Why is taking care of people so hard for me?

November 1, 2024 5:13 AM

If I have to give someone any sort of special care or attention because they’re sick, incapacitated, had a bad day, whatever - it makes me angry and drained, like my soul is being sucked out of my body. I have no related trauma… what gives?

I would totally expect this response from someone who grew up, say, with parents who expected to be parented themselves, or who was tasked with the care of a chronically ill sibling, but that’s not me. I have zero caregiving experience from childhood.

I love to make people happy and bring them special treats and gifts. I find doing favours and errands for people very rewarding. In general, I really enjoy making peoples lives easier and making them feel cared for. I love caring for sick and injured animals. I have little experience with children, but I have a feeling I’d be ok with that.

It’s just this particular scenario with adults that bothers me. Does anyone have any insight or even keywords to help me start searching to figure this one out?

Please don’t suggest therapy. I mean… go ahead, but I won’t listen.

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (28 answers total)

I would totally expect this response from someone who grew up, say, with parents who expected to be parented themselves, or who was tasked with the care of a chronically ill sibling, but that’s not me. I have zero caregiving experience from childhood.

It might be the opposite. My partner had a charmed childhood and family experience, everyone has a very robust immune system, no freak health occurrences, in nuclear family and extended. Definitely some maladaptive tendencies, but no one talks about mental health or neurodivergence either.

He just had no frame of reference for the fact that… that’s not everyone’s experience… so in his world, focusing on “the negative” was a self-indulgent waste of time that could be spent on more “meaningful” or “fun” or “positive” things. That bled through to things like caregiving and errands and favors when I’m sick or otherwise disabled. We are still working on it.

Look up ableism.
posted by seemoorglass at 5:18 AM on November 1 [9 favorites]

Does someone take care of you when you’re sick or unwell?
posted by raccoon409 at 5:30 AM on November 1 [7 favorites]

Another keyword for your ableism research: invisible disabilities.

Not sure if your question is referencing acute sickness bouts or chronic sickness. (Though, unless you’re inquiring authentically, you definitely DON’T know the extent and type of someone's illness.) But there are so, so many types of invisible disabilities - truly debilitating ones - that extend beyond discrete, visible bouts of being unwell.

In a nutshell: if you’ve ever rolled your eyes at someone having a massive migraine or frequent GI pain, but held the door open kindly for someone in a wheelchair or cast, you may have a specific ableism around invisible disabilities.
posted by seemoorglass at 5:36 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]

Caregiving is legitimately challenging, especially over the long term. People have complicated feelings about it.

Do you feel you have the right to, and are you comfortable with, setting boundaries in caregiving? It can be internal, such as “I’ll do x and y for them but I won’t do z because that compromises my well-being.”

Do you feel you are freely choosing to care for someone you love, or do you feel obligated to provide care for someone with whom you have a complicated relationship?

Is this a consistent pattern with multiple people and situations, or is there one person in particular who needs you to caregive?

Have you ever needed and received that kind of care? Do you feel it’s available to you if and when you need it?
posted by bunderful at 5:38 AM on November 1 [2 favorites]

I could have written a version of this. Maybe you're just selfish. I am. And I don't mean that in a way like you're actively cruel to anyone; I am extremely personally concerned with protecting my own welfare.

I have been incredibly self sufficient and independent from a very early age. I deal with my own problems. I learn how to do things on my own and I seek professional help when I can't. I take care of myself. It has been the singular drive of my life: am I okay? do I feel safe? what steps do I need to take to get there? what steps to I need to take to ensure my future okayness, and let's do those next.

I have not had a cozy time of it. I've been desperately broke, I've got a congenital neurological condition which is better sometimes and worse some others and I've had idk maybe get brain surgery hanging over my literal head like the sword of damocles for decades, my parents don't like me, I've had shitty abusive bosses, shitty housing situations, and bad things happen to me. But I had to figure out how to make myself okay because I didn't have any other choice. It's only me. Things are going great for me right now and have been for several years, but I know every day that the only thing keeping that true is because I jealously and selfishly guard my ability to continue to be okay.


I'm happy to take care of a sick pet because they can't help themselves. I love to do little kindnesses for others when those things are a natural overspill of my own okayness. But I won't put my own health/safety/wellbeing at risk for any of it. Sorry.

