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The Instinct to Collect and the Challenge of HoardingWednesday, April 10, 2024
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Your parents recently moved into a retirement home and you were relieved they’d now have three proper meals per day. With your mother’s progressing dementia, she hadn’t been cooking for quite some time.
There's only one problem. Your mom has been bringing her purse to the dining room where she stashes extra food! She takes it back to their room and hides the food and you’ve been finding it in various states of science-experiment decay!
What is happening?In the past, this might have been called “hoarding”. But “hoarding” has a negative connotation and is quite different than what is happening to your mom. A more suitable term might be “collecting”.
Her new behaviour is not unusual and it makes sense when you consider what is happening in her brain. The drive or instinct to gather is a hard-wired human instinct. Humans have been hunters and gatherers for millennia. We have the instinct to gather food beyond what we immediately need to prepare for future hunger.
In modern society, most of us are blessed enough that we don’t have to worry about our next meal. With 24/7 grocery stores, we have access to food at any time. But for your mother who has dementia, that option is not as viable. First of all, she likely grew up in an era where stores were not open 24/7. Secondly, she may feel particularly vulnerable that she has no way of accessing food at any given time—she likely cannot drive, she likely wouldn’t know how to get to the closest grocery store, she might not even have access to money to purchase food. Her instinct to gather food that is available actually makes perfectly good sense. She is gathering food because she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from.
“But wait!” you say. “She has three full meals daily with access to a coffee bar that has muffins and cookies and fruit—she’s never left hungry. Of course, she knows where her next meal is coming from!”
Your response is perfectly logical. Remember, though, that her brain’s ability to be logical is diminished. If she has dementia, she may not remember yesterday clearly enough to remember that she did, indeed, receive three full meals. She can’t use yesterday’s experience to reassure herself that she will likely receive three meals today.
From her perspective, she is suddenly in this new place that doesn’t yet feel familiar.
There is no kitchen that she can see. She doesn’t recall the delicious dinner she had last night. No wonder she is concerned about where her next meal is coming from! On top of all that, one of the deeper portions of her brain—the Amygdala—continues to send out hunger-gathering instincts for self-preservation.
Instead of considering her behaviour to be "hoarding" and problematic, understand that she is doing her best to provide for herself and meet her most basic human needs. |
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Family Caregiver Bill of RightsWednesday, March 27, 2024
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Family caregiving includes a broad scope of activities. It is not only hands-on personal care, though that can certainly be part of family caregiving. Also included are activities like driving to doctor’s appointments, running errands, cleaning the house, doing laundry, cooking meals, sorting the mail, paying bills, setting up appointments, etc. A primary family caregiver may not be doing all of these activities, but they may oversee the completion of these tasks and arrange to have assistance in these areas.
Family caregiving can also happen from a distance when family members are spread out across a province, or even across the continent. Although the caregiver is not physically present all of the time, they feel the primary responsibility for the care of their loved one, and so they are the advocate and spend many hours on the phone or on email arranging help across the country.
The role of the family caregiver can be incredibly exhausting and sometimes rather lonely. People often do not know where to turn for assistance and attempt to manage everything on their own.
Often, this may not be a realistic goal as the care of their loved one may be too demanding for any individual to take on single-handedly, and so to preserve the health and mental wellness of everyone involved, it may be best to enlist the help of others. Here at Warm Embrace Elder Care, we advocate for the health and wellness of family caregivers who are often too busy advocating for their loved one to speak for themselves! To further remind family caregivers to always care for themselves, here is a Family Caregiver Bill of Rights:
FAMILY CAREGIVER BILL OF RIGHTS: I HAVE THE RIGHT…
To take care of myself. This is not an act of selfishness. It will give me the capability of taking better care of my loved one.
… and most of all, TO BE MYSELF |
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Lissette Mairena Wong 35 April 30, 2024 |
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Chloe Hamilton 112 April 17, 2024 |
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Avery Hamilton 4 June 7, 2018 |
