How oh how does one keep your cool all the time? Living with someone with this awful desease is enough to try the patience of a saint and I'm no saint. I hear the tone of my voice and know it's wrong but after years and 24/7 it really is hard to sound sweetness and light all the time.
Help I feel as if my head is going to explode!
- Thread starter Jean1234
- Start date
I can't keep my cool all the time sadly and my lovely husband looks so sad if I get annoyed or irritated with him and I know he can't help it but I am really not cut out for this. I am ok for a while then something happens often minor and I lose it. I think its inevitable. Try not to feel bad about it, its a real struggle and you are doing a super job.
Don't set the bar too high! I would say it is impossible not to give way to the tensions at times when you're living with the situation 24/7. I consider myself patient on the whole but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't given way to a fit of the sulks or a telling tone in my voice at times!
Yes we feel awful for it afterwards but we are human, doing our best in very trying circumstances
Yes we feel awful for it afterwards but we are human, doing our best in very trying circumstances
Hi Jean 1234 don't beat yourself up this AZ journey is no walk in the park.I never thought it would be this hard and nobody can be perfect 24/7 trying to stay calm smiling always trying to judge their mood it isn't easy at all I know. I feel awful if I snap at Mum and that guilt stays with me but you have to be realistic you can't keep your cool all of the time you can only do your best.
How do you keep your cool? Very good question, Jean. At the moment I'm back and forth from losing my cool to feeling numb and lifeless. It actually feels like a blessing that OH is able to forget those awful moments fairly quickly most of the time.
Look after yourself.
Look after yourself.
HELP i FEEL AS IF MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE
Hello Jean, I know exactly how you feel. Some days I feel I cannot continue any more and want to end it all. But another day dawns and we keep going trying to keep our head above water but oh it is so hard some days. My husband refuses to go to a day centre or respite care at the moment but I know a day will come when he will have to to give me a break.
Do you have family near bye to help? I don't but am always grateful when they do come and give me a couple of days break to help recharge the batteries, but after one day with my husband the weariness creeps in again.
I find that when I lose my patience it always comes back to bite me as he get's so upset and frightened because I have shouted at him. This then makes me feel even worse. There are no easy answers all we can do is go into another room to have a cry and then keep battling on. Sending my love x
Hello Jean, I know exactly how you feel. Some days I feel I cannot continue any more and want to end it all. But another day dawns and we keep going trying to keep our head above water but oh it is so hard some days. My husband refuses to go to a day centre or respite care at the moment but I know a day will come when he will have to to give me a break.
Do you have family near bye to help? I don't but am always grateful when they do come and give me a couple of days break to help recharge the batteries, but after one day with my husband the weariness creeps in again.
I find that when I lose my patience it always comes back to bite me as he get's so upset and frightened because I have shouted at him. This then makes me feel even worse. There are no easy answers all we can do is go into another room to have a cry and then keep battling on. Sending my love x
miss sunshine
Oh yes I completely understand! I dont live with my mother but just visit a couple of days a week and stay over one night a week and that is enough.
I'm exhausted when I get home because I have been trying to speak the same every time she asks me the same question for the 50th time, distracting her from a subject if she gets angry.
I was nursing for a very long time and my way of coping is to visualise her as a patient. this brings me some peace and compassion, and ease to handle the situation. Someone said to me 'When you are on an aircraft about to take off, the cabin crew tell you if the oxygen masks drop, to put yours on before putting your childrens on. As she is now like my child, this gives me a step back from the situation and I always make sure I have my 'oxygen mask' on before going in and this helps to calm and sustain me while I am with her.
Oh yes I completely understand! I dont live with my mother but just visit a couple of days a week and stay over one night a week and that is enough.
I'm exhausted when I get home because I have been trying to speak the same every time she asks me the same question for the 50th time, distracting her from a subject if she gets angry.
I was nursing for a very long time and my way of coping is to visualise her as a patient. this brings me some peace and compassion, and ease to handle the situation. Someone said to me 'When you are on an aircraft about to take off, the cabin crew tell you if the oxygen masks drop, to put yours on before putting your childrens on. As she is now like my child, this gives me a step back from the situation and I always make sure I have my 'oxygen mask' on before going in and this helps to calm and sustain me while I am with her.
Help I feel as if my head is going to explode
Hello Jean and all other carers who are in the same position. I would just like to say that we are not saints but even a saint would find it difficult to stay cool at the coal face of dementia care. We all want the best for our loved ones and that is all we can do, OUR BEST. We beat ourselves up when we aren't perfect, when we're dog tired and beyond exhausted. We all need to recognise and accept that we are only human beings doing an impossible job the best way we can. Some days you step in it, some days you don't. All we can do is keep trying and not knock ourselves out because we have normal human reactions and emotions when Dennis Dementia has never heard of being reasonable no matter how good we are. It's Dennis's fault,not our loved ones and certainly not ours. Keep smiling and have the best day you can.
