If it doesn’t feel good, it is not caring and it is not a beneficial service.
The reason carer’s care is because it allows them to feel good. Even the most emotionally unaware and insensitive people know what feels good and what feels bad. The reason that we suppress our emotions and deny our sensitivity is because of our experience of feeling bad. Bad experiences cause us to become unemotional and insensitive in relationship to other people.
The paradox of the caring profession is that it teaches the best way to take care of other people is to not be bothered by the bad experiences that occur every day. So when we can’t be bothered we don’t care and when we care, we mustn’t be bothered. From a rational perspective, the way to care without being bothered is to become unemotional and insensitive. Unfortunately, this rational perspective is devoid of emotional intelligence. This results in professional carers losing the ability to feel either good or bad about their caring experiences, so the service given by carers is neither good nor bad but rationally efficient.
Every carer’s heart is in the right place. The issue is whether they have an open connection to it, or not. My heart connection allows my good feeling experiences to flow. My attachment to my mental fears and limiting beliefs blocks my good feeling experiences, which is when I can’t be bothered and I just don’t care.
In this relative dual reality world, there is always a choice of perspective that is either good or bad, which determines whether I care or not. When I care about something, it is because it serves me and when something doesn’t serve me, I don’t care for it. Caring for someone is a service that serves the carer as well as the patient. It is not a selfish ideal for caring to serve the carer. It is only selfish when caring serves the carer to the detriment of the patient. When caring serves the carer and the patient in equal measure, the relationship between the carer and the patient is balanced and in harmony. When the carer-patient relationship is emotionally out of balance, there is always discord and ill feeling on one side or the other.
An ideal caring relationship is when the relationship is serving both parties in the relationship and both partners in the partnership are feeling good in relationship to each other. When caring is a service of supplying just physical needs, it is not in balance because the patient is just receiving what the carer is physically giving.
Caring is mentally in balance when the patient appreciates the service that is provided and the provider appreciates the appreciation that is provided in return.
Caring is emotionally in harmony when the patient’s need to be cared for is aligned with the carer’s emotional need to be needed.
When our personal emotional needs are met, we are empowered to do what we truly value in life and it feels good. There is true value in every relationship when both parties are doing what they believe makes them feel good. The reality is that we do what we truly value when we are inspired and empowered to do so. In the absence of empowered inspiration, we spend our lives chasing what we believe that we need to make us feel good. We look to the external world to provide what is hidden within us, our good feelings. We hide our good feelings by choosing to act in an insensitive and unemotional way. They become experiences that happen to us rather than emotions that flow through us. When I feel good about what I am doing, I am empowered and inspired to do it. I am always empowered and inspired to do what has true value for me. The true value in any experience is the power of the inspiration that I emotionally experience.
The only thing that I ever need emotionally is my empowered connection to my inspired action. The only thing I ever need in life is to feel good about whatever I am experiencing. When I feel good about whatever I am doing, I have everything that I need, then & there, in life.
It is very easy to get trapped in a perspective of chasing what I need to make me feel good, instead of only doing what I perceive to be beneficial because it allows my good feelings to flow. Good feelings only ever flow with good thoughts. Good thoughts allow a positive perspective, which allows a positive flow of emotional energy. If I don’t feel good about what I am doing, it is not a good action or a thoughtful intention.
With dementia especially, a good thoughtful caring intention allows a positive flow of emotional energy and a positive perspective of life, which allows the patient to feel good and the carer to feel good as well.