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EPISODE 65: The Ten Minute Pity Party And Why You re Not Allowed More
44 Plays6 days ago
In this episode, I challenge the belief that constant exhaustion is a sign of being a good caregiver. I introduce my "10-Minute Pity Party" framework, a simple but powerful way to process grief, frustration, and overwhelm without letting those emotions take over your entire day. You'll learn why suppressing your feelings can lead to burnout, how giving yourself permission to feel actually builds resilience, and why caring for yourself is essential to caring well for your parent. This episode is your reminder that showing up with strength begins by making space for your own humanity.
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Transcript
Introduction to Caregiver Concerns
00:00:01
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She told me she couldn't remember the last time she cried. She was 46 years old, the eldest daughter of a mother with progressive dementia. She had not come to see me for herself. Exactly. Her primary care doctor was worried.
00:00:17
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Her, he was worried about her blood pressure. The blood pressure had been creeping up and so had her weight. She had stopped going to the gym in February and here it was already
The Pity Party Approach
00:00:26
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October. And her 13 year old son had recently asked her if she was sad all the time.
00:00:32
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I asked her if she was sad and she said she didn't know and she didn't feel like she could afford to find out. I have heard a version of that sentence from 100 women.
00:00:45
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And today I'm going to give you the framework I gave her. I am a psychiatrist and I'm about to tell you to feel sorry for yourself. on purpose out loud for exactly 10 minutes. And then I'm going to tell you why the timer matters as much as the tears.
Importance of Caregiver Wellness
00:01:05
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Welcome back to the aging parent playbook. I'm Dr. Barbara Sparacino, triple board certified psychiatrist and adult psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, and addiction medicine. I'm also a coach and a caregiver and a daughter.
00:01:20
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for the last several weeks, this show has been about your parent. The documents, the doctor visits, the window before the crisis. Today is not about your parent.
00:01:32
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Today is actually about you. The person holding all of it. Because here is what over 15 years of practice has taught me. The caregiver's wellness is not a luxury sitting off to the side of caregiving.
00:01:45
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It is the load-bearing wall. And I have watched too many load-bearing walls come down. So today we have the 10 minute pity party. What it is, why it works and why the limit is a whole point.
Cultural Beliefs on Suffering and Love
00:01:58
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And the bigger idea beneath it, which is my quiet war against a culture that has decided caregiving suffering is sacred. So let's go. Part one, the culture I'm pushing back on.
00:02:11
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Before I give you the framework, I need to name the thing is fighting. Because there is a story being told about caregiving right now in books and support groups all over social media.
00:02:23
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And the story goes like this. Suffering is a proof of love. The good daughter is the depleted daughter. If you are not exhausted, you must not be caring enough.
00:02:35
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Nobody says it that bluntly, ah but it's um it's in the water. It's in the way we praise the caregiver who never takes a day off. It's in the guilt you feel the moment you do something for yourself. It's in the support group where the unspoken competition and who has it the hardest.
00:02:53
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The suffering becomes the badge and the badge then becomes the identity. And I wanna be fair about where this came from because it did not come from cruelty. It came from invisibility.
00:03:05
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For generations, caregiving was unseen, unpaid, and unthanked. And the only currency caregivers were ever offered was admiration for their sacrifice.
00:03:16
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So sacrifice became the story because sacrifice was the only thing anyone applauded. Then social media arrived and put a stage under it and the algorithm learned that depletion performs.
00:03:29
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The most shared care caregiver content is almost never I took a walk and felt better. It's the breakdown, the 4 a.m. confession, the crisis. I understand why.
00:03:40
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Pain is real and it deserves witness. But when the most visible version of caregiving is always the most depleted version, every caregiver who's merely tired starts to wonder if she's doing it wrong.
Misinterpretations of Suffering
00:03:53
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She's not. She's not just performing it. As a psychiatrist, I have to tell you what I see downstream of that story. It is the cleanest pipeline to clinical depression in my outpatient practice.
00:04:05
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Caregivers are two to three times more likely to develop clinical depression than the general population. they are more likely to develop their own chronic illness. Some studies suggest the highest strain caregivers are more likely to die before the person there for which they are caring.
00:04:24
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That is not motivation language, that is the data. And here is the part that should change your mind even if the data does not. The martyrs do not actually make better or take better better care of their parents. They just suffer more visibly.
