What Are Boundaries? (And Why Caregivers Need Them)

What are personal boundaries, and why do we feel so guilty setting them? In this episode, we break down the different types of boundaries we all need to protect our time and emotional well-being—and why they are absolutely essential for family caregivers. Burnout, exhaustion, and resentment shouldn't be the price of supporting a loved one. Learn how setting clear limits is not about caring less, but about preventing caregiver burnout so you can actually provide better care. If you are feeling drained, overextended, or struggling to say no to family caregiving demands, this episode will show you exactly how to find your lines and hold them. 
Listen and more: https://bit.ly/4viWWRZ

In this podcast, we discuss:

• What are personal boundaries and the different types of boundaries. 
• How to set boundaries as a family caregiver to protect your time and emotional health. 
• Recognizing the major signs of caregiver exhaustion and caregiver burnout. 
• Practical strategies for setting boundaries with aging parents without the guilt. 
• Why drawing lines isn't selfish, but actually leads to preventing caregiver burnout and delivering better care. 

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro: Remembering Fathers and Boundaries in Caregiving
01:51 - Recipe of the Week: Dad's Pineapple Salsa
02:14 - A Father and Boundaries - An Essay by Nick Dothée (Washington Post)
08:42 - "Personal Boundaries" - What does that mean?
13:21 - Why Boundaries are Important in Caregiving
14:44 - Charlie's Stoic Aging Father - How His Family Set Boundaries with Love
19:33 - Cold Chicken and Last Breaths - Remembering and Grieving a Father
22:27 - Outro

#howtosetboundaries #healthyboundaries #boundarysetting #mentalhealthtips #emotionalwellbeing #caregiverstress #burnoutprevention #griefsupport #fathersdaygrief #rememberingdad

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies and Happy Father's Day. Relax and settle in for our podcast about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. Because even though everyone dies, no one must face it alone.

This week we're talking about caregiving and boundaries. When a caregiver says that they can't do something, it may sound like they're giving up. But it's not failure.

It's a signal that something must change. Caregiving rarely starts all at once. It builds slowly over time until it becomes overwhelming.

Many people keep going longer than they should because they care deeply until they can't. In this episode of Everyone Dies, we're talking about that moment, that breaking point, and why setting boundaries does not mean less care, it means better care possible. I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 47 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life.

And I'm Charlene Navarrett, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We're both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions. And remember that this podcast does not provide medical advice nor legal advice.

Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. In the first half, Charlie has an essay about a father and son and boundaries in our Recipe of the Week. In the second half, I'm going to talk about caregiving boundaries with an essay from Jennifer Patrick.

We have a link in our show notes if you want to read any of her other writings. And in our third half, Charlie has an essay by a son whose father was dying. For our first half, our Recipe of the Week, in honor of Father's Day, is Dad's Pineapple Salsa, which is a versatile salsa that is perfect as a refreshing appetizer for a hot summer day.

And it's also fantastic for topping grilled seafood, pork, and chicken for a topical twist. Bon Appetit! Nick Dauthé wrote the following essay for the Washington Post about his father and boundaries. My dad was dying the last time he asked me to take a selfie.

Set aside the machines, the antiseptic, and his labored breathing, and you wouldn't have known it. Anytime you asked how he was, he'd say, couldn't be better. This day was no different.

He looked at me and my sister, eyes foggy but still flickering with dry charm, and said, let's get a picture. We froze. My dad loved photos.

Then he saw our faces, realizing how sick he looked and changed his mind. My sister looked at me. I knew what she was thinking.

This is probably it. Aren't you glad you flew home? He'd seen me close to death once, too. Years earlier, I stood outside my apartment in New York City, chain-smoking and rehearsing a lie.

I couldn't work. I was performing in Fire Island. I told him over the phone, good for my career, but now I can't pay rent.

He didn't ask questions. Okay, Nick, he said. Calls like that continued for years.

Transactional, always urgent. My dad tolerated this until the meth. I landed in a cabin in Querneville, California, with an older man I was using, and who was using me.

We weren't partners, just co-conspirators in a slow collapse. I told everyone I was regrouping for a fresh start in LA, but my dad called my bluff. He wanted to see for himself.

Come tomorrow, I said. The next morning, naked men were passed out or still tweaking. It felt as though no time had passed.

You promised we'd be presentable by noon. It was nearly 11. I texted my dad, don't come.

I watched the dots appear, then disappear. All he wrote was, okay, Nick. Twenty minutes later came a wall of sentences.

I love you, but I can't do this anymore. You've burned every bridge. Until you figure your life out, I can't be part of it.

I was gutted. My father was my biggest fan, and now even he was gone. I stared at the message while someone passed me the pipe.

It took jail, a psych ward, and finally inpatient rehab before I started to string together some sobriety. Early on, I called him a few times a week. This was new for both of us.

Hi, Dad. He sounded panicked. That's all I laughed.

How are you? At first, he didn't know what to do with these foreign phone calls, but they always ended the same way. Hey, Nick, I really appreciate you calling. That summer, he flew to LA to see a ragtag musical the recovery community had put together.