And so when it comes to other adult people, I can't help but feel angry sometimes. It's perfectly acceptable to be in a bad spot temporarily. But if you won't take any steps to help yourself out of your situation: you won't to to the doctor, you won't seek therapy, you won't put any effort to seeking a better job, you won't take any steps to getting out of your crappy relationship, you won't do anything in service of improving yourself??? I'm fucking out. It's exhausting to me, it's insulting to me, and it puts my wellbeing at risk. It gets to a point where ALL I can see and hear from those interactions is a demand from the other person that I take care of all of their needs in perpetuity, and I simply won't.
posted by phunniemee at 5:40 AM on November 1 [26 favorites]

I've heard it said that anger is almost always fear in disguise. Confronting the reality that illness or misfortune can strike anyone at any time might touch something deep for you. There are many mindfulness and spiritual traditions aimed at helping people through the fundamental grief-in-waiting that comes with loving living things, maybe one of those is right for you
posted by Ausamor at 5:48 AM on November 1 [20 favorites]

I had more than a touch of this when I was younger, but then a series of unexpected and complicated things happened to me. I spent a lot of time thinking I was a failure and an inconvenience and that somehow I was a bad person because, like, a completely random medical thing happened to me. People had to care for me--more than once, more than a little while--and I learned what a great community I had and how much I wanted to, not just "return the favor" but maintain that mutual care, affection and empathy for anyone that needed it. I grew up in the kind of household where people were allowed to be eccentrics but on some level, if you weren't fit, healthy, financially secure and happy, it was your own fault/ you were doing it wrong. It has taken me a long time to recognize that it's partly hardwired into me too. I think, for a long time, that enabled me to ignore people in need or write them off or tell myself it wasn't my responsibility to deal with them. And I guess it isn't, technically. There's no hell you're going to for refusing to drive a friend to a biopsy. But it's worth noting that when I did/when I do, I'm more willing to extend the grace to myself when my life is less than perfect.
posted by thivaia at 6:08 AM on November 1 [13 favorites]

It's hard work.

Taking care of someone requires emotional labour - awareness of how effective you are being, predicting their future needs, not just the obvious things like food and water and help getting to the bathroom, but taking away the used kleenex, while not getting pissed at them for being so sick they missed the waste basket, finding something they would actually like to read, figuring out how much light will encourage them to get some more sleep while not leaving them depressed in the dark...

It's hard work neurologically, like doing chess. You are predicting what will be needed and you are hiding your own moves, such as the resentment you feel, and stifling your own urge to chatter about the things that cheer you up because maybe they have a headache and it would make them feel worse.

Taking care of someone else requires you to break your own boundaries. I look after me and you look after you is a basic boundary. If in ordinary life you kept checking your housemate, "Do you need to go to the bathroom yet?" your boundaries would be very wrong, much less if you spent time musing what you could coax them into drinking, maybe ginger ale... But with a sick person you have to start using the same self care skills you use on yourself, all while not getting the clear and obvious signals that trigger your own self care. You have to guess when they are thirsty, help them with their emotional regulation... You have to work against your own strong instinctive sense of self and subsume yourself to include them, temporarily.

And then there is the fairness thing. Many people go through life dependent on and taking advantage of others. We have a culture that strongly encourages this in the form of capitalism. But we all have an instinctive sense of fairness, so when someone presents good reasons why they should get the fruits our time, effort and talents, it's extremely sensible to first of all suspect they are freeloading and taking advantage of us. Teenagers are notoriously lazy, which is probably an instinctive way of keeping others who are in traditional authority over them from taking advantage of them. The obvious example is that when there are several kids in the family the parents will try to delegate the care taking to the teenager. It's really easy for a loving and empathetic teenager in those circumstances to end up becoming everyone's alloparent and taking up burdens they are not ready for. This means that naturally you've got some instincts that make you mistrust anyone who is asking for help, the way you would mistrust a man offering you ten dollars to get into his car and help him look for a lost puppy.

And then there is the keeping score thing. Will the person you need to look after be capable of reciprocating? If they are not capable of taking care of you, for whatever reason, then are you going to get fair recompense in some other way? It's bad to be keeping too close a score so you end up arguing over how many glasses of orange juice, but at the same time, it's critical to take the long view and be suspicious if committing to tending someone when they have a broken ankle will, over the next few years evolve into them depending on you for random errands, fueled by a slew of guilt trips. It's selfish to feel, "What's in it for me?" when someone solicits your care-taking, but it's a form of self protection. It's only a fault in you when the other person has clearly already earned your care taking with a history of support they supplied to you.

