of mind. In fact, Krisher says shifting perspective can be a remarkably powerful tool for caregivers — who are wrestling with just as much internally as externally.
Take caregiver guilt. When you have a recurring thought about what you should have or could have done, mentally list the positive things you did instead: We had a nice dinner. We didn’t fight in the car. The kids cleaned up the kitchen. This technique comes from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). “It’s a good way to get our brains to think differently,” says Krisher.
5. Learn to say yes
Asking for help is hard. And many caregivers, who typically find their own job overwhelming, are reluctant to ask others to step in (why put someone else through that?).
But the truth is, we all need help. And asking for help can start with small things. Even tiny things, Krisher says. “If someone asks you if you need anything from the store, say, ‘Yes, could you pick up some bread?’”
Once you’ve broken the ice, it becomes easier to ask for and accept help in other ways, Krisher notes — and maybe offer help in return. “There are 53 million family caregivers,” she points out. “That’s about one in five adults. Everyone is taking care of somebody.”
And everybody deserves a break.
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