I Wish Someone Told Me: Love Alone Doesn’t Make You a Good Caregiver | Ayurveda for Caregivers
- Jean-Francois Alleno
- Dec 22, 2025
- 6 min read
Love alone doesn’t make you a good caregiver. And believing it should is one of the biggest sources of burnout, guilt, and self-blame.
In this video, I break down:
🌿 Why love is a feeling, but caregiving is a skill set
🌿 How love without boundaries drains your Ojas (your vital essence)
🌿 The Ayurvedic perspective on why exhaustion is not a sign of failure
🌿 What actually makes caregiving sustainable
🌿 A simple grounding breath you can use anytime guilt or resentment shows up
If you’ve been caregiving from pure love but feel stretched thin, overwhelmed, or alone this video will help you understand why, and what you can do today to rebuild steadiness.
💛 Ready to move from barely keeping up to feeling grounded and emotionally steady? Book an Ayurvedic Assessment and get personalized support for your caregiving journey.
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Caregiver, let's talk about love. and more specifically, have you ever thought that because you love the person you are caring for, then that should be enough?
Enough to keep going, enough to stay patient, enough to stay strong, and enough to not break down. Here is the truth. I wish someone told me when I was caregiving. Love alone doesn't make you a good caregiver. And thinking it should is one of the greater source of burnt out guilt and self blame.
So today, I want to help you shift that. Consider giving a like to that video, subscribe for more caregiver-centered Ayurvedic support, and share it with someone who needs to hear that too.
Hi, I'm Jean-Francois, a registered nurse, a ayurvedic health counselor, a yoga teacher, and a vedic astrologer.
Iguide caregiver of aging parents who give so much of themselves that they forget to care for their own health, needs and energy until they hit a wall. And in this video today, I'm going to talk about why love is not enough and why it's not supposed to be enough. What actually makes caregiving sustainable?
And the Ayurvedic perspective on why love without boundaries drains your Ojas All right, so stay till the end. I will share with you a simple grounded practice you can start today to bring more steadiness and less guilt into your daily care.
So let's start with the hard truth. The one most caregivers never hear, why love is not enough? So most of us grew hearing things like, if you love your family, you take care of them. Love means sacrifices. Family come first. Do whatever it takes. And so when aging parents need us, when siblings don't really help,
or when our partner assume we will handle everything we think, I love them. So I should be able to do this. But here is what no one says out loud. Love is a feeling. Caregiving, on the other hand, is a skill set. I'm a professional, I know that. Love is emotional. Caregiving is physical, practical, logistical, mental,
and emotional all at once. Love inspires care but it doesn't replace rest, support, systems or skills. And you need all of it. Rest, support, systems and skills. So you can love someone deeply and still feel overwhelmed, still be resentful, exhausted or stretched beyond your limits.
And that doesn't mean you are failing them. It means you are human. All right. So what happened when we think love should be enough? When caregivers believe love should carry everything, three things happen. First, you ignore your limits. You push through exhaustion. You don't ask for help. You convince yourself you can do one more thing.
Ayurveda has a word for that energy you are using. You are using your ojas, your vital essence, your energy, your well of immunity and vitality. when ojas depletes, exhaustions become your baseline. Number two, you take everything personally. Every mood swing, every difficult day, every comment like...
You are late again. Why you did not do that? Why this? Why that? Feels like almost like an attack. because you are doing it out of love and when it's not received with gratitude, it hurts. And number three, you feel guilty for struggling. I should be able to do this. I should not feel resentful. I should have more patience.
She's my mother, but caregivers listen closely. Struggling doesn't mean you don't love them. It means that care has outgrown the support you are receiving. Love isn't the issue. Isolation is the issue. Over-responsibility is the issue. Doing everything alone is the issue.
see the Ayurveda view on the cost of love without support. Ayurveda teaches that good care comes from equilibrium, balance, and not from pushing through. So let's break it down through the three doshas.
Number one, Vata. When Vata rises again, when you are constantly on alert, doing everything, juggling tasks, making decisions,
your nervous system goes into an always on mode.
And you will feel anxiety, overthinking, disrupted sleep and feeling unsafe in your own body. And love didn't create those symptoms, right? It's over responsibility When Pitta rises, that's the second Doshas, the pressure to do it right, the frustration that no one else stepped in, the resentment that grows when you are the default caregivers. I knew that one.
And it will show up as irritation, snapping easily. I know that one. Guilt after snapping and feeling like you are carrying injustice on your shoulder. So love did not create that fire, right? It's the absence of shared responsibility. And finally, when Kapha collapsed completely,
Eventually when you have carried everything on your shoulder for too long, symptoms of heaviness, emotional withdrawal, feeling numb, sadness or low mood will show up and it will be very difficult to motivate yourself. Love did not create that numbness. Exhaustion did.
What actually makes someone a good caregiver? A good caregiver is not someone who loves the most. It's someone who has the capacity to care for themselves sustainably. What does that mean? Well, I divided in four different categories. The number one is boundaries.
protect your energy. It's someone who is capable of saying no, and not from guilt and not from self-sacrifice, but from clarity, saying like, here is what I can do today and here is what I can't. That's clear and that support your energy. Number two, support. Emotional, logistical, practical support. Even a little bit make a huge difference. And it means maybe asking a sibling for
One task, maybe asking a neighbor to check on your parents for that evening that you cannot really go and check. Or maybe like having the support of your community. This is huge. Number three, skills and system that make care easier. I mean, you are not maybe good at understanding the medication, let's the drug store handling the medication for you.
let's maybe order once or twice a week food from a restaurant that will deliver directly to your parents.
None of these have anything to do with love, but all of it helps you love better. And finally, number four, the inner steadiness, your Ojas I beg you, Ojas is built through nourishment, rest, breath, boundaries, connection, routine, all of it.
Love expresses care or Ojas sustains care.
So as promised, what you can do today, a simple practice. it's called the loving boundary breath. So do that every time you feel some guilt, some resentment, it's really helpful.
Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly, being in contact with your own body inside. And you inhale and tell yourself,
Inhale, my love is steady. Exhale, my limits are sacred.
So you repeat that for five to seven rounds and watch what happens. Your breath slows, your chest soften, your nervous system shifts from survival to steadiness and your Ojas begin to rebuild in real time. So caregiving become less about obligation and more about presence.
Caregivers, let me leave you with these things. You don't have to prove your love through exhaustion. You don't. You don't have to earn worth through self sacrifices. You don't have to do anything alone.
Capacity, community, boundaries are what help you stay. And you deserve all three. If you are ready to move from barely keeping up to feeling grounded, clear, and more emotionally balanced, this channel is for you. So consider giving a like, subscribe, share with your friend. And if that video resonated with you, please.
I would love for you to give me a call, maybe book an Ayurvedic assessment, and I would be honored and privileged to help you on the caregiving journey. All right, so take care of yourself and I'll see you on the next video. Ciao.
