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This session includes the following parts:
Part 1: Making the Decision to Move
Part 2: Accessing a Care Home
Part 3: Adjusting to the Move
Part 4: Communicating with Care Home Staff
Part 5: Questions for Reflection
Summary
Work through the various parts in the session at your leisure. Move from one part to another at your own pace and in the order that makes sense to you, based on your own needs and interests.
At any time, you may scroll to the Search bar and type a specific question or topic to learn more.
Click on the image below to download and print a brief self-reflection activity sheet. The purpose of this tool is to help you think about what you have learned and to provide a space for you to document some of your thoughts and ideas for moving forward.
All care partners of people living with dementia experience their own unique journey.
Some care partners progress through a series of stages, while others do not follow any set pattern. Here’s a look at the typical stages you might experience.
First Steps for Families After Diagnosis
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Sharing personal stories and experiences can be an invaluable support and can give insight to all who care for people with dementia. Similarly, reflections from people with dementia and those who are making a difference in their lives can inspire us to keep our hopes and dreams alive.
In this touching video, people share their hopes for the future. The video features care partners, people living with dementia and Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories staff.
Take a few minutes to watch the video and listen to the words and messages. And think about what hope for the future means for you.
After you watch the video, take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions. Feel free to make some notes.
In this video, we talk with psychologist and hope specialist Wendy Edey about how maintaining hope can help along the care partner journey. Learn about the importance of maintaining hope and knowing how to ask for help when you need support.
Take a few minutes to watch the video. Feel free to make some notes as you listen.
After you watch the video, take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions. Feel free to make some notes.
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Progression Series: Late Stage
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This session includes the following parts:
Part 1: Hope for Tomorrow
Part 2: Personal Reflections
Part 3: Taking Care of Me
Part 4: Questions for Reflection
Summary
Work through the various parts in the session at your leisure. Move from one part to another at your own pace and in the order that makes sense to you, based on your own needs and interests.
At any time, you may scroll to the Search bar and type a specific question or topic to learn more.
Click on the icon below to download and print a brief self-reflection activity sheet. The purpose of this tool is to help you think about what you have learned and to provide a space for you to document some of your thoughts and ideas for moving forward.
Providing care for a person with dementia takes a tremendous toll on the physical and emotional health of the primary care partner. Yet, many care partners often don't recognize the warning signs or deny its effects on their health.
You may tend to set your own needs aside while caring for the person with dementia. You may hope that if you don't think about it, the stress might just go away.
Imagine that you have been given a gift of time. How wonderful! Some time for yourself to take care of you. How would you spend this time for your own enjoyment and pleasure?
Download and print a copy of the activity sheet below. Reflect on and answer the questions.
After you complete the activity sheet, take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions. Feel free to make some notes.
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To effectively relieve stress, we need to activate the body's natural relaxation response. There are a number of techniques you can try that will fit into your daily life as a care partner.
Some techniques require little time. They will help reduce everyday stress and boost your energy and mood.
Examples include:
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Deep breathing is a simple yet powerful relaxation technique focusing on full, cleansing breaths. It’s easy to learn, can be practiced almost anywhere, and provides a quick way to get your stress levels in check. Deep breathing is the cornerstone of many other relaxation practices, too, and can be combined with other relaxing elements such as aromatherapy and music. You only need a few minutes and a place to stretch out. Source:www.helpguide.org
Watch this video and learn a deep breathing relaxation technique as occupational therapist Gina Shimoda demonstrates it. Follow along!
Visualization, or guided imagery, is a variation on traditional meditation that requires you to employ not only your visual sense but also your sense of taste, touch, smell, and sound. When used as a relaxation technique, visualization involves imagining a scene in which you feel at peace, free to let go of all tension and anxiety. (Source: www.helpguide.org)
Sit back, relax, and listen to this guided imagery audio recording.
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“Life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you are gonna get.” Forrest Gump
Everyone, at some point in their life, will face a challenge. Resilience is what gives us the emotional strength to deal with challenges that life brings along our path. Care partners and people living with dementia are starting this journey with a life experience that is unique to each one of you. We want to honour the life experience you have and positive supports you already have in your life.
Because resilience is built on our positive and negative experiences, we can apply our early life’s lessons later in life. Think of when you learned to ride a bike, which might feel like a lifetime ago, or learning to drive a car. You have learned to manage perhaps some fear, to anticipate what you would need to address a flat tire, or how to deal with having to take an unexpected detour.
An image is often worth a thousand words. The following video will introduce you to a teeter-totter. This teeter-totter can help you reflect on your resilience. You will find exercises that will build on this image as you move through Seeds of Hope family learning series.
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Care partners and people living with dementia have mentioned they like to think about resilience as their ability to bounce forward. When your teeter-totter leans toward the positive, you have more capacity to handle the unexpected hurdles that come along. Just like driving a car or riding a bike, we all need to be moving forward to get over the bump on the road. That’s how, when maintaining a positive balance, we learn to bounce forward and be more resilient!
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Life skills are mental processes that help us plan, juggle many demands, remember instructions, and focus our attention successfully. When we have strong life skills, they seem invisible to others!
Think of an air traffic controller. For an airport to run smoothly, a successful air traffic controller keeps tabs on incoming and outgoing planes on multiple runways. Just like an air traffic controller, life skills enable us to keep the multiple life demands and distractions we have from crashing into one another.
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2011). Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function: Working Paper No. 11. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.
In your teeter-totter, strong life skills increase your ability to have more weight on the challenging side while remaining positive. Mapping your life skills can allow you to reach for resources that can support them, allowing you to keep bouncing forward.
The following PDF has a reflection activity to help you map out your life skills. Thinking about how you are feeling today, look at both statements on each row and choose the one that applies to you the most now. Reflecting on how you are doing can feel challenging, but this can also be an opportunity to increase your awareness of what you need.
Now that you’ve completed the Life Skills Check-In take a few minutes to reflect on your results and consider the following questions. Feel free to make some notes.
Reflecting on what you are doing well and areas you can improve on can help you stay upright and keep moving forward—just like riding a bike!
The tool below will help you to reflect on your situation as it is today.
For each side of the teeter-totter, we provide examples. Think about how each category applies to your situation and decide how big of a role it plays in your life. You may find that none of the suggestions apply to you; feel free to choose “other.” You can add comments once you submit your results to remember what “other” meant for you. If you are a member, you can save your results to your dashboard to compare later.
You might notice that this activity appears at various points within this Seeds of Hope program. The dementia trajectory has an ongoing impact on people living with dementia and their care partners. It’s helpful over time to pause and think about your positive supports, stressors, and life skills.
Alberta Family Wellness Initiative
