SPEAKER_00 0:32

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Sandwich Bread Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Kaminsky. The Sandwich Bread Podcast is conversations about life and money through the lens of financial planning for the sandwich generation. And I'm very, very excited to welcome a co-host today, Lisa Kendall. Lisa, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Thank you, Tom. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I have been thinking about this topic really since the launch of the podcast. Really, I mean, the focus, if you're a regular listener, is on your kind of common financial planning subjects of taxes, investments, estate planning strategy, you know, the core wheel of a certified financial planner process. But for the sandwich generation, I feel like there's this subject that looms large over. Like this is what creates the sandwich of the sandwich generation. And that is, you know, the enormous uh pressure and responsibility that falls on the caregiver. You've got the responsibilities of young children, which is super important as a sandwich generation individual. You've got your own professional career and responsibilities that are incredibly demanding at our age. You've kind of hit that peak, peak uh point in your career in most cases, right around 40. Then you've got aging parents that you're deeply concerned about. And so it's just like you've got all this kind of accumulating, and it can be an enormous weight for somebody to carry. So I worked my network and Lisa popped up. And here she is. So a little bit about Lisa Kendall. She's devoted her career to supporting older adults, caregiver, and people in the helping profession with compassion, wisdom, and deep respect for the human experience of aging. Over 40 years of experience in clinical social work and gerontology, education, community leadership. She brings a trauma-informed and strengths-based approach to conversations about caregiving, grief, resilience, and the meaning of the second half of life. She's a popular speaker and award-winning therapist who helps individuals and organizations create a more humane, person-directed approach to elder care. Learn more about her coaching, mentoring, workshops, and consulting at her website, Lisa Kendall Consulting.com. We'll link to that in the show notes so you don't have to write all that down now. So how was that, Lisa? Good back.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

That sounds amazing. It's hard to fit 40 plus years into a short intro, but you did a great job. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

It is very difficult. But I think that speaks to the depth of your experience and wisdom in this area. And elder care and elder planning has been a serious focus of mine for really since the launch of my firm. And so I'm I love having someone with your expertise on show. So welcome and uh excited to have you.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

So let's start high level. So this this whole conversation is around caregiver burnout. Um, let's start high level and let me ask you, you know, how do you define caregiver burnout?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah, we've been talking about caregiver burnout for a long, long time. And really the bottom line is that it's when taking care of somebody, even for a short time, if the relationship is strained or the circumstances are difficult, and especially caregiving for a long period of time, it's really exhaustion. And that that can be physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, or even mental exhaustion, just feeling wiped out by the caregiving. And it's not uncommon. About 60% of caregivers have symptoms of caregiver burnout, according to an article I read recently from the Cleveland Clinic.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah. Okay. Now let me ask you, you know, this kind of segues into the next part of our conversation. How does caregiver burnout emerge? Because I feel like you may not know you have it until it's like you either have this like moment where you look in the mirror and go, oh my God, I'm so exhausted. I can't, I I need help. But how do you see it in your experience? How do you see it? Come on.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

You know, a caregiving, let's call it burden, because that's the word that was used decades ago by researchers who looked at what the weight of caregiving is. I I'm I'm not sure I love that word because caregiving is a different experience for everybody and it can be a very joyful and meaningful phase of life, part of life. But again, even in the best of circumstances, it can it can weigh on you. So really I've seen people come to the caregiving experience two different ways. One is uh, well, let me let me paint you a picture. Think about how you would make frog soup. So if you have a frog in that if you have a pot of water sitting on your stove and it's it hasn't been heated up, it's cool, and you've got a little froggy swimming around in it, you can put the heat on under the pot. And over time, that temperature is gonna just rise slowly, slowly, slowly until the frog in the water reach some kind of a boiling point. The frog doesn't really know that he's in this kind of environment because it feels slow and steady to him. I'm I'm gonna share how that how that equates to caregiving in a minute. Yeah. But the other way to make frog soup is to have your pot of already boiling water, try to get your frog in, just plop him in there, and he's gonna jump out. He's gonna go, whoa, that is way too hot for me. I can't handle it. I I don't know what to do. I don't know where to get help. So in caregiving, a lot of people come to it through the slow boil method. And they start out by helping out with groceries occasionally, or maybe they just go to a a parent or a grandparent's home every so often to help with spring cleaning or to do the windows. And then over time, the amount of resources, your own time, effort, energy, space, money that you're putting into that caregiving slowly increases. So you might not really notice when it's getting to that boiling point or where you're feeling stressed. You might not really know why you're feeling some of the symptoms of burnout, which I'm sure we can talk about. Uh, but things like irritability or problems at the job, just feeling tired, sort of feeling resentful, those can all build up over time. If you're a caregiver, though, who gets that call in the middle of the night that says, hey, your folks have been down here in Florida for five or 10 years and your dad's now in the hospital, he's fallen, he's broken his hip. And by the way, it looks like your mom has some early dementia starting. And you're like, what? You're the frog who's just jumped into a boiling pot, and you know right away that you're in over your head. Hopefully you recognize that so that you can take some steps to get help and support for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah. And when it happens slowly, I feel like there must be some type of inflection point where it's one event, but it's maybe even a small event where you kind of cross the threshold and the same kind of awareness sets in that you're just overwhelmed, but it feels like a slow burn more in that case. Interesting. So let's help folks identify the signs. Maybe you could share some symptoms of caregiver burnout. We talked about the different ways it manifests, but what are some symptoms that um you know might help you self-what's the word for it? Self-assess.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

