Excerpt from Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end and yours begin

Trying to do too much

You are undoubtedly a woman who is trying to do too much:

• There aren't enough hours in the day to do what you need to do.
• Responsibilities feel too big for one woman to manage.
• You find it hard to say 'no' to requests.
• Your personal life has faded into non-existence.
• You feel depleted, sad or resentful.

As women, we often enjoy connecting with others and are very good at supporting them. Some social scientists, like Carol Gilligan, believe that women are guided by 'an ethic of care' that leads us to be concerned with personal relationships. Women often prefer to avoid conflict, so we may not articulate our own needs and desires.

When we can't give ourselves permission to seek what we want, we live our lives playing the roles of worker, mother, partner, daughter, community member and so on. Over time we may begin to think the needs of our partner, our children and our aging parents are actually our own needs, says Jean Baker Miller. We have become our roles rather than performing them.

Doing it all

We're great at multi-tasking and balancing many tasks with ease. We embody many roles and perform them with amazing efficiency. I remember how I prided myself on my great multi-tasking abilities in my twenties and thirties. In an office setting I could keep several balls in the air at once. As I grew older, I had a desire to focus more, so I chose a path that allowed me to concentrate on one task at a time rather than constantly moving from one to the other.

We have lives that are too busy for one person to handle with comfort. Sometimes we take on extra duties, perhaps filling in until someone is hired or recovers from an illness. Whatever the reason we just keep doing the extra work, being overwhelmed usually creeps up on us slowly over time, outside our awareness.

• If we take a close look at what we're doing and why we're doing it we can make some inroads towards reducing our schedules.
• Over-scheduling and multi-tasking will seldom be required when we pare our work down to a manageable level.

When the founder of the online community Momasource sent out a questionnaire to members, women's responses to the question "What intrinsic qualities do women have that give them a competitive edge over men?" exemplified their pride in their ability to multi-task and to manage over-scheduled lives.

• The majority of respondents touted their multi-tasking expertise by an overwhelming margin.
• Heather Lawrence of Texas Stork challenged men to: "Talk on the phone, send a fax, reply to an e-mail, change a diaper, get a toddler a snack, monitor school-age children's TV shows and add to the grocery list — all at the same time."¹

What is this brilliance costing us? It seems that this adeptness, based on perceived necessity and perhaps on competitiveness, is a double-edged sword, turning on us when we're least expecting it, in the form of stress, anxiety, guilt and physical ailments.

When we hit midlife, the ability and often the desire to switch from one focus to another effortlessly and quickly begins to diminish. Some studies suggest multi-tasking skills decrease in midlife because they're estrogen-facilitated. This is good news. We can manage it if we must, but it is not our preferred way of functioning in the world. This gives us a chance to slow down, engage fully in each activity and then segue slowly to the next task.

My meditation and energy training at The Self Realization Centre taught me that we need different kinds of energy to perform different tasks. For example, attending a meeting, working with clients and eating lunch with colleagues all call for diverse energies. We learned to take a short break and to mentally clear ourselves before going on to the next activity. Walking around the block, breathing deeply, washing our hands or visualizing our energy field seamlessly circling our body can all renew us.