Every person living with dementia has their story,
and so do their care partners.
Embracing Their Reality®
Even though this short film is a work of fiction, the story is based on countless direct experiences helping people living with dementia and their loved ones navigate challenging situations. It isn’t meant to encapsulate every person’s experience with dementia, or every caregiver’s experience. There are over 100 causes of dementia including Alzheimer’s, and the film was not made with any particular cause of dementia in mind. Instead, it’s based on an amalgamation of experiences working with people living with dementia.
Through working in dementia care since 2014, Rachael Wonderlin, Johns Hopkins Press author and founder/CEO of Dementia By Day (featured in the film as Grace’s friend) realized that the old frameworks of dementia communication just weren’t working.
Why?
Reorienting, Distracting, Validating™
None of these solves the emotional problem of the person living with dementia. These methods, in one way or another, avoid answering the person’s question, avoid solving their emotional problem in the moment, and scare families about what “lying” is and isn’t.
How is Embracing Their Reality™ Different?
Embracing the Reality of someone living with dementia means finding their reality and doing what is true for them instead of worrying about what is true for us.
It’s not “therapeutic lying.” It’s not telling a “fiblet.” It’s not lying. Period. As Rachael says in the short film, “take the word lying out of your vocabulary” when it comes to Embracing Their Reality!
Here are some more explanations behind some of the choices we made while making the film:
Embracing Their Reality®
Rachael’s trademarked concept for doing what is true for the person using questions like, “Where do you think they are?” and tossing out the word “lying.” Yes, the idea of “going to their world” has been around for a long time, but nomenclature is important: what we call something defines that thing. Embracing Their Reality™ provides a framework for care partners to follow.
Timeline Confusion®
This is another concept trademarked by Rachael Wonderlin that builds upon Embracing Their Reality™. Timeline Confusion™ explains why people living with dementia might struggle to place a person on their timeline. As Rachael says, “It’s not that they don’t love you, it’s not that they don’t know you, it’s just that they can’t figure out who you are on their timeline.”. It’s easiest to demonstrate with an example. If Dad believes he is 30 and works at a law firm, how can his daughter, Grace, be in her 30s? Instead of recognizing her as Grace, he reasons that she is in fact her mother and his wife, Lydia. They do look alike, after all!
“Can You Help Me?”
Notice that Grace asked her dad “for help” chopping vegetables instead of “Do you want to come chop vegetables with me?” Asking for “help” makes the person living with dementia feel needed and necessary, but asking if they “want” to do something will most likely result in them saying, “No!”
The Lamp and The Briefcase
This is called object agnosia, when someone has difficulty distinguishing one object from another. Yes, it really does happen occasionally that people with dementia confuse one object for another!
The Tie
You may have noticed that both Young Dad and Older Dad are wearing the same tie. Even though Dad was experiencing a delusion that he was late for work, he actually did find an old tie from his office days and put it on in an attempt to look his best for “work.”
Going to Work
Did you catch what the special idea Grace’s friend had for her dad? Since he was so fixated on “going to work” at the start of the film, Grace and her friend built him a life station made up of a briefcase, a book, and some office supplies. This way, when Dad asks to go to work, Grace can Embrace His Reality and let him know this is where he’s working from today, just until “quittin’ time,” of course!
Mirrors
People with dementia can have access to mirrors. In the short film, we used mirrors as a narrative device to show the audience how someone living with dementia might think about themselves and what they might be feeling while experiencing Timeline Confusion. In reality, when someone with dementia looks at themselves in the mirror, if they’re experiencing Timeline Confusion, they will probably just think the person in the mirror is a photo of someone else, or a window into a neighbor’s house.
Knives
People living with dementia can also have access to knives. Just because they have dementia does not automatically mean they are a danger to themselves or others. If they have mobility issues or a history of aggression, that is a different story altogether. In general, people living with dementia can use butter knives. Knives for chopping in the kitchen are more of a case-by-case basis call, but it’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility, so we have a lovely vegetable chopping scene at the end of the short film!
