Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have the stark, cold reality of the existence of
the nefarious disease. It is Alzheimer's disease. I'm happy to
welcome to the thirty five Caresey Morning, So Lisa's Skinner,
a behavioral health are expert in the field of Alzheimer's
and related Dimentia's twenty year career as a community councilor
and regional director of a senior care facilities, She's helped
thousands of families find the best care options for their
loved ones, holds an administrator's license through the California Department of
(00:23):
Social Services, and has written a book Were Talking About Today.
Truth Lies in Alzheimer's, Its secret faces. Lisa, it's a
pleasure to have you on the program.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh, good morning. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it
very much.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm happy to my personal experience with Alzheimer's. My father
passed away a couple of years ago as a consequence
of Alzheimer's, and we had to live with and cope
with the decline, the gradual and then accelerating decline of
his memory and his ability to take care of himself,
and ultimately had to be in a full time care
(00:57):
facility because the caretakers has simply become exhausted and props
and so much love to my mom and how hard
she worked to try to keep up with them. But
it's such a tragic, tragic disease, so I have a
connection with it. But I'm kind of curious to know
how you got involved in treating folks with Alzheimer's and
what prompted you to write the book.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well similar experience to yours. I've actually had eight of
my own family members live with one of the brain
diseases that caused dementia. And my very first experience was
about fifty years ago with my grandmother. I went over
(01:41):
to her house. She worked very close to me, I
grew up with her, and I thought it was just
going to be a normal conversation. We sat down and
she started telling me about these birds that were living
in her mattress and they would come out at night
and peck her face. And then she pointed to her
(02:02):
walls and asking, you see those rats running all over
the place. They're invading my home. And then finally she
told me that there were these men who were constantly
breaking into her home. They were stealing her personal possessions,
her jewelry, and she was convinced that they were going
(02:24):
to do away with her and take over her life.
So what I was witnessing, I mean, I was a teenager,
unbeknownst to me, was a delusion, yeah, or a false
belief with the birds living in her mattress, a hallucination
(02:44):
with the rats running all over the house. And another
common symptom that we see with dimension and Alzheimer's disease
is paranoia and suspiciousness. And I had no idea that
there was even anything wrong with my grandmother. This was
the first time that I saw any signs of anything unusual.
(03:11):
And I asked my mother, you know, I just had
the most bizarre visit with Grandma, but it seems like
there's something wrong with her. And she says, yeah, she's
been diagnosed with what they call back then, senile dementia.
And I said, well, why didn't you tell me? I mean,
(03:31):
I was completely caught off guard. I didn't know what
to do. I didn't know what to say. He says,
we don't talk about this, and that was really the
mindset back then when it came to, you know, brain diseases,
and because people really thought it was a mental health
(03:51):
issue back then. So anyway, I ended up going to
getting my degree in college and I went My degree
was in human behavior, and I was absolutely fascinated by it.
So I had an opportunity to take this position in
(04:12):
an elder care facility called a community counselor, and basically
it was helping families. I would do all the assessments
and explain to them what the advantages were of senior
living and memory care and assisted living. And I just
(04:34):
ended up working my way up to this regional director
position and I ended up managing five buildings and training
all the staff, and I received a lot of training
myself on better practices and what a new ideology that
was basically becoming popular called a person centered approach to
(04:58):
care versus the therapy that was being used for people
living with dementia at the time, which was called reality
orientation therapy. And what that meant was if a person
living with dementia was having a false belief, if they
(05:21):
were confused about the time of day, or the day
of the week, or anything else, we were expected to
correct them and kind of steer them back into our reality,
which was what was current true. And we just found
(05:45):
through decades of that practice that it didn't work because,
as you probably realized with your own personal experience, once
a person living with dementia is locked onto a belief,
there is absolutely nothing anybody can say or do to
(06:07):
change that belief until they've kind of, you know, change
it themselves.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And right, so you got to kind of you have
to kind of roll with it.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Then you do. That's exactly That's exactly what you know.
Years and years and years of trying to effectively communicate
with somebody with cognitive decline, with brain disease, we found
out that it was just really exacerbating anxiety and anger
(06:40):
and frustration and you know, really led to catastrophic reactions
and meltdowns. So I was trained on this new approach
to dementia communication, and you know, in the earliest phase
of it, and I saw firsthand the difference it made
(07:05):
in the lives of everybody involved, the family members, the caregivers,
the people living with dementia, and really became an expert
in it, and I started teaching it and bringing it
to people's attention and teaching people how to approach these
(07:27):
situations like I had with my grandmother. Okay, how do
you respond with somebody all of a sudden, that of
nowhere starts telling you that birds are living in their mattress,
coming out at night and pecking at your face. You
don't argue with them and try to say you're crazy,
that couldn't even possibly happen. You join them where they're.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
At, like what kind of birds? What color are they?
