Stressed out caregiver

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 3, 3023

If you are a caregiver, you deserve a superhero cape! In my case, the witch hat is more appropriate considering that is the way I feel most of the day.

I had to learn that taking care of my husband and 6-month-old puppy during most of the day has to include time for me to take care of myself. If I don't include myself on the to-do list then I won't be much good to those depending on me to do what they can't do for themselves. Top that off if, I'm cranky doing it, that won't help their mood or mine.

Choosing to put limits on what we do, and when we do it, is hard when we don't want to admit we're human and doing the best we can when they want it all! Our lives are on hold and that can be frustrating on top of everything else we have going on. 

For us, we're supposed to be enjoying retirement, or that's what I thought it was supposed to be like. What we were supposed to be and what we are are two totally different things. Figuring it out is a struggle.

The best advice I can give is to do what you can, when you can, as much as you can. Learn to let go of what you can't do. Make peace with it. Take time to do something you enjoy instead of trying to spend 24-7 taking care of everyone else. Breathe and, yes let out the grunt you're trying to hold in. If you can be sarcastic, that works for me too. (Okay, that works magic on my mood when I laugh at how impossible becomes possible.) It's also a lot better to spend the day without being a witch about all of it.

UPDATE

The post I put up proved that I am totally stressed out! I fixed it but what I regret most of all was leaving out one more thing that is vital to all caregivers. ASK FOR HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT! If we don't think we should need it, because we're the ones helping, remember everyone needs help. Even you!

100 Border Patrol Agents have committed suicide in last 12 years

Border Patrol struggling to hire, keep agents, but may never get 5,000 Trump ordered

USA TODAY
Alan Gomez
March 29, 2019

Such stress might help to explain why over 100 CBP employees have committed suicide over the past 12 years, according to agency data.

When U.S. Border Patrol agents called on the patrol's air unit to provide overhead coverage for operations, about four out of five requests were rejected over three recent years.

The reason? A lack of pilots.

And the staffing crisis at Border Patrol doesn't end with pilots.

Vice President Mike Pence (right) and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (second from right) watches Virtual Simulator Training during a visit to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Advanced Training Facility in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., on March 13, 2019. (Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP)

As President Donald Trump's attention is focused on building a border wall to keep out unwanted migrants, the Border Patrol's "human wall" is in a serious state of disrepair, according to a USA TODAY review of government documents, congressional testimony and interviews with agents.

The Border Patrol, a component of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, faces a crisis in hiring, training and retaining agents as well as keeping track of what exactly its 19,555 agents are doing at any given time, according to internal watchdog reports.

As the Border Patrol struggles to maintain current workforce levels, its greatest challenge will be President Trump's executive order from two years ago calling for the hiring of an additional 5,000 agents to seal off the southern border.

Since that Jan. 25, 2017, order, what should have been a flood of hiring has been, at best, a trickle. In 2018, the agency added 118 Border Patrol agents, with only three stationed along the southern border.

That shortfall is part of the reason Trump has deployed thousands of National Guardsmen and active-duty military troops to the southern border and has left agency officials questioning whether the 5,000-agent goal will ever be realized.

"I can't necessarily say whether we'll be able to meet it at this point," said Temea Simmons-Collins, acting executive director for the talent management directorate at Customs and Border Protection.
read more here

Researchers Find Reason PTSD is Not All in Your Head

'Trigger' for stress processes discovered in the brain
Medical Xpress
Medical University of Vienna

"In contrast, the consequences of chronic stress are manifold and can, for example, lead to an increased tendency to suffer from infections but also to high blood pressure, diabetes and an increased risk of cardio-vascular disease right through to chronic headaches, tinnitus or osteoporosis."

At the Center for Brain Research at the MedUni Vienna an important factor for stress has been identified in collaboration with the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm (Sweden). This is the protein secretagogin that plays an important role in the release of the stress hormone CRH and which only then enables stress processes in the brain to be transmitted to the pituitary gland and then onwards to the organs. A current study on this molecular switch has now been published in the top-ranked EMBO Journal.

"If, however, the presence of secretagogin, a calcium-binding protein, is suppressed, then CRH (= Corticotropin Releasing Hormone) might not be released in the hypothalamus of the brain thus preventing the triggering of hormonal responses to stress in the body," explains Tibor Harkany of the Department of Molecular Neurosciences at the MedUni Vienna.

"Now we have a better understanding of how stress is generated," says Tomas Hökfelt of the Karolinska Institutet and guest professor at the MedUni Vienna. This could result in a further development where secretagogin is deployed as a tool to treat stress, perhaps in people suffering from mental illness such as depression, burn out or posttraumatic stress disorder, but also in cases of chronic stress brought on by pain. If a rapid recovery phase follows a period of stress, body and mind are restored to "normal working", which is associated with a suppression of the release of circulating stress hormones.
learn more here

Crime takes heavy toll on legal minds

Crime takes heavy toll on legal minds

Lawyers are particularly at risk from mental health problems.
Lynnette Hoffman reports
March 01, 2008
SEAN Brown still remembers the details a decade on. From the horrific sequence of events right down to the specific type of bullets that were used; how many there were, where they went in, how long it took the victim to die.