00:04:40
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The depleted daughter is not more loving than the rusted one. She is more depleted. Those are different things and the culture has fused them. And I am asking you to- today to unfuse them.
Emotional Rationing in Caregiving
00:04:52
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Suffering is not the proof of love. Showing up is. Hold on to that sentence because we are coming back to it. Part two, the rationing problem. So let me tell you what happens inside the women I see.
00:05:07
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Because the opposite of the martyr is not the woman who has it all figured out. The opposite of the martyr usually sitting in the same body is the rationer.
00:05:18
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The woman from my cold open, the one who could not remember the last time she cried. She wasn't in denial about her situation. She knew exactly how hard it was.
00:05:29
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What she was doing was rationing. Rationing grief, because if she started crying, she was not sure she'd be able to stop. Rationing rest, because rest felt like falling behind.
00:05:41
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Rationing anger, because anger at a declining mother felt monstrous, even though it is one of the most normal feelings in all of caregiving. She had turned herself into a project manager, dispatching herself through the days because the feelings had started to look like a risk to the operation.
00:06:00
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Maybe you recognize her. Maybe she's you. So let me say clinically and plainly what rationing does. Feelings that are not processed do not evaporate.
00:06:12
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They are stored. And stored grief, stored anger, stored fear, they come out one of three ways. They come out sideways as irritability, as the snapping at your husband, the short fuse of their kids.
00:06:24
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They come out somatically as the blood pressure, the insomnia, the the back that won't unclench the weight, or they come out all at once as the breakdown in the grocery store parking lot that arrives with no warning. 18 months into the rationing.
00:06:43
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The rationing is not strength. The rationing is a symptom.
Framework for Controlled Emotional Expression
00:06:47
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And the answer to it is not unlimited feeling either. Unlimited feeling has its own failure mode, which is rumination.
00:06:54
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the spiral, the all day marinade and how unfair it all is, which feels like processing and is actually just suffering on a loop. So we need something between rationing and drowning.
00:07:07
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Something that does the emotional work and protects the functioning. That something is the pity party with the timer. Part three, the framework, how to throw 10 minute pity party.
00:07:21
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So here's the framework exactly as I give it to my patients. Five rules. So rule one, it is scheduled and it is on purpose. You do not wait for the feelings to ambush you.
00:07:33
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You make an appointment with them. Some of my patients do it daily during the hard seasons. Some do it twice a week. The car works, the shower works, the bedroom floor works.
00:07:45
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The point is you walk in, the feelings don't drive you in. Rule two, Set an actual timer, 10 minutes, your phone, not a vibe, not roughly 10 minutes, a timer. The timer is what transforms this from wallowing into a practice. The timer is a container and the container is what makes it safe to pour everything in.
00:08:08
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Rule three, Go all the way in. This is not a polite little sigh. For 10 minutes, you have full permission. Cry without performing recovery. Say out loud that this is unfair because it is.
00:08:20
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Name everything that is not okay. Be furious at your sister. Be furious at the disease. Grieve the mother you are losing while she is still alive, which is its own specific grief and deserves its 10 minutes.
00:08:33
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Light a candle if that's your style. Write an angry letter you will never send. Nothing you feel in the container is wrong. Nothing in the container makes you a bad daughter.
00:08:43
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The container exists precisely so it could all be true for 10 minutes. Rule four, when the timer goes off, you stop. And let me be precise about what stopping means. It does not mean the feelings were silly.
00:08:59
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It does not mean that you are done forever because there is another party tomorrow if you need it. Stopping means you stand up, you wash your face, you drink some water, and you take one concrete action.
00:09:12
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Maybe the next phone call. Maybe start dinner, walk to the mailbox. The pity party does not the pepi does the emotional work. The stopping does the executive function work.
00:09:23
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Together, they metabolize the feeling without so surrendering the day to it. Rule five, never at the expense of help you actually need. And hear me on this.
00:09:35
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The pity party is a wellness practice for the ordinary, enormous hardness of caregiving. It is not a treatment for clinical depression. If the sadness is everywhere all day for weeks, if you cannot sleep or cannot get up, if the thought has crossed your mind that everyone would be better off without you, this is not a pity party situation.
00:09:57
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That is a call your doctor situation. This week, today better. And there is no shame in it. And the strongest caregivers I know are the ones who made that call.
Processing Emotions Effectively
00:10:07
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As always, if you are personally struggling, please reach out to a professional.