There's probably nothing wrong with you. You may of course be rather selfish by nature. But many people now a facing situations where, for example older parents are turning to their adult kids to look for some support as they age, only to discover that their kids are struggling so much that they are tapped out and that simple logistic help, like picking up a parent at the hospital after surgery is beyond them, because they can't afford a car and taking time off to do it might cause them to lose their minimum wage job... Maybe agreeing to their simple requests really IS a huge burden to you? Maybe you don't know them enough and don't want to know them enough to have a reciprocal care-taking relationship. Or maybe the only relationship you want to have with these people is that of a user and a dependent on them? That would be bad, because it means you'll have trouble connecting with people throughout your life and that in turn other people will find you lacking.

I suggest you look at the specific care-taking situations that are causing you to resent and resist and figure out if you really do owe the other person your support, and if you really do have a reasonable chance of reciprocity if the situation becomes reversed, and then finally what is going on in your head when you do resist. You might simply be appalled at the idea that, if there were a fire, you'd be responsible for dragging an invalid out of the building crawling under the smoke, or that you are simply drawing a blank when the question of how to look after the other person comes up. Is the root feeling "I can't do this!" or "I shouldn't have to do this!"

If you are not good at the complex problem solving involved in care taking, then set out to learn it and work your way through a list. Every new parent in the world does this. Is he wet, hungry, thirsty, in pain, too cold, too hot, sick, over tired.... and they do this while holding a howling baby and keeping the primary rule in mind that you never, ever, ever do anything that would create a risk of harm to the baby. It is much easier when you are care taking someone who can speak, but you still want to begin by working with a list that you run through repeatedly. If you aren't good at figuring it out for yourself, look it up on the internet. You're not the first person to suddenly have to play nurse while having no clue what being a nurse even entails.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:10 AM on November 1 [12 favorites]

I've heard it said that anger is almost always fear in disguise

If you think of yourself as becoming old and helpless and needing other people to do everyday things for you because you'll be too weak or too confused to do them - how does that feel for you?
Because I find that terrifying and consequently it infuriates me when other people show me by example that this is the way life is headed. My whole sense of security is based on not needing anybody (because you can't trust people to stick around).

If you have similar hang ups, that would be one explanation.
posted by Omnomnom at 6:19 AM on November 1 [7 favorites]

I know someone who has a similar reaction, and they've told me it's out of frustration: they're a Fixer and they can't fix this situation, so they get mad.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:32 AM on November 1 [12 favorites]

I was raised in a house that showed contempt for people who required assistance or even made mild complaints when they were sick or in some way temporarily incapacitated, or worst of all if they simply had a bad day. The official line in our house was that strong people dealt with things on their own, showed up to work/school despite colds/flu/injury, and stewed in their own juices rather than discuss their own feelings when they had a bad day.

I grew up to be someone who had difficulty asking/accepting help. This didn't just make me emotionally inept, it literally harmed my body. I once went to a podiatrist and found that seven of my ten toes had been broken at various points. I had just "walked off" actual broken bones with no treatment. I have scars doctors have flatly told me should have been stitched. I have allergies that should have been diagnosed and medicated, instead of continuing to send me into the world to cough, sneeze, and choke.

The I had a learning disability that was not diagnosed until my twenties. I had depressions issues untreated until my thirties. I didn't find out until I was nearly fifty that I was autistic.

I took this into the world with me, too. For many years, I then visited this shitty attitude on the other people in my life when they had minor needs I should have been supporting.

In my family's case, this was a mix of heavily gendered ideals/toxic masculinity and an unkind, unyielding form of the Protestant work ethos.

I have had to work hard to become a decent father/spouse despite this family history, but doing this work has corrected multiple aspects of the same attitudes that were self-defeating.

TL;DR: I was this way because my family 9despite having a lot of finer points and being basically a loving family overall) had dated, fucked-up ideas about these things.

You might want to look into that.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:35 AM on November 1 [17 favorites]

> Does someone take care of you when you’re sick or unwell?

This is a good question.

Myself, in general, I enjoy taking care of people when they are sick or sad — it makes me feel good.

