When Caring Takes Over
Supporting Yourself While Caring for Someone with Dementia
Caring for a person living with dementia can slowly take over daily life. Alongside love and commitment, many carers experience exhaustion, guilt, frustration, anger, grief, and a constant, exhausting sense of responsibility — often without space to acknowledge how hard it really is.
This supportive workshop offers carers a chance to pause and reflect in a safe, evidence-informed setting.
Blending medical understanding of dementia with gentle, structured self-inquiry practices (The Work), the workshop explores not only the practical challenges of caring, but the emotional narratives carers often carry — about duty, patience, control, blame, and what it means to be “good enough” in the face of overwhelming carer burden.
Through focused medical inputs, guided inquiry, and personal reflection, participants are supported to:
· Better understand stress and burnout in carers
· Identify beliefs that may be increasing suffering
· Respond more compassionately to themselves and their loved one
· Make clearer, kinder decisions in day-to-day caregiving
· Further build their own resilience
This workshop is not about fixing dementia or learning more tasks. It is about supporting the person who is doing the caring.
Suitable for family carers, partners, and those supporting a loved one at any stage of dementia.
Dr Brendan O’Shea has been a General Practitioner in Co Kildare for over 30 years, providing personal medical care to individuals and their households. He has been extensively involved in both medical education and research in the area of overweight and obesity, successfully completing doctoral research on childhood obesity at Trinity College in 2015. He is Assistant Adjuvant Professor at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at Trinity College Dublin, and has previously acted as Chair of the National Clinical Advisory Group of the HSE National Obesity Programme.
Dr Nadine Ferris France A regular contributor to Seminars.ie workshops, we are delighted to welcome Nadine back to give this workshop. Nadine is a Certified Facilitator of the Work of Byron Katie and holds a PhD on internal stigma and shame. She gives workshops and retreats and facilitates individuals and groups all over the world. She specialises in working with beliefs and thinking that keep us stressed or hold us back from achieving our full potential. With an unusual background in international development Nadine, originally from Dublin, spent 20 years living in the Global South, and continues working with communities on issues of stigma, HIV, gender-based violence and global health.
More about Nadine here: www.nadineferrisfrance.com
To know more about them, both Brendan and Nadine have TEDx Talks available:
The Journey from Self-stigma to Self-worth
Whose death is it anyway ? How we die matters - seven steps to a good death.
Early Bird price before 30 September €120
After 30 September €150
Student/unwaged: €80