Hello Jean and all other carers who are in the same position. I would just like to say that we are not saints but even a saint would find it difficult to stay cool at the coal face of dementia care. We all want the best for our loved ones and that is all we can do, OUR BEST. We beat ourselves up when we aren't perfect, when we're dog tired and beyond exhausted. We all need to recognise and accept that we are only human beings doing an impossible job the best way we can. Some days you step in it, some days you don't. All we can do is keep trying and not knock ourselves out because we have normal human reactions and emotions when Dennis Dementia has never heard of being reasonable no matter how good we are. It's Dennis's fault,not our loved ones and certainly not ours. Keep smiling
and have the best day you can.It seems the answer is we don't keep our cool all the time. I have said Job, of the patience of Job, obviously never encountered dementia. I haven't felt very good the last couple of days with a heavy cold so I've found my patience even more tested than usual.
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Sent from my iPad using Talking Point
I hope you will be feeling better soon Trisha, colds make you feel so poorly and it's very hard not to be able to take a step back and just look after yourself for a little while. Especially difficult to be cheery, caring and patient in those circumstances. I don't know how one earth people with chronic health problems of their own manage.
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Regularly I have to walk away from my mum and go into another room or I will explode and each night I put myself to bed, telling myself to be better tomorrow, to find the patience to try and understand, but some nights within an hour of my going to bed mum is up wandering and I just seem to forget all about the patience and understanding and know that if I do not get up to deal with her, then it gets a whole lot worse and so a night with very little sleep makes me grumpy the next day and that night I am repeating my mantra of patience and understanding! I just want dementia to do its bit during the day and leave me alone through the night.
I've had an awful horrible day and I feel so bad and guilty. My OH has vasculer dementia for a year now, he's become very verbaly aggresive and then he will go about a week not talking to me at all. It's been 10 days of this aggresive side now and tonight he suddenly started shouting and swearing at me saying g how evil I am. Well I just snapped and started shouting g back, saying some angry things to him, we were both in an awful state. God knows what the neighbours thought He went to bed not long after, I tred to talk calmy to hI'm but just started shouting againI walked away to the next room, which I know I shold have done in the begining of this awful episode, but I just snapped. I feel so guilty of breaking the rule of walking away. Ive left him a note to say sorry and that I was in the wrong to shout at him and tried to reassure him everything would be better the next day. I find he takes things in better when reading it than if I say it and he can't shout while he's reading. But it's so very hard as someone here said, you feel like your head is going to burst or your heart is racing with the stress of it all at times. I WILL try harder though.and be a better person tomorrow, at 75 yrs old my patience is not like it used to be.,
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I'm sorry there's a lot of printing mistakes in the above post, not sure how that happen, this predictive txt I think.
Sorry about the printing mistakes in the above post, not sure how that happen, hope it's readable, I should have checked it first. But I will definitly try to keep calm and spoil OH tomorrow to make up for my lack of patience today
I feel exactly the same. Usually I am first up in the morning. But today I woke up to find my husband already up and had filled the toaster with water which kept shorting the electrics when trying to switch it on. I had to throw it away. But how can you deal with things like this calmly. Yesterday it was filling the wheelie bin with spadefuls of mud. Then turning all the drawers and cupboards out and piling things everywhere. I'm almost afraid to go to sleep or turn my back because of what he will do next
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Sent from my iPad using Talking Point
I wish I could do something to help, Sorry I can't!!!
My FIL has been verbally abusive, but after moving into specialist dementia unit has settled. We still have episodes , and out of the blue moments but much more controlled now.
Can you get any outside help?
I though my morning was hard having little people wanting breakfast before 6:30 this morning.....
I'm sure you have thought of all this before, but can you pack the toaster away overnight?
Hoping & praying for a better day tomorrow.
Sending hugs to you all.
Night night
Mammamu [emoji202]
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My FIL has been verbally abusive, but after moving into specialist dementia unit has settled. We still have episodes , and out of the blue moments but much more controlled now.
Can you get any outside help?
I though my morning was hard having little people wanting breakfast before 6:30 this morning.....
I'm sure you have thought of all this before, but can you pack the toaster away overnight?
Hoping & praying for a better day tomorrow.
Sending hugs to you all.
Night night
Mammamu [emoji202]
Sent from my iPhone using Talking Point
Reading these posts has been a help to me. I have not been able to be smiles all day have found my patience wearing thin. I too feel like my head is going to explode. It always makes me feel so guilty, and so it helps to know that others feel the same.
Things are no better from my post last night, I started chatting to OH this morning as normal but he's still insisting I'm evil and a liar and I tell everyone his secrets, says our marrige is over and he never wants to speak to me again. Well he hasn't spoken a word to me all day. I've tried brining up conversation but he just blanks me. He is self caring so I've left him to get on with it its his aggression and bullying that wears me down. Does vasculer dementia do this. Not sure how long I can cope with it. He's always been on the verbaly abusive side but worse since he had his diagnosis of vasculer dementia a year ago, but he seems worse the last few weeks
lovely husband
i also have regrets when I am sharp with him. I have to repeat everything even if he hears me and now my voice has gone, having had a virus. do others have to repeat everything too? perhaps it is just that he doesn't take it in the first time?