They're just kind of again rolling with it and just
acknowledging what they think and not resisting them on the cap,
which brings about that frustration you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's exactly what was discovered to be true. And so
this is basically what led me to write the book,
was to raise awareness about what living with Alzheimer's disease
was truly like for the people who have it, the
(08:25):
family members, the caregivers, And because I discovered in my
career helping families that probably the biggest piece that was
missing to this whole entire puzzle was people's lack of
understanding of what these diseases are doing to the brain
(08:48):
and the symptoms that show up and the behaviors that
show up. And once people understand that and then are
properly guide on how to effectively respond, then the whole
entire experience and journey for everybody involved can be so
(09:11):
much less stressful, and they can focus on what really matters. Yeah,
quality time with their loved one, at least.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
The Skinner, author of the book we're talking about today two,
thrives on Alzheimer's at Secret Faces, which provides you with
all this information that you know I'm thinking about. You
were focusing on the frustration and the anxiety that the Alzheimer's,
the struggle the person struggling with Alzheimer's gets when you
resist what their perception of reality is. But that in turn,
their resistance to that also agitates the person trying to
(09:42):
tell them that no, they're not birds in the bed.
So you both get on this downhill slope and nobody
benefits from that. I can see the point you're making
on this. You can't cure the Alzheimer's. This person is
going to carry those beliefs. There's no pill that they
can take to make it go away. There's no point
in arguing with them about it, right, I mean, isn't
that kind of what it boils down to?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, you're spot on, absolutely spot on on that. You
You couldn't have said that oral, realistic truth. Yeah, but
you've experienced it.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, yeah, And I resisted, you know, I was, you know,
like he wouldn't remember my mom's face or who she was.
And I was like, why don't we get the wedding
pictures out and look, you know you here's your here's
when you got married. And and I remember my sister
telling me, Brian know that that's not going to work.
That's pointless. And it sounded so cold. It seemed like
such a simple solution, and it's not. You learn that
(10:39):
over time having lived through it. So I'm glad you
wrote the book and provide people with this and maybe
take the weight off their shoulders that they don't need
to run around and argue with this person struggling and
it's not worth the time effort, and it makes everybody
worse off. I just appreciate that perspective. Now before we
part company at Lisa Skinner, I we all have what
we call senior moments. How can people distinguish between normal
(11:02):
aging forgetfulness? Because coming up on age sixty this September,
you know, I do have my days and mild versus
mild cognitive IMPAIRMENTI and dementia. There are there telltale signs
that we can like be a red flag to people.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Absolutely, yes, and what you just described happens to all
of us probably starting around when we put our phone down,
we can't remember where it is you find our car keys,
we walk into a room and I would remember why
we were Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
You made me feel better, very very normal.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
But to that point it starts freaking people out because
the first thing they think of is, oh, is this
the first sign that I'm going to get Alzheimer's dizzy?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right, especially when your dad passed away from it and
your mom's mother passed away from it too, So it's like, yeah,
got me completely freaked out.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
It's like, uh oh, and it is there were one
fear that people have believe it or not starting about
the age of fifty five, and you can can't blame them.
So the best way to kind of described in a nutshell,
because we don't have a whole lot of time to
really go into no, no, just brief speaking to which
(12:18):
you're out of time in the segment.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Conclude your thought leaside because we need to get this information.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Okay, So the frequency and the severity of the memory
loss is really key. So if it's just happening once
in a while, then that can pretty much be considered
normal age forgetfulness. If it starts to happen more often,
more frequently, and more severely, then it's probably moved into
(12:47):
more uh, you know, a more obvious stage of miild
cognitive impairment. Okay. What really separates between those and full
blown dementia is if the underlying cause is truly a
brain disease like Alzheimer's causing the memory deficits. Okay, and
(13:13):
most people aren't even diagnosed till they're in their mid
stages because that is when the symptoms become so obvious, okay,
that you need to go get a professional assessment. I yeah, starting.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I appreciate you writing the book to provide this information
because there's so much of this floating around out in
the world. It seems like it's becoming a more and
more common phenomenon. The truth lies in Alzheimer's its secret faces.
Thank you for your time this morning with my listeners,
and thanks again for writing the book. Lisa. I appreciate
the work that you're doing.
