Tag Archive | lying

“You Oughta Know: Acknowledging, Recognizing, and Responding to the Steps in the Journey Through Dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease” – Chapter 5 Excerpt

Dec23

You Oughta Know: Recognizing, Acknowledging, and Responding to the Steps in the Journey Through Dementias and Alzheimer's DiseaseIn this sixth installment of brief excerpts from each chapter in the book You Oughta Know: Acknowledging, Recognizing, and Responding to the Steps in the Journey Through Dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease, we look at the fifth step in the journey through dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease.

This post includes an excerpt from chapter 5, which provides a thorough look at how to acknowledge, recognize, and respond to the fifth step in the journey through dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease when paranoia emerges.

This chapter shows why and how paranoia is part of the journey through dementias and Alzheimer’s disease, the impact it has on our loved ones, and how we as caregivers should respond to them both medically and personally with kindness, gentleness, and understanding.

This fifth step requires a lot of love, a lot of commitment, a lot of sheer determination, a lot of perseverance, and a lot of courage on our part as caregivers because this, of all the steps, can be most brutal emotionally to us personally because it will literally chew us up and spit us out on a continual basis all the way through it.

This chapter offers practical and accessible information to help us and our loved ones navigate this step successfully and intact.

This series begins with the forward to the book and an explanation of why I wrote this book and why you should read it.

The series continues with the inclusion of excerpts from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and, with this post, Chapter 5.

The steps in the journey through dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease are presented sequentially in the order in which they actually appear in the course of these neurological diseases.

There are no other books that literally walk through each step in sequential order as they emerge in the journey through dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Additionally, there is no other book that discusses:

  1. The process we as caregivers acknowledge each new step – there is an acceptance period that we have to go through
  2. The process we use to guide ourselves and our loved ones with dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease through the recognition phase of each step
  3. The concrete, loving, and practical information on how we should respond and how we can help guide our loved ones’ responses

These are the things that make You Oughta Know: Acknowledging, Recognizing, and Responding to the Steps in the Journey Through Dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease unique and stand alone in the plethora of books about dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease.

going gentle into that good night divider

Excerpt “Chapter 5: ‘Confusion Never Stops, Closing Walls and Ticking Clocks’”

“Pervasive paranoia is the next step in the journey of dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease. At some point, hallucinations and paranoia tend to overlap – the hallucinations, especially if they’re scary will elicit panic and anxiety – but paranoia eventually stands on its own as a distinct step in the journey.

Paranoia has a complicated root system that we’ll break down into its components so that we understand why it occurs and what it looks like.

  1. One of the roots of paranoia in our loved ones with dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease is confusion and fear. There is self-awareness, at this point, within our loved ones that something is really wrong. They don’t know what it is, but the feedback around them, spoken and unspoken, tells them that they can’t trust themselves. 

    Persistent hallucinations leave them with blurred lines between what’s real and what’s not. Constant corrections to the information our loved ones believe is true creates widening doubt. Repeated proofs that disprove what our loved ones believe to be accurate create insecurity. 

    All of this also creates anger and fear because humans are wired to trust themselves – their reasoning, their assessments, their intuitions, their processing of the external world – more than to trust any other human being. When that innate ability is constantly challenged and proven faulty, it’s scary and it is infuriating.”

Is It Ever Okay to Be Dishonest With Our Loved Ones Suffering With Dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease?

Nov21

I’m actively involved in several online support groups for caregivers and sufferers of dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Again and again, when caregivers post about issues and problems they are having in their roles as caregivers for loved ones who have dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease, I see in the responses, from other caregivers, the overwhelming advice to tell “fiblets” to handle the tough issues or problems.

I have noted that none of the dementias and Alzheimer’s Dementia sufferers in these groups offer this advice. Instead, they stress telling the truth at all times because as loved ones who are suffering with these diseases, they want to know the people they’ve entrusted their care to are being honest with them.

It is only the caregivers who suggest being dishonest and deceitful.

I’d never heard the term “fiblets” until I joined these support groups, but I know what that means morally and ethically. It is a synonymous term for an equally ubiquitous term in the general population: “little white lie.” (Lies, by the way, are lies. All the minimizing adjectives in the world do not change the bottom line of being dishonest and deceitful.)

lies deception fiction alzheimer's disease dementia caregivingEach time I see the word fiblet, I physically and mentally cringe. Partly because of the “it’s okay” mentality of those suggesting being dishonest by a labyrinth of excuses and justifications that, in the end, ring hollow.

And I cringe partly because of my own internal rejection of the morality and the ethics of being dishonest with anyone, no matter what his or her current neurological/mental/physical state. Beyond my foundation of absolute right and wrong that says that all dishonesty is wrong, I see the practical and detrimental effects of this practice in the relationships involved.

If I, as a caregiver for a loved one suffering from dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease, am willing to be dishonest about routine matters (e.g., “Dad left the house,” when Dad is actually there or Dad is dead, “I called the doctor,” when in fact no call was made, or “your brother/son was here yesterday,” when he was not or is dead) with my loved one(s), then how can I be trusted, in a general sense, and by my loved one and everyone else in my life, to be honest about anything else?

I destroy my credibility one lie at a time. And I create, in my own mind, each time I am dishonest, a myth that it’s okay, that it’s the easiest way, and that it’s necessary. And, I also am creating a habit that will automatically default to dishonesty any time I face a difficult situation in life. At some point, down the road, I won’t be able myself to know what is true and what is not because of all the lies I’ve told before.

So, not only have I broken the trust of my loved one(s) who’ve entrusted their care and their lives to me, but I have also broken the trust of everyone else in my life.

So, is it ever okay to be dishonest with our loved ones suffering from dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease?

The unequivocal answer is “No!”