Insights from the Couch - Mental Health at Midlife

Ep.38: Navigating the Squeeze: Surviving the Sandwich Generation's Challenges

• Colette Fehr, Laura Bowman • Season 3 • Episode 38

Share episode

In this episode, we tackle the challenging topic of the Sandwich Generation – those caught between raising children and caring for aging parents while managing their own careers and lives. Let’s get into the emotional, financial, and physical toll this can take. We will offer practical advice on how to cope without losing oneself to help you navigate this demanding phase of life.

We will discuss strategies for setting boundaries, asking for help, and maintaining your well-being. Whether in the thick of it or just preparing for what’s ahead, this episode provides relatable experiences and actionable tips to help you find balance and support.


Episode Highlights:
[1:58] - Real-life client stories and the impact of teenage children and ill parents.
[4:29] - Shocking statistics about the time demands on the Sandwich Generation.[6:07] - Emotional and financial burdens of caregiving, even with strained family dynamics.
[8:55] - The pervasive guilt and resentment felt by many caregivers.
[10:55] - Personal experiences and the challenges of asking for help.
[15:25] - The Giving Tree analogy and the dangers of giving too much without receiving support.
[18:30] - The importance of direct communication and setting boundaries.
[20:30] - Healthy coping mechanisms and the importance of self-care.
[30:01] - Recap key strategies and proactive self-care's importance.



Resources:

🔥Get Clear on What You Want in Your Sex Life: Free Download! 


For more on this topic visit our website insightsfromthecouch.org If you have questions please email us at info@insightsfromthecouch.org we would love to hear from you!

If today's discussion resonated with you or sparked curiosity, please rate, follow, and share "Insights from the Couch" with others. Your support helps us reach more people and continue providing valuable insights. Here’s to finding our purposes and living a life full of meaning and joy. Stay tuned for more!

Colette Fehr:

Laura, welcome back everyone to insights from the couch. Thanks for listening. I'm here with Laura, and we're about to dig into a big fat, juicy, difficult topic that so many women are grappling with, which is being in the sandwich generation, when you are carrying the burden of aging parents raising children, and in many cases, also working a busy nine to five job on top of it. And we want to try to bring some normalization insight, and then also, of course, give you some tools that may help you cope with this dilemma. But before I turn it over to you, Laura, I just have to say, I just want to acknowledge my voice. Because I'm I'm, I may lose it completely. I just went to the Alanis Morissette concert with a friend from grad school and her husband in West Palm Beach, and we had the best time just joyfully singing and belting it out in the rain, no less, and I can barely talk.

Laura Bowman:

Is it an ironic

Colette Fehr:

if Colette can't talk? That is some deep ironic shit. Yeah,

Laura Bowman:

that's some deep ironic shit, right there. Well, I'm glad it's like, well earned and fun. I mean, there's not enough fun in the world, so I'm glad that's how you lost it. But yeah, this topic is juicy, and if you for those who know, they know if you're not in this gender, if you're not in this place, maybe you're just fearfully awaiting it, right? But when you're here, it's really tough. And I, I currently have some clients who are in that place of they've got teenagers that they're actively parenting and you know, we we both know if one thing goes wrong with your kids, if you have one thing to deal with with your kids that can suck the energy out of your whole household, you are

Colette Fehr:

only as happy as your released happy Hunter child. But then

Laura Bowman:

imagine I'm pulling one client into mine right now who has two children in their teens and young adult, early 20s type stuff, and they have real significant stuff going on, and both of her in laws are ill and kind of in steep decline, and she has her mother, who is like also, kind of in physical and struggles with mental issues as well, and she works a nine to five job. And listening to this, it's a huge burden. Financially, it's a huge burden. Emotionally, there's not enough time something, a ball is always getting dropped,

Colette Fehr:

right? And energetically, you know, I'm in the I'm in the Purgatory, because I'm maybe the rarer person for today's times who had children fairly young. I mean, I was 27 and 29 so some people might not consider that young, but it was young in my cohort of peers and my parents, who are in their mid Well, my dad's in his late 70s, and I guess my mom's getting there too. They're in like, pretty good shape. You know, I joke with you, my dad has more energy and does more stuff before 6am than people half my age. So but I'm facing I'm seeing that this is what's coming down the pike. And I know I'm lucky my children are already old enough, but I'm considering the possibility of becoming a caretaker again sometime soon for both of my parents, who are not married. And you know that that's a job in and of itself, and then we've got all these clients, and I have many friends who maybe teenagers, but also because so many people have children later in life. Now we have many women who have young children, which is the most demanding stage of life, even if that's all you're focused on. And then they also are caring for aging parents. And then, you know, I'm going on a podcast saying 75% of your energy should go into yourself.

