CAREGIVERS.

................... by Stanley

........I am about seven years of age at a fairground in England with my mum. She pays sixpence each for us to ride on the Ghost Train – a string of small open carriages on a miniature rail line that disappears into a dark tunnel. From out of the tunnel I can hear ghoulish howls, cries and hideous laughs. The carriages start to roll towards the dark opening. I am sitting alongside my mum quietly terrified. My most vivid memory is hanging on to her arm and saying: ‘Don’t be frightened mum – I’ll look after you !’
........I won’t say I’ve have been a caregiver ever since, because my caregiving began long before that. I mean, my kind of behaviour on the Ghost Train didn’t suddenly start at seven. The picture of the child who mothers his mother is well known. And the reason is easy to see. If you are insecure, you have to take care of the one you are counting on to take care of you. Especially in any unsure and dangerous situation - which life most often is, or at least was, for me. It really is a matter of reasoned self interest.
........The kind of caring we instinctively feel safe with is the kind that has no hidden agenda, it just feels good, relaxing; but sometimes care comes with a veiled motive. Is it to make the carer feel better? One senses the caring is not congruent, it’s uncomfortable, tiring. Afterwards you feel depleted.
.........One of my problems has always been that I am nervous when being cared for, even when there is no hidden price tag. For instance, whenever I’ve been sick it’s an ordeal when someone wants to help me. I’m on edge. I’m in bed sick and I have to keep reassuring everyone I’m OK. I can’t be just looked after because I’m so busy looking after the one who’s looking after me. Now, I wonder where I got that from !
.........Caring is psychologically rich. It is an ambivalent mix of motives we would prefer to think of as simple and straightforward. Like the juice of love when seen under the microscope it is teeming with life forms, some benign and some pathogenic. Caring is always more than it seems.
.........In the business of caregiving there are those who give it and those who receive; and those who take care of others most often can’t receive it; and those who receive it most often don’t give. The selfless and the selfish often go together as a workable, but unequal pair.
........The selfish are an easy target for moral criticism. The selfless, the caregivers, are applauded; but the compulsive caregiver makes us uneasy. Their habit of always putting others first makes us feel something isn’t quite right. All you can do is tell them, “You have to look after yourself, you know.” The advice usually makes no difference.
.......In some people’s hands caring can be toxic. There are helpers whose caregiving is designed to kill. They often gravitate to the ‘helping profession’ as a perfect cover. Medical and psychological services are great hiding places. There they can practice their malevolence under the cloak of professional concern, but they can be recognized by a certain lack of generosity. They work by the book. In fact, they use the book to penalise whenever they can. If they are in any position of authority in a helping agency they will turn it into a punishment centre. Unfortunately, helping agencies are easily ‘turned’ in this way because these killers have the ability to gather ‘pieces of paper’ that qualify them for positions of control. But they are easy to spot: they have heads, but no bodies.