Webinar: Resilience
Dementia Australia webinars are free videos where subject experts discuss topics relating to dementia for a general audience.
In this webinar, Sandra Kay explores what resilience is, why it is important and how you can develop it. She also looks at ways to acknowledge life’s challenges and explore self-care strategies through building resilience.
You’ll learn:
- what resilience is and how it can help you respond to life’s challenges
- how to equip yourself with strategies and knowledge to help with providing care to loved ones
- how to ensure that your own self-care is maintained and valued.
Transcript
[Beginning of recorded material]
[Title card: Dementia Australia]
[Title card: Resilience]
Sandra: Welcome everyone to Dementia Australia's webinar on resilience. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to Elders, past, present, and emerging, and to our shared futures. I'm Sandra Kay. I work with Dementia Australia as a dementia support specialist, and I'm a qualified counsellor. In my role with Dementia Australia, I support families and carers through various psychosocial education. This education supports carers by equipping them with knowledge and strategies that aims to empower them to provide the best possible care for people with dementia, while ensuring their own self-care is valued.
In today's session, I will speak on the topic of resilience and how it can be achieved through the challenges and uncertainties of living with and caring for someone with dementia. The topics will identify how resilience is defined, and look at strategies on ways we can cultivate and stay on the path to resilience. It will consider self-care strategies that have been researched and proven to help build resilience. While this topic will consider self-care strategies while living with and caring for someone with dementia, the strategies discussed here are appropriate for maintaining resilience through all of life circumstances, and can guide us on how we respond to challenges. I'd like to start by reading an analogy from the American Psychological Association on encountering a challenging situation and the tools required to get through it.
Imagine you're going to take a rough trip down a river. Along with slow water and shallows, your map will show that you'll encounter unavoidable rapids and turns. How would you make sure you can safely cross the rough waters and handle any unexpected problems that come from the challenge? Perhaps you'd enlist the support of more experienced rafters as you plan your route, or rely on the companionship of trusted friends along the way. Perhaps you would pack an extra life jacket or consider using a stronger raft. With the right tools and support in place, one thing is sure: you'll not only make it through the challenges of your river adventure, you'll also emerge a more confident and courageous rafter.
This analogy of rough river raft trip shows that we could risk safety and wellbeing if we were to take on the challenge such as a raft trip without the right equipment and support. Indeed, taking on any challenge requires the right supports, tools, and strategies to get through and ultimately build resilience. When we enter unknown territory such as a diagnosis of dementia, the appropriate support will help us to navigate the challenges that inevitably will come up. But what does resilience mean? Well, psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant stress. It's the capacity to recover quickly from difficult life events, or the ability to withstand adversity, and bounce back, and grow despite life's downturns. Resilience describes the process of learning and growing from the experience in order to possess a greater emotional and psychological ability for the bouncing back from the challenging circumstances. Additionally, to bouncing back from the difficult experiences, it also involves profound personal growth.
While it's important to understand definitions of what resilience is, it's equally important to understand what it's not. Being resilient doesn't mean that a person won't experience difficulty or distress. People who have suffered major adversity or trauma in their lives commonly experience pain and stress. In fact, the road to resilience sometimes involves considerable emotional distress. Having resilient tools does not protect us from the adverse experience, such as a diagnosis of dementia. However, implementing and working on developing some resilient strategies will support our physical and emotional wellbeing through the adversity.
How do we develop resilience? Fortunately, anyone can build resilience. It involves behaviours, thoughts, and actions that can be learnt and developed. Much like building a muscle, increasing your resilience does take time and intentionality. Focusing on four core principles can help to withstand and grow through life's difficult situations. The four principles are emotional and social wellbeing, psychological, spiritual, and physical wellbeing. We'll consider each of these four principles individually.
Emotional and social resilience: This involves meaningful connections with others, prioritising relationships. Connecting with empathic and understanding people can remind us that we're not alone in the midst of difficult situations. Accepting help from those who care about you and validate your feelings is fundamental in building resilience. This can be through connection with family or friends or even joining a support group. Some people find joining support groups can help in finding connections with people who are experiencing the same situation.
Also, maintaining personal boundaries. Acknowledging your personal boundaries are so important, and knowing your limitations and having the ability to say no. Being mindful of negative and positive emotions. Certainly, negative emotions can warn us of threats and challenges that we may need to deal with. For example, fear can alert us to possible danger. It's a signal that we might need to protect ourselves. Negative emotions can focus our awareness. They can help us zero in on a problem so we can deal with it more effectively. However, too many negative emotions can make us feel overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted, or stressed. When negative emotions are out of balance, problems might seem too big to handle. The more we dwell on negative emotions, the more negative we begin to feel.
However, positive emotions can balance out those negative emotions, but they have powerful benefits too. Instead of narrowing our focus like negative emotions do, positive emotions affect our brains in ways that increase our awareness in attention and memory. They help us take in more information, hold several ideas in mind at once, and allow us to understand how different ideas relate to each other. They help us to connect with something other than the problem and see the world outside the current challenge, such as dementia.
