In this short interview, Mel Robbins asks why caregivers find it so hard to recognize the importance of self‑care. The expert (Speaker B) explains that caregivers are often overwhelmed by intense love, empathy, and a sense of responsibility toward the person they care for, which can lead them to neglect their own needs. Robbins then prompts the expert to address someone who feels isolated and burdened by an unrelenting sense of duty, emphasizing that they must learn to turn off that overwhelming responsibility and prioritize their own well‑being in order to continue providing care effectively.
Why do you think it's so hard when you're in the caregiving role to really understand the critical nature of taking care of yourself?
Because you're so overpowered and overwhelmed by the care and love and empathy and responsibility that you feel for another human being. And so that's an amazing thing, right? To have so much love for someone that you're giving up everything, but you can't, you know, we, we have to take care of ourselves in order to to be able to be there for someone else.
What do you want to say to that person who does feel that no one else is there? Like, there's this overwhelming amount of responsibility that I feel that I can't turn off. You have to.
Why? Because it is critical to your survival, and it's going to be critical to the survival of the person that you're caring for. If your health declines, it's game over, right? And so again, I think people just think of stress as this invisible force that we don't really understand. But Mel, I mean, I will tell you from a cardiovascular cardiovascular perspective, it causes inflammation, it causes the rupture of plaque. So if you have plaque buildup in your arteries, suddenly it goes from stable to unstable, you have a heart attack or stroke. There are stress-induced heart attacks. It can— you can have arrhythmias or abnormal heart rhythms. You know, all a whole cascade of events happens inside your body, particularly in your cardiovascular system, which are all negative. And cardiovascular disease is already the leading cause of death for men and women. So you add to that the stress, and it's just a recipe for disaster. I'm seeing it every day in my exam rooms. I'm hearing it. This is so important, and we are not talking about it. We're not educating about it. We're not helping our patients manage it.
