You’re working a full-time job, managing your home and raising your kids. And if you’re like millions of middle-aged adults in U.S., you’re also taking care of your aging parents. Without much warning, you’ve become part of the sandwich generation, squeezed between the needs of your kids and your older mom and dad.
“You’re balancing the demands of raising and supporting children and worrying about your parents’ independence and well-being. It’s tough,” says psychologist Jonathon Sikorski, director of wellness education at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
The Sandwich Zone
A 2012 Pew Research report found that about half of all U.S. adults in their 40s or 50s have a parent age 65 or older and are raising a young child or financially supporting a grown child. This group of 40- and 50-somethings makes up the majority of people in the sandwich generation — 71 percent, according to Pew. About 20 percent of sandwich-agers are younger than 40 and about 10 percent are 60 or older.
The type of care sandwich-agers provide children and older adults is sometimes similar. Both age groups may need help with the activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, feeding) or they may need to be shuttled around or accompanied to activities or doctor appointments.
[See: 14 Ways Caregivers Can Care for Themselves.]
But caring for parents with chronic illness may require you to develop new expertise. If one of your parents has Parkinson’s disease, for example, you’ll need to know about therapies that can help ease symptoms, signs that treatments aren’t working and ways to help the parent break out of episodes of “frozen” muscles (a spontaneous loss of mobility is common among Parkinson’s patients).
The extra care your parents need is time-consuming, almost like a part-time job on top of your regular employment and parenting duties. A 2014 report from the University of California–Berkeley suggests sandwich-agers log between 16 and 26 hours per week caring for older loved ones, with women tending to put more time toward caregiving than men.
Being in the sandwich generation can be a costly arrangement — about 1 in 5 middle-aged adults provided financial support to a parent in 2012 — and it can be emotionally taxing, as nearly 4 in 10 sandwich-agers provided emotional support to their parents and grown children, according to the Pew report.
Taking a Toll
Just like any caregiver, sandwich-aged adults endure chronic stress, a nonstop version of the body’s fight-or-flight response. “It’s exhausting,” Sikorski notes. “If you keep pouring out time for your children and your parents, there isn’t much time for yourself. It’s too much pressure, and it can come out in anxiety, heart palpitations, difficulty concentrating, sleep trouble and digestion issues.”
Chronic stress also contributes to the risk for developing high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and depression. There may also be an association with stress and comfort eating that leads to obesity.
And plenty of sandwich-aged adults are stressed to the max. A 2007 American Psychological Association survey found that 2 in 5 men and women in this group feel overextended, and 40 percent of women ages 35 to 54 report extreme stress.
That stress can also affect your spouse and kids. Sikorski says they may feel they have to compete for your attention. “And if parents are stressed, kids will have more stress as well,” he explains.
[See: How to Help Aging Parents Manage Medications.]
How to Cope
To be a good caregiver, you have to take care of yourself. But sandwich-agers aren’t quick to do that. “It’s easy to be on autopilot and completely neglect your own needs,” agrees Neda Gould, a clinical psychologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “That can lead to burnout. You only have so many resources you can give.”
The basics of self-care start with living a healthier lifestyle:
— Eat a healthier diet. High fat or sugary foods can make you feel lethargic. Instead, fight stress with antioxidant-rich foods (vegetables and fruits like dark, leafy greens and berries) to give your immune system a boost and high-fiber carbs (lentils, beans) to satisfy hunger, recommends the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
— Get more sleep. Sleep deprivation leads to fuzzy thinking and irritability and contributes to the risk for chronic disease such as heart disease and diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency recommends aiming for seven hours of sleep per night.
— Exercise more. The minimum recommendations are 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise (like brisk walking). Sikorski says getting even more exercise is better. “A lot of research shows that getting 30 minutes of exercise per day at 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate improves your mood and concentration. It’s like taking a natural antidepressant each day.”
Reduce Stress
Stress management is also a key coping mechanism when you’re in the sandwich generation. Regular exercise can help with that. So can meditation, a technique to calm the mind and body that triggers the relaxation response — the opposite of the stress response. Meditation is associated with reducing blood pressure and pain and improving digestion, sleep and mood.
Meditation techniques include guided imagery (focusing on mental images), transcendental meditation (focusing on a repeated word or sound) and centering prayer (focusing on a sacred word to connect to a higher power).
[See: 10 Money Tips for Family Caregivers.]
Sikorski and Gould recommend mindfulness meditation, which involves being aware of the present moment without judging if it’s good or bad. “So much of our stress comes from thinking about what could happen or should happen and things that have already happened. Mindfulness is a way to focus on what’s actually happening. We’re cultivating an ability to notice what’s here as it unfolds,” explains Gould, who’s also the director of the Mindfulness Program at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Sikorski says that mindfulness can also help multitasking sandwich-agers make the most of their time with their kids, spouse, friends or parents, and stop thinking about being somewhere else. “Fifteen minutes of intentional time with a loved one is often more meaningful than an hour or two of your divided attention,” he says.
Other Ways to Cope
It takes many approaches to be successful as a sandwich-ager. Other tips include:
— Talking to your boss about working from home, at least sometimes.
— Making a list of what’s most important and letting go of tasks that can wait.
— Enlisting the help of other family members, even your older kids. “Research suggests it may be a buffer to stress if sandwich generation adults have their kids helping out, especially if there’s a grandparent with dementia,” says Roger Olson, a clinical psychologist at St. Luke’s Children’s Center for Neurobehavioral Medicine in Boise, Idaho.
— Joining a support group or talking to a therapist.
— Making time to socialize, since connecting with friends is associated with better mood and health.
The key is recognizing that you’re overtaxed and then doing something about it. “Many people think taking care of yourself is a luxury,” Gould says. “But you can’t take care of any of the people around you if you’re not healthy. Know your limits, and bring kindness and compassion to yourself.”
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Coping With Stress When You’re in the Sandwich Generation originally appeared on usnews.com