00:10:12
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This show is education and it loves you, but it is not treatment. you So now the objections. I have prescribed this framework many times and the objections arrive usually on schedule. So let me answer the four I typically hear.
00:10:30
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Objection one, I don't have 10 minutes. Look, I want to be gentle and direct at the same time. If you generally do not have 10 unscheduled minutes anywhere in your day, that is not an argument against the pity party.
00:10:43
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That is the single most important piece of political information in this episode. And it means your load needs restructuring, which is a different and bigger conversation.
00:10:56
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But for most of you, that is not actually true. You have the 10 minutes. You're just spending them scrolling in bed at midnight, leaking the same feelings in a form that doesn't help.
00:11:09
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We're not adding 10 minutes to your day We are relocating 10 minutes you already spent. Objection two, if I start crying, I will not stop. Look, this is the most common fear and it deserves a real answer.
00:11:24
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The fear is that the grief is an ocean and that opening the door means drowning. Here's what I've seen over and over. Actually, the opposite is true. Unfelt grief feels infinite precisely because it is unmeasured.
00:11:38
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The first party might be heavy, yes. The first one might feel like might use all 10 minutes and feel like it could have used 60. But you will discover something important when the timer goes off and you stand up and wash your face and the world is still there.
00:11:52
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You will discover that you can touch the ocean without drowning in it. That discovery is the whole treatment. And if you truly cannot stop, if the crying does not resolve, that is rule five territory it means you need more support than a timer, which is information worth having.
00:12:12
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Objection three, isn't this self-indulgent? People have it worse. Listen to what that objection is. It is the suffering is sacred culture talking. The very thing we spent part one dismantling, wearing a humble disguise.
00:12:28
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Somebody always has it worse that has never once made a caregiver's feelings less real or less in need of processing. You don't refuse to treat a broken arm because someone else broke too.
00:12:42
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10 minutes of honest feeling is not indulgence. It is maintenance. The indulgent version is the all day marinade and the pity party is precisely what prevents it. Objection four.
00:12:54
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I tried it and I felt silly. Well, of course you did. sat in your car with a timer running, trying to cry on command, feeling like an actor to buy a commercial. That's normal.
00:13:05
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And it passes. The first few parties are awkward the way first few workouts are awkward. Lower the bar. You don't have to cry. You can just talk out loud about what is hard.
00:13:16
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you can write instead of speak you can sit in the sit in the feeling quietly the party is whatever honest looks like for you the only requirements are the appointment the permission and the timer so now part four why it works let me put my psychiatrist hat fully on and i'll tell you why this works because understanding the mechanism makes people actually do it, right? So first naming and expressing emotion changes how the brain processes it.
00:13:47
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When you put a feeling into words, you shift activity away from pure alarm toward regulation. This is one of the oldest findings in my field. The feeling once named and expressed loses some of the script.
00:14:01
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That is what the 10 minutes is doing. It is not indulgence. It is processing. Second, the boundary prevents rumination. Rumination, the open-ended loop of the distress is one of the best established risk factors for depression.
00:14:16
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The timer is an anti-rumination device. It says, oh, we will foot feel this fully and then we will close the file for today. With practice, your brain learns that hard feelings have a beginning and an end.
00:14:29
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That learning by itself is protective. Third, the action afterward rebuilds that sense of agency that caregiving often strips away. So much of this is life is things happening to you. Standing up after the timer and doing one chosen thing, however small, is evoked for the part of you that still steers.
00:14:50
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And fourth, scheduled emotion protects the rest of your life. The feelings stop leaking into the work meeting and the bedtime routine because they have a home. My patients are always surprised by this part.
00:15:03
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the pity party does not make them sadder. it makes the other 23 hours and 15 minutes lighter. Part five, building it into a real week.
00:15:15
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Last piece, how to make this real because a framework you did not use is just a nice idea. Start with frequency in a hard season daily, in a stable season once or twice a week, or simply as needed.
00:15:28
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Pair it with something that already happens, the commute, the shower, right after drop-off. Habits attach best to existing anchors. And decide to respond in advance.
00:15:40
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The car is the most popular answer I hear, and there is a reason half of caregiving America cries in parked cars. Fine, make it official. Your car, your timer, your 10 minutes.
00:15:51
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Tell one person, your spouse, your best friend, your sister, if she's safe. Not for permission, for cover. If the bathroom door is closed and you hear me crying, I am fine.
00:16:02
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I am doing my 10 minutes. It removes the secrecy and secrecy is half the shame. And put it next to the other three basics because the pity party works best on a body that is minimally maintained.
00:16:15
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Sleep, movement, connection. One and more hour of sleep. 15 minutes of walking, three days, one true text to one friend.
00:16:25
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Those three plus the 10 minutes will do more for a caregiver's mood than almost anything I can prescribe. And I say that as someone with a prescription pad.
Managing Guilt and Grief
00:16:37
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And a word about the guilt. Before I close this part, I have to talk about the guilt because guilt is the engine of everything we have been pushing back on today. And it will try to sabotage this practice in two specific ways.
00:16:51
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The first way is guilt about the content of the party. You'll be three minutes in, finally saying the true things and the guilt will arrive mid-sentence. ah How can I be angry at her?
00:17:03
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She's sick. What kind of daughter resents her own mother? And here is the clinical distinction I want you to carry. Guilt is the feeling that you did something bad.
00:17:14
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Grief is the feeling that something bad is happening. What you are feeling in that car is almost always grief wearing guilt coat. You didn't do anything bad by being human about an inhuman situation.
00:17:28
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Resenting the disease? The load, even sometimes the person while still showing up for them is not a moral failure. It is the normal weather of caregiving. Inside the 10 minutes, the resentment is allowed too, especially resentment.
00:17:44
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It is the feeling most in need of somewhere safe to go. second way guilt It's about the party itself. You will finish 10 minutes, feel a little lighter, and then feel guilty about feeling later, as if relief were a word betrayal, as if your mother's situation requires your continuous visible suffering as tribute.
00:18:04
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It does not. Go back to the sentence. Suffering is not the proof of love. Showing up is. Your lightness after the party is not your caring less. Is the practice working?
00:18:15
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Let it work. I want to come back to the woman from the beginning, the woman who couldn't afford to find out if she was sad. We didn't start with her mother's care plan.
00:18:28
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We started with her 10 minutes. Then she thought it was beneath her, honestly. She was running a household, a career, and her mother's entire medical life. A timer and a cry felt like a craft project.
00:18:41
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I'm happy to say she did it anyway, in her car on Tuesdays and Fridays after she dropped her mother off at a day program. Weeks later, she told me two things. The first was that the initial party lasted the full 10 minutes and felt like it could have gone two hours.
00:18:55
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The second was that for the first time in a year, her son had stopped asking her if she was sad. Not because she had hidden it better, but because the sadness finally had somewhere to land and go, and it had stopped seeping out of her into the house.
00:19:12
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as mother Her mother's dimension did not improve. That is not the kind of story this is. But the daughter standing next to that dimension got steadier, more present, more okay.
00:19:23
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And her mother, I promise you, would have chosen that over the martyrdom every single time. Because our mothers do not actually want us depleted. They want us okay.
00:19:37
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So here's the whole episode in one minute. The culture says suffering is the proof of love. It is wrong and it is a pipeline to depression.
00:19:48
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Suffering is not the proof of love. Showing up is. Caregivers ration feelings to stay functional and ration feelings come out sideways, somatically or all at once.
00:20:00
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The answer is not unlimited feeling. It has contained deliberate scheduled feeling. The 10 minute pity party. Scheduled on purpose. A real timer. All the way in, full permission, nothing is off limits. And when the timer ends, stand up and do one concrete action.
00:20:18
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And never as a substitute for professional help when the picture is clinical. It works because expressing emotion regulates it. The boundary blocks rumination, the action rebuilds agency, and the schedule protects the rest of your day.
00:20:35
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10 minutes for the pity party, then you move. If to- today's episode hit close to home, I want you to know where you actually stand, not where you feel you stand.
Burnout Awareness and Resources
00:20:48
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I made a free burnout self-assessment. It takes a few minutes and it tells you honestly, which zone you are and what to do next. Comment burnout on this episode's Instagram post at theagingparentcoach.com and we'll send it straight to you.
00:21:07
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We have covered a lot of ground this month. The documents, the doctor's office, the quiet window. And today, you. Next week, we keep building on the caregiver strong pillar because the second half of this summer is about making sure the person holding everything together gets held too.
00:21:27
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Until then, have that party, set the timer, and then move. Take care of your parents and take care of yourself. I'll see you next week.