Laura Bowman:

I know, like, Fuck Yeah.

Unknown:

Fuck you. Colette, yeah. Walk a Mile, bitch. Yes. 100%

Colette Fehr:

yes, because I'm in my emptiness, tiny moon, you know, but so this is and you shared some stats with me when we were chatting about this. Can you go through this? Because this blows my mind. Yeah,

Laura Bowman:

in prepping for the episode, I read that what like a person who's in this sandwich grip spends 28 hours delegating to kids, giving to kids, and about 22 hours giving to aging parents, and then they have a nine to five job, so it's 50 hours of caregiving responsibilities a week in addition to nine to five work

Colette Fehr:

that makes me want to lie down on like a cold floor and die

Laura Bowman:

and just weep. Yeah, that's

Colette Fehr:

too much for anybody. And yet, if that is your life, you can't just say, sorry, I'm out. I mean, I mean, you could, but most people wouldn't do that or want to. So how do you cope with the enormity of that burden on a day to day basis? Be there for people the way you want to, but also not lose yourself or your responsibility to take care of yourself. I

Laura Bowman:

mean, I think that's the million dollar question. I think it's incredibly hard. And just to flesh this out even deeper, is we're assuming that these fight, these family dynamics, are brilliant and loving and, you know, reciprocal and warm, and they're not. I mean, these are women very often are in in these responsibilities, and they're caring for parents that haven't been good to them, or they don't they, yeah, very ambivalent towards and I mean, that that's a we're not talking about how hard it is to step into a role and in a family system where you don't really want to be doing this, or they haven't even shown up for you in that way. I

Colette Fehr:

had a client. I mean, this is huge, and I think it's another layer that has such an emotional punch. I had a client who her father had abandoned her, and before he abandoned her. He had abused her and cut her out of the will. Long story, and of course, I don't want to share any details. This is a long time ago, but I'll never forget it, because of a variety of complex factors, caring for him fell to her. I mean, you've abandoned me, financially, emotionally, you abused me, and now I have to take care of you and not slip you a cyanide pill, right? I mean, sorry, but like the amount of inner consternation you have to go through to grapple with the complexity of emotions that this is someone who has hurt you and harmed you, yet it's your parent, which we know one of the most difficult things in life is that children it's a survival component that children will always love a parent, even when the parent causes harm. But at the end of life, if you're tasked with caring for someone who's hurt you so deeply that's a whole nother level, yeah, and

Laura Bowman:

even just the more mundane dynamics of parents that haven't planned well, haven't managed their finance as well, have made very poor decisions, and then the consequences of that are falling to their adult children, yes. So I just want to acknowledge the level of resentment that here you are now giving away all of your time and your energy, and you're doing it, just saddled with a bunch of resentment for that's not every that for some people, some people are very happy caregivers, and it's very meaningful work for them, but I just want to shout out to people who feel very ambivalent about the role they're in.

Colette Fehr:

I agree, and I think it's important to acknowledge that. So what we're saying so far, that I think is so critical, is that even if you love your parents and you had that great life and you are happy to be there for them, the natural order of life stages, it's still incredibly flipping hard, right? And then if you didn't have a good family dynamic, it's even harder. And then let's acknowledge what I think we're saying implicitly, very explicitly, that this is all expensive, and not only is that tough, if your parents weren't good to you, let's say, but not everyone has the money for this. You're, you're shelling out money for children. And then what if your parents haven't planned well? And you're now, you're now the person who's stuck in between those two burdens. Yeah,

Laura Bowman:

it's untenable. Yeah, you're and you're the only one with a job that's producing income that could even touch these situations. Where do you you know, these are where people are faced with decisions like putting their parents in, you know, homes that don't feel right to them and and so this is where the guilt comes in. And the guilt is all consuming, because it's like, where do these resources go? There's not enough to go around, and there's not enough of me to go around. So I see a lot of women who deal with a tremendous amount of guilt

Colette Fehr:

say more to me about the guilt. I think this is important for us to talk about.