We have the stark, cold reality of the existence of
the nefarious disease. It is Alzheimer's disease. I'm happy to
welcome to the thirty five Caresey Morning, So Lisa's Skinner,
a behavioral health are expert in the field of Alzheimer's
and related Dimentia's twenty year career as a community councilor
and regional director of a senior care facilities, She's helped
thousands of families find the best care options for their
loved ones, holds an administrator's license through the California Department of
(00:23):
Social Services, and has written a book Were Talking About Today.
Truth Lies in Alzheimer's, Its secret faces. Lisa, it's a
pleasure to have you on the program.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh, good morning. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it
very much.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm happy to my personal experience with Alzheimer's. My father
passed away a couple of years ago as a consequence
of Alzheimer's, and we had to live with and cope
with the decline, the gradual and then accelerating decline of
his memory and his ability to take care of himself,
and ultimately had to be in a full time care
(00:57):
facility because the caretakers has simply become exhausted and props
and so much love to my mom and how hard
she worked to try to keep up with them. But
it's such a tragic, tragic disease, so I have a
connection with it. But I'm kind of curious to know
how you got involved in treating folks with Alzheimer's and
what prompted you to write the book.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well similar experience to yours. I've actually had eight of
my own family members live with one of the brain
diseases that caused dementia. And my very first experience was
about fifty years ago with my grandmother. I went over
(01:41):
to her house. She worked very close to me, I
grew up with her, and I thought it was just
going to be a normal conversation. We sat down and
she started telling me about these birds that were living
in her mattress and they would come out at night
and peck her face. And then she pointed to her
(02:02):
walls and asking, you see those rats running all over
the place. They're invading my home. And then finally she
told me that there were these men who were constantly
breaking into her home. They were stealing her personal possessions,
her jewelry, and she was convinced that they were going
(02:24):
to do away with her and take over her life.
So what I was witnessing, I mean, I was a teenager,
unbeknownst to me, was a delusion, yeah, or a false
belief with the birds living in her mattress, a hallucination
(02:44):
with the rats running all over the house. And another
common symptom that we see with dimension and Alzheimer's disease
is paranoia and suspiciousness. And I had no idea that
there was even anything wrong with my grandmother. This was
the first time that I saw any signs of anything unusual.
(03:11):
And I asked my mother, you know, I just had
the most bizarre visit with Grandma, but it seems like
there's something wrong with her. And she says, yeah, she's
been diagnosed with what they call back then, senile dementia.
And I said, well, why didn't you tell me? I mean,
(03:31):
I was completely caught off guard. I didn't know what
to do. I didn't know what to say. He says,
we don't talk about this, and that was really the
mindset back then when it came to, you know, brain diseases,
and because people really thought it was a mental health
(03:51):
issue back then. So anyway, I ended up going to
getting my degree in college and I went My degree
was in human behavior, and I was absolutely fascinated by it.
So I had an opportunity to take this position in
(04:12):
an elder care facility called a community counselor, and basically
it was helping families. I would do all the assessments
and explain to them what the advantages were of senior
living and memory care and assisted living. And I just
(04:34):
ended up working my way up to this regional director
position and I ended up managing five buildings and training
all the staff, and I received a lot of training
myself on better practices and what a new ideology that
was basically becoming popular called a person centered approach to
(04:58):
care versus the therapy that was being used for people
living with dementia at the time, which was called reality
orientation therapy. And what that meant was if a person
living with dementia was having a false belief, if they
(05:21):
were confused about the time of day, or the day
of the week, or anything else, we were expected to
correct them and kind of steer them back into our reality,
which was what was current true. And we just found
(05:45):
through decades of that practice that it didn't work because,
as you probably realized with your own personal experience, once
a person living with dementia is locked onto a belief,
there is absolutely nothing anybody can say or do to
(06:07):
change that belief until they've kind of, you know, change
it themselves.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And right, so you got to kind of you have
to kind of roll with it.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Then you do. That's exactly That's exactly what you know.
Years and years and years of trying to effectively communicate
with somebody with cognitive decline, with brain disease, we found
out that it was just really exacerbating anxiety and anger
(06:40):
and frustration and you know, really led to catastrophic reactions
and meltdowns. So I was trained on this new approach
to dementia communication, and you know, in the earliest phase
of it, and I saw firsthand the difference it made
(07:05):
in the lives of everybody involved, the family members, the caregivers,
the people living with dementia, and really became an expert
in it, and I started teaching it and bringing it
to people's attention and teaching people how to approach these
(07:27):
situations like I had with my grandmother. Okay, how do
you respond with somebody all of a sudden, that of
nowhere starts telling you that birds are living in their mattress,
coming out at night and pecking at your face. You
don't argue with them and try to say you're crazy,
that couldn't even possibly happen. You join them where they're.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
At, like what kind of birds? What color are they?
