Talking Resilience

Readers of my previous articles and blogs will know that I have been thinking about how resilience can help us in times of uncertainty. I’ve recently been able to do something practical to help.

Dementia Support UK, a service led by HammondCare has been established to help care homes in England as they respond to COVID-19. We know that the current pandemic has had an unique impact on people with dementia, whether this has concerned the risk of developing the virus, recovery, or the experience of protective and distancing measures. Innovate UK have funded this service to provide dementia support consultancy at no cost as care homes respond to these challenges. You can find out more here

Talking about Resilience and Dementia

Agnes Houston, author of Talking Sense, and I met virtually this week to explore sensory challenges for people with dementia at this time. Agnes is a Churchill Fellow, lives with dementia, and is a proud Glaswegian like myself. She champions the need for knowledge and awareness of the changes to vision, hearing, touch, position sense, taste and smell, as a result of both ageing and dementia. She also lives with breathing difficulties and has found the current shielding arrangements difficult. 

Agnes and I are very interested in resilience and how we find ways to cope in difficult times. She is one of the most resilient people I know and I value her friendship. Recently, however, Agnes has had to adjust to unwanted changes in her health, overcoming periods of discomfort and worry. But she can’t always remember that she has done this. So, how does she know that she can and that she is ‘resilient’?

 When someone is living with dementia they can forget about aspects of their life, their experiences and relationships. We don’t usually keep a ready list of things or people to call on, instead we rely on knowing ourselves and recalling the people and things we can use in any situation. Our brains shortcut lots of things for us to make our lives more manageable. So, if a difficult situation arises we can recall a similar situation, and what we did to resolve it, and try the same thing again. Dementia can interrupt this process. Thinking of yourself as ‘a person with dementia’ can also shake confidence in your abilities. Not to mention living with the negative attitudes or preconceptions of others. 

Tips to Help

With reference to the techniques in my book Promoting Resilience in Dementia Care, here are a couple of things you can do.

• Write down the types of things you might need help with (a care partner can help you with this if needed).
• Have you had to deal with anything similar before? (You might need someone to remind you on this).
• What did you do then? (Taking time to talk to other people about your life is a great way to stimulate this).
• Keep a list of people and things that can help you. (This can be a different list depending on what each issue is).
• Be kind to yourself. We are not all resilient all of the time or can be in different situations.
• Needing help doesn’t mean you are not resilient. In fact, seeking help is an act of resilience as you get the right resource for the problem at hand.
• Remember that you can be on someone else’s list as their ‘go to’ person. Having dementia doesn’t mean you can’t help or support other people. We all have something to offer.

 Where to from Here?

Meantime, Agnes is continuing to educate others about life with dementia. This current experience of life in the midst of a pandemic, could be just another addition to her personal resilience reserve, which she can reflect on and employ at some point in the future. We both certainly hope so.  Talking Sense. Living with Sensory Changes and Dementia published by HammondCare. Promoting Resilience in Dementia Care: A person-centred framework for assessment and support planning is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers and can be found here