Caretaking Quotes

Today I will practice healthy giving, understanding that caretaking and compulsive giving don't work. I choose what I want to give, to whom, when, and how much. It takes time to learn how to give in healthy ways. It takes time to learn to receive. Balance will come. ~ Melody Beattie

observations suggest that the survivor as ANP typically engages in tasks of daily life such as reproduction, attachment, caretaking, and other social action tendencies, and avoidance of traumatic memories, which support a focus on daily life issues. In contrast, the survivor as EP primarily displays evolutionary defensive and emotional reactions to the (perceived) threat on which he or she seems to be fixated. Third, survivors should be very susceptible to classical conditioning, because, as we discuss below, EP and ANP strongly respond to unconditioned and conditioned threat cues. ~ Onno Van Der Hart

I wasn't sure Lorraine and others like her-ones who were so despairing of marriage, ones who were so sure their expectations could never be met-understood that it was these small moments of caretaking that meant the most, that forged the real relationship. The way one pulled the blanket over the sleeping other, the way one prepared a snack for oneself, but made enough to share. Such moments made for the team of two, which made for one's sword and shield. ~ Elizabeth Berg

Caring works. Caretaking doesn't. We can learn to walk the line between the two. ~ Melody Beattie

How can children bombarded from birth by noise, frenetic schedules, and the helter-skelter caretaking of a fast-paced adult world learn to analyze, reflect, ponder? How can they use quiet inner conversation to build personal realities, sharpen and extend their visual reasoning? ~ Jane M. Healy

Caretaking is different from care giving. Care giving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached. It cannot be manipulated or discouraged because love cannot be manipulated or discouraged. ~ Gary Zukav

Maggie? Who takes care of you?"

"Me?" She pulled away. "I don't understand what you mean."

"I bet you took care of your dad. I know you catered to Brian and Phillip. Who has ever taken care of you?"

"I'm f-fine. I can take care of myself."

"I know you can. But what if I want to take care of you? Would you trust me enough to let me? ~ Nancee Cain

Then he stared down at the twinkling lights and sobbed, "All my stars fell out of the sky. ~ Belinda Bauer

Can we really expect adequate funding for programs to clean up our environment and care for people's basic needs as long as the socially essential work of caretaking and cleaning is relegated to women for little or no pay? ~ Riane Eisler

Not only do our wives need support, but our children need our deep involvement in their lives. If this period [the early years] ofprimitive needs and primitive caretaking passes without us, it is lost forever. We can be involved in other ways, but never again on this profoundly intimate level. ~ Augustus Napier

The caretaking has to be done. "Somebody's got to be the mommy." Individually, we underestimate this need, and as a society we make inadequate provision for it. Women take up the slack, making the need invisible as we step in to fill it. ~ Mary Catherine Bateson

I hear you. Angry words get louder when people do not listen. When a person is ill and dying, it seems as if no one understands what is happening. People are busy doing what is required for physical caretaking, but very often the inner needs of the person are ignored. Even if the dying person makes no sense, which is often the case, knowing that someone hears the words, and the feelings behind the words, and is responding, makes all the difference. ~ Megory Anderson

Few see looking after others as therapeutic for the person who does the caretaking, or consider community involvement as therapeutic as drugs. Yet there is mounting evidence that a rich network of face-to-face relationships creates a biological force field against disease. ~ Susan Pinker

Caregiving requires the intention of love, caretaking requires the intention of fear. Not acting in anger when you are angry requires the intention of love. ~ Gary Zukav

Constant consciousness of old age's frailties really makes me appreciate youth. It's so interesting that we evolved to respond with automatic care to the young... while old age repels, makes us afraid of our own mortality. ~ Lucy Knisley

A good model of how to 'work with the enemy' internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. ~ Alice Walker

Months after my wrists ripping, a talk therapist referred to the act as self-hatred. Until then nobody had said this to me. Did everyone presume that I already knew so? People say it all the time. It's safer to draw this conclusion. Throw in cowardice and you have an insulated public. I was not enraged at all. I was panic stricken. How could I hate myself for wanting to stop such physical sickness and terror? Mine was an act of caretaking, compassion, love. You cannot share this insight with therapists because they think such encourages recurrence. Have you ever stopped diarrhea with a prayer? If you have to go, you go. If you have to die, you die. ~ Brian Spellman

In fact, the same intervention or response may even have the opposite effect on two different clients with contrasting developmental histories and cultural contexts. For example, if a client's parent was distant or aloof, the therapist's judicious self-disclosure may be helpful for the client. In contrast, the same type of self-disclosure is likely to be anxiety-arousing for a client who grew up serving as the confidant or emotional caregiver of a depressed parent. Greater sharing with the therapist may help the first client learn that, contrary to her deeply held beliefs, she does matter and can be of interest to other people. In contrast, for the second client, the same type of self-disclosure may inadvertently impose the unwanted needs of others and set this client back in treatment as, in her mind, she experiences herself back in her old caretaking role again - this time with the therapist. This unwanted reenactment occurs because the therapeutic relationship is now paralleling the same problematic relational theme that this client struggled with while growing up. ~ Edward Teyber

The task is clear: to create a culture of caretaking in which no one and nowhere is thrown away, in which the inherent value of people and all life is foundational. ~ Naomi Klein

None seemed irreverent enough to address the situation of being a baby, of caretaking a baby. Do castration and the Phallus tell us the deep Truths of Western culture or just the truth of how things are and might not always be? It astonishes and shames me to think that I spent years finding such questions not only comprehensible, but compelling. ~ Maggie Nelson

I suppose I could spend time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that's really not the point. The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what's too high, or what's been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it's always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always. ~ Ross Gay

There is no neediness in desire ... there is no caretaking in desire. Caretaking is mightily loving, [but] it's a powerful anti-aphrodisiac. ~ Esther Perel

The corn is planted first, followed by beans, then squash between the rows.They are called the Three Sisters. They sustain each other, the earth, and us. But the Big Ones do not know that. They do not care for the earth, and its children, properly. ~ Elizabeth Haydon

The long matrimonial haul was accomplished in cycles. One cycle of bad breath, one cycle of renewed desire, a third cycle of breakdown and small avoidances, still another of plays and dinners that spurred a conversation between them late at night that reminded her of their like minds and the pleasure they took in each other's talk. And then back to hating him for not taking out the garbage on Wednesday. That was the struggle. Sickness and death, caretaking, the martyrdom of matrimony
that was fluff stuff. When the vows kick in, you don't even blink. You just do. She had to be up for it. ~ Joshua Ferris

If what you dig up is painful or ugly, throw it away. That means to process it, mourn it, heal it, grieve it, repent of it, or whatever it takes to work it out of your system. You are growing a garden in your heart; some things you wish to increase, and others you need to weed out. Either way requires caretaking. That is your job as guardian of your heart. ~ Henry Cloud

Caretaking is the utmost spiritual and physical responsibility of our time, and perhaps that stewardship is finally our place in the web of life, our work, the solution to the mystery that we are. There are already so many holes in the universe that will never again be filled, and each of them forces us to question why we permitted such loss, such tearing away at the fabric of life, and how we will live with our planet in the future. ~ Linda Hogan

But now, Mr. Bates didn't scream or try to get the truck's license plate, nor did Mrs. Bates, who had once wept when we set off firecrackers in her state-fair tulips - they said nothing, and our parents said nothing, so that we sensed how ancient they were, how accustomed to trauma, depressions, and wars. We realized that the version of the world that they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass they didn't give a damn about lawns. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides