How to Find Peace in Any Situation

I'm currently in the process of becoming certified, through the McLean Meditation Institute, as a meditation teacher. Meditation was never really something that I gave much thought to, until I began realizing that my thoughts and my mind really was running my life, and not always for the better. I've always thought of myself as a "thinker" which can be both a good and a bad thing. The good thing is that my brain has enabled me to fulfill a long and rewarding career in nursing and to achieve many goals that I've had over the years. The bad thing about my brain, is that it never shuts down and is often filled with thoughts that are less than peaceful, loving and positive.

When I heard about quick and easy activities that could actually settle my mind in any given moment, I was intrigued. If we're being honest with ourselves, Alzheimer's disease gives us lot's of opportunities to worry and feel less than peaceful. What will happen in the future? How will this disease progress? Am I doing all that I can/should? Will I be able to handle whatever comes my way? Does this person still know who I am? Why does this person act in such strange ways? And, countless other questions, that leave us feeling unsettled, anxious and depressed.

Imagine being able to return to, or experience a feeling of peace at any given moment. There are ways that we can do this, but like most things it requires a commitment to try and a willingness to practice. Next time you're feeling stressed or anxious why don't you give it a try.  The following are some practices that have worked for me:

1) The first place to start is always with the breath. Turn your attention to your breath and how it feels moving in and out of your nose. When you're attention is on the breath, it is not on the things that you were previously worrying about. Your breath is a life line and your connection to the here and now. You can do this with your eyes open or closed.

2) When you notice your mind is wondering, and worrying, try bringing your attention to what is going on around you. If you're somewhere where you can observe nature, that is particularly helpful. Notice the sky, or the way the wind feels on your face, or the sun on your body. Noticing nature, is a great way to come back to the  present moment. If you don't have access to nature, just paying attention to what you're actually doing will break the thought pattern. For example, if you're doing the dishes and you're worrying or stressing about something, bring your attention to the dishes. How does the water feel? What does the soap smell like? When I first practiced this, it felt strange, but it really does work and the more you practice the better you'll get and feel!!

3) I find using a short statement which I find calming is really helpful. It can be something like, "this too shall pass" or "I'm calm" or "I can handle this".  I used the mantra, "I'm okay" the whole way up the final trek of Mount Kilimanjaro. Without the mantra, my mind was traveling to all sorts of really scary places and scenarios!

4) If you have a few minutes, listen to one of the guided meditations provided in the Mind Candy section of this blog. It will give you an opportunity to replace some of the negative, destructive thoughts with more peaceful, calming thoughts. Our thoughts are either helping us experience a more peaceful life, or they're causing us stress and all the harm that goes along with being stressed out!

What things have you found helpful to bring your attention back to the present and find peace in difficult situations?

Why Suffering Could Be A Good Thing

How could anything good come from suffering? This was the question I asked myself when I first heard that there is an argument to be had for the benefits of suffering. I have to admit, that I really resisted the whole idea and thought that it must be coming from people who have never really suffered. Having said that, who hasn't suffered? It seems that we often feel that certain people and certain situations have more of a "right" to suffer.  For example,  someone who is experiencing the gradual and progressive loss of their mind due to Alzheimer's disease may be perceived to have more of a right to suffer than someone who is suffering because they lost all their money in a stock market crash or a bad business deal.  The important thing, though, is that it doesn't matter where the suffering comes from, the experience at a physical and an emotional level is similar. Suffering hurts and most of us try to get as far away from it as possible.

Although the experience of suffering is universal, regardless of the cause, the response to suffering from the external world is varied. For example, people may be more compassionate to someone who is suffering due to illness or loss, whereas not so compassionate if it's felt the suffering is self inflicted. So what good then could possibly come from suffering? If there was no suffering in this world, there would be no compassion. Compassion is a seed that is watered in people when suffering is present. To avoid suffering, means we stunt our ability to grow compassion.

The more I reflected on this, the more I could think of situations when I witnessed and experienced this.  I can think of so many times when family members of people experiencing dementia would respond differently to their situation. The family members that were in close and constant contact seemed to demonstrate more compassion than family members who, for whatever reason kept their distance. I often wondered what role compassion had in their involvement. Were they more compassionate because they were present, or were they present because they were more compassionate?

Unfortunately, suffering is not going to disappear anytime soon and since it's needed in order to develop compassion maybe it's a necessary thing. So, if we're left to suffer at times in our lives, how can we learn to suffer less and turn it into a growth opportunity?  I think the best way to do this is by observing our suffering and how we feel without trying to deny it or change it. When we accept our suffering, it seems to transform it. When we resist our suffering, it seems to magnify it. Another way to address suffering head on, is by asking ourselves, "what am I grateful for in the midst of the suffering?"  This question shifts us from being a victim of our suffering to being receptive to finding the gifts and lessons in the suffering.

I would love to hear from you about how you have managed suffering in your life? Has anything good ever come from your suffering?

