Caregiver
Support Group
Caring for a loved one with a dementia-related illness can be emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting.
Many caregivers silently carry grief long before a death occurs. You may be grieving changes in personality, communication, roles, independence, connection, or your own sense of self.
This group is designed for caregivers navigating the ongoing emotional complexity of caring for someone living with a dementia-related illness.
Caregiving can bring love, guilt, resentment, exhaustion, tenderness, anger, isolation, and uncertainty all at once.
This group exists to remind you that your experiences matter too.
You are not only the person caring for someone else. You are also a person carrying something heavy.
Group Details
Tentative Day and Time: TBD
Session Length: 90 minutes
Format: Virtual
Optional: In-person closing gathering during the final session
Frequency: Bi-weekly
Length: 8 sessions
Group Type: Closed group for the first round
This group is designed to offer consistency, safety, and connection. A closed group means the same members move through the full group experience together once the group begins.
The Kind of Caregiving Experiences We Make Space For
☑️ Anticipatory grief and ambiguous loss
☑️ Grieving someone who is still physically here
☑️ Feeling invisible, unsupported, or misunderstood
☑️ Caregiver burnout and emotional exhaustion
☑️ Losing your sense of identity outside of caregiving
☑️ Family conflict or unequal caregiving responsibilities
☑️ Guilt around rest, boundaries, anger, or resentment
☑️ Feeling pressure to always be patient or compassionate
☑️ Chronic stress, anxiety, sleep disruption, and irritability
☑️ Wanting support without being told to just “stay strong”
Our Approach to Caregiver Support
This group offers emotional support, grief education, reflection tools, and community connection for caregivers who are carrying more than most people can see.
Each session creates room for:
Naming: Making space for the emotions caregivers often hold silently, including grief, guilt, anger, resentment, fear, love, and relief.
Understanding: Exploring how caregiving changes identity, family roles, relationships, the nervous system, and everyday life.
Support: Helping you reconnect with your own needs, limits, body, and humanity while you continue caring for someone else.
This is not a group that tells you to be more grateful, more patient, or more selfless.
It is a space where the full truth of caregiving can be spoken with compassion.
1
The Invisible Weight of Caregiving
We begin by naming the emotional labor of caregiving. This session explores what it feels like to be in survival mode, to feel unseen or unsupported, and to carry responsibility that others may not fully understand.
We will make space for the question: “What feels heaviest for me right now?”
What We’ll Explore Together
2
Anticipatory Grief and Ambiguous Loss
Caregivers often grieve someone who is still physically present. This session explores the slow losses of dementia, including personality changes, communication shifts, relational changes, and the uncertainty of what comes next.
We will name the parts of your loved one, your relationship, and your life that you may already miss.
3
Losing Yourself While Caring for Others
Caregiving can slowly take over your identity. This session explores hyper-responsibility, caregiver identity engulfment, neglected personal needs, and the guilt that can come with rest or boundaries.
We will gently ask: “Who am I outside of caregiving?”
4
Family Dynamics, Resentment, and Role Changes
Caregiving can strain families and relationships in painful ways. This session explores unequal responsibilities, sibling or family conflict, relationship role reversals, resentment, anger, and emotional fatigue.
This is a space to name what feels unfair without being judged for saying it.
5
The Emotions Caregivers Feel Ashamed to Admit
Caregivers often feel pressure to be endlessly compassionate. This session creates room for anger, numbness, resentment, relief, guilt, ambivalence, and the emotions you may have judged yourself for having.
You do not have to pretend caregiving is only love in order to be a loving caregiver.
6
The Body Under Chronic Stress
Caregiving does not only affect your thoughts and emotions. It can affect your sleep, body, nervous system, mood, patience, and sense of safety.
This session explores chronic stress, anxiety, irritability, exhaustion, somatic awareness, grounding, and small moments of restoration.
8
Holding Grief, Relief, Love, and Life Together
The final session focuses on integration. We will explore how grief, relief, love, fear, exhaustion, and hope can exist at the same time.
This session makes room for honoring your loved one while also honoring yourself, your needs, your limits, and your life beyond caregiving.
7
Isolation, Support, and Asking for Help
Many caregivers feel alone, even when they are surrounded by people. This session explores shrinking support systems, feeling misunderstood, asking for help without shame, and building support that can actually be sustained.
We will make space for the kind of support you truly need, not just the kind people assume you need.
Caregiver Support Rooted in Experience
Lindsay Fernandez has worked closely with caregivers and individuals impacted by dementia-related illnesses for nearly a decade.
Since 2016, she has facilitated support groups for caregivers navigating the emotional complexity of caring for loved ones experiencing cognitive decline. She also spent six years working in a social adult day program supporting individuals living with dementia-related illnesses and their families.
This group is shaped by that understanding.
Caregivers often carry grief, exhaustion, love, guilt, role changes, anticipatory loss, and isolation in silence. This group offers a place where those experiences can be named, supported, and held with care.
Ready to learn more?