Brown (not his real name) wasn't a witness, nor was he on the ground at the crime scene, but plenty of grisly stories have been embedded in his memory in 20-odd years as a senior crown prosecutor.

Brown has "seen a lot" over the span of his career, a career that has required him to immerse himself in the intricate circumstances of violent death and homicides, brutal rapes, war crimes, you name it. The sum total of all that, he says, is "not very healthy".

New research from Macquarie University, to be published in the international journal Traumatology, has found that criminal law work can have profoundly damaging psychological effects.

By and large, Brown has been rather fortunate in that regard. He has not suffered a debilitating depression, nor has he felt the need to seek professional assistance for mental health issues, or fallen into a pattern of abusing alcohol or drugs.

But that's not to say the work hasn't taken its toll. His dreams are sometimes affected, as are his relationships. "I tend to get moodier with my family and become more difficult to get on with at home," he says.

At 58, Brown has been married and divorced three times, and while it's difficult to blame one factor, he feels his work has played some sort of role in it all.

In the new study, researcher and senior clinical and forensic psychologist Lil Vrklevski -- herself a lawyer -- compared the mental health and wellbeing of 50 solicitors who work with traumatised clients, namely criminal defence lawyers and prosecutors, with that of 50 solicitors (conveyancers and academics) who work with non-traumatised clients.

The study found that criminal lawyers are nearly twice as likely to seek professional assistance to cope with work related distress: 36 per cent of the sample of criminal lawyers sought professional help for that reason, compared with just 20 per cent of the sample of other solicitors.

Likewise, criminal law solicitors are much more prone to developing depression, stress and vicarious trauma, where professionals who are indirectly exposed to trauma begin to take on some of the same symptoms as the person who actually experienced it, such as increased depression or anxiety.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23292980-23289,00.html

When you read it and know what some go through without ever being involved in traumatic events, but touched by them after the fact, you may understand how PTSD can and does strike combat forces.

Veterans Helping Hands Give Help to PTSD Veterans

Reporter: Andrew Del Greco
Local Soldiers Can Find Help For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Posted: Jan 31, 2008 11:37 PM EST


According to the U.S. Army, suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 hit the highest level since the Army began keeping track in 1980.

The president of "Veterans Helping Hands" says many of our soldiers come back home with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He says he wants them to know they're not alone in any feelings of depression, and that there is help available.

These are numbers from the U.S. Army: In 2007, 121 soldiers took their own lives, which is an increase of about 20% over 2006. Also in 2007, about 2,100 soldiers attempted suicide. In 2002, prior to the Iraq war, that number was 350. Jerry Schmidt and others helps veterans and their widows file claims with the V.A. and get benefits and other services.

He says the soldiers' Post-Tramautic Stress Disorder stems from the horrors of warfare that many of us will never know. And there are 'new' horrors in Iraq where suicide bombs explode suddenly and kill innocent people.

Schmidt says in East Idaho, there should be more psychiatrists or pyschologists trained in military P.T.S.D., with just two doctors in Pocatello and one in Idaho Falls. But those kinds of counselors are available for our local soldiers - and veterans like Jerry are available too.
go here for the rest
http://www.kpvi.com/Global/story.asp?S=7806641

When Iraq Comes To Wal-mart

MP blames flashback in Wal-Mart assault

The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Dec 19, 2007 11:52:48 EST

BLOOMSBURG, Pa. — A Wal-Mart shopper said a “flashback” from her military service in Iraq made her shove a 70-year-old greeter at the store.

Jessica R. Bogart, 24, was sentenced Monday to four days in jail for assault.

“My first instinct was to get away. I pushed her,” Bogart told Columbia County Judge Thomas A. James Jr.

James replied, “Nonetheless, the lady was hurt.”

Bogart was leaving a Wal-Mart store near Bloomsburg in February when greeter Ahnastacia Miller asked to see a receipt for items in Bogart’s cart that were not in shopping bags. Bogart shoved Miller to the floor and Miller hit her head.

Bogart said she got upset after Miller threw the receipt at her 2-year-old son, who was seated in the shopping cart. Miller denied the claim.

Defense attorney Leslie Bryden said Bogart, who spent a year in Iraq as a military police officer, had “a difficult adjustment” returning home with one child and being pregnant with another.

In addition to the jail time, Bogart was sentenced to 18 months of probation. She will also pay a $300 fine and $1,986 for the victim’s medical expenses.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/ap_walmartshove_071219/

It is surprising there haven't been a lot more of these reports. It is what happens when soldiers are stressed to the breaking point and there is no one interested in putting them back together again. As you read the number of claims the VA is behind on, what we do not read is how many the DOD is not processing either. While we assume active military are being taken care of on the spot for whatever they need, it is an assumption without any link to fact. If Walter Reed was not an eye opener, nothing will ever remove the grandiose blinders.

Does anyone really understand what we are asking of the troops in these two occupations? Anyone other than their families?

Ahnastacia Miller was just doing her job and should not have been subjected to this. MP Jessica Bogart had done her job being deployed. What's missing in between these two women who did their jobs, is the problem something like this happened. Did Bogart have a flashback or was she just being a jerk? The only people who know are the ones who really know her and what she has always been like.