Their health changed. Your life changed too.
Caring for someone with an illness or changing health needs can affect nearly every part of your own life. Your relationships, your plans, your independence, and sometimes even how you see yourself or the world.
For younger caregivers, it can mean navigating responsibilities and decisions that most people your age haven't had to think about. While friends are making plans for the weekend or thinking about their futures, you may be managing medical appointments, medications, and decisions you never expected to face so early in life.
Whether you're caring for a parent, partner, grandparent, or someone else in your life, caregiving can bring complicated emotions. Frustration, resentment, guilt, uncertainty, and even wishing things were different. These are all real experiences, and they don't make you any less of a caregiver.
What can counselling help with?
Counselling won't change the medical circumstances of the person you're caring for or make your responsibilities disappear. But it can change how you navigate them.
Our work together might involve finding ways to manage the demands on your time, setting boundaries without being consumed by guilt, or making room for your own needs when someone else's have taken priority for so long. It's not easy. I know. I really do.
It might mean working through resentment, complicated family relationships, or the uncertainty of what comes next. For younger caregivers, it can also mean navigating the feeling that your own life has been put on hold while everyone else's keeps moving forward.
Sometimes it's about figuring out how to be a caregiver without losing sight of who you are outside that role.
As a Registered Nurse and Certified Nurse Psychotherapist (Qualifying), I understand how the medical and emotional realities of caregiving are often intertwined. You won't have to spend your sessions explaining medical terminology or the complexities of navigating healthcare.
I offer virtual counselling for caregivers across Alberta.
