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Elaine K. Sanchez
Caregiving Speaker & Author
Elaine K. Sanchez
Caregiving Speaker & Author
Biography
Based on her extensive experience of caring for family elders, Elaine K Sanchez developed a passion for helping others manage the emotional stress of caregiving. She is the author of the unflinchingly honest and surprisingly funny book Letters from Madelyn, Chronicles of a Caregiver, and the founder of CaregiverHelp.com.
Elaine started writing and speaking about caregiving in 2004. Together with her husband, Dr. Alex Sanchez, she developed multiple CEU courses for long-term workers and mental health professionals. She wrote articles and facilitated a national call-in support group for Aetna’s Caregivers Employee Resource Group for more than five years. She delivered keynotes and breakout sessions at caregiving and healthcare conferences across the US until 2020, when all her scheduled events were canceled due to Covid.
Determined to continue helping caregivers manage the emotional stress of caring for those who cannot care for themselves, she had a production studio built in her home and transitioned to making virtual presentations.
In the fall of 2020, she felt compelled to combine her real-life caregiving stories and practical survival strategies into a video-based caregiver support group program that would be available to caregivers whenever they needed a little support or encouragement to get through a bad day or a sleepless night. She had the opportunity to refine her new program over the course of the next several months as she developed and delivered it to a caregiver support group sponsored by WACOG, the Western Arizona Council of Governments. The new CaregiverHelp Support Group Program was launched on June 15, 2022.
Elaine’s masterful story-telling and her practical, applicable self-care strategies help participants develop new skills for managing their anger, guilt, depression, and grief. In addition, participants learn about the importance of getting their end-of-life documents in order. They develop strategies for managing dementia-related challenging behaviors, including stress, triggers, sundowning, and surprising and inappropriate sexual behavior.
Elaine knows there is absolutely nothing funny about Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and other long-term progressive and degenerative diseases. However, caregivers who have heard her speak and those who have taken her course appreciate how she brings humor to some incredibly delicate and challenging caregiving issues. They come away from each session feeling validated, connected, and empowered to care for themselves.
Speaker Videos
TEDTalk: Having the Sex Talk with Dad
Sex and Dementia Vignette - Having the Sex Talk With Dad
End of Life Planning Vignette - Ducks in a Row
Identify a Guilt Tripper
Fear, Frustration, and Fatigue
The Importance of Support
Sense of Loss
Speech Topics
Managing Caregiver Anger and Three Fs of Flipping Out: Fear, Frustration, and Fatigue
Caregivers get angry! The number of people, situations, and events that cause caregivers to lose their tempers is almost too numerous to list. However, in most situations, Fear, Frustration, and Fatigue are significant contributors to caregiver anger. In this session, Elaine shares strategies that help participants:
Become familiar with how applying the three steps of “Creative Indifference” can help them manage their caregiver anger toward the people, situations, and events that cause them the most significant emotional stress.
Identify and manage caregiver fear by controlling their thoughts, minimizing “What If” thinking, and getting prepared for events that are likely to happen.
Reduce caregiver frustration by setting firm boundaries and releasing their emotional attachment to the things over which they have no control.
Recognize how caregiver fatigue affects a person’s ability to think, work, and function effectively and accept that to care for anyone or anything else, they must self-care must be a priority.
Giving Caregiver Guilt the Boot
Caregiver Guilt can be a cruel and controlling emotion. Sometimes guilt is self-imposed, and sometimes it is imposed on caregivers by someone else. In this keynote, Caregiver Speaker Elaine Sanchez shares strategies that help participants:
- Understand the difference between earned guilt and unearned guilt.
- Recognize the behavior of guilt-trippers.
- Identify when Caregiver Guilt is and is NOT an appropriate emotional response.
- Release their need to manage other people’s feelings.
- Change their emotional response to guilt by changing their emotional vocabulary.
- Understand how caregivers can stop feeling when they haven’t done anything wrong.
Dealing with Caregiver Depression & Grief
The symptoms of Caregiver Depression and Grief are so similar that it can be difficult to distinguish one from the other. Plus, it isn’t unusual for caregivers to experience depression and grief simultaneously as they witness the decline of someone they love while their own lives become increasingly more complicated, restrictive, and reclusive.
The information in this keynote helps caregivers:
- Become familiar with how reactionary depression and clinical depression are unique and why distinctly different treatments are required for recovery.
- Develop strategies for managing their caregiver depression so they can stay up when their care receiver is down.
- Become familiar with the services available to help caregivers cope with grief before and after they lose someone they love.