Laura Bowman:

Well, especially women who want to do it all and really value caring for their families. They want to do it well. And in a situation like this, as we're just as we're talking about it, you can feel that there's not enough to go around. It's impossible to execute this week in and week out and do it well. And so you're always dealing with a ball dropping, like, oh, I want. There for this, or I can't afford that, and so women very often absorb that guilt that they should be doing more. And then we were talking is that the psychology of the woman that gets kind of because it is usually a sibling in the family system, and often a daughter who gets it, yeah, who's proximate to the family that ends up taking on the lion's share of the responsibility? You're so right? It's and it you're like, your brother's 1000 miles away, and he's like, Yeah, you know, call me if you need something. Okay,

Colette Fehr:

my brother's literally 1000s of miles away. As you say this, I'm thinking,

Unknown:

JAWS coming forward.

Colette Fehr:

Here comes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you before we dive more into that and the psychology of the guilt, and you know what I always call The Giving Tree, do you are you dealing with any of this in your own life right now, not

Laura Bowman:

yet. And you know my mother and her husband lived near us and then moved back home close to my brother, and my brother is not going to be a resource for them. You know, he's kind of made that clear. So my mom and her husband are 1000 miles away from me, and I think, you know, sometimes I let the thought wash over my mind, like, what happens if something happens to either one of them? You know, I am the person for them. I'm 1000 miles away. How would I How would I navigate that? I mean, you just start adding up plane tickets and time off work, and none of it feels easy. I

Colette Fehr:

agree, and this makes me think of another component, like problem wise, that we haven't hit on yet, which is that as parents age, they don't always realize that they're not in the shape they think they are, or that they need help, and it can be difficult to get parents to acquiesce to the kind of support they need and like, I'll just share a quick thing that happened, because I joke about my dad, but really, I'm amazed by my dad. He'll be 80 in a year. He's really can't

Laura Bowman:

believe he's 80. That's ridiculous to me, right? I mean,

Colette Fehr:

he's up at 4am he's traveling, he's giving talks, he's practicing medicine, he's sharp, he's energetic, but the the kink in the in the armor that I see is that my father doesn't understand that he's approaching 80, yeah, and he still feels very invincible. And a couple of years ago, it has taken me. I've lived in Florida for 28 years. A lot of you know, I grew up in New York, and my dad has been in New York. My parents are divorced. I've been trying to get my dad here for a long time, because as you age, first of all, I want him here because we're best friends, and I love being with my dad. But as you age, you need to be close to a family member who will look out for you. And I'm that person, and I'm happy to be that person. Okay, my dad has been amazing to me my whole life. A couple years ago, he lives north of the city, and has been commuting into Manhattan. I mean, now he lives here, but this is in the past. He was pulling out of his driveway in the winter or going out to the car in his driveway, and he lived in a town called Mount Kisco, that's like, 40 minutes north of Manhattan, and you would think you're in, like, the Canadian woods. It's so isolated and like, deer everywhere.

Laura Bowman:

He slipped. Yeah, it's

Colette Fehr:

pretty but, I mean, it's remote, okay, dark and remote. He slips on a patch of ice, falls right back on the back of his head, cracks. His skull is bleeding everywhere. And of course, being a man of that generation, instead of like calling 911 gets in the car with a towel around his head, concussed, cracked skull, and drives to the hospital and how to have his whole head stitched back up and had really injured himself and could have died. So, you know, this is the kind of thing where I'm like, Dad, this situation isn't gonna work anymore. And even after that, he was like, I'm fine. I'm good. I don't need help. And that's another piece of it, is that, like, I can't get this man to see he needs to slow down. So I feel responsible for that.

