New development concerning delusions. Original delusion is a belief that someone has been getting into the house and stealing things, or leaving items behind. A discovered item of clothing she has not worn for years is believed to have been left behind by an interloper, who has been taking, not valuables, but, say, a comb, or toothpicks.
When it first happened, I gently challenged her view on the assumption that it would not help to go along with the delusion. I used logic such as, "If people have been in the house, why have they not taken my wallet which has been on full view in the kitchen for months".? Even when I find the item she has claimed was stolen, it does not diminish her feeling that we have people entering the house. Finding that challenging her belief is likely to cause distress, I now try to change the subject or distract or seek a 'solution' she will accept. When she began barracading locked doors, I fitted extra bolts for security. Despite finding the bolts greatly reassuring, after a few days she resumed barracading the doors with a broom, a mop, and even a pair of clogs. Totally ineffectual as barriers but giving her extra reassurance.
The new recurring delusion is that her next-door neighbours in her home town almost 50 years ago (before we were married) were our recent next-door neighbours in our current city. She asks me where they have gone and I explain that I have not seen them for 45 years and that they were neighbours from her early life. This was confusing for her but she is reassured when I suggest that she has had a vivid dream and that her neighbours from her youth have become through the dream to be recent neighbours. She finds this slightly unsettling but to some extent reassuring because she is being offered an explanation which makes some sense to her.
When it first happened, I gently challenged her view on the assumption that it would not help to go along with the delusion. I used logic such as, "If people have been in the house, why have they not taken my wallet which has been on full view in the kitchen for months".? Even when I find the item she has claimed was stolen, it does not diminish her feeling that we have people entering the house. Finding that challenging her belief is likely to cause distress, I now try to change the subject or distract or seek a 'solution' she will accept. When she began barracading locked doors, I fitted extra bolts for security. Despite finding the bolts greatly reassuring, after a few days she resumed barracading the doors with a broom, a mop, and even a pair of clogs. Totally ineffectual as barriers but giving her extra reassurance.
The new recurring delusion is that her next-door neighbours in her home town almost 50 years ago (before we were married) were our recent next-door neighbours in our current city. She asks me where they have gone and I explain that I have not seen them for 45 years and that they were neighbours from her early life. This was confusing for her but she is reassured when I suggest that she has had a vivid dream and that her neighbours from her youth have become through the dream to be recent neighbours. She finds this slightly unsettling but to some extent reassuring because she is being offered an explanation which makes some sense to her.