We all know the Hollywood, car-chasing blockbuster franchise ‘Fast & Furious’ … but WTF has it got to do with caring for a loved one with a life-limiting illness? I’m starting to think maybe quite a bit!
In his book ‘Waking The Tiger’, Peter Levine (The OG of Somatic Experiencing Therapy) defines trauma as:
“Too much. Too soon. Too fast”.
It made me think about being a caregiver … You may as well define being a carer as ‘A daily dose of Too much. Too soon. Too fast’.
Finding out someone you love is ill …
Seeing them rushed to hospital in the back of an ambulance …
Juggling normal life with treatment and all the conflicting emotions that go with it ....
In ‘Fast & Furious’ Vin Diesel and the crew lurch from one action-packed, adrenaline-charged scene to the next. And life as a carer isn’t far off. Even an ‘average’ week looking after a loved one with a life-limiting illness can be pretty traumatic.
Back when I was a carer for my mum, there was a period of a few days where: (1) She fell while trying to walk and hit her head, (2) I had a massive argument with my then-boyfriend, (3) The pharmacy messed up her prescription, (4) Mum ended up in ICU with an infection because the chemo had lowered her immune system so much, and (5) I was asked to sign her ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ forms.
… definitely Too much. Too soon. Too fast.
As a carer, I often felt just like the actors in ‘Fast & Furious’ - everything was happening at once and ‘life’ was firing at me from all directions while I tried to ‘keep the car on the road’. All I could do was focus on making it through this ‘attack’ and hope I had time to catch my breath before the next one started.
And the craziest thing about it all was that I didn’t think I was allowed to find it all so tough - after all, it wasn’t me that was ill. I was ‘just’ Mum’s carer. What did I have to complain about?
But I wouldn’t have said that about the Fast & Furious crew. I never watched the films and said “well he was riding shotgun in the passenger seat, why is he scared?” or “well they did the same thing in Fast & Furious 1, 2 and 3 so why are they still bothered about being chased and shot at in movie number 4?
Reading Levine’s words made me understand why reasoning as a carer that ‘we were expecting it’ or ‘it could have been worse’ doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the way that things felt inside my head and my heart.
Just because you don’t allow your brain to recognise something as a trauma, it doesn’t mean that your body won’t.
You don’t have to be the one who is sick to find it traumatic.
Your loved one can make a full recovery and it can still be traumatic.
You can have known you were going to lose them for years, but when you do, it can still be traumatic.
It’s about time we carers give ourselves credit. Recognise what you’ve been through and be kind to yourself.
You don’t need to call yourself weak. You don’t need to “suck it up”. You don’t need to put on a brave face. You need to show yourself compassion and recognise how hard this is and how well you’re doing.