I recently posted on FB about reliving past trauma during dementia. There was a considerable response from people with dementia explaining personal experiences and caregivers, both family and facility personal, relating stories of how the person with dementia relived episodes of trauma from their past or was stuck repeating one. Reliving isn’t remembering. While they are in the middle of the experience it is real to them

Sometimes the person with dementia relives a traumatic experience from the past as though it were happening in real-time. That experience might have been buried under a lifetime of an inability to face it. Unfortunately, the damage to the brain caused by dementia can sometimes bring these unresolved issues to the surface and bleed into the present. During one of my picture communication sessions in a nursing

During dementia, time becomes distorted or lost. Even the difference between day and night can become unclear. The sense of linear time is confused, and past and present can intermingle. I think about time a lot; maybe because at my age its passing so fast. But then Einstein said time is relevant to the one perceiving it. “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute,

In my book, Journey through the Infinite Mind, I wrote about when the person with dementia loses memory, they can’t plan future. Future planning can be as simple as trying to make a ham sandwich. Let’s look at what it entails to make that sandwich. To begin with, I need to recall what is a sandwich, what goes in it in and where those ingredients are in