I sang under fluorescent church lights in borrowed shoes and gave it everything I had. He thought I'd never perform again. When the lights came up, I saw his face.

Pride. Relief. Joy.

The kind of peace I hadn't seen since I was a kid, when I still thought he'd always know what to do. Before I realized he was just surviving too. But he wasn't perfect.

Mostly functioning, often fun, but sober only if he was in the hospital. So when he drew a line around my addiction, it landed hard. We never talked about his drinking, only mine.

But when I got a year sober, he said, I couldn't do what you've done. That's how I knew he saw it, too. The last time I saw him without the tubes and pumps was about a year before he got sick, on his porch.

You know my favorite song you sing? He asked. That Joseph song. The cold one.

Any dream will do. Why that one, I asked. He sang.

I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain. I realized later it wasn't about the song, but the image. Me in white, in light.

Hopeful. That's how he wanted to remember me. Not what happened after.

If he had died without seeing me sober, I would have carried the guilt for a lifetime. But he saw me, and I saw him. And I got to tell him he did right by me, as time bent in the hospital.

He was slipping in and out. The machine forcing air into his lungs clicked and pumped. I kissed his white hair and whispered, you did a good job.

He didn't respond right away. Then, gravely and faint, you did too. We didn't take the picture, but I can still see him.

He looked nothing like himself. And yet I never saw him more clearly. It's a sad, happy story, huh? Yeah.

But at least, they had that connection at the end. They got there. Yep.

Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe and additional resources for this program. This is the part where we ask for your financial support. Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our nonprofit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone.

You can donate at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one, dies. Or at our site on Patreon under Everyone Dies. Marianne? Thanks, Charlie.

I don't want to sleep over there anymore. My 63-year-old father sounded like a little kid when he called me early on Saturday morning. He and the rest of the family had been taking turns staying at my grandmother's apartment since she'd begun the downward spiral of frequent falls and multiple hospitalizations.

I listened to my dad complain about how he had reached his breaking point. He couldn't get a good night's sleep on my grandmother's couch. He was tired of the disruption of his evening routine.

While he was willing to continue visiting, taking her to the doctor appointments and running errands, he was done with sleeping over. We reached a critical point in the caregiving process. The first family caregiver had finally established some boundaries.

My dad and my aunts, my grandmother's primary caregivers, were all burning out. Although my dad was the first one to say it, they were all exhausted, missing work, and neglecting their self-care. After letting my father vent for a while, I responded, you don't have to sleep over there anymore.

You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I think it was a little shock that I was supporting the boundary. You probably hear people talking about their boundaries and what does that term mean? Personal boundaries are simply the lines we draw for ourselves in terms of our level of comfort around others.

These boundaries may have to do with physical contact, like not feeling comfortable hugging a person you've just met. Verbal interactions, not wanting a friend or family member to speak down to you. Our own personal space, choosing not to have others in your home when you aren't there.

Boundaries typically fall into a few specific categories. Emotional, protecting our own emotional well-being. Sexual, protecting our needs and safety sexually.

Workplace, protecting our ability to do our work without interference or drama. Material, protecting our personal belongings. Time, protecting the use and misuse of our time.

So even though my dad was very close with my grandmother and his sisters, he was reluctant to tell them that he'd hit a breaking point. With his permission, I shared this conversation with them. I reminded everyone that sprinkling in some home care help and maybe looking at assisted living were options as well.

My grandmother was hurt and shocked by the idea of bringing help into the home. She also balked at the idea of moving out of her apartment. Since my grandmother was cognitively intact, ultimately the decision to refuse home care and assisted living was hers.

But as much as my grandmother had every right to say she didn't want a home care aid or to move, her family caregivers had every right to say what we didn't want to do as well. A lot of family caregivers forget this. I know many people in my family did.

Everyone has a right to say what they will or won't do in a caregiving situation. I decided that I was going to remind my grandmother of this during my next turn sleeping over at her apartment. Once again, I broached the topic of adding home care into the rotation of who would sleep over at her apartment.

I asked her why she was so against the idea and she replied that she didn't need help. She just enjoyed having someone visit with her all the time now. Candidly, I told her that her daughters and son were very tired and needed more breaks.

Home care would allow for that. My grandmother then became very irritable and said that everyone could stop sleeping over since she could take care of herself. I challenged her to do just that during my visit.

Take care of yourself while I'm here. Let's just treat this like a regular visit. For a full hour, I encouraged my grandmother to attempt to get her beverage from the refrigerator, to hobble to the bathroom solo, and to take her medication on time.

After just a one-hour experiment of trying to take care of herself with no assistance, she looked at me with tears in her eyes. She got it. When we constantly prop up older loved ones who are declining, sometimes they mistakenly believe that they are functioning independently.

This leads to a cycle of dependence on the family caregivers and burnout and resentment for everyone involved. When burned out family caregivers don't set limits, they are at risk for several health and mental health problems. They are also less likely to provide good care and more likely to engage in unintentional abuse and neglect of their loved one.

