12 Tips for Caring for Someone with Alzheimer’s.
Our team at Home To Stay Health Care, the premium Alzheimer’s home care company in New Jersey, would like to share some tips with you about caring for a loved one with this disease. Not only is it debilitating for the sufferer, but Alzheimer’s care can be very stressful for the caregiver. The following tips should help you cope with the process.
- Don’t Neglect Yourself Since you are taking care of a loved one with Alzheimer’s, you tend to spend an inordinate amount of time focused on their needs. This is frequently necessary, but make sure you aren’t doing so to the exclusion of your own health and wellness. Make sure to get plenty of sleep and eat well because your suffering loved one is counting on you.
get plenty of sleep - Ask for Help Managing your stress is critical, and one way to do this is to enlist the help of others when needed. This may include family and friends, but when they’re not available, you may need paid assistance. At Home To Stay Health Care, we are proud to offer compassionate and affordable home health services in New Jersey. Alzheimer’s care in NJ is a particular specialty of ours as we are the only certified provider of the AlzBetter method of care.
- Have Regular Breaks From Caregiving This is related to the previous point. Getting stressed out can sneak up on you, so you need to have planned breaks in care. This is where family members or services offering senior home care in new jersey can be crucial.
- Learn All You Can Learning all you can about this form of dementia will help you to sympathize with your suffering loved one. Understanding common behavioral changes and challenges and how to handle them will prepare you for this difficult task.
- Keep Your Own Interests and Social Life Active It’s important to maintain connections with the people and interests you had before you started caring for your ill family member. You don’t want being a caregiver to cause you to recede from the rest of your life.
- Talk About the Disease With the Afflicted Loved One Talking about the illness and issues that arise as a result of it in a nonjudgmental way can actually be helpful in alleviating stress. You should take care to do it in a respectful way.
- Seek Out Others in Your Situation Support groups can be an effective form of catharsis for many types of problems, and being a caregiver for an Alzheimer’s sufferer is no different. There’s nothing like the feeling of knowing you’re not alone in the situation you are facing.
- Discuss the Illness With Friends and Family It’s important to realize that Alzheimer’s is an illness, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed when seeking support from others. Sometimes this support is as simple as communicating about it, and even this can be tremendously helpful.
- Seek Out Activities the Two of You Can Do Together The scope of things the Alzheimer’s sufferer can do will undoubtedly be diminished by the illness, but find things they can still do with you. Even if it’s as simple as taking a walk together, this will foster conversation and make them feel less alone in a world that seems increasingly beyond their control.
- Look for the Positive Look for any positive aspects you can in the process of caregiving, and reflect on them as a mental tonic for the difficult times.
- Learn to Accept Your Lack of Control Realize that about the only things you can control when caring for someone with Alzheimer’s are your own emotional reactions and personal behavior. Learn to not get upset at the randomness that will certainly ensue from someone afflicted in this manner.
- Recognize When Enough Is Enough Companies like Home To Stay Health Care exist for a reason. If your loved one has reached a point where you can’t handle the situation then let our compassionate, professional elder care providers take over. Our dementia services in New Jersey include Alzheimer’s home care that has no rival. Please don’t be afraid to call and find out what our home care services in NJ can do for you either on a temporary or long-term basis.
