After spending your whole life with your parent or family member, or spending some of the most important chapters of your life with your spouse, could there be anything more painful than feeling that they have completely forgotten who you are? Many people are under the misapprehension that this is what happens when their loved one has dementia.
The truth is, despite working in the dementia care space for over 10 years and meeting countless individuals with dementia, we have very rarely ever seen someone with dementia who absolutely does not recognize a loved one who holds an important piece of their heart.
When your loved one with dementia doesn’t quite recognize you, or they call you by the wrong name, they are most likely experiencing Timeline Confusion™.
It’s not that they don’t know you. It’s not that they don’t love you. They’re just having trouble placing you on their timeline.
People living with dementia experiencing Timeline Confusion™ are experiencing time generally in a non-linear fashion, not just with regard to their interpersonal relationships. This means that they may believe that they are a young parent or that they are in the prime of their career, for example. Where someone living with dementia is on their timeline can vary from day to day, but it’s common for someone to stick to the same timeline narratives.
When it comes to interpersonal relationships and Timeline Confusion™, please remember that— just as we demonstrate in the above comic— your loved one recognizes you as someone who is familiar to them— someone they care about— they are just having trouble working out who exactly you are on their timeline.
In the comic, you will also notice that we often use a graphic like the one above to explain the discrepancy between our reality and a typical reality of somebody living with dementia who is experiencing Timeline Confusion™.
If your loved one with dementia calls you by a different name, don’t correct them. Just go with it! You and they will have a much easier time together if you can learn to accept and Embrace Their Reality™.
Yes, in order to understand Timeline Confusion™ and be able to effectively adapt to it, you first have to understand Embracing Their Reality™. Not everyone with dementia experiences Timeline Confusion™, but it is very common. Other hallucinations and delusions apart from Timeline Confusion™ are also really common, which is why it is absolutely necessary for all caregivers, family members, and friends to learn about and understand Embracing Their Reality™.
