The Art of Dementia Conversation
I’ve been around a lot of dementia these past couple years — as a professional caregiver, as a hospice companion, and as a granddaughter. Here’s what I’ve found in my continual refining of the artform that is dementia conversing:
Give up any kind of hold you normally have on linearity, being right, and factual happenings (like x happened, y did not happen, and z happened in such-and-such fashion). For example, if you find yourself going to correct something they say, first pause and ask and yourself: is this an important correction to make? Or is this one of the ones I can let go?
Vibes above all else — respond to their emotionality rather than their words. If you don’t know how to do this, it’s a great opportunity to practice developing your intuition, sensitivity, and full-body listening.
If you’re more of a conversational follower than leader, practice leading more. A fresh topic can (sometimes) help your conversation out of the loops it gets stuck in. Intentional vibe-steering is the move! Music and photo albums can also do wonders as vibe-steerers.
One of the beauties of this venue is you get a lot of chances to try out different topics and responses. If you mess up… just keep trying. All will be forgotten soon enough ;).
Don’t be afraid to speak nonsense, follow them in a million different directions, and pretend to know what they’re talking about. Remember, linearity doesn’t matter so much here. And if it’s about vibes, not factual details, then you do know what they’re talking about… even if the words are way out there.
Loving touch can be incredibly grounding for them. Try holding their hand, rubbing their arm, or touching their back.
Find the humor where you can. It can help ease the immense challenge of the situation. And there tends to be quite a bit of humor mixed in the complex cocktail of dementia.
When possible, embrace silence, feel into your heart, and speak silently to them from there. When you do this, you might find that more of their being is present in the room than you realized.
Cover art by Nick Stares.