JOAN’S BLOG – FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2008 – COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN

My regular readers know that I have spent my entire adult life working in a specialized department of Special Education - Language Learning Disabilities and Communication Disorders. I was “lucky”, if you could call it such, that the first and most severely affected ability that Alzheimer’s Disease attacked in my husband, besides his short term memory, was his ability to process and comprehend auditory language – language that he hears. Because of my background, I did not have to “learn” what many of you did – how to talk to and give directions to an Alzheimer patient so they will understand what you are saying. Click this link for an in depth “seminar” on communicating with your AD spouse. It contains material I used to train parents and teachers how to communicate with language disabled students. Right from the beginning, I utilized all of those techniques in communicating with Sid. They work.  

So what has gone wrong since then? Why have we been engaging in screaming matches that leave both of us , and me in tears? It took me a few weeks, and three or four of these emotionally charged arguments to figure out what was going on, which was - He cannot express what he means, so instead, he goes off on a tirade about something else, which, in turn, infuriates me, and the vicious cycle of misunderstandings and arguments ensue. After giving both of us a “time out” to calm down, I remind him of his rants, and he says – “That’s not what I meant. You’re smart enough to figure out what I mean!!!” So besides all of my other duties, I am supposed to be a mind reader too.

To be specific, I ask you to refer to yesterday’s Blog (below) about the car outbursts. He got “stuck” on accusing me of destroying his life and isolating him in the house because I sold our second car. When it was all over, I finally pried it out of him that he was upset because he thought it was going to rain while he was fishing, and he would not have a car to return to for shelter. If he had said that in the first place, I would have told him that I was leaving the car with him, and all of us women were going to lunch in one car, which did not happen to be ours.

The problem was that he COULD NOT say that in the first place, because AD patients are not able to express their thoughts clearly. Ideas, meanings, language, are all mixed up in their brains, so one obsessive thought comes out verbally, and the result is misinterpretation on both sides.

To put it as simply as possible, the thoughts of “red” and “green” may be in their head. They say “red”, and you respond to “red”. But they really meant “green”, and they go off on rants because you are responding to “red.” And in the case of my husband, and maybe your spouse too, he thinks I should KNOW what he meant.  

With NORMAL couples, communication difficulties often lead to divorce, but AD couples are living in the Twilight Zone of Communication, and its name is Hell. So three or four of these communication incidents in two weeks is Part II of what caused my meltdown.

Now, believe it or not, there is a solution to this, if they are still in the stage to grasp it, of course. Once I figured out what was going on, I knew how to fix it, because I did it with the kids in school all of the time.

Next time your spouse says something that hurts or enrages you, say (calmly of course) – “I heard you say…XYZ. Is that what you meant?” When they hear it without accusations and screaming, and are given the processing time needed to think about it, they can often tell you whether that is what they meant to say. If it is NOT what they meant, you can gently ask them to try again. (Obviously this does not work in later stages.)

Yes, Yes, Yes, I know it is time consuming, annoying, burdensome, and a cause for resentment on your part. As in “Why do I always have to be the one to be calm and make concessions? ” Believe me, I feel that way too, but I cannot take much more of this ranting and raving on both sides. I would like to live through this disease, so I am going to try to put my professional training to work on this one.

Feedback to joan@thealzheimerspouse.com

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