Why Caregivers Need to Build a Social Support Network

The term "caregiver support network" is too fuzzy for my tastes. It includes everything from people in your social circle, to healthcare specialists, to social workers and all the businesses and organizations in between. I'm supposed to build a caregiver support network, but I don't know where to start.

Today I prefer to keep our conversation specific to a social support network, with people like family, neighbors, friends, community.

By removing healthcare and professional support from the equation, we can focus on the people you know on a personal level.

The Dunbar Number for Caregivers

The Dunbar's Number theorizes that people commonly have around 5 core friends, 15 close friends, and 150 relationships. Not all of them will have the same context or strength of relationship. The numbers are likely to become smaller for people as they age.

To family caregivers to say, you cannot caregive alone. It's not sustainable for one person to bare all responsibility. You want to be a hero, but it's not realistic that you alone will be able to provide the best qualify of life to the person you're caring for.

You need a social support network to help you. But only you can be the one to build that social support network.

Here's how you can use the Dunbar Number to become clearer who might be in your social support network.

• 5 people you might rely on to perform caregiving (even better if trusted without supervision)
• 15 people you can call on for smaller thing to help manage caregiving responsibilities, like favors, questions, advice, coaching, consulting, comfort, or "just to chat".
• 150 people just as a reminder there's a big bright world of people outside your home.

Be clear about your needs

My family - me included - does especially poorly in this department. Both within the family and outside the family.

Inside the family, we don't have a family dynamic of talking about our feelings, asking for help, stating our desires, expressing when our needs are not being met, and other Boomer generation hand-me-downs.

Since we fail to make our needs clear, our needs don't get met. We end up doing more work ourselves, getting worse outcomes than we want, and resenting each other for it.

Outside the family, we've done even worse. My parents maintain just one family friend who we'll see once or twice a month all together for a meal. I maintain a few friends who I'll see once everyone couple of months.

What's more than lack of friends, is the nature by which we interact. My parents have meals with their friends like normal friends. I have meals with my friends like normal friends. We're just normal friends. We don't talk about the Parkinson's in the room.

My mom is hurting under the pressures of caregiving. I'm living in a dream world thinking if I work hard enough at my career, I'll be able to afford regular paid respite care.

This is what happens when you never learn how to make your needs met.

But I'm too ashamed to say it

The same way you didn't sign up to become a caregiver, your friends didn't sign up to be part of your caregiver social support network. Spouses reading this have the "til death do us part" clause putting the responsibility onto you, but friends never took a vow like that.

It's unrealistic to expect the same friends who you enjoyed meals with to be also interested in solving your caregiver woes. The git and grime that comes with caregiving just doesn't come up in dinner conversation.

Asking for "support" would be out of place, awkward, and impolite.

With that, I feel embarrassment and shame. Talking about caring for my dad's dementia problems at home, sounds like a Debbie Downer I don't want to party with.

The friendship is trying to stay the same by simply ignoring the Parkinson's. The truth is, we're not that much fun to hang out with anymore.

Support I wish I could ask friends for

This is going to sound like a cry at the sky to start a celestial pity party. My purpose is to find the deeper truth about which needs of mine are not being met.

I have all but failed to build a resilient social support network in the face of caregiving for my father with Parkinson's and dementia.

If I were more capable of asking for help, this is what I'd say.

• Do you know any affordable respite care options?
• Do you have any suggestions for how I can earn money?
• Do you know an expert who can assess my families situation and tell me if I'm utilizing the resources available to me in an efficient manner?

What's the truth? I don't want to be caregiving, and the only way I see out is to pay for it or get it for free.