5 Quick Tips For Dementia Caregivers About Hallucinations
Have you ever wondered how to handle hallucinations in your loved one with dementia?
As a caregiver, you might feel overwhelmed when your loved one sees or hears things that aren’t there. It’s common to feel unsure about what to do next. This blog post will guide you through some practical tips to help you navigate these challenging moments with love and grace.
What Are Hallucinations?
Hallucinations occur when a person sees, hears, smells, or feels something that isn’t real. For those living with dementia, this can be a distressing experience.
However, understanding the nature of these hallucinations can make a big difference in how you respond.
Are They Afraid?
The first step is to ask if the hallucination scares them. Fear is a powerful emotion, and it’s essential to address it immediately. If your loved one is frightened, reassure them.
Use gentle words and a calm tone. You might say, “I’m here, and you’re safe.” This simple approach can bring comfort and reduce anxiety.
When Hallucinations Don’t Bother Them
Sometimes, the hallucinations don’t trouble the person with dementia. If they are not afraid, it might not be necessary to take immediate action. Instead, focus on staying calm and acknowledging their experience.
You could ask, “What do you see?” or “Tell me more.” This approach helps in validating their feelings without causing unnecessary stress.
Managing Your Own Reactions
Hallucinations can be more unsettling for the caregiver than the person experiencing them. If this is the case, it’s important to manage your own expectations.
Accept that you might not be able to change the hallucination but can change how you respond to it. This shift in perspective can ease the burden on both you and your loved one.
Environmental Factors
Sometimes, the environment plays a role in triggering hallucinations. For example, shadows or reflections can confuse someone with dementia. Consider making small changes in the environment, such as adjusting lighting or removing certain objects, to see if it helps reduce the hallucinations.
Keeping a Diary
Documenting when and where hallucinations occur can help you identify patterns or triggers. This can be incredibly useful in understanding the situation better and might even help in preventing future episodes.
Final Thoughts
Hallucinations in dementia don’t always need to be feared. By approaching the situation with patience and understanding, you can provide comfort to your loved one. Remember, if the hallucination isn’t causing them distress, it might not need intervention.
However, if it is, consider seeking medical advice to explore further options. Your role as a caregiver is invaluable, and these moments, while challenging, offer an opportunity to connect with your loved one in a profound way.
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[0:01] Well, what’s up, Christian caregiver? Welcome back to Christian Dementia Caregiving. It is the podcast where I teach Bible-believing Christians how to make their dementia caregiving journey easier. We use proven evidence-based principles, but we do it from a biblical perspective, which is what makes this podcast unique and different. Kind of like me, a little bit unique unique, and different. Today, we are going into the last of this mini-series that I have done on five quick tips for dementia caregivers.
[0:35] This was a little experiment to see how it went, how people responded to it. I don’t obviously have the data yet related to how these episodes were received on the other end, but this is going to be the last one for right now. I’m going to go back to doing a little bit more of the more mindset and other
Understanding Delusions vs. Hallucinations
[0:56] caregiving types of episodes after today’s episode. But today’s episode is about hallucinations. And so I thought it would be helpful for us to start this episode with a discussion or a description of what is the difference between a delusion and a hallucination. So what is a delusion? A delusion is a false belief of something that truly isn’t true. The words that usually come with delusion is a paranoid delusion. Here’s an example. Many, many years ago, I was working as a home health in Greenville, South Carolina. And one of the patients that I went to do an initial start of care on, as I was talking to her, I noticed that she had fully formed paranoid delusion. And it was very interesting because the more you spoke to her, like at the beginning, it wasn’t evident. She was answering all my questions very reasonably, very cognizantly and.
[2:03] I could tell that she was having some trouble with her thinking, but it was only a little bit later on as we went through the house and I started to look in her beautiful little condo and she had paintings on the wall, like beautiful artwork on the wall, but they were taken down and there wasn’t a pattern to it. It was really, really odd. One painting here, one painting there. And they were in front on another surface in the room and somebody had taken a marker or a nail or something and scratched on these paintings and like scratched out people’s faces and all sorts of really bizarre stuff. And I asked her, I said, oh, well, what happened to your paintings? Because I’m the world’s most curious person when I go into people’s houses and my parents have a lot of beautiful artwork. So I always look at art and she’s like, oh, you will never believe. I’m like, what? What’s going on? She’s like, somebody comes into my house at night. And then they take my paintings down and they move them around.
