When someone close is sick…

Ilya’s best friend is undergoing chemotherapy, but Ilya is not going to call him in any way: fear and a vague feeling of guilt that he himself is healthy do not allow him to dial the number. Anna is sure that it is she who is to blame for the fact that her younger sister suffers from anorexia. “My departure from home to study in Moscow could have provoked the disease,” she explains bitterly. Tatyana is ashamed of her daily bouts of irritation and hostility towards her paralyzed mother, who needs constant attention.

When we are faced with a serious illness of a loved one, we are overcome by despair. We are lost and acutely feel our helplessness. And often we begin to reproach ourselves. It seems that we are ready to perform a feat of compassion, but we run into the limits of our capabilities.

Trying to drown out the painful feeling, someone, like Ilya, prefers to move away and unconsciously chooses an escape strategy (“can’t” get through, “doesn’t have time” to come to the hospital during office hours). Others “throw themselves into the embrasure”, give all their bodily and mental strength and often sacrifice their own family life, depriving themselves of the right to happiness.

Guilt mechanism

“It takes time to take the right place next to the patient – this rarely happens right away,” explains psychotherapist Igor Shats. “The first reaction is shock and numbness. Working with relatives for many years, I see that the most difficult thing for them is to realize that a loved one is terminally ill. And you can’t count on changes for the better.”

“An irrational sense of guilt arises almost instantly: “I couldn’t prevent it,” “I didn’t insist on visiting a doctor,” “I was inattentive,” adds Vyacheslav Janston, a clinical psychologist and Gestalt therapist. – Relatives feel guilty: both for past conflicts, and for being healthy, that they cannot always be around, that they are still fascinated by something in life … “

In addition, it is difficult to understand how to behave now. As if nothing had happened, so as not to aggravate the feelings of a loved one? But then there is a risk that we will be considered selfish. Or is it worth changing the nature of your relationship with him, because he is now sick?

We ask ourselves questions, think about what our relationship was like before the illness. But more importantly, someone else’s illness reminds us of our own fears. And above all – about the unconscious fear of death.

“Another source of guilt is the common belief that we should be the perfect son or daughter, husband or wife,” says client-centered psychotherapist and psychologist Marina Khazanova. – They should ideally look after, ideally take care of their relative. This is felt especially acutely by those who were criticized a lot in childhood, who were constantly shown that they did not correspond to the norm. This is a paradox: the more responsible a person is, the better he takes care of the sick, the more acutely he feels his imperfection.

We want to support a sick friend or relative and keep ourselves out of pain. There is an inevitable tangle of conflicting feelings: we are torn between love and despair, the desire to protect and irritation towards a loved one, who sometimes hurts us himself, fueling our guilt with his suffering. We risk getting lost in this maze, losing sight of our landmarks, our faith, our beliefs.

“When we constantly grind the same thoughts in our heads, they fill our consciousness and create chaos that prevents us from thinking rationally,” adds Marina Khazanova. “We lose contact with ourselves, with our own emotions.” This manifests itself literally on a physical level: insomnia, chest pains, skin problems can occur … The imaginary guilt and exaggerated responsibility that we take on ourselves are to blame.

There are many reasons for such confusion of feelings: caring for the sick leaves neither time nor space for oneself, it requires attention, emotional response, warmth, it depletes our resources. And sometimes it destroys the family. “All its members may find themselves in a state of co-dependence, when a long illness of their relative becomes the only meaning of the family system,” warns Vyacheslav Janston.

Define boundaries

In order to be free from guilt, it must first be acknowledged and expressed in words. But this alone is still not enough. “We need to understand that we cannot be responsible for the misfortune of another,” says doctor of the highest category, oncologist at the European Medical Center Julia Mandelblat. “When we discover that our guilt and our involuntary power over another person are two sides of the same coin, we will take the first step towards our spiritual well-being, free up energy to help the sick.”

To stop blaming yourself, you must first of all give up the feeling of your omnipotence and accurately outline the boundaries of your responsibility. It’s easy to say… It’s very difficult to take this step, but it’s better not to hesitate with it.

“I didn’t immediately realize that I wasn’t annoyed with my grandmother, but with the fact that after a stroke she became a different person,” recalls 36-year-old Svetlana. – I knew her completely different, cheerful and strong. And she really needed it. It took me a long time to accept her fading and stop reproaching myself.

Guilt can poison life, it is precisely this that prevents us from truly being close to our loved ones. But what does it say? About whom, if not about ourselves? And there comes a moment when it is time to sincerely answer the question: what is more important for me – a relationship with a close suffering person or my feelings? In other words: do I really love this person?

“An oppressive sense of guilt can cause alienation between the patient and his friend or relative,” Marina Khazanova clarifies. “But in many cases, the patient does not expect anything unusual – he just wants to maintain the connection that has always existed. In this case, we are talking about empathy, about the willingness to listen to his expectations. Some want to talk about their illness, others prefer to talk about something else. In this case, it is enough to be able to empathize, to listen to his expectations.

It is important not to try to decide once and for all what is good and bad for the patient, and to be able to set your own boundaries. The best way to help yourself is to switch to small daily tasks.

“Make a step-by-step plan of action in treatment, consulting with doctors, ask questions, look for your own algorithm for helping the patient,” advises Vyacheslav Janston. – Calculate your strength without falling into sacrifice. When life becomes more orderly and there is a clear plan for the day, it becomes easier. And don’t hesitate to ask other people for help.

Vadim is 47 years old. For 20 of them, he cares for his paralyzed mother. “Now, after so many years, I understand that my father’s life and mine would have turned out differently – I don’t know if it was better or worse, but very different if we had allowed more care for my mother and other family members.”

Being close to the sick person, it is difficult to understand where his borders end and your own begin. And most importantly – where the boundaries of our responsibility end. “To draw them means to say to yourself: there is his life, and there is mine,” explains Vyacheslav Janston. “But this does not mean that a loved one will be rejected, it will only help to figure out where the point of intersection of our lives is.”

Accept reward

In order to establish the right relationship with the person to whom we bring good, for whom we care, it is necessary that this good become a blessing for ourselves. And this implies that there must be some kind of reward for the helper. This is what helps to maintain a relationship with those whom he takes care of. Otherwise, help turns into a sacrifice. A sacrificial attitude always breeds aggressiveness and intolerance.

Not many people know that a year before his death, Alexander Pushkin went to the village to look after his dying mother, Nadezhda Gannibal. After her death, he wrote that during this “short time he enjoyed maternal tenderness, which he did not know until that time …”. Before her death, the mother asked her son for forgiveness for not loving him enough.

“When we decide to accompany a loved one on this difficult journey, it is important to understand that we are making a long-term commitment,” emphasizes Igor Shats. “This is a huge work that takes months and even years. In order not to succumb to fatigue, emotional burnout, helping a relative or friend, you need to clearly understand what we get from communicating with the sick.”

This happened in the family of Alexei, where the grandmother who fell ill with transient cancer in one day united all relatives around her, forcing them to forget about previous disagreements. “We realized that the most important thing for us is to make the last months of her life happy. And for her, there was always only one criterion for happiness – that the whole family be together.