Laura Bowman:

This is where, like, having a strong sibling unit is really important that you can talk and kind of intervene and say, hey and support one another. It's when, and very often it does. It falls to one person, typically a woman, who's in it by herself, yep,

Colette Fehr:

and that's going to be the case most of the time. It's very

Laura Bowman:

often the case, and that woman is usually a caregiver. I'm over generalizing, not always, but is probably has a mindset of, I can do this, or this is my job, and that's the beginning of a process that can be. Very overwhelming and burdensome, absolutely,

Colette Fehr:

and we're acknowledging that even if you're happy to do that job, whether you see yourself as a caretaker or not, it is a lot of emotional, logistical energy. It's easy to develop resentment if you're not, if you're not having good boundaries, if there isn't some energy still going to you, which can be challenging, and I think we need to talk about and it always brings me back to the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree, where, if you haven't read it, read it. It's so powerful. It makes me cry every time I want to, like, kill that little boy. Don't

Laura Bowman:

make me cry as a kid, Colette, like when I was little, I thought, oh, isn't that sweet? Like the tree gave it all for the child that I didn't get it as a kid, you didn't get it. The

Colette Fehr:

tree gave it all for the child.

Laura Bowman:

When I was little, when I was a kid, I thought, oh, oh, I guess this is how you know, you give for those you love. You give it. You leave it all on the field. There's the problem, right? Well, it took me years to go, oh, wait, this is a really dark book. This is really dark, and now I have a copy of it in my office, because sometimes I gotta hand it to people. Oh,

Colette Fehr:

I routinely send the PDF version, which actually just probably outed myself on some kind of copyright infringement, but just for someone who hasn't read it in brief, The Giving Tree is about this boy, this beautiful, lustrous tree, and this boy that has a relationship with the tree, and he goes to the tree for everything throughout his life, and I don't even remember what he does with it, but he takes the leaves and the branches and the apples and builds a boat. Yes, yes. And he's never quite happy, never quite happy, and he's never done taking. There's always a new ask, and the tree gives and gives and gives and doesn't take anything back or ask for anything in return, except the boy's love. And see, now I'm gonna, like, make myself cry, and then at the end, the boy goes to the tree. I don't remember what his final demand is, but the tree that was once big and beautiful is down to a one inch stump, and the tree says it's a stump, and it's not even a big stump. And the tree says, I have nothing left to give you. I'm sorry. I would give it to you if I had it, but I don't exist anymore. And the boy, instead of saying, Wow, thank you for sacrificing everything you had for me, the boy's kind of like, fuck you.

Laura Bowman:

Yeah, well, I think that they both, the tree is now a stump, and the boy just sits there and is an old man at that point and realizes he kind of has to do it for himself at that point, or has to grapple with his own existential, you know, dread. But you're right. It's, it's women do this, and they will give it all away, and they will give it all away till they are there is nothing left, right? And if, and this is the situation where you can give it all away and not even realize you're doing it, because you're caring for so many people, right, that you just become invisible. And

Colette Fehr:

it feels like I have to, right? So it doesn't feel like a choice, because I think a lot of these women will say, Yeah, great. I don't want to be a stump. I wish I had some time and energy for myself. Yeah, what do I do? I can't off offshoot any of this. So let's talk about what can help people with some variables that they can't control. Let's say you're stuck in this situation and you don't want to be the stump of The Giving Tree, but you also want to be there for your family. You want to raise your kids well. You want to take care of your parents, even if they suck. How? How can you do this without totally losing yourself?

Laura Bowman:

It's so funny. I just had a client in my office, and her mother recently had surgery, and she has an older brother that lives up north, and then she has a brother here, and she's been doing the majority of the caregiving work for her mom, and she has young kids, and she said, I finally called My told my mother, you have to tell my brother that he needs to take you to your doctor's appointment on Thursday. You have to good for her, like, I'm not going to that appointment. I can't go to that appointment. You have to. So I think that direct communication of, if you haven't learned to ask for what you need, this is the moment to do it, and do it very directly and not kind of like, Hey, I'd really appreciate if you could you just step in or just give me. No, I need you to go on Thursday.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, and I think you're right. This is going to be challenging. If you've never done this before, but sink or swim, you're also saving yourself, and you're going to have to you are going to have to say, No, sometimes you are going to have to ask directly, explicitly and clear. Actually for what you want and need, and you may feel guilt or discomfort when you do that, because of all of the good girl conditioning we've all been subjected with throughout our lives, but you have to do it anyway, or you are going to drown in this thing. Yeah,

Laura Bowman:

definitely. And and then another piece that occurs to me is that when you're going through difficult times of any form or fashion, it's a time where you have to take even more impeccably good care of yourself. Yeah, and we all know that when you're when you're stressed out, you can slide so easily into what I call it crappy coping, which is like, you know, you start to drink more and you just, you start to eat more, you know, just, you're just coping with, like, low hanging things. Are

Colette Fehr:

you saying those are bad things? No, I'm kidding.

