Approaching Difficult Conversations with Compassion

Transcript:

What advice would you give families to help them approach these difficult conversations with compassion and understanding? Whether it's with their siblings or their loved one who has dementia, how should they approach that conversation?

What I really like to do is offer for them to meet with me. It does not have to be actually in the cottage, but meet with me somewhere neutral where I could talk with the family members that are all going through this together.

I find my master's in counseling degree has come into play frequently throughout these conversations. But what I really like to do is talk about, okay, what is going on in the family household today? Is the caregiver completely consumed by the role? If they are, then we need to start talking about, can the person be a wife again? Can they be a brother again? Can they be a child again? And those are some of the compassionate conversations that I have.

I think people are very hard on themselves, that they don't think they can do this for long at home, and it's a reality and no one can. And that's, I think, a tough conversation sometimes, but people have to realize that physically and mentally exhausting themselves to take care of another person does nothing to help that other person. Then we have to move on to discussing some other steps of support that I can give them.