Soon after this experiment, my grandmother agreed to allow home care into her apartment. She was paired up with some lovely aides who took great care of her. While the rest of the family still was very involved on caregiving, my aunts and my father got some much deserved time off.

Everyone's boundaries are different. Think about what yours are and don't be afraid to establish them. Saying, I can't keep doing this the same way, is not the end of caregiving.

It's the beginning of doing it differently in a way that can last. Boundaries do not mean you care less. They mean you are trying to keep caring because no one person can do everything and no one is meant to.

Charles? You know that, I hear that and just what you were describing. I mean, I've had different friends have that same experience. Yeah, we were really lucky with my mom and dad.

My mother died peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by her loved ones. I was the last one to say goodbye. I think it was you who reminded me that hearing, you know, five senses, hearing is the last one to go and which taught me something valuable when it came to my dad.

Yeah, I just wish I would have stayed just a few minutes longer. I mean, it was fine, but yeah, with my mom and you know, and she died like an hour or two later. You know, this is already late at night and you know, my family was all there, immediate cousins and everyone said goodbye.

With my dad, yeah, it was different. Always very independent and there was even the suggestion of, dad, have you ever thought of, you know, assisted living place or anything like that? Yeah, the conversation stopped right there. We really had to step in when my 91-year-old father, one of my brothers, you know, went over to the house, you know, just to drop by and hang out with him, pulled into the driveway and my 91-year-old father had pulled the ladder out of the garage, climbed up the ladder.

My brother arrived and was like, dad, what are you doing? My father looked at him like, well, I'm cleaning out the gutters. It's like, you know, like my brother was an idiot to ask that. It took slowly to get him to even consider, you know, just some sort of place where, you know, some assisted living thing and it only worked because we hung a place that had, it was for seniors.

You lived in your own, you know, tiny apartment but you were left alone and if you needed help, you would ask for it and they would come. He was very fine with that and it was good because slowly as his body began to deteriorate, he made the adjustments, happy to be on his own. Somebody was always, you know, dropping food off or just going and hang out or just talking on the phone.

He stopped driving, fortunately, and there was bus service from his nursing home to my mother's nursing home. It worked out very fine. So, that, but I know, you know, we were lucky.

He refused to die, was determined when he could no longer really walk, he would just pull himself out of bed, cling to the wall because he just needed to see for himself he could keep going. And as we've discussed before on the show, it's the falls that kill you. My dad got up like three different times, fell three different times, amazingly did not break anything, but the last time there was a small fracture and then he couldn't walk anymore and that killed him.

Yeah, three days, I mean three days, about 10 days later, he was dead. He died. He just could not go on if he could not move.

So, yeah, there it is. Sounds like you guys did a really good job with him. Thank you, but he was, it was good that eventually he saw his limits and didn't keep and didn't keep pushing it.

Yeah, but it was mostly my sister, my sister and my brother, because, you know, I was here in New York. Sergio. Yes, Mary Ann, Sergio, yes.

All right, here we go. For our third half, ripped from a Facebook post. Six years ago today, I spent the final hours of my father's life at his bedside at the care center for the hospice I serve, holding vigil.

The world was shut down due to the pandemic and I had stopped going to see my father in person four weeks prior. We only saw each other through the window of his adult family home because I was working as boots on the ground and outpatient hospice. I couldn't tell you about the last actual conversation I had with him that we both were able to participate in, but I can tell you that it was incredibly important to me to be able to hold his hand for the last three days of his life.

The hands that strung guitars and picked on them. The hands that built things and fixed cars. The hand that I had seen black and cracked from cutting steel for 32 years.

The hands that comforted me until he took his leave here. We played all his music and his friends came to say goodbye. He took his final breath as I was eating cold chicken and I'm more sure the last words he heard on this earth were, well, I'm eating this effing chicken because I paid $6.99 for it.

See, I had held his hand for hours knowing he was moments from taking his last breath. I held it for so long and I was so exhausted I needed to eat. As souls do, he needed me to let him go and he needed to know that I was going to take care of myself.

So as I was doing that, he stopped breathing. The last funniest thing he did was to die as I was eating cold chicken that was so gross. I literally said out loud in that moment, really dad? Cold chicken? You had to go out on cold chicken? Today snuck up on me because grief is a weird bitch.

It never goes away, but my capacity to live with it grows greater year by year. Yesterday as I was thinking about the fact that today is the day, I had zero emotion. Now as I write this up, I'm overwhelmed with tears and I'm okay with that.

There may come a time where this day goes by and I don't feel anything other than deep gratitude for the time we had. Until then, we actively and openly grieve. And so we end this week's episode of Everyone Dies.

Please stay tuned and thank you for listening. You can find more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. Follow and subscribe to the show.

Share it with someone today. This is Charlie Navarrete and from actress Kay Francis' private diary, when I die, I want to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is left on this earth. I can't wait to be forgotten.

And I'm Mary Ann Matzo and we'll see you next week. Remember, every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice.

All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast.

If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. Everyone Dies does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, practitioners, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned in this podcast. Reliance on any information provided in this podcast by persons appearing on this podcast at the invitation of Everyone Dies or by other members is solely at your own risk.