BUT, if I have recently had an experience where I wanted/needed to be taken care of and didn't get the care I was looking for, the idea of taking care of someone else makes me feel resentful and drained.
posted by mekily at 6:43 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]

I always burn out eventually and end up bowing out if I am taking care of people in long term situations where there is no expectation of reciprocity. "Eventually" has meant anywhere between two weeks and a year, depending on the circumstances. "Burning out" has meant anything from tired to bored to resentful to hopping mad at the person I am taking care of, depending on the circumstances. If there has been reciprocity it's fine! I've gone many years being a friend's primary support person, providing care and support and even financial assistance to an unequal degree but never minding because this person is consistently my emotional support in return. But lack of reciprocity is a no-go.

The only exception has been my children (and even there, speaking in evolutionary terms, you could argue that I was programmed to care for them only because I do need them to care for me when I am old).

So I, too, think that "Is anyone taking care of you when you're sick?" is a very good question.
posted by MiraK at 6:53 AM on November 1 [2 favorites]

I'm a little like this, and I think it comes from my preference on how I'm "taken care of" when sick. I mostly just want to be left alone. Even when I was so sick with covid I almost couldn't get out of bed for 2 weeks, I didn't want anyone fussing over me. Like you I don't really have any past experiences with putative caregivers telling me to toughen up or anything like that.

My wife is the opposite; wants someone in the room at all times, constant checking in, asking if she needs anything, etc. And I have a viceral ICK, NO reaction to that. I do what I can, but it's not as much as she likes.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:53 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]

It’s just this particular scenario with adults that bothers me. Does anyone have any insight or even keywords to help me start searching to figure this one out?

All of your other scenarios involve you choosing to be involved. Taking care of someone who is incapacitated is an obligation. You would probably choose to do so anyways because you’re a good person, but being forced to do it is a bit irksome.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:42 AM on November 1

When I feel this way it is usually because I don't feel like my needs are being met and now I have to shove them even further down the ladder to help someone else with their needs. There is also a little bit of annoyance that I feel like I am being thrust into this position that I didn't ask for or want and thus am trapped by this other person's problem that I had nothing to do with making. I asked a similar question last year. Maybe this is what is going on with you?
posted by tafetta, darling! at 7:59 AM on November 1 [3 favorites]

How are you with looking after yourself? Do you motivate yourself with threats and catastrophising, and take pride in your ability to rise above challenges?

Do you allow others to look after you? Do you find it easy to ask for help?

I've noticed that some people who are otherwise compassionate, caring people, get angry when asked to look after others in specific contexts like mental or physical health, because they are angry at the care they've been deprived of / not allowed themselves to ask for.

When I had a mental breakdown, I've had a otherwise kind person angrily tell me that they couldn't "just break down", when in fact they never let anyone know that they were struggling.

Maybe think carefully about the sources of pride and self worth, and how you judge yourself and others. What do you consider to be your best aspect ? What if you lost that quality or ability, would you still respect and value yourself? Can you develop compassion for that version of yourself?
posted by Zumbador at 8:02 AM on November 1 [6 favorites]

I've heard it said that anger is almost always fear in disguise.

An alternative view (and one that I found very useful over the years) is that if we get irrationally angry at someone else for a behavior, it is a behaviour that we hate ourselves for when we do it.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:24 AM on November 1 [7 favorites]

My ex was a lot like this, and spent a fair amount of time unpacking it. You are not him, he is not you, but in case this is helpful--

He had an absolute aversion to anyone except his kids depending on him or relying on him for structural things. So he was perfectly fine surprising me by picking me up at the airport, but would resent it if I asked him to do so because I had too many bags.

In his case, the root cause seemed to be some kind of deeply held sense of priorities about who and what deserved his support-- and other adults just did not make the cut. I think the best way to explain it is he did not see why caring for others who were not his offspring should be his issue.

This was very difficult to navigate in a relationship because while he could be breathtakingly kind and generous, he could also be moody and angry for a week if I asked him to (say) bring groceries if I was ill. (though he would generally do so.)

