The symptoms of dementia are unique to each Individual. We all have a unique mind, we all have a unique capacity of the mind and a we all have a unique incapacity of the mind.
In a relative dual reality world, capacity & incapacity are relative to the ability of the mind to function well. It is the health of the brain that allows the mind to function well and it is the health of the mind allows the brain to function well. A healthy mind requires a healthy brain and a healthy brain requires a healthy mind.
Being mentally healthy is a state of mind. My state of mind is not determined by my brain. My mental programmes are not an inherent aspect of my mental processor. The state of my mental processor, my brain, is relative to my relative state of mind. It is therefore my healthy mind that allows my brain to operate well. When the programming has no gremlins, the processor experiences no glitches.
A computer needs good software to run on good hardware, to operate well. The software of my mind is my sub-conscious operating system. My operating system is designed to write its own programmes, which is its choice. I sub-consciously programme my mind through the conscious choices that I make.
My mental programmes are a perspective of my belief system and are designed to ensure my existence, my survival and my perceived beneficial experiences of life. My operating system ensures that I function autonomously and instinctively meet my need for emotional power.
As I am sub-consciously driven to meet my need for emotional power, I form a perspective of my reality that I perceive to be beneficial for myself. The truth of my reality is that I believe it allows myself to exist, survive, experience, develop & grow in the best possible way for me.
I am always guided by my empowered thoughts or driven by my motivated actions, based on what I believe consciously or sub-consciously is beneficial for myself.
As a baby, through infancy, we each develop our own personality, based on our own unique set of emotional needs and develop our own character, based on our own set of individual beliefs.
Dementia has its own personality & character because we all have our own personality & character. However, our character changes as our beliefs change. With dementia, our character changes as other people change our beliefs about our survival, our existence and our experience.
With dementia, when other people tell me I have an illness, I believe them; when other people tell me I am forgetful, I believe them and when other people tell me that I need to be looked after, I believe them.
As other people change my beliefs, my character changes. I adopt the character of someone who is suffering with dementia. As this meets their expectation, it does not disappoint or displease them.
At times, I forget that I have dementia and I act out of character. Sometimes there is no character, just a reflection of a Soul that is happily at peace with its Self. Sometimes, other people meet my emotional needs and I appear happy to see them. Other times, I am isolated & depressed and nobody knows how to cheer me up.
My personality is a reflection of what I need emotionally. I get frustrated when I do not have the emotional power to do what I want to do for myself. When a I take my frustration out on other people, they often mistake it for anger or see my intolerance as being intolerably difficult to manage.
I cannot expect my carer to understand what I really need emotionally, when I do not know myself. Unless I truly know myself, I do not know what I need emotionally to motivate & empower me. Even when I intuitively know what meets my emotional needs, it may be difficult to rationally explain to other people exactly why I need what I need.
People, with normal mental function & cognition, do not always have the awareness of what they need emotionally, nor do they have the rational ability to consciously explain it to someone else. We are rarely taught, so never consciously learn, the emotional attributes that empower us and the emotional needs that sub-consciously motivate us.
I am motivated sub-consciously by default to get my emotional needs met. When I am doing what I truly value, I am empowered by a joyful energy that fulfils me and makes me feel content. It is called happiness.
For many people, the feeling of happiness is something that rarely happens to them in their experience of life, which ranges in intensity from extreme pain to extreme pleasure.
Dementia, as far as we are aware, does not affect emotional awareness. Many people with dementia become more sensitively aware and less insensitive to life in general. It may be that dementia does affect emotional awareness, but without emotional awareness, we are unaware of it.
Although most people are unaware of their potential choice of emotional power, they are very much aware of their lack of emotional power, which they call misery or unhappiness. I may be unaware of what my emotional needs are, and how to personally get them met, but I am intensely aware when my emotional power is missing. Everybody has their own default level of emotional power, below which they feel depressed, disempowered & demotivated.
With dementia, an awareness of low emotional energy is still very much present. Just because someone is taking care of your physical needs, it doesn’t mean that they are also caring for what you need emotionally. Just because someone is doing what they believe is best for you, it doesn’t mean that you have to agree with them.
Every dementia patient presents a unique set of problems because they have a unique set of beliefs and a personal set of emotional needs. When the patient is unaware of them both, it is likely that the carer will also be unaware of them too.
The patient may eventually come to believe that it is best to let the carer take control but they can only come to that conclusion if they have the emotional power to change their own sub-conscious need to be in control.
The patient’s perspective of the care that they are receiving is unique, personal & individual to them, which makes their apparent illness a unique, individual & personal problem for the carer.