- Believe that it will be possible to create a new life after caregiving.
The Triple Threat of Caregiving – Anger, Guilt, End-of-Life Care
Caregivers struggle with a multitude of emotional challenges. This presentation focuses on three of caregiving’s most difficult issues: Anger, Guilt, and End-of-Life Care. Caregivers come away from this presentation with new strategies for:
- Reducing caregiver anger by setting better boundaries.
- Distinguishing between earned guilt and unearned guilt and how to stop feeling guilty when they haven’t done anything wrong.
- Understand the wide rage of choices caregivers and their care receivers can make regarding life-extending treatments and end-of-life care.
Ducks in a Row
Planning for disability and end-of-life care is challenging at the best of times. It’s especially difficult when the end is near.
This keynote helps people understand the importance of making decisions and getting the required documents in place to avoid conflicts over issues like tube feeding, life support, and the distribution of money, property, and other assets after a person dies.
Caregivers will come away from this presentation with strategies that will help them:
- Start hard conversations with their care receiver about how they want their affairs managed if they become incapacitated.
- Identify the critical end-of-life documents that need to be in place before their person loses the ability to make their own decisions.
- Understand the options for end-of-life medical treatments, including palliative and hospice care.
Seven Strategies for Caregiver Self-Care
It seems that no matter how hard how they try, how much they give, or how many things they sacrifice, caregivers feel like it is never enough. In this session, Caregiver Speaker Elaine Sanchez, focuses on caregiver self-care and helps attendees become aware that it is not possible to care for another person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, without experiencing caregiver burnout. Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of how to:
- Accept their limitations as a caregiver.
- Embrace the concept that caregiver self-care is NOT selfish.
- Develop a self-care plan to help them maintain the physical, mental, and emotional strength they need to continue caring for those who can no longer care for themselves.
Dementia: Stress, Triggers, and Sundowning
Being a caregiver for a person living with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive impairments can be perplexing, upsetting, and challenging to manage. In this session, Caregiver Speaker Elaine Sanchez, describes how physical and emotional triggers contribute to “Sundowning” behavior, and she provides tips to reduce and manage dementia-related behaviors, including how to:
- Avoid conflicts with a person who is living with dementia by practicing the “Three Don’ts of Dementia.”
- Embrace the practice of Compassionate Deception.
- Make adaptations to reduce physical and emotional triggers that cause stress for people who are living with dementia.
Dementia: A Different Reality—Individuality, Sexuality, & Other Surprises
Dementia alters a person’s perception of reality and ability to understand what is and is not appropriate social behavior. In this presentation, Elaine shares real-life stories about the perplexing actions of several individuals living with dementia, including surprising and inappropriate dementia-related sexual behavior. Attendees come away with a greater awareness of how to manage their responses to their care receiver’s dementia-altered reality and behavior, including how to:
- Release their attachment to who their care receiver was before dementia.
- Separate the disease from the person.
- Understand why stroke survivors, people living with Alzheimer’s, and individuals who take Dopamine to control the symptoms of Parkinson’s sometimes develop a heightened interest and desire for sex.
- Remember that regardless of how many skills, abilities, and memories dementia steals, the care receiver is still capable of being loved.
A Spiritual Journey Through Caregiving
This presentation is the story of one woman’s spiritual journey through caregiving, told through the letters Elaine’s mother wrote to her during the six-and-a-half years she cared for her husband following his debilitating stroke.
Madelyn’s strength came from her faith in a loving and benevolent God, but that didn’t keep her from questioning, doubting, and sometimes getting angry at God.
Her spiritual journey starts at a point of “lightning strike irreverence” and ends with Madelyn’s profound and personal relationship with God.
Some of the letters are laugh-out-loud funny. Some are heartbreaking. All are an unflinchingly honest exploration of faith from the letters of an aging woman dealing with her failing health while caring for her husband as his prostate cancer advances and his cognitive abilities decline because of his stroke-related dementia.
Finding Resources for A Child With Special Needs
Becoming a parent to a healthy newborn comes with a fair amount of stress. But when a child comes into the world with a disability, everything about caring for them, educating them, and protecting them becomes exponentially more difficult.
In this pre-recorded keynote, Elaine shares information that helps parents:
- Understand the importance of getting their child enrolled in an Early Intervention Program so they can access support from infancy through preschool.
- Become familiar with the types of accommodations and modifications school districts are required to provide to children with special needs.
- Discover how a child with disabilities can prepare for a successful transition from school to work.
Testimonials
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