I resented it eventually, because I did quite a bit of emotional labor for him. I never did it on a quid pro quo basis, I did it because in my world this is what you do in a relationship (friendship or lovers). Even if you understand this is just how someone is, it falls out of balance sooner or later. It isn't why we broke up, but we did waste a lot of time discussing it in the course of our years together.
posted by frumiousb at 8:36 AM on November 1 [5 favorites]

Virginia Held's framework of motherhood versus contract may help you better understand how you feel about obligations, caregiving, human relationships that include asymmetry, and related stuff pertinent to your question.
posted by brainwane at 9:06 AM on November 1

I hate caregiving. It's emotionally draining, frequently gross, hard on your body, and really, really, really super draining. Also, it's irritating to have to physically caregive for an adult because that only gets worse as time goes on, it's hard to do with someone over 100 pounds, the person probably has just enough capability to argue with you when they don't like what's going on, and there's emotional resentment at being forced to parent when you didn't want to parent.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:12 AM on November 1 [1 favorite]

Did you grow up in an environment where adults paid attention to your emotions, acknowledged and cared for your emotional state, and helped you understand how to deal with things?

If not, you might have grown up with some amount of emotional neglect. If your emotional truths were routinely ignored, then you probably learned to always take care of yourself as a survival mechanism.

In that case, watching someone else ask for help (or being asked for help yourself) might feel not just uncomfortable but actively dangerous, like “Don’t you know?! You have to take care of yourself at all times or you won’t survive!!!” and “I can’t take care of you, I am busy taking care of myself, otherwise I won’t survive!!!” It might feel like they are not upholding their end of an invisible social contract.

The mechanism behind this is shame about needing things or asking for things or both. A person in this situation first internalizes shame (“I can’t get this” becomes “I shouldn’t have this” and “I shouldn’t need this”), and then externalizes it by shaming others (“You shouldn’t need this either, stop asking me!”).
posted by danceswithlight at 10:07 AM on November 1 [9 favorites]

Please don’t suggest therapy. I mean… go ahead, but I won’t listen.

Sounds like you can’t stand being told what to do, and are actively defiant in the face of anybody or anything that presumes to do so.

Our whole society tells people they have to care about the sick, injured, and incapacitated, and I don’t think you actually disagree with that, but your reflexive and uncontrollable adversion to being controlled throws you into an existential crisis when you can’t willingly do what everyone is telling you you must do even when you think it’s the right thing, and the thing you think you should do.
posted by jamjam at 11:50 AM on November 1 [1 favorite]

if you won't take any steps to help yourself out of your situation: you won't to to the doctor, you won't seek therapy, you won't put any effort to seeking a better job, you won't take any steps to getting out of your crappy relationship, you won't do anything in service of improving yourself??? I'm fucking out.

Tom Cardy wrote a song about this.
posted by flabdablet at 12:17 PM on November 1 [1 favorite]

A search phrase you may find useful is “demand avoidance,” often referred to as “pathological demand avoidance” or PDA, in ADHD/Autism circles. I prefer “pervasive drive for autonomy” as the acronym filler, but I’m not keen on pathologising what might be a perfectly reasonable coping mechanism (albeit one you seem to want to explore with a view to altering it) and I’m not about to tell you how much this phenomenon is messing with your life at the moment. Hope that is useful.
posted by All hands bury the dead at 12:48 PM on November 1 [3 favorites]

Are you a better caregiver for pets than for people? I am. So it must not be that I intrinsically resent doing disgusting tasks or going without sleep for days on end or making endless trips to medical facilities. I think the difference is that with a pet, I get to just give care, and the pet receives it, whereas with a human I have to negotiate this entirely new landscape of unfamiliar interactions. Maybe they need to ask me for something--perhaps in a whiny, fretful tone, or a gruff, demanding one that makes me feel annoyed. Maybe I offer help and they reject it in a bid for independence that makes me feel pushed away. Maybe I have to insist on help that they don't want and I feel unappreciated. None of these things happen with a pet.
posted by HotToddy at 2:14 PM on November 1

I'm not clear on if the difficult part for you is the kind of care you provide, or the context of the care. Like, does making a casserole for a healthy person feel good, but making a casserole for a sick person feel bad? Or is the problem that sick people need a kind of care that you don't like to give?

If it's the context then something interesting might be going on! If it's just that you e.g. like making casseroles but don't like e.g. listening to people complain, then that seems... fine?
posted by eraserbones at 4:53 PM on November 1

If I have to give someone any sort of special care or attention because they’re sick, incapacitated, had a bad day, whatever - it makes me angry and drained, like my soul is being sucked out of my body.

Words of advice for young people
posted by flabdablet at 11:28 PM on November 1