Whenever Deena started to get upset my goal was to find a way to change the direction that the conversation was going before it got out of hand. Consequently, I became a master of apologizing, distracting and diverting to cool things down and move us into a calmer frame of mind.
Apologizing for something you know you didn’t do is hard. Why should you take a hit for something that didn’t happen or at least didn’t happen in the way it’s being construed? But, as a corollary to “Being right is always wrong”, the person with dementia only knows what they know and isn’t able to acknowledge anything else.
I did learn though, not to apologize for something that I didn’t do just to end the pain of the argument. I made that mistake one time and sure enough it was one time that Deena actually remembered what I had said.
Instead, I learned to repeat over and over “I so sorry you’re upset. I so sorry if I’ve done something to upset you.” Those statements were easier to say, because they reflected how I genuinely felt. I was sorry that she was upset. And I would have happily apologized for something that I said, or did that upset her, I just needed to understand what that was before I could apologize for something specific. And, of course, she wasn’t able to describe my transgressions.
Changing the topic, tone and energy of a conversation can go a long way to calm down a situation before it gets out of hand. That’s why I learned the art of distraction and diversion. Sometimes I would see something outside that I told Deena about. “Oh, look honey, the roadrunner is on the patio wall.” Sometimes I would create a distraction. “I haven’t seen the roadrunner for a couple of days. Have you?” And I kept a list of good distraction topics that I could pull out in a heartbeat. Questions about Deena’s son or grandchildren were especially helpful in turning the tide of a difficult conversation.
I also learned to involve our friends to serve as a diversion. They knew a text that read “Cocktails? Dinner? Dessert?” wasn’t as much of an invitation as it was a cry for help.
And when it was fairly predictable that things might get tense, I’d plan a diversion in advance so that I knew that there would be a hard stop to any tension that could have started.
For example, I had my Alzheimer’s caregiver support group in the late afternoon on the 2nd and 4thWednesday each month. Deena believed in the value of support groups and really encouraged me to participate in one. And yet, it was hard for her to know that I was out talking about our life with people she didn’t know. Consequently, you could set your watch on the fact that by 5:00 on support group Wednesday she’d start to get angry and agitated. So, if we were going to socialize with anyone that week, I always tried to schedule it for Wednesday to distract her. It wasn’t perfect, but it actually worked pretty well, and Wednesday evenings became much less of a problem than they were before I got into this diversion routine.