(aka “Suzi the Robot”)
Burn-out is a real issue for Care-Givers. I know because I have cared for a succession of elderly relatives over the decades. This is a 24/7, 365 days of the year job, with little or no time off.
Unlike nurses, care-assistants, catering and cleaning staff in a nursing home, Home Carers are on duty, doing all of these jobs ALL OF THE TIME! It is not glamorous work either: cleaning up vomit and diarrhoea, mucus and blood and other unsavoury bodily fluids; or having food sneezed all over you; or using every ounce of strength to pick up your charge from the floor, where they have fallen, and driving them at midnight to the nearest A&E for x-rays, always when you are most tired and least able to cope.
Yes! Burn-out is a real issue for Care-Givers. In worst case scenarios, both the Care-Giver and the Care-Recipient can end up resenting each other because both feel trapped!
In 2014, teetering on the edge of a nervous break-down myself, I had a strange dream. Looking back, it was my subconscious trying to warn me in advance. The setting was a pristine modern bungalow, a place I did not recognise in Ordinary Reality. It was set in its own immaculate gardens, a perfect glossy magazine idyll. I seemed to be renting the place, or taking care of it but it definitely did not “belong” to me. With me were my mother’s little dog and my cat Aramis.
Inside the bungalow, everything was automated because this was a “Smart House”. A computer voice spoke whenever I opened a door, be it the front entrance or the fridge. Everything was regulated by this computer: the temperature, humidity, everything. Tiny little robots scurried about cleaning and tidying.
Dog did not seem to mind the frantic activity but Cat hated it and wanted to escape. So I let Aramis out into the garden but he was immediately attacked by other cats. I rescued him, by picking him up and bringing him back into the Smart House, where he stayed in my arms, shivering with fright. Because I was constantly carrying around the cat, I was no longer free to do anything else.
Just when I thought things could not get any worse, some cupboard doors sprang open and out clanked this giant white Robot, a mega version of the ones the Japanese have been developing. It stopped in front of me and spoke in a squeaky computer voice: “My name is Suzi! We are going to clean the house now!”
Dog, Cat and I panicked simultaneously. We all ran for the door leading out into the garden. I made sure to lock this door from the outside, so that the “Monster Robot” could not follow us. Of course, Suzi was powerful enough to demolish the front door, if it had wanted to. Instead, it just looked puzzled and said: “I do not understand! What is wrong? The human will not talk to me!” At this point, I woke up in a sweat!
It took several weeks for me to analyse my dream but finally the penny dropped. I had joked for years about how nice it would be to live in a neat little bungalow, requiring minimal maintenance work – unlike the labour-intensive smallholding, where I had lived for 30 years! So, this was the fully-automated Smart House of my dream.
My two companions had significance too. Dog represented my logical domesticated side, which was content to be “regulated”, so long as he was fed and comfortable. Cat, on the other hand, represented my wild, intuitive side, unhappy being cooped up in an unnatural setting and yet unable to cope with freedom, for fear of attack. So, I had disabled myself by carrying my instinctual self about like a child in need of protection.
The biggest shock came when I realised that Suzi, the giant robot, was really ME! How did I get like this? It was back to my role as Care-Giver. I had learnt to stop thinking about the difficult jobs, which I had to do each day, to switch off my feelings, to “Stop Caring”, (if you pardon the pun!) so that I could get the jobs done at all. Thus, Suzi the Robot was born: perpetually on auto-pilot, mechanically going about daily domestic routines. Robots don’t feel resentment or fatigue or disgust, although they do sometimes break down, like all mechanical things!
The problem started when I tried to reboot my feelings, change the programme, so that I could rejoin the “Outside World”, a world that I left behind, when I became house-bound, caring for elderly and disabled loved-ones.
I guess the key to my dream is like all messages from the unconscious: to acknowledge a problem and to try and bring balance into the situation. It was time to be a little less robot and a little more human; a little less domesticated and a little more confident jungle cat; to be neither saint nor martyr!
So, please give Care-Givers your support and understanding. We are not Super Heroes. We have just taken on a job that often demands more than we are capable of giving.
Author: Veronica Smith first published in 2014
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