• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • News and Info
    • Sermons
    • Connecting with You
    • Apostle
    • Photo Albums
    • Special Children’s Activities
  • Calendar
  • Contact
  • Staff
  • Breeze Login

St. Thomas the Apostle

Come, Grow, Serve, Make a Difference

  • Home
  • Worship
    • Baptisms
    • Music
    • Special Services
    • Weddings
    • Weekend Services
    • Worship Volunteer Opportunities
  • Spiritual Growth
    • Adult Confirmation
    • Bible Studies
    • Dinner Groups
    • EFM
    • Small Groups
    • Sunday Adult Forum
  • Outreach
    • Kansas2Kenya
    • Immigration Ministries
    • Caring for Kids Ministry
    • Thom’s Helpers
  • Pastoral Care
    • Eucharistic Visitors
    • St. Martha’s Guild
    • Walking the Mourner’s Path Grief Groups
  • Youth
    • Confirmation
    • High School Christian Formation
    • Sunday Youth Group
  • Children
    • Children’s Church
    • Nursery Care
    • Special Children’s Activities
    • Godly Play
    • Godly Play Training
  • Music
  • Mental Health Resources
  • LGBTQIA+
  • Readings
  • Donate
  • 2025 Pledge/ Capital Campaign
  • SUMMER @ ST. THOMAS 2025

Caregiving

May 1, 2022 By Gar Demo

When you hear the word caregiver, what comes to mind? Parent, nurse, doctor, childcare provider, teacher, psychologist, others? Caregivers are responsible for the physical and emotional care of someone else. Oftentimes, people associate caregiver with parent. While this is not inaccurate, these terms are not exclusive. The term caregiver encompasses a much larger group of people. One might be a caregiver to their small child who is developing and growing. But one might also be a caregiver for their adolescent and adult child who has various developmental, physical, or mental health needs (familial). This might also mean caregiving for someone who is not of any relation (professional).

Many times, these acts are out of love, with the caregiver choosing to care for this person because they care deeply for them. While their intention is good, the act of caregiving is something that requires the caregiver to provide time and energy. How many times have you seen a parent of a young child working through a behavior at a local grocery, or seen a support worker or aid helping an older individual with a physical need that requires assistance? While caregivers often chose to be caregivers to some degree, this at times results in unexpected stress or fatigue on the caregiver. Depending on the type of caregiver you are dictates whether you can “shut it off” at the end of the day. Even those of us who are not parents and who can walk away from work at the end of the day struggle at times with stress and fatigue due to working in high stress environments or with populations who engage in a high rate of aberrant behaviors.

Understanding caregiving from different perspectives (nurses, psychologist and other mental health professionals, parents), hardships caregivers experience (caregiver burnout, empathy fatigue), and ways to take care of your own well-being (self-care as a caregiver) normalizes the experiences we have in caring for others. It also provides to opportunity to empathize more with those around us. It reminds us that we, as humans, need understanding and support from other humans. We as caregivers, are not exempt from experiencing emotions, and still need to feel cared for ourselves.  Over the coming weeks, we will provide a number of articles or short blogs about caregiving from a number of these perspectives. 

Kari A. Wold, MA, LMLP

Filed Under: Mental Health Resources

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Gar Demo says

    May 1, 2022 at 4:49 pm

    Great insights by Kari- and lots to think about. Thanks so much.

Primary Sidebar

How to Reach Us

Our Church Building
PHONE: 913.451.0512
ADDRESS: 12251 Antioch Road, Overland Park, KS 66213

SERVICES:                                              Saturday 5:30pm                                          Sunday 10:00am

To contact us by email, please visit the Contact page.

For this week’s readings, click on the “Readings” tab above.

Newsletter Signup

Live Stream

Youtube

Click the button to join the live stream!

Find us on Facebook

FacebookClick the button to find us on Facebook.

Footer

Worship

Worship

Outreach

Outreach

Youth

Youth

Spiritual Growth

Spiritual Growth

Children

Children

Music

Music

Copyright © 2025 St. Thomas Episcopal Church · Made by Zoo Studios