For most people, life is a test of endurance. It is about learning to tolerate & endure whatever does not reach the standard of an ideal or perfect life. Few people have the continued experience of Heaven on Earth. For most people, an ideal or perfect life is just an unattainable dream.
We are taught to endure life with the belief that we make our own bed and then we lie in it. We are led to believe that sh1t happens and we have to learn to cope with it. We are told to be careful because accidents happen and they can be an intolerable pain. Throughout our life, we adopt other people’s beliefs based on their experience of how they cope, tolerate & endure a less than perfect life and we consider this to be normal.
Dementia occurs when we are no longer able to endure the problems that we face in what is considered to be a normal life. The fear of facing life alone or facing death alone can become an intolerable burden as we get older.
When the sub-conscious mind is unable to solve the problems of living a disconnected life in separation or isolation, it cannot cope with the chaos of everything that can possibly go wrong in life. When the sub-conscious mind believes that it can no longer cope, it needs a coping mechanism that ensures its continued survival.
Survival is a sub-conscious instinct. When I believe that I cannot cope with life by making my own choices, there appears no alternative but to express a preference for other people to make my choices and cope for me.
Dementia then becomes a test of endurance for the carer. When the carer is a long term partner, they have to endure all the changes that their partner’s dementia causes in their lives. At the point when they have learned to cope adequately with all the problems in their life, an impossible problem of dementia afflicts their partner. For the rational problem solver, who manages the partnership, this irrational problem will be their greatest test of endurance.
My sensitive attachment to my partner means that I share their problems and I share their pain. It is a great test of endurance because there is no way of solving their problem. The problem is dementia and as there is no cure, there is no solution to the problem. There appears to be no alternative but to endure an intolerable situation and learn to grin and bear it, like we have been taught.
The biggest test that faces a non-professional carer is how long they can continue to care for a person with dementia, who they care about and care for, before they are no longer able to take care of them.
The sensitive attachment that a carer has for the one who they care for, eventually becomes mentally, emotionally and physically draining. The positive sensitivity turns to negative insensitivity as the carer’s patience & endurance is tested to their limit. There comes a point when they have no option but to disconnect emotionally and become insensitive to the needs of their patient. When the carer’s patience runs out, they also become a patient.
Professional carers can truly care when they have learned to become sensitively detached. Detached means that there is no emotional attachment to the patient and there is no attachment to the dramas that the patient is facing in their relationship to other people.
A good & beneficial standard of care requires that the carer cares with detachment, which requires sensitivity. Sensitivity allows the carer to always know where the patient is emotionally. Caring without detachment is emotional disconnection, which is insensitive to the emotional needs of the patient.
In an inclusive, unemotional and generally insensitive society, many carer’s, professional or otherwise, are unable to sensitively detach and become emotionally disconnected, as the only way to cope.
Sensitive detachment allows one to care for another emotionally, care about them mentally and take care of them physically. A carer who is emotionally disconnected is capable of taking care of another’s physical needs but lacks the competence to care for them emotionally because they do not have the capacity to care about them mentally.
When we are relating to someone with a mental deficiency, it is easier to cope when we ourselves switch off our own mental efficiency in the belief that if we cannot solve their problem, there is no use trying. When I mentally disconnect, by not caring about another’s mental incapacity, it no longer bothers me, so I don’t care about it and I no longer have to tolerate or endure it. This is a common, often sub-conscious, coping mechanism of a carer who has not attained any level of sensitive detachment.
When I am bothered to care, caring will bother me and as a carer I need to learn to care without caring and I need to learn to bother without being bothered. When I need to care or I need to be bothered, I have an emotional attachment to the one who I care for and it will bother me. When I am sensitive, I care and when I am detached, nothing bothers me; so with sensitive detachment, I can care without being bothered.
The fate of all people with dementia is to eventually end up in an institution, which caters for their physical needs and allows them to endure a painless end to their life. Usually with the assistance of tranquillisers to suppress any emotional problems, anti-depressants to alleviate any emotional problems and painkillers to relieve any physical or mental pain. Institutions are there to take care of a patient’s physical needs by dealing in the best way that they know how with the mental & emotional problems that have committed the patient to their care.
It is not my destiny to experience my fate and it is not my destiny to allow others to experience their fate. It is my destiny to allow others to fulfil their destiny with or without dementia.