Laura Bowman:

I am. I am. I'm saying that when you're in a really tough spot, you're, you're slowly killing yourself with those kinds of behavior. I'm not saying that judgmentally. I've been there. I'm

Colette Fehr:

joking. I'm joking. I couldn't agree more, and that's what I have a tendency to do. Like I have a part of self that prefers to cope that way when things get too much. But I've worked over the years to develop healthier mechanisms, and

Laura Bowman:

it comes with the voice of, like I deserve this. Like I deserve this, because this is too much. And that's that's that's a real feeling, but it needs to be dealt with with some and I love when I looked this up, one of the tips that I that I got when I was researching was determine your non negotiable needs. And I think that's what every caregiver has to say. Like, what do I need in order to do this job in a sustainable way like I didn't get through raising my kids without running. Running saved me raising kids, and because I it would do something that would release something in me where I had so much more space to be able to cope. So if I were in this in this place in my life, I'd say, Well, I have to run three to four times a week in order to handle this job and

Colette Fehr:

right to be able to do it without it really destroying me. Yeah, yeah. And when you say that, what I think of for me. I mean, I think exercise is key for everyone we know. Not only is it good for you physically, but it's so fundamental to mental health, even a 10 minute raising of the heart rate, boost mental health for six to eight hours of the day. I mean, you just can't it's the best antidepressant in the world. But along the lines of what you're saying with young kids, you know, I realized, for me, when I was in the young kid stage, the hardest part was that I'm such a Joie de Viv, like social butterfly kind of girl, and all of a sudden everything was very responsibility laden around the clock. I had to say, I have to have time with friends that does not involve and it doesn't have to be, you know, there's that whole mommy thing of, like, going out and getting shit faced and, like, right, right as, like, a backlash, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I need time with my friends where we are having soul filled conversations to fill my cup. Like, that's what I needed to get through the early kids stage. And you know, this is something that I think we're both saying. It's not a negotiable. It's not selfish. It's not like, Oh, I can't, because you're going to hear those kind of distorted cognitions, because the guilty part of you will want to tell you that you have to be all things to all people all the time. But if you carve out 20 minutes in the day and make it a disciplined, non negotiable commitment that this is my time to run, talk to a friend, journal, write, go out in nature. You got to find your thing that is going to charge your engine. It's not going to make this easy, but it's essential.

Laura Bowman:

Yeah, and then I, as you're talking, the other thing that I see is, and especially these really capable women who can throw a whole family on their back and march up the hill, you know, this is what these women can do. As I'm reflecting back to them, like, gosh, this is so much like any one of these things could be overwhelming, and they're like, wow, you know, I just sometimes I feel like I'm coming in here and just venting and I'm complaining, and they have no grace or space for their own issues. They don't want to feel sorry for themselves, they don't want to acknowledge their own grief and sadness around what's happening. And it's important to go, this is really fucking hard. I agree. And have other people who will will see that and reflect that back and go, Yeah, this is hard, and you're doing a really hard thing, grace

Colette Fehr:

and space. I love how you said that. Yeah, have grace for yourself. Give your. Space to process, allow yourself to acknowledge that it's really hard and that that's okay and your feelings deserve to be tended to, and that ties to also the whole idea of seeking help. You know you need someone to talk to, and if you can't afford a therapist, find somebody in your life that you can go to and share about this burden, and just someone who will listen and validate and understand it's important.

