Giving someone a dose of their own medicine has its roots in the notion of revenge.  Turns out, though, that the process often has a deeper purpose: that of determining whether the offending person is capable of developing greater empathy for you, as seen in Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201901/should-you-give-someone-taste-their-own-medicine.  

When we have the privilege of using and sharing the DAWN method https://thedawnmethod.com for dementia care, we hope that learning dementia will help folks with healthy brains also learn empathy.  We hope that as more people understand the skills that folks with dementia are losing, and also the skills the person with dementia retains, the world will become a more dementia-empathic place.

The Covid season has caused us to grow in our empathy for those living with dementia, and we are grateful, but it hasn’t been easy.  You see, we have had moments where we have literally walked around our homes wondering what we should be doing, not sure what to do next, with feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and ambiguity.  It’s been an unsettling reality to have our usual life and usual pace of life abruptly stopped, as if a brick wall just went up in the path with no way around it.  

But we’ve realized this: this is what our companions with dementia increasingly live with every day. 

Because of the gradual loss of memory, folks with dementia have a harder time remembering what today is, and what yesterday was, and what they just did, and what it is they are needing to do.  The gradual loss of rational thought makes it difficult to analyze what’s going on and how best to respond to what’s going on.  It becomes harder and harder to use problem-solving and judgement to make good decisions.  As attention skills become less proficient, folks may get mentally started on a plan, get distracted by the bark of a dog, and never be able to mentally return to the process of planning their day.  

Those of us with brains not affected by dementia have had options in how we’ve responded to Covid; we could decide to do a long-delayed house project.  We could decide to go out for a walk with a friend and use our cognitive skills to make it happen in a socially distant way.  We could read that book we’ve put off for forever.  We could spend more time with our loved ones, and be quite sure that it would be a nice time because we have the cognitive skills to be part of the conversation, keep up with the conversation, and not be embarrassed because we are increasingly unable to remember our loved ones’ names.

But that walking around aimlessly, and wondering what to do,  along with the feelings that caused; well, it really got to us.  And caused us to consider, with just a bit more understanding, the life our companions with dementia live every day.  

As the world slowly reopens, we hope our deeper level of empathy will remain at the forefront of our days, because Covid caused us to spend just a few moments in the uncertain shoes of dementia.

©Jill Couch, MS, OT/L