I knew that when I entered my friend’s door, I would need to sit, face her so that when she looked my way, our eyes would meet, and patiently and attentively listen. I knew that my response would have to feel to her as if I agreed with her negative comments about her son. She needed validation, empathy, and for me to understand that what was in her mind was, to her, 100% real.
If she was sad that her son “never came to visit”, my facial expression and body language needed to “look” sad. If she was mad that he “dumped her in this facility”, my facial expression and body language needed to “look” mad. If she was really happy when speaking about her favorite grandson, I needed to “look” happy too.
I never needed to use many words. I would often say, “huh”, or “wow”, or “what the heck!” but what she needed was to “feel” that I was listening, that I was with her, that what she was thinking and feeling was valid.
I have never seen this kind of validating/empathic response increase a person’s frustration or be at the root of what society calls dementia-related behaviors. But I have seen people whose companions skip the step of validation and empathy and move right to distraction. These people don’t get to feel the relief of having a safe place to express themselves, so their frustration remains unresolved. And because trauma therapy lets us know that the body keeps the score, we will usually see that unresolved frustration come out later. And then the person will get blamed for being agitated, aggressive, a wanderer, or having dementia with behavioral disturbance. The problem is rarely dementia. The problem is a companion who doesn’t yet understand how to work with the changing cognitive skills and changing emotional needs of their companion experiencing dementia.
This is what The DAWN Method helped me understand. Phew!
