Hanging on to yesterday vs. being in today

Posted by RichardTaylor at 7th January, 2009

Stay with me Today!

I think there is too much emphasis on helping people with dementia hang on to yesterday (something caregivers need) vs. helping people living with dementia being, understanding, and appreciating today (something all human beings, especially people living with failing cognitive skills need). We need less memory books and video and more cues, memory helps and support to know and understand what is going on around us and within us today.

So what if we forget today 1,000 times a day. We still need to live in it. We still need to understand it and feel a sense of ownership of it. Otherwise, what is left for our minds to work on, to understand - yesterday? Twenty or fifty years ago?

It takes more time to enable and support us with our struggle to understand today. It takes increasingly more time and effort the deep we sink into the symptoms to support our need and want to stay in today. Helping us hang on to yesterday requires less time. Make us a book of family photos, put a little shadow box outside our room with things from our past in it, give us some old dolls or clothes to fondle or wear - then leave us alone, go about the rest of your day.

The emphasis on memories and yesterdays unintentionally tells our ever-confused hippocampus to focus on the past and pay less attention to today. Today seems to take care of itself as far as we are concerned. Other people make decisions for us, lay out our clothes, dress and wash us, take us to the bathroom, buy our groceries, cook for us, and keep calling us finding out what they can do for us today that we haven’t/can’t do for ourselves today. So why not spend some time relaxing and drifting out of today and listening to old tunes, watching old movies, talking about the past and let today take care of itself?

Regardless of how many plaques and tangles we each have in our respective brains we are all still what we think we are (Rene Descartes was right, sort of). Think about yesterday and guess who you are? When others around you treat you as if you were simply a carbon (sorry, Xerox) copy of yesterday or the past five or ten or twenty years, when others see us as evolving and growing old as they see themselves evolving and growing old they are naturally inclined to see in us their own need to enjoy the past, but live in the present. They sometimes escape to the past to avoid the problems of today, but then they must return to day. There is no pressure on us to return to today, because there is less and less need for us to return.

Not so!

Spend more times thinking of creative ways to support and enable us to stay in today, to understand what is happening around and to us, to structure activities so we must make our own decisions - today.

“Make it so.” Please!

Richard

Category : Blogs

Comments

Christina January 15, 2009

I have learned so much from you about living life. Yes, I have learned much about living with dementia but I think I have learned more about living with compassion, intelligence, curiosity and mindfulness.

Many of us will find ourselves journeying through life with some type of dementia. When my mother developed dementia I probably showed less common sense than she did. My confusion over how to “manage” the situation was more of an obstacle to our communication than her cognitive issues. I had not read your writings then. Things would have been different if I had.

I have experienced executive functioning and memory problems as a result of illness and have an inkling of what it is to suddenly become unhooked and lost. I know how it feels to be unable to find my house from two doors away. I am better now but some effects linger. It is a small window into the world of cognitive dysfunction and a sobering one.

When I next find myself in a situation where dementia is something I must contend with, in myself or another, I pray that I remember your insight and your wisdom. I will make sure that one of my kids has a copy of your book, just in case.

But, I do not have to wait to find ways in which my understanding of the human experience is deepened by your writing. You teach me about living right now.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Christina

Ann Frazier, ADC, CDP February 1, 2009

Thank you, Richard. As a professional caregiver of people with dementia I seem to be fighting against the tide. “When is the last time you did something for the first time?” has been a thought which lies behind my motivation for programming. Always keeping in the forefront the basic human needs as defined by Maslow…the need to be valued, to be needed, to be loved. I have seen, through non-traditional approaches to programming that there can be Dementia With Dignity. After observing what our residents accomplish many times I hear “We underestimate what they can do.” . I have heard of your book, today I am going to order my copy. As a public speaker for Alzheimer’s I will no doubt be encouraging others to read it as well.

Thank you, Ann Frazier ADC, CDP

Candy March 3, 2009

Hi Richard -
I am so sorry I was unable to travel to meet you Sunday at Presbyterian Village. You know how some of “us Southerners” freak out when it snows! Not getting there was certainly my loss. I have officially filed a complaint with my state’s medical board over the under-treatment of my mother’s pain during her last stage of dementia. It is time the medical professionals stop treating our dementia victims as purely psychotics and recognize that agitation is often caused by pain, discomfort, etc. Thanks so much for the great effort you are giving to help us understand this disease. Sincerely, Candy

KonstantinMiller July 6, 2009

Hello, can you please post some more information on this topic? I would like to read more.