They're just kind of again rolling with it and just
acknowledging what they think and not resisting them on the cap,
which brings about that frustration you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's exactly what was discovered to be true. And so
this is basically what led me to write the book,
was to raise awareness about what living with Alzheimer's disease
was truly like for the people who have it, the
(08:25):
family members, the caregivers, And because I discovered in my
career helping families that probably the biggest piece that was
missing to this whole entire puzzle was people's lack of
understanding of what these diseases are doing to the brain
(08:48):
and the symptoms that show up and the behaviors that
show up. And once people understand that and then are
properly guide on how to effectively respond, then the whole
entire experience and journey for everybody involved can be so
(09:11):
much less stressful, and they can focus on what really matters. Yeah,
quality time with their loved one, at least.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
The Skinner, author of the book we're talking about today two,
thrives on Alzheimer's at Secret Faces, which provides you with
all this information that you know I'm thinking about. You
were focusing on the frustration and the anxiety that the Alzheimer's,
the struggle the person struggling with Alzheimer's gets when you
resist what their perception of reality is. But that in turn,
their resistance to that also agitates the person trying to
(09:42):
tell them that no, they're not birds in the bed.
So you both get on this downhill slope and nobody
benefits from that. I can see the point you're making
on this. You can't cure the Alzheimer's. This person is
going to carry those beliefs. There's no pill that they
can take to make it go away. There's no point
in arguing with them about it, right, I mean, isn't
that kind of what it boils down to?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, you're spot on, absolutely spot on on that. You
You couldn't have said that oral, realistic truth. Yeah, but
you've experienced it.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, yeah, And I resisted, you know, I was, you know,
like he wouldn't remember my mom's face or who she was.
And I was like, why don't we get the wedding
pictures out and look, you know you here's your here's
when you got married. And and I remember my sister
telling me, Brian know that that's not going to work.
That's pointless. And it sounded so cold. It seemed like
such a simple solution, and it's not. You learn that
(10:39):
over time having lived through it. So I'm glad you
wrote the book and provide people with this and maybe
take the weight off their shoulders that they don't need
to run around and argue with this person struggling and
it's not worth the time effort, and it makes everybody
worse off. I just appreciate that perspective. Now before we
part company at Lisa Skinner, I we all have what
we call senior moments. How can people distinguish between normal
(11:02):
aging forgetfulness? Because coming up on age sixty this September,
you know, I do have my days and mild versus
mild cognitive IMPAIRMENTI and dementia. There are there telltale signs
that we can like be a red flag to people.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Absolutely, yes, and what you just described happens to all
of us probably starting around when we put our phone down,
we can't remember where it is you find our car keys,
we walk into a room and I would remember why
we were Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
You made me feel better, very very normal.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
But to that point it starts freaking people out because
the first thing they think of is, oh, is this
the first sign that I'm going to get Alzheimer's dizzy?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right, especially when your dad passed away from it and
your mom's mother passed away from it too, So it's like, yeah,
got me completely freaked out.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
It's like, uh oh, and it is there were one
fear that people have believe it or not starting about
the age of fifty five, and you can can't blame them.
So the best way to kind of described in a nutshell,
because we don't have a whole lot of time to
really go into no, no, just brief speaking to which
(12:18):
you're out of time in the segment.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Conclude your thought leaside because we need to get this information.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Okay, So the frequency and the severity of the memory
loss is really key. So if it's just happening once
in a while, then that can pretty much be considered
normal age forgetfulness. If it starts to happen more often,
more frequently, and more severely, then it's probably moved into
(12:47):
more uh, you know, a more obvious stage of miild
cognitive impairment. Okay. What really separates between those and full
blown dementia is if the underlying cause is truly a
brain disease like Alzheimer's causing the memory deficits. Okay, and
(13:13):
most people aren't even diagnosed till they're in their mid
stages because that is when the symptoms become so obvious, okay,
that you need to go get a professional assessment. I yeah, starting.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I appreciate you writing the book to provide this information
because there's so much of this floating around out in
the world. It seems like it's becoming a more and
more common phenomenon. The truth lies in Alzheimer's its secret faces.
Thank you for your time this morning with my listeners,
and thanks again for writing the book. Lisa. I appreciate
the work that you're doing.
Brian Thomas News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!