Caring for Someone with Cognitive Impairment

When is it time to get help?

If you are the caregiver for someone in your life, it’s important to recognize and respect your personal limits. If you are unable to enlist the help of others, for whatever reason, you likely feel the burden of shouldering this responsibility all on your own. That can feel suffocating and overwhelming. If you are having trouble coping, find your physical or mental health to be poor because you’re barely able to care for yourself – then it’s time to seek help.

Caregiver stress treatment methods

Your therapist will talk with you to find out the primary source of your stress (anxiety, depression, frustration, etc.). Once that’s identified, together you can come up with some strategies to alleviate that stress. Everyone has different needs, so treatment methods can vary from individual to individual. However, effective treatment methods include:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach to treatment that focuses on how people’s thoughts, emotions, and beliefs influence their behaviour and how they perceive themselves.
• Person Centered Therapy differs from more traditional therapeutic approaches in the belief that, while the therapist has expertise in many areas, the client is the expert on themselves and their lived experiences. People are essentially trustworthy and have a vast potential for understanding themselves while also being able to ultimately resolve their own problems when guided properly.
• Emotionally Focused Therapy is based on observations and experience, which looks at emotions and emotional intelligence, which helps support stronger and more secure relationships by helping better understand how our actions impact others, and how our emotions drive our interaction.
• Existential Therapy is focused on providing the client with a greater understanding of themselves including self-development, and self-awareness. This therapy works on the individual’s unique set of choices and the meaning behind them, make them aware they can’t blame their decisions and the repercussions entirely on past conditioning and/or genetics.