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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
What are Executive Function Skills
Executive Function & Self-Regulation
Taking care of someone with dementia requires time and energy. It can be a demanding and stressful task. Knowing and recognizing the signs of stress in yourself or someone you care about is the first step toward taking action.
Watch this video to learn about the ten warning signs of care partner stress.
After you watch the video, take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions. Feel free to make some notes.
Care partner stress is a normal part of dementia caregiving. There are steps you can take to reduce it, but first, you must recognize it.
If you or someone you know is exhibiting signs of care partner stress, it is important to seek help. The person under stress should go to the doctor for regular check-ups. Ask family members and friends for their help and support. Take advantage of community programs that provide respite and relief from caregiving, practical help with meals or housework and assistance with the care of the person with dementia. And plan ahead for both the immediate future and the long term. These are just some of the things care partners can do to make their lives a bit easier.
Progression Series: Middle Stage
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Stress is your response to a stressor, such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. It is your body's method of reacting to a challenge.
Care partner stress is a normal part of dementia caregiving.
Watch the video below. It introduces a bucket analogy to help us understand stress. The size of our bucket is an analogy of our stress tolerance.
While a big bucket indicates a high stress tolerance, a smaller bucket means that you are more prone to the negative effects of stress.
Our tolerance level is a product of our genes, personality and life experiences. Therefore, the size of the bucket varies from person to person.
Regardless of bucket size, the first step for effective stress regulation is to get an overview of the water filling your bucket.
After you’ve watched the video, take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions. Feel free to make some notes.
What will you continue to do in your role as a care partner to manage the negative effects of stress? What will you stop or do differently?
This session includes the following parts:
Part 1: What is Stress?
Part 2: Symptoms of Stress
Part 3: Learning to Balance
Part 4: Relaxation Techniques for Stress Relief
Part 5: Taking Care of Me
Part 6: Questions for Reflection
Summary
Work through the various parts of 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.
Family and friends are often uncertain about how to help. They may not fully be aware of the support that a care partner needs.
When someone says, “If there is anything I can do...” that is the time to reply with, “As a matter of fact, I need help with my groceries!” Many people want to help, but they don’t know how. Identifying what you need help with should make asking a little easier.
Download and print a copy of the activity sheet below. Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with what you see. In the chart on the activity sheet, make a list of all the things that you can use help with. Use as many tables as you need.
Most communities have agencies and services that can help you. Services for people living with dementia and their care partners vary across each province.
You can find out what services are available in or closest to your community from a number of sources:
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Support from others can reduce stress and increase chances for success. Your circle of support can include people inside and outside the family. Community organizations and agencies may also be included.
Complete the circle of support “cloud” exercise below to help you identify and possibly expand the sources of support (formal and informal) that are available to you.
Here’s a sample of what a completed “cloud” looks like.
After you complete the exercise, print a copy of your “cloud” and take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions. Feel free to make some notes.
To learn more about what supports are available in or close to your community, scroll to the Search bar at the top of the page and type a specific question or topic.