Spiritual resilience and psychological resilience are other ways of fostering wellbeing and resilience. But psychological resilience is part of embracing healthy thoughts, keeping things in perspective, and identifying areas of irrational thinking, such as a tendency to catastrophise as difficulties or assume that the world is out to get you. Adopting a more balanced and realistic thinking pattern is very beneficial to psychological resilience.
Accepting change, accepting that certain goals and ideas may no longer be attainable as a result of a diagnosis of dementia. Accepting that those circumstances can't be changed can help you to focus on circumstances that you can alter and do have some control over. But understand that acceptance of a challenge such as living with dementia can take time and often support to get there. Also, accepting limitations. Ask yourself if this is something that is in your control. Maintaining a hopeful outlook. Certainly, it's hard to be positive when life isn't going your way, but an optimistic outlook can empower you to accept the good things that can happen to you. You may not be able to change a highly stressful event, but you can change how you interpret and respond to it.
Engaging in positive self-talk. Override the negative self-talk with positive statements. Negative self-talk comes to you naturally when you're going through a tough time. Try instead to say positive things to yourself, such as, "Let me be open to new possibilities, and I'm open and respect receptive to a new way of approaching my life." Consider, also, if you would speak to a friend the way you might speak to yourself. Is it encouraging? Is it affirming?
Seek support from a counsellor if need be. A counsellor can assist you in developing an appropriate strategy for moving through the current challenge. It is important to get professional help if you feel like you're unable to function as well as you'd like, or if you feel stuck in a current thought pattern.
The important thing is to remember you're not alone. While you may not be able to control all of life's circumstances, you can grow by focusing on the aspects of life's challenges that you can manage and support with the support of loved ones and a trusted professional. And spiritual resilience has been shown to be a fundamental part of growing and fostering wellbeing. The term spirituality refers to a sense of connection with something greater than oneself. It describes a deeply personal sense of interconnectedness and purpose. Spirituality describes an internal sense of connection with something benevolent that is external to and greater to oneself.
This connection provides a sense of belonging, safety, and purpose. Spirituality is not the same as religion. Spirituality is capable of remaining inclusive of many concepts and perspectives, and does not require adherence to any particular set of rules or rituals. Certainly, spirituality can include religion, and this may bring the practise of prayer and worship. It can also include a practise of mindfulness. Some form of mindfulness includes journalling, yoga, and other spiritual practises like meditation. Whatever the practise, each can help build connections and restore hope.
A practise of gratitude is also significant in spiritual resilience. Keeping a gratitude journal or having gratitude conversations are very helpful in wellbeing. When people intentionally choose to engage in gratitude practises, research has found that practitioners experienced an overall enhanced sense of wellbeing with their clients, as well as the capacity to build empathy for others. Though gratitude might not come naturally, particularly in challenging circumstances, it can be a learnt behaviour. Another spiritual practise can be finding purpose in meaning in helping others. It can garner a sense of purpose but also foster self-worth. And tangibly helping others can empower you to grow in your own resilience.
Physical resilience is significant as well, and it's the fourth component to fostering wellbeing. It's essential to exercise, to take care of your body, to have proper nutrition, sleep, and hydration. And regular exercise can all strengthen your body, and help to adapt to stress and reduce the toll of emotions like anxiety and depression. Exercise such as walking outdoors, going to or joining a gym. If you're time poor, simple stretches at home, or even park your car further away from the shop entrance to encourage that extra walk. Simply moving your body in some capacity will help with physical resilience.
Eating well, keeping a balanced, nutritious, healthy diet. Certainly, enjoy some treats, but balance it with healthy food. Try to have water accessible at all times to keep hydrated. Sleep hygiene is significant. As best you can, get a regular eight-hour sleep. Create a nice space that's comfortable. Disconnect from devices such as mobile phones and iPads before bed. Avoid negative outlets such as masking your pain with alcohol, drugs, and other substances. That's like putting a bandage on a deep wound.
It's important to remember that life will present with challenges, and building resilience through these challenges will take time and intentionality. While these adverse events, such as a diagnosis of dementia and caring for someone with dementia are certainly painful and difficult, it's important to remember you don't have to be defined by them.
We thank you for watching this webinar on resilience today. We, at Dementia Australia, support you as you work towards building resilience. If you require further information about self-care, resilience, or other information while caring for someone with dementia and living with dementia, please do not hesitate in contacting our helpline on 1800 100 500, or visiting our website on dementia.org.au. Thank you.
[Title card: Together we can reshape the impact of dementia]
[Title card: Dementia Australia. 1800 100 500. Dementia.org.au]
[END of recorded material]
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https://www.dementia.org.au/living-dementia/family-friends-and-carers/self-care-carers - Looking after yourself
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https://www.dementia.org.au/living-dementia/home-life/looking-after-yourself
The National Dementia Helpline
Free and confidential, the National Dementia Helpline, 1800 100 500, provides expert information, advice and support, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. No issue too big, no question too small.