When Connection Makes You Sick

The past couple of weeks has been interesting and definitely given me an opportunity for personal growth and reflection. My journey with my parents continues as they face significant health challenges. My mom fell and broke her pelvis and was admitted to a rehab facility for several weeks to regain her function. My dad, was left at home heading into the final round of treatment for cancer. The interesting thing is that I could see that a crisis was coming and couldn't do anything to change the course of the inevitable. You see, what I observed was the significant amount of stress that my mom was under and her inability to separate herself from what my dad was going through. At a subconscious level, it was if she needed this crisis in order to change the circumstances of her life. The longer his health issues went on, the sicker she became. It's as if their energy was joined and although I always believed it, I observed the profound impact that one person's energy has on those around them.

Reflecting on my experience with Alzheimer's disease, I think this commonly happens in the relationship between the person with the disease and the care partner. The challenge for the care partner, is how to stay connected, compassionate and present without making yourself sick. How do you maintain detachment when we're all so connected? If I'm being honest, I really didn't do a great job of that when I was going through it. So maybe that's why I have been given another opportunity to practice it with my parents who are currently going through their struggles.

One of the single most helpful things has been the practice of mindfulness. Being mindful has enabled me to be present in the moment without being swept up in the current of worry that arises when  thoughts are focused on the future. In this moment, everything is okay! Even if it's difficult to believe, everything is as it should be. The other great thing about mindfulness, is you learn to get in touch with your own feelings and emotions and observe how they are influenced by your circumstances and the energy of other people. With this increased awareness brings a level of acceptance that may not have been there previously. If you're interested in learning more about mindfulness, Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana is a great book.

Now that the crisis is over, I really can see that everything happens for a reason. My mom is more peaceful than she's been in a long time and realizing that she needs to take care of herself. My dad is learning how to cook and I'm reminded that nothing is permanent, which includes both the happy and the sad times.

Alzheimer's: A Slipping Away

Erika Dyck, an Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Saskatchewan, wrote this poem 25 years ago, while in grade 7 about her Grandmother. Thank you Erika for sharing this beautiful poem with us!

It is like a living death, 

takes the mind and leaves the breath.

The body is there for all to see,  

floundering without memory.

First, just harmless forgetfulness,

then soon grandma needs help to dress.

Tasks once handled with such ease,

are beyond reach for those diseased.

Household chores are out of hand,

constant care is in demand.

Close companions come and go,

who they are, she doesn’t know.

Those left behind as the memory goes,

believe they can cope with the status quo.

But the reality is, they cannot face,

a disease that progresses at such a pace.

The confusion she feels is never lost,

only shared by others at great cost.

Communication, now on another plane,

my sorrow for her is hard to contain.

How could nature be so callous,

to condemn someone who had no malice.

Who’s next, who will it be,

mom, dad or perhaps me?

Erika reflects 25 years later on the poem and her experience with her Grandmother's Alzheimer's disease....

My grandmother died when I was in grade seven.  I had the good fortune of spending a lot of time with her as a child. She cared for me when my mom returned to work after each of my siblings was born and I have strong and very fond memories of happy times, like playing cards and Hi-Q with her.  We often spent time exploring outside in the large garden full of fruit trees and the large compost pile that we fed regularly.  We played in the kitchen too; Grandma making meals and me making a mess.  I don’t have a distinct memory of her getting sick.  I just remember little things.  We used to sort the garbage each week, which was a ritual my grandmother had acquired after living through the Depression and saving anything remotely useful.  We carefully smoothed out wax paper wrappers, tin foil scraps, and sorted items that could be burned or composted from the few things that truly needed to be placed in the landfill.  But the weekly rituals became more confusing, I now realize in hindsight.  Over time the sorting sessions took longer and longer and seemed to have no real end goal.  Items would move from one pile to another and back as she lost the thread.  As a kid though, I didn’t notice, I liked playing with my Grandma.

As I got older and started school I continued to spend time with my grandparents.  Grandma had always talked to me about my lessons and always appeared to have time to work in a game of cards while we discussed the day’s events.  But that too became more difficult over time.  I got busy and noticed less, but she seemed more and more distracted.

My cousins visited too.  There would be loads of us kids running through the house or chasing each other across the street at the school yard.  We would take over the entire house setting up train tracks with impossibly long and winding routes.  Grandma would quietly watch us destroy her house and she sometimes slipped into the background.  She seemed quite tired often.

In grade seven I was chosen among my classmates for a lead role in the school play.  I had to practice daily as we prepared for several shows in the spring.  By then Grandma barely recognized us, and no longer knew her own children or my Grandfather.  We visited her each day after school, but the visits were hard.  My mom kept a porcelain rabbit with hard candies filled in my Grandma’s room.  I used to feel angry that I thought my younger siblings only visited to get the humbug candies she kept in that rabbit.  My Grandma would sit or pace in her room, and couldn’t even express herself or describe her far away thoughts. She lost weight.  Her eyes seemed to change from blue to grey.  My heart aches now remembering those days.  Her eyes often seemed very far away, though they remained kind and searching.  She was in there, but there was somewhere else.

