Topic Tuesday tonight at 7pm AEST / Do carers have a right to be happy?

[Rjb]

I was not good at being happy when my baby/toddler/child was distressed. These days i am still not practiced at being happy in times of distress

[Former-Member]

@Rjb There are times when circumstances just aren't right for happiness.  But the key is to stop that being your whole day.  Find some time to the things that make you happy.  Ideally when your baby isn't distressed! 

Give me a sec and I'll pull out the things that research tells us genuinely make us happy 🙂

[Rjb]

@CherryBomb you here? Maybe I have lost my connection?

[Former-Member]

So the clever folks that research such things tell us that nearly half of our happiness comes down to the small daily choices we make in our lives. 

Things like:

• Taking a moment to really savour the first coffee of the day
• Practising small unexpected acts of kindness
• Choosing not to compare your life to anyone else’s
• Starting a family dinner ritual of saying three things you enjoyed that day
• Squeezing a walk (or any other type of exercise you enjoy) with a friend or some favourite music
• Really immersing yourself in some gardening or sketching to the point that you lose sense of time
• Inviting your best mate out for a coffee despite being way too busy

They may sound small, maybe even trivial, but there’s good research behind every single one of them to show that they really do make us happier.  But only if we do them often.  Every time we spend time with someone who makes us feel good, we get a happiness top up.  As we do every time we exercise, savour the moment and act kindly. 

Each time we make a step towards a goal that’s important to us makes us happy too.  Finally pulling together the digital family album. Growing all our own herbs.  These things count too.  Not necessarily the goals that society sets for us.  We don’t have a great deal of control the number of promotions we get.  But we can control whether we spend time on stuff that matters to us.

[Rjb]

Thanks ... my baby has turned into the loved one for whom I am caring

[Viv]

Hi all,

I can feel happy these days, but it has been a long haul. As the mother of an adult daughter with BPD, it has been a struggle to feel some ease. BPD by its very nature makes relationships hard. The grief I felt when I realised that my hopes and dreams for my beautiful girl would not be realised, that grief was hard to hold.

Since that early time, I have learnt how to hold that sorrow and still find happiness for myself.

To think that she could have died, was one of the things I had to come to grips with. The constant psychic pain that she feels is something I have had to come to grips with. Her possible homelessness was something I had to come to grips with. A mother feels she has to solve her daughter's problems... I learnt not to do that. And it was hard.

So, it is possible to find happiness I believe, but it is hard and it hurts too.

[astrengthinever]

Happiness is in the eye of the beholder. No matter how hard it is I find it is essential to find happy thoughts to maintain a feeling of happiness. Happiness is also contagious. Modeling happiness is really the only way I can hope for any bit of happiness in my loved one that I care for

[astrengthinever]

I hear you sister!

[Former-Member]

Thank you for joining us @astrengthinever and @Viv.  It's good to hear from the 'trenches' about how your role impacts on your happiness.

[CherryBomb]

Still here @Rjb

Just took a step back because I thought I had cherrbombed the conversation, asking so many questions. So I thought I'd wait a little bit before posting so people could respond to my questions.

Hi @Viv! Glad you could make it the conversation.