At Dementia By Day, we strive to innovate, to make our teachings around dementia care and dementia-friendly communication digestible in order to reach the people who need this education the most.
Especially in today’s algorithm-driven climate, despite being a brand that has had an online presence in our niche for over 10 years, we indeed do reach new people all the time. Most people don’t think about dementia until it affects them personally. Every day, suddenly finding the “caregiver” label thrust upon them, people stumble upon our content for the first time while searching for answers to questions they never guessed they would have to ask. If this sounds like you, welcome. You’ve come to the right place.
After celebrating the one year anniversary of our short film, Embracing Their Reality, our founder and CEO Rachel Wonderlin had the cool idea that we should develop a web comic on that same subject, the core tenet of our dementia communication framework. We commissioned the talented artist Brett E. Wagner to bring to life the story you see here.
This time, we chose to illustrate (literally) the concept of Embracing Their Reality™ with the story of a mother and daughter. As you can see, the mother has a delusion— a fixed, false belief— that her mother is still alive, so she keeps asking about her. She is experiencing Timeline Confusion™. Essentially, she is experiencing time differently and believes that, where she is on her life timeline, her mom is still alive. (Keep your eye out for our next web comic, as we will be tackling that subject next).
This is a common scenario for caregivers, in which the person living with dementia has a hallucination or delusion that is difficult for the caregiver to know how to respond to. So, what is a caregiver to do?
Trying to prove that our reality is the truth and impose it on the person living with dementia, by arguing or through extreme measures, never goes well. Though to some it may seem over-the-top and unrealistic, we have actually met people who have taken their loved ones to the cemetery to try and prove that the person they ask about on repeat is indeed deceased.
In the web comic, the daughter learns that she needs to ask her mother key questions to find out where her Reality is, in order to then Embrace it. By asking, “Where do you think she is?” the daughter gains insight into her mom’s delusion, and is able to solve the emotional problem her mom is experiencing. The emotional problem is that Mom feels stressed because she does not know where her mother is.
The daughter gives her mom the opportunity to think about a likely place her own mother might be, and when Mom answers that she believes Grandma is at the store, the daughter now has a good answer she can share with her mother next time she asks the same question.
We encourage everyone who interacts with people living with dementia to Embrace Their Reality™. It can feel awkward at first. We often compare it to learning a new language. Once you get the hang of it, though, it is very rewarding, and makes for less stress for everyone involved.