[3:01] And I can’t believe that they do that. Can you believe that they do that? And I said to her, oh, wow, that’s interesting. Tell me more. And she’s like, she kept on with this. And we walked further into the house and there was a closet and it had multiple, multiple extra bolts on the outside of the closet. I’m like, well, tell me about this closet with all of these locks. And she’s like, Like, oh, they come in at night and they steal my stuff. Like, oh, that’s interesting. Now, what happened then was she started to pick up that I wasn’t believing what she was telling. And so she got really super agitated with me because I didn’t believe her delusion. That was a delusion, a paranoid delusion. It is a false belief of something happening. Typically in dementia, people who have delusions have one of these two types of delusions.
[3:58] People are stealing my stuff or my husband or wife is having an affair. Those are the two most common delusions in people living with dementia. So that’s just a little bit about a delusion. A hallucination, which is what we’re going to talk about primarily and give you five my quick tips for hallucinations is a hallucination is a true belief. The person is actually seeing something that isn’t there. Like they see something that isn’t there. They hear something that isn’t there. They see something that isn’t there and they smell something that isn’t there. We cannot hear, see, or smell it, but they absolutely see or believe that they see something that isn’t there. And usually, and this is an interesting fact, that there are different types of hallucinations. One type of hallucination that research has actually shown to be consistent when somebody has a delirium, we’ll talk about delirium and dementia in another episode, maybe next episode, what is delirium. But a person who is hallucinating bugs.
[5:12] The research has shown cockroaches, spiders, ants crawling around, whatever, bugs, that a person who hallucinates a bug is typically in a delirium and not necessarily truly hallucinating. Now, somebody who is hallucinating related to dementia, the research has shown that Alzheimer’s dementia, frequently they hallucinate children. They hallucinate children doing something. And why that is, I have no earthly idea. These are questions I’m going to ask the Lord when I get there. But related to hallucinations, if your loved one living with dementia hallucinates and tells you they’re seeing bugs, that is an indication that they are actually having a delirium on top of their dementia. It could be dehydration, it could be an infection or whatever. Those are things you actually have to take care of separately and have them treated and evaluated to see if something medically is going on. So just file that in your steel trap for another day, but just hallucinating bugs indicates a delirium. Are you feeling stressed as a Christian dementia caregiver? Let me help. I offer a monthly dementia care audit to one listener of this program to provide you with personalized but evidence-based strategies from a biblical perspective.
[6:39] We only have one session available each month.
Tips for Managing Hallucinations
[6:43] Don’t miss this opportunity to make your dementia caregiving journey easier. Schedule your own dementia care audit today.
[6:53] Now, hallucinations. What is a hallucination? A hallucination is seeing, hearing, smelling something that isn’t there. Now, quick Tip number one that I have for you is the most important thing that you can ask the person who is hallucinating is, are they afraid? Does the hallucination scare them? Because if the hallucination is frightening to them, I want to make sure that we do something about it because I don’t want anybody living in fear. I don’t want my mom living in fear if she were hallucinating. I don’t want your loved one living in fear if they are hallucinating. Because hallucinations.
[7:37] If they are bothering the person who is living with the dementia, then we have to take care of the hallucination. Oftentimes, hallucinations are one of the hardest things because it is frequently, not always, but frequently really related to the physical changes in the brain, which means they’re harder to handle and manage. There are some things that we can do, and we’re going to talk about that next. But if your loved one who is hallucinating is afraid, then that is something that we need to take seriously and maybe consider if we’ve tried some of these other five quick tips. If they do not work is to consider medication and talking to the doctor because I don’t want them living in fear. That to me is the biggest thing. I don’t want them living in fear. So you can ask them if there’s anything that you can do to help them feel safer, but it is often an indication that we need to consider medication.