Laura Bowman:

And in this, in this time, you need all kinds of help. I mean, this is a a time to be able to reach out to people and say, Do you know anybody? Do you? What do you? What do you? What have you done for nursing care? What do you do for financial planning around this and and reach out to anybody in your resource, you know your anybody you know your network that can help? I

Colette Fehr:

agree. It's, it's we need to talk to other people about what we're going through, and get resources and ideas and help and also normalize these conversations, because so many women are going through this and feeling like, oh, this is just what life is, and I'm doing my duty, and it's a lot,

Laura Bowman:

yeah, and I want to just give out a shout out to men, because a lot of men are in this role too. And I think I was reading in the research that an ever increasing amount of men are getting put in this role. And I was running this morning with a gentleman, and he was telling me, we were talking about marathons we've run and stuff. And he said, Well, you know, I stopped running for three years while I was taking care of my parents. And I just thought, this is so interesting that we're talking about this today. But yeah, he's just he put himself on the back burner as his parents were dying, and that's not uncommon.

Colette Fehr:

No, it's not, it's not right. We're not suggesting that women are the only ones doing this. And also we're not suggesting that there might not be times when you really just have to put yourself on the back burner to push through. I think what we are suggesting is find little ways carve out the little that you can for yourself and your soul and whatever is going to give you just a little bit of comfort and grace and acknowledgement and energy as you're coping with so much

Laura Bowman:

because being a stump at the end of the day is not an option. Yes, amen, no stumping, no

Colette Fehr:

stumping, no stumping, no. I mean, I get chills when I read that book and I come to the end, I want to cry. I want to scream. You're right. I forgot the boy's an old man. I really want to kill him at that point because he's still got his hand out. It's like, Are you kidding? Yeah, but this happens to women more than anybody. They feel like a stump, and then they resent and they can't understand why nobody saw them, acknowledged them, appreciated them, gave back. And these are, in large part, often, the women who are leaving their marriages after 2030, years. They're like, Fuck you, I've had it right. They go have an affair. They run away. They want to tell everybody just, I'm done, right? Or they have a blow up moment where the whole family's like, what just happened to mom? Right? Like, you can only take so much. So if you're giving, giving, giving and getting nothing in return, it's there's going to be some kind of implosion or explosion. And what we're suggesting is take care of yourself enough along the way that it doesn't get to that point by just to recap, asking directly for what you need, having the boundaries you can have, being active and using healthy, not crappy coping mechanisms like exercising and spending time with friends. Get help where you can ask other people, ask friends for favors, ask for resources, ask someone if you can talk about this, and will they just listen and validate that will really feel a lot better. And am I missing anything? As I recap here, I

Laura Bowman:

mean, I think there's a whole bunch of tactical stuff for people who are really and they're different pain points for different people so but I think the general big rocks really come down to getting good at asking for help, direct communication, boundaries, protecting your non negotiable needs and and being okay, not being all things to all People, and really dealing with it is not your job to to serve everybody. And what was it? Was it Laura Myers, that we had on that was telling us about menopause, that the caregiving hormone starts to kind of go away, and I think that's something to research, right? Thank

Unknown:

God I

Laura Bowman:

know, because you just get. On, like, you do, you do it, and you do it, and then you're like,

Colette Fehr:

Oh, yeah. I mean, everybody has a breaking point, so doing some of this proactively to the degree that you can will prevent the breaking point from causing spectacular disarray, because you don't need that on top of everything else. I love that. And I think this is something, yeah, I've done that a time or two. I'm done with, I'm done with that way of handling things. So maybe this is something that let's put some of this down onto, like a little worksheet for people, and you can visit insights from the couch.org, for some of these points. And some things you can do that may help you. If you're finding yourself in the sandwich modality, struggling with raising kids, taking care of parents, working a job too much, too little time. We want to be here as a resource to help and please as ever, reach out to us with questions. Our email is info at insights from the couch.org. We want to hear from you. What did you think? What do you like? What do you hate? What do you want to hear more of we want to hear it all. We're so grateful. What

Laura Bowman:

are you struggling with? We want to know what you're struggling with, where your pain points are, because if you're struggling with it, it's pretty likely that somebody else is too, yeah.

Colette Fehr:

And it's pretty likely we are too, yeah. Yeah. So we'll figure it out together. Let us know what you need support with, and thanks so much for listening. We'll see you soon. You.