The life of a person living with dementia still has meaning and purpose, yet this meaning and purpose have to be constructed and recognized. Caregivers who are tuned into experiences of persons living with dementia will attend to these five important needs that they have. By doing so, attuned caregivers will serve as co-creators of meaning alongside persons living with dementia.
1. Comfort—We provide comfort when get physically and emotionally close to someone with dementia in a way that eases their sense of loneliness and isolation, we help build and maintain a sense of calm that we share with them. Sometimes people with dementia feel estranged from themselves and their community. They have moved from a home and fabric of community that they knew well. When a caregiver engages with an attitude and tone of warmth, kindness, and positivity, her open and mindful presence soothes the person who is dismayed by her dementia experiences.
2. Attachment—We establish the right conditions for secure attachment between us as caregivers and persons living with dementia when we are in tune with who they are and their needs. This is similar to using mindfulness to parent well. I fact, patterns of secure attachment (bonding) set down in childhood serve as the pattern throughout the life course. When we as a caregiver establish a nurturing bond with a child, we give them and us a sense of security in the relationship. Persons living with dementia need reassurance that they are connected with others when they face the challenges of the disease. They also need caregivers tuned into their joys. They need to “feel felt” as Daniel Siegel describes attuned attachment with children and parents. This gives them assurance that they are not abandoned.
3. Inclusion—We make community a place where everyone belongs by noticing and making space for the various experiences of human beings who are different from us. People who have some form of barrier to participating in community often suffer greater isolation. People with a disability need to know that they belong to social life and a social group. This is also true of persons living with dementia. Caregivers who are warm and attuned to persons who have dementia give them a sense that they still belong to social life by making space for them and their experiences.
4. Occupation—Everyone needs to have a sense that what they do matters and that they have a purpose. The same goes for persons who live with dementia. They need to take meaningful action that has consequences for social life in a way that is safe and appropriate for them. When they no longer can contribute to their vocation, they need other forms of directed action that gives life meaning, such as doing chores at home. Caregivers in tune with this need build opportunities and simulations of activities that relate to the occupation of a person living with dementia and their sense of meaning and purpose.
5. Identity—We build identity in relationship with ourselves, others, and our social worlds. When persons lose a sense of who they are, when they can no longer tell their own story, they need people around them who remember who they are. Caregivers who remember who persons living with dementia are can cue stories and interactions that help persons living with dementia to feel like themselves as best they can. If we as caregivers can maintain a person’s sense of who they are in community, then their story is accessible to them and us as a community asset. We practice storytelling together.
