Looking after your emotional wellbeing as a carer

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Counselling Carers was set up by carers for carers, so we understand your situation.  In this article we want to explain why it is so common for carers to experience challenges with their mental health, and also to draw on our therapy team’s wisdom and experience to set out three key things you can do to help. 

From a mental health perspective, when we become a carer, many of us experience a ‘double whammy’: 

• we experience the emotional impact of a diagnosis or a change in a loved one,  
• and we also have much less time for life-giving activities and self-care, because the demands of caring take up so much time and energy. 

Over time, these effects are often compounded.  We may never have had the chance to properly process the initial events that led to us becoming a carer, and the emotional, physical and time burdens of caring can become overwhelming.   

For some, caring can also bring up painful memories from our past, adding to the emotional strain. 

If you are a carer and you are feeling low or burnt out, or as if you’re barely coping, then you are not failing, and there is nothing ‘wrong with you.’ In many ways, these feelings are the natural response to everything you are carrying. 

You are also not alone in feeling like this.  Carers UK report that more than a third of carers say they have ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ mental health (Carers UK, 2025).   

You have power and agency.  We asked our team of therapists, who between them have thousands of hours experience working with carers, what three key things they would recommend... 

1. Self-Care.  Sometimes we can even forget what this feels like, because we have spent so long spending every waking moment thinking about providing care (and other responsibilities like work).  Start by planning a small thing each day that gives you a moment of joy, comfort or relaxation. Trust that intentionally seeking out small glimmers of joy in each day can make a great deal of difference. Then create a regular daily rhythm.   

If you are already doing this, try drawing up a plan of scheduled self-care.  Include things for each day, each week, and each month, as well as some ideas for 'dark and difficult days'. Be realistic but intentional. Enjoy the creativity of coming up with things that would be enjoyable for you. And schedule it.  

Self-care is not selfish.  Looking after your own wellbeing can help you to manage your caring role.  After all, no-one can pour from an empty cup! 

If this feels too much for you, please reach out to our therapy team through the referral form here.  We can help. 

2. Allow yourself time to express your emotions regularly.  This can feel like unlocking a flood, but bottling up your emotions is not going to help you in the long-run.  You could start by writing down how you feel.  Or talking to someone you can trust about how you are finding things. This might be a friend, relative, carers helpline or local carers group. 

It’s ok to hold opposing feelings at the same time: desire and guilt, love and hate. And it’s okay to feel angry, sad and anxious.  These emotions are vital messengers that give us information, informing us of what we need to pay attention to. 

3. Accept help.  And even seek it out.  This is a sign of strength, not of weakness.  Who could cook a meal? Watch the kids for an afternoon? Help with the shopping? Many people want to help but don't know what you need or how to offer it.  

As carers, sometimes our sense of identity, of who we are, can become buried under the demands of caring.  Taking these steps can help us remember that - as well as being a carer – we are human beings with our own hopes, aspirations and needs.  

You deserve not just to exist but to have times of joy and fulfilment, and doing so is in everyone’s interest.