TBI Blog: 8 Tips for Coping with Elderly Parents and Advanced Dementia

Jack Sisson's TBI Blog

A hug is duct tape for the soul.

A parent's physical decline or loss of memory due to dementia or Alzheimer's can cause anxiety, depression or just a niggling feeling of malaise inside.

A great way for coping with the stress of a parent’s declining health due to dementia is to acknowledge the anxiety, depression, or the general feeling of unease felt. Then you can decide how best to manage these feelings and live through them as they arise.

Realizing that a parent can no longer look after themselves alone, or that they no longer know who you are, can cause stress of varying degrees. Nevertheless, the challenge is to persist with acknowledging those moments of anxiety first, and then designing and implementing a plan when you feel anxiety or stress levels increase. All of us do better when we have put some thought into how to respond to circumstances that are upsetting.

Feeling Stressed about an Elderly Parent Suffering from Dementia
An elderly parent’s deteriorating dementia may prompt an adult child to experience anxiety or stress and feel any of the following:

Worried and distressed that the parent's personality and abilities are slowly disappearing
Helpless at being unable to ‘fix’ them and prevent the dementia from advancing
Guilty for not taking better care of them in the past and now
Lost and confused about what the future holds
To blame for an elderly parent’s own distress.

Any or all of these feelings can contribute to anxieties each time news that the health of an elderly parent due to dementia or Alzheimer's has diminished further.

Continue reading for 8 Tips to Manage Anxiety Prompted by a Parent’s Advancing Dementia

Labels: Alzheimer's disease, Alzheimers, caregivers, dementia