[8:37] And like I said, I am not a strong proponent for medication, but it does play a role and it is something that we have to consider when we are coping with these kinds of things. Now, the second quick tip for today is sometimes hallucinations bother the caregiver more than they bother the person living with dementia. And if that is the case, then we need to manage your expectations as the caregiver and not so much worry about the hallucination of the person having this particular behavior. And so the reality of the fact is if the hallucination is bothering you, we need to manage your expectations and recognize and realize that this behavior may not be something that you can change. And how do we find ways for you to cope? So that’s the second quick tip. The third quick tip is always stay calm and be reassuring to the person and say gentle reassurances like, I’m here, I can help you.
[9:37] You’re safe. Try to work on whatever the emotion is behind it. Oftentimes, hallucinations are not scary for the person living with the hallucination. So if they’re not afraid, don’t worry about it. Just be matter of fact and say, oh, what are they doing? You know, the children are playing. I see a child standing in the corner of the room. Oh, well, what are they doing, mom? That is a strategy that you can employ. Sometimes environmental things can play into, this is quick tip number Number three, environmental things can play into a hallucination. One of my clients many years ago, there was a coat rack on a very far wall. Her mom hallucinated children. She always saw a child standing there. So we removed it to see if it was a factor in her hallucinations. It didn’t seem to make them better or worse, but sometimes it can. And yet again, you know, quick tip number four, always, always document or diarize, keep a diary of when it is happening, look for the environmental things or the reflections or their shadows, change things in the environment to help see if they decrease the frequency of the hallucination. And then lastly is always just validate the person, meet them where they’re at, ask questions like, tell me more about it, and gentle distraction techniques.
[11:02] So, you know, If you cannot change the hallucination, then what you can change is how you respond to it. But the crux of today’s conversation, the big takeaway that I want you to have is that hallucinations are only, in my experience, a problem when they bother the person living with dementia.
[11:27] Not so much a problem if they’re bothering you. Then we work on changing your response to it. If it’s not frightening mom, if it’s not frightening dad or your spouse, then we learn to cope with these hallucinations. We change things. We do a dementia log, a diary, look for triggers, look for all of the stuff that we know that could be contributing.
Conclusion and Resources
[11:53] But we are the ones that are likely going to have to, change our responses to their hallucination because if it’s not bothering them if it’s not broken don’t fix it if it is bothering them your last takeaway is that is when we do want to try to do something because i don’t want anybody living in fear so i am super excited about this short mini series on five quick tips for dementia caregivers this was the last one we’re going to do you for a bit. I will see how these episodes downloaded, how they did, if people enjoyed them. They were much shorter. I tried to keep them about 15 minutes or 20 minutes or so. But if you haven’t yet joined my Facebook group, that is also something that you can do. I have a small Facebook group called Christian Dementia Caregiving because I do want to work with and highlight a biblical perspective on caregiving. So I invite you to join me there.
[12:55] And then the last thing that I invite you to today is I do one-on-one free 30-minute coaching sessions as co-creation for this podcast. I call it a dementia care audit for people just like you who are struggling with a challenging behavior or deciding how to help your parent or your spouse or planning ahead for your dementia caregiving journey, anything and anything related to you and how to be a more effective and more efficient dementia caregiver.
[13:34] We can hop on a 30-minute dementia care audit. It becomes a part of this podcast. We can change your name, the name of your loved one. You do not need to be on camera. We can maintain your privacy, but you can actually get one-on-one help and one-on-one coaching from me. So if you haven’t signed up for one of those, message me on Instagram or Facebook Messenger the word audit, A-U-D-T, A-U-D-I-T, audit, just the word audit, and we’ll send you a link to sign up to one of these sessions. And we will record a podcast episode of about 30 minutes where you can get some one-on-one help and I can help you get on the right track for you to know where you need to go and what you need to focus on next. So take me up on this invitation. I only do one a month, So there’s only one slot a month. Hopefully that’ll be you. And I hope to see you starting to use these free resources available to you as a dementia caregiver in my community, because I am here to serve you. And I thank you for listening. Come back for the next episode. If you like these episodes, share them with another caregiver who is a Christian. That is how you can serve me. And thank you for being here today. I will see you in the next episode.
