Providing care for
people can add to my self-esteem in some ways and lower it in others. I was
raised to see caring for others as a value, so providing care can help me feel
satisfied with my sense of self: I can see myself as a good person. Moreover, I
genuinely feel distressed when other people are distressed, so helping people
feel comfortable and safe helps my sense of self at a nervous-system level. I
feel better when the people around me feel better. If I'm one of the reasons
they're feeling better, I feel good about that, too.
On the other hand,
providing care for others can become unmanageable if I'm not careful. Providing
care can involve many tasks, with multiple steps within those tasks. If, as
often happens, I struggle with the executive side of providing care, or run out
of spoons, I might end up masking, feeling overstimulated/overwhelmed, blaming
myself for not being able to provide better care or for putting myself in an unmanageable
situation, or even resenting the person I am caring for, even if my overwhelm
is not their fault. My self-care, sense of personal values, and my relationship
with myself and other individuals can suffer as a result. That can hurt my sense of self and self-esteem.
I'd like to think
that there's a happy medium where I can provide care for others in a way that's
manageable for me and sustainable in the long run, but I don't have enough experience
yet to know what that is. How about you? What is your relationship with autism,
self-esteem, sense of self, and providing care for others?
Share questions:
- Have you ever been in a position of providing long-term care for other people,
like children, older folks, disabled folks, or someone else? What was/is it
like?
- How did providing care affect your sense of self? Self-esteem?
- How did it
interact with your self-care, personal values, or relationships with other
individuals or communities?
- How did providing care interact with your inner experience
as an autistic person in terms of your sensory life, executive function,
spoons, social differences, special interests, processing differences, perfectionism,
black and white thinking, other?
- Do you understand care giving differently
since you learned about autism?
- Any tools, resources, or strategies to share?
- Anything else to add?
