Care Training
Dementia Memory Direct Care Training
Although dementia is a medical condition, understanding its language is an activity of heart and feeling. And we never give really good care to people with dementia unless we can stand side by side with them.
Too bad, then, that the usual care stance is oppositional. We are usually too ready to symptomize and negatively label those with dementia. And we are hardly aware that we have done that.
Not surprising. That is exactly how our society regards those with dementia. From the doctor to the daughter, all too eager to hide behind symptom labels. Much more useful to understand how dementia changes a person. Then to make relationship with this person who has been changed.
Many of our problems in caring for those with dementia come about because we are trying to change them. Instead, we should be learning how to relate to each one in their illness.
We can name the signs of dementia, but so what? I have never found in 20 years of caring for people with dementia that their symptoms were the issue. The issue is the caregiver and the making of relationship.
Keys to Dementia Relationship:
1. Assume this person is full of fear and anxiety;
2. Therefore, always speak kindly, slowly while making eye and same level contact;
3. Learn the common problems in dementia thinking;
4. Accept those and work with them, not against the person;
5.Built trust through kindness;
6. Accept that each person does dementia in his own way, while sharing common problems.
From the beginning, see how dementia puts roadblocks in this person’s life. Notice you could walk round those roadblocks to meet this lost and lonely person.
Common Problems in Dementia Thinking:
1. The fragmenting of short-term memory;
2. Being unable to follow logical argument;
3. Being unable to follow rational explanations;
4. Having no choice in any of this;
5. Creating stories to fill memory gaps;
6. Losing the sense of family connection.
You’d think, since we caregivers usually know all this, we’d make allowance for it all. But we don’t. Sometimes it’s because we really don’t truly understand how these losses show up in daily life. Then, if we don’t really understand what people are going through, we may blame them.
Sometimes, it’s because we are stressed, tired and overworked. Then it’s really easy to blame the person with dementia for being difficult, when we are actually at fault for not being easier. It helps a lot to know how dementia affects a person. Then we have to understand and forgive the ways in which those effects make our care life harder.
No-one gets dementia to make our lives difficult. After all, it also stole away that person’s life and that person really is trapped. We still have choices.
So we need to understand how dementia works. We have to learn the ways it steals a life away from the person, leaving them alone on Planet Sadness.
And, if you’re ever in that bad mood — not that you ever would be — then it’s very important to get it that you have choices. They don’t. And, heaven help them, they are in your power.
So, let’s fill our care with kindness. And keep taking those vitamins.
About the Author
Frena Gray-Davidson, Alzheimer’s caregiver and author of five caregiving books, including her latest book “Alzheimer’s 911: Hope, Help and Healing for Caregivers”, available at http://www.amazon.com/
Frena teaches care families and professionals to decode the language of dementia and achieve successful behavior interventions. Go to her website at http://www.alzguide.com/ and sign up for her free monthly online newsletter for all involved in dementia care. Email her at frenagd@gmail.com.
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