How's that?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Self-assess. Yeah. Doctors love this. Yeah. So help you self-diagnose. That's what I was going for.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

You know, it's it's important to look at all the different areas of your life, but you're probably first going to notice physical symptoms. And that could be just feeling tired, having a headache, maybe having some upset stomach issues, feeling achy in your muscles. Some family care partners actually get physical injuries, like the first time or twelfth time they try to assist mom or dad, they hurt their shoulder. So when caregiving is directly taking a physical toll on you, you need to pay attention to that and hopefully even earlier. You may just be more susceptible to things like colds that are going around. And for sure, if you're having trouble with sleeping, if you're thinking about that caregiving situation or you're up at three in the morning and you can't sleep, sleep is so fundamental to everything else that we have and do in our lives that when your sleep is disrupted, that's that's gonna trigger a whole cascade of other physical symptoms and mental ones too. So the mental symptoms could be things like having trouble concentrating on what you're doing. If you're feeling hopeless or sad, those are emotional symptoms, but pay attention to what you're telling yourself. And sometimes caregivers find themselves saying things like, I feel so guilty, I'm not with my mom more, or I'm frustrated because I have to try to juggle all these different things that I'm juggling. Some people may feel angry, they may be irritable. But this kind of stress over a prolonged period of time can actually lead to clinical depression or anxiety. It's okay, no judgment about that. But if you can catch this early, you can maybe prevent it sliding into that kind of a situation. And then socially, people do find themselves having trouble at work. Sometimes they have to leave the job, but before they decide to leave the job, there is sometimes a lot of absenteeism from work or having to come in late or leave early, phone calls to your office. So the work is really impacted by caregiving when you're one of the working partners in the household. Having conflicts with other people, that can come just from that irritability. Or in caregiving, there can be conflicts with siblings or other people that are involved because they just have different ideas about what needs to be done, or maybe they say, well, that's not such a big deal. It doesn't need to be done. So they're disagreeing with you about that. So yeah, you can you can get very isolated and feel like you're the only person in the world that is having these feelings.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

And aside from the the physical and the mental and social strain, do you see, I kind of alluded to it earlier, do you see financial strain? You know, I I mentioned folks leaving the workforce, but are there other ways you see financial strain?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yeah, well, it's important to notice, and you know this better than I do for sure, but uh it's not just leaving the workforce. When you leave the workforce, you're now not putting money into your social security account, you're now not putting money into a retirement fund. So there's less money today, but there's also less money for the future. And so that's that loss of income. The other thing is I think when you get overwhelmed, you're not as likely to be able to focus on all those other sort of foundational things that need to be taken care of, like the financial and legal planning, not just for the elder that you're caring for, but also for yourself. Like is your own, they call it different things in different states, but your advanced directives are they in place for you if something should happen to you? Are you paying attention to your retirement? And how does that need to change in response to the caregiving where maybe you've shifted to part-time work or maybe you've had to leave the job altogether? Financial planning is really key. So I'm glad we're talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

It's something I look at carefully with my clients. It's, you know, you you have to understand, I always kind of build it as if we they won't re-enter the workforce because it sort of is this indefinite time period. And we understand in the short term, can their cash flow sustain it? Like can they flat out handle the loss of income? Uh and then in the long term, my software will help me project out the loss of income for both their social security benefit amount and their retirement balances. And we just determine if it's possible, if it's doable. And it's tough, tough decision, tough conversation. And then do they need to scale back certain aspects of their life so that they can uh you know accommodate their new caregiver responsibilities? So not the easiest journey.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Important stuff though, right? I mean, this is this is where the rubber meets the road for a lot of folks.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yep. Yep. So let's let's shift into a slightly, slightly more positive segment of the conversation. What are some things we could do to combat caregiver burnout or get out in front of it or just kind of take care of ourselves and take care of others?

