The situation
My mum has dementia and I’ve become her main carer while still working part-time. I love her, but I’m exhausted, I snap at her over small things, and some days I want to walk out and leave it all to someone else. Then I feel guilty for even thinking it.
Your situation, reframed
AI interpretationYou are worn out, you love her, and part of you wants out: all three can be true at once, and the wish to escape does not mean your love has failed. In Stoic terms, the question is not whether you feel that pull but what a choice that is both loving and reasonable looks like here. Almost always, that means staying involved while sharing the load and protecting the strength you need to keep going.
The dichotomy of control
AI interpretationYours to act on
- Asking for help, and naming exactly what help you need
- Building regular breaks into the week and treating them as part of the care
- Apologising and starting again after a sharp moment
- Finding out what support her doctor, local services and carers’ organisations can offer
Not yours
- The course of her illness and how quickly it changes
- Her confusion, her moods and what she remembers from one day to the next
- Whether other relatives step in without being asked
- How long this stage will last
The Stoics said
Verbatim from the source · full citationsEpictetus, Discourses 1.11 ¶2
… “Whatever then we shall discover to be at the same time affectionate and also consistent with reason, this we confidently declare to be right and good.” “Agreed.” “Well then to leave your sick child and to go away is not reasonable, and I suppose that you will not say that it is; but it remains for us to inquire if it is consistent with affection.” “Yes, let us consider.” “Did you then, since you had an affectionate disposition to your child, do right when you ran off and left her; and has the mother no affection for the child?” “Certainly, she has.” “Ought then the mother also to have left her, or ought she not?” “She ought not.” “And the nurse, does she love her?” “She does.” …
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.7
Be not ashamed to be helped; for it is thy business to do thy duty like a soldier in the assault on a town. How then, if being lame thou canst not mount up on the battlements alone, but with the help of another it is possible?
Seneca, On Peace of Mind 17 ¶1
… Men’s minds ought to have relaxation: they rise up better and more vigorous after rest. We must not force crops from rich fields, for an unbroken course of heavy crops will soon exhaust their fertility, and so also the liveliness of our minds will be detroyed by unceasing labour, but they will recover their strength after a short period of rest and relief: for continuous toil produces a sort of numbness and sluggishness. …
What this means here
AI interpretationEpictetus, Discourses 1.11 ¶2
Epictetus is questioning a father who left home while his little daughter was dangerously ill, because he could not bear to stay with her. He does not doubt that the man loves her; he doubts that leaving was a loving act, and he asks whether the mother, the nurse and the tutor, who loved the child too, ought to have left her as well. Two things follow for you. The urge to get away from the suffering of someone you love is common, as the father himself points out and Epictetus does not deny, so it is not proof that you are a bad son or daughter. And notice who is looking after the child in his example: several people, not one. His test of what is both loving and reasonable rules out walking away, but nothing in it asks one exhausted person to do everything.
Translation note: Affectionate here means loving towards your family. The nurse and the pedagogue were members of the household: a nurse looked after young children, and a pedagogue was the attendant who cared for a child and took them to and from lessons.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.7
Marcus is writing to himself, and the picture he uses is an injured soldier trying to climb a town wall during an attack. The task is to get up the wall; if he can only do it with someone else’s hand, taking that hand is simply how the job gets done. Looking after your mum is your post, and accepting help from relatives, friends, neighbours or professionals is not a failure to hold it. Often it is the only way the job gets done at all. If shame is what stops you asking, this short passage answers it directly.
Translation note: Thy business means your job or task; lame means injured or unable to walk properly; the battlements are the top of a town’s defensive wall.
Seneca, On Peace of Mind 17 ¶1
Seneca is advising a friend on how to keep a steady mind, and here he argues that nobody can keep going without a break: a field cropped year after year is exhausted, and a mind worked without pause grows numb and sluggish. A few sentences later he draws the distinction that matters most for carers, between slackening your hold on something and letting it go. A few hours off, a respite week or an evening with friends is loosening your grip so that you can keep holding on; it is not abandoning her. It is worth reading your snapping in the same light: far more likely a sign of unbroken effort and broken sleep than of any lack of love, which is a reason to plan rest rather than to punish yourself.
Translation note: In this translation, men stands for people in general, and slackening your hold means loosening your grip. Further on, Seneca also praises wine as a relief from cares; that part belongs to its time, and when you are exhausted, rest means sleep, breaks and company, not drink.
Read together, the three passages point the same way. Staying with someone who is ill is what love asks; carrying it alone and without rest is not, and nothing in these passages suggests it should be. Your guilt rests on a judgement worth examining: that needing a break or needing help means you love her less. The father in the first passage left because he could not bear to stay. You are still there, tired and imperfect, and that is the harder and better thing.
One action for today
AI interpretationAsk what your role requires
Ask what your role as her child actually requires: love, presence and good decisions on her behalf, not that you personally do every task. Tonight, list what you do for her in a typical week, circle three things someone else could do, and ask one specific relative, friend or service to take on one of them, with a day and time attached. Then put one regular block of time off in the diary and keep it as firmly as you would a hospital appointment. If you are struggling to cope or your own health is slipping, speak to your GP and contact a carers’ support organisation; looking after yourself is part of looking after her.
A line to carry
“There is a great difference between slackening your hold of a thing and letting it go.”
— Seneca, On Peace of Mind 17 ¶1