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, thank it's such a good question. Thanks, Tom. Going back to my frog analogy, I was thinking about this and I was thinking, well, you start with the frog him, him or herself. And the main thing is to notice, to learn how to notice what is happening in your body, to not be caught up in it as though you are the thought or the emotion. So when you say, I'm angry, that is kind of saying that you are anger. But learning to say, hmm, I I notice that I'm feeling anger, and be more curious and compassionate about it. And it sounds complicated, but and it's something most of us are not taught. But it once you learn it, it's amazing to do that because it gives you a little distance from either the thoughts, the emotional sensations, or the physical sensations that you might be having. And just to notice, first of all, when you're stressed and the simple ways that we have to reverse it. So things like progressive relaxation, deep breathing. That's probably the simplest and easiest thing you can do that truly on a physiological level will shift you out of that fight or flight anxiety state into a calmer state where you can think and choose what you want your response to be instead of just reacting. So that's one of the first things. The other thing to look at is what's the water that the frog is spinning in? So how hot is it? Be willing to ask for help before the water is boiling. And that can look like coaching support groups are phenomenal for caregivers. And I really encourage people to do that. If you can get counseling of the local office for aging, offices for aging around the country, many of them have caregiver support groups or caregiver support people to help family members, but be willing to ask for help, to do research, to look into, yeah, what's available. And and don't don't be afraid to talk to a therapist, especially if you can find one who knows something about caregiving or about stress or burnout, because that's gonna help start to learn what the community resources are, get that financial and legal advice, start a file. Your file's gonna end up pretty thick, but that's the way to start it. And then I like to think about those things as the ice cubes. So, what are those resources in the community? There are ways to there's one number in the country to find the elder care locator, is called to help you find the offices for aging in your community. And they're mandated to help with information and referral by the Elder Americans Act. So they're there to help you. And so that's that's one of the main resources that you could use, would be your community area agency or office for aging.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

I love the idea of a caregiver support group. Most likely it's if coordinated through, you know, the elder care office in your community. It's probably a free thing to attend. If you can find time in your incredibly demanding schedule, that's obviously an important caveat. But it's good to feel like you're not alone. I I think the isolation component is very real. And I think folks feel guilt that they feel burnout. You know, they want to be there for their family and they don't want to admit that they're getting, you know, crushed by the responsibilities. So being around a bunch of other people that are feeling the exact same way is, I think, a very powerful solution to at least fighting the isolation that comes with it. Second part of that is just sharing resources, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, I I agree. And I and I I always think of the tips that I've heard that come from caregivers that I'm working with or that they've gotten from support groups. I actually ran a support group for 10 years myself, but just an example, if you have two seconds for it.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Of course, I'm here all day.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Somebody told me one time, this was decades ago, that they had a parent, a dad in particular who was living with dementia, and they had a family wedding coming up, and they wanted him to be able to go with the family and help celebrate the wedding. But he did have a tendency to take his trousers off. So what they told me is at a support group, they brought that up, and another person in that room said, that happened to us, and we found out how to solve it. We put the trousers on him backwards, we put the belt on him backwards. His hand still kind of went to his navel area as though he were fumbling with his belt buckle, but his trousers stayed on. And go. You know, I love that story because it really tells us that, you know, I again I've worked in this field so many years. I've heard hundreds and thousands of stories. But as a social worker, um, as a counselor, as a coach, I that's not a solution I would have come up with on my own. That's something you hear from other people that are in the trenches and that are doing the work. And folks tend to listen better to other people who are actually in the middle of caregiving. So it yeah, support groups are awesome. And post-COVID now, we have a lot of them that are online. So worth looking into.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, that's awesome. You know, at a wedding, if you're on the dance floor, clothes are flying left and right anyway. So that would be like the safe space potentially. I love that. I'm obviously not a therapist and don't deliver advice as such. But one thing I try to feel out with my clients is when their life feels strained and you can you can just sense it in the conversations. There's two people we're trying to serve with financial planning, like future self and current self. And so I'll look at their cash flow and I'll look at their spending behaviors, and I'll try to feel out if they're feeling strain or feeling stress and say, well, okay, you've got the resources to outsource some of these things that are stressing you out. How should we be spending your money to free up your best life? If you have the available resources now, you know, guilt-free, how can we, how can we help? Does it mean signing up for a meditation class or does it mean just buying, you know, hiring a nanny for X hours a week so you can just walk, like go for a walk, give yourself some space, exercise classes that you might have been neglecting because you're too busy, right? But you love to exercise, and it's obviously very important for a lot of the mental and physical challenges that you're experiencing. So I try to come up with ways, and that candidly is why my job exists for a lot of my clients is they're buying their time back. They don't want to spend three hours a week fumbling around on Roth IRA rules when they can get the right answer in two minutes by emailing me, right?

unknown 18:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

That makes such beautiful sense. Um I I think we used to call that production versus production capacity. And with caregiving, I always thought about that as like you're putting gas in the car. It's yeah, it's costing you a little money at the pump, but it's gonna allow your car to keep running. If you're not investing in yourself, your well-being, and and well-being in all those pillars of self-care and and those domains of wellness, you're gonna run out of gas and you might be in the middle of the desert when it happens. So yeah, you've gotta take care of yourself.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

I love it. No, that's that's critically important. And and if you don't know if you have the financial resources to buy time back, well, you just have to recognize that you need to come up with ways to give yourself space or do little quick exercises, breathing exercises, things like that to try to do your best and do what you can, you know, with the resources you have. That's outstanding. Lisa, are there any other nuggets or anything else you wanted to share?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Oh my gosh. I I honestly have so many stories that if I started another story, we'd be here for the rest of the day and and happily so. But I I would just like to, I would like to say that if anybody wants to click on my website, I am having some work done on it, so it's a little funky right now, but you will see my email address on my website. I want all of your listeners to feel free to contact me. I've got like a one-page handout that's got links to all these different ways that you can shift into a calmer mental state and you can do it really quickly. It's neurobiologically sound information. It's really based on what we're learning about our brain science, but it's easy and can even be fun. So I just I'd like to invite anybody who's listening who wants a little more information on that aspect of it, get in touch with me. I'm happy to send you my handout and uh and support you however I can.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Awesome. Yeah, we will absolutely uh include that in the links with the show notes. And I definitely encourage folks to reach out to Lisa if if any of the topics from today's conversation resonate with you. She's got a wealth of experience. So thank you so much. A couple little financial nuggets to wrap up the show. I always got to throw my little nuggets in there. Like we mentioned before, step number one, think about ways to buy yourself time, space, and recovery. So that's one of the big things when you look at your budget, look at your finances. If you are experiencing symptoms of burnout or you think you're in full-fledged burnout, look at your resources and buy your time and buy your mental health and space back. Number two, a lot of the care topics discussed in this episode may be considered qualified medical expenses. So if you have a health savings account, it may be a good opportunity to use those resources for a very tax-efficient way to pay for them. Or you simply save the receipts, keep the money in the HSA and invest it for a future date. But saving those receipts can be valuable for a future HSA distribution. And last but not least, I do I look at open enrollment uh guides for all my clients, and I am increasingly seeing employer-provided resources to support your mental and physical well-being. So look through your employer-provided resources, and a lot of them have valuable nuggets in there for your health and your well-being. That's money wasted if you aren't using those resources provided by your employer. Usually I see these types of resources like on page 31 of 33. So get to the end, at least. Just to summarize today's show, we we went through defining what caregiver burnout is, the different ways it can emerge in your life, identifying the signs and symptoms. So Lisa helped us with common symptoms that will that will present when you are feeling experiencing the onset or you're in full-fledged burnout. And then we wrapped with some helpful tips on navigating it, trying to remedy and manage the symptoms for this chapter of your life. So very, very helpful content. And you're a pro, Lisa.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

That's amazing. I I love it. It's such a it's such a good topic, and there's so much, so much more. But I appreciate you having me here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

We're this episode is scratching the surface. So maybe next episode you're on, we'll do story hour with Lisa Kendall. Awesome. Thanks again for joining us today, Lisa. And thank you for our listeners for taking a minute to tune in. And uh please check out the show notes where you'll have lots of links and information pertaining to this conversation. I hope you all have a good rest of the week. Thanks again.