My Grandma died just before our school performance.  The funeral was set for the opening night.  Everything is now a blur to me.  I can’t even remember the faces of my distant cousins who traveled to pay their respects.  I certainly don’t remember any of the lines from the play.  I remember my Grandfather listening to Mozart’s requiem for days, loudly, on repeat.  My father and his brothers went quiet. 

Although her death was merely the end of a long slipping away, it created a hole in our family that had long been developing.  She had kept things together and had a calming influence on those of us around her, even through her time with Alzheimer’s.  I feel extremely lucky to have known her on both sides of the disease.  My cousins and siblings ask from time to time about my memories of her, and I feel honoured to have them to share.  I hope that my memories and reflections can afford her the dignity that she deserved, even as she wrestled to hold on to her own thoughts.

I have recently become a mother, which has encouraged me to reflect on family in new ways.  Memories of my Grandma’s kindness, her gentle nature, and her strong intelligence have come back to me as I struggle to keep my patience as my toddler draws on the walls or builds towers with my spice collection on his sister.  My Grandma never yelled to my recollection, yet she raised four boys and had grandchildren under her feet in most of my days with her.  I think of her strength and imagine her patience as I come to face my own trials as a parent and a partner.  I know that many people think I didn’t really know my grandmother; that her illness had taken hold already when I was young.  I’ll never really know whether that is true, but I like to believe that I learned a lot from her, and still am.

The Divine Spark

by Dr. Pat Campbell, Senior Minister and Spiritual Director, for the Calgary Centre For Spiritual Living.  Dr. Pat is the author of Giving God a Good Time.  

When Bev Janisch asked me to write an article for her blog on Alzheimer’s from a spiritual perspective, I thought, “What do I know about Alzheimer’s?”  But then I remembered that both my parents, although never diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, dealt with moderate dementia prior to their deaths. 

And like anyone else who has had a loved one lose their mental capacities – I often wondered, “Where did she go?  Where did that bright, funny, interesting woman go?”  And “Where did he go?  What happened to that strong, vital, man of integrity and dignity?”

The answer is, they didn’t go anywhere.  Because from a spiritual perspective, they still had the spark of the Divine within them – even if I couldn’t see it anymore.

As a minister of Centers for Spiritual Living, what I teach and believe is that God (or whatever you choose to call the Universal Life Force) is all there is.  Everything is part of this Life Force.  It cannot die.  It cannot become confused.  It cannot be extinguished. 

Because that is true, then we too are part of this Life Force.  Each of us has that Divine Spark within us.  Each of us is here to shine that spark as brightly as we possibly can.  And no one’s spark is like anyone else’s.  We are unique, special, and absolutely individual.  Each of us is walking our own individual spiritual path, that is just right for us for our own soul’s growth.

When I remember this, I can view what appeared to be the loss of my parents to dementia as part of their spiritual path; their soul’s growth.  I can celebrate when their spark was bright and vivid, and be happy for having that be part of my life. 

And I can also appreciate them when their spark appeared dim, because I know that nothing can really diminish the spark – it’s just that I could no longer see it.  Yet, it was still there, shining brightly of the path of their soul’s growth.

Blessings.

Alzheimer's Four Agreements

Don Miguel Ruiz wrote a book named "The Four Agreements." If you haven't read it, it's definitely worth reading.  It was interesting to me, that although it wasn't written about Alzheimer's disease, the book's message is very relevant to both living with this disease and life in general.  The book "reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering".

The first and most important agreement is to be "impeccable with your word." This agreement acknowledges that the word is a very powerful tool which can manifest both good and bad thoughts, feelings and outcomes in your life. I've often been concerned about the words we use surrounding Alzheimer's disease and believe that the words impact how we feel about it. For example, words like, victim, sufferer, robbed, tortured, violent, non compliant are often used when describing those impacted by the disease. Think about how these words make you feel. Words are powerful and we must chose them consciously to result in more peaceful and loving experiences. Alzheimer's Australia, published a paper, Dementia Friendly Language,  which provides suggestions for preferred terms which result in more positive and hopeful feelings.

The second agreement is "don't take anything personally." Wow, that is a really hard thing to do when many of us take so many things personally. What does that mean in the Alzheimer's world? It means that most of what happens when interacting with people with dementia is as a result of the disease and not as a result of us. It doesn't make it any easier, but it is the truth. Miguel Ruiz wrote, "All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world and we try to impose our world on their world." Amazing! He wasn't even talking about Alzheimer's disease!

The third agreement is "don't make assumptions." This is a really important one in the Alzheimer's world as we tend to make a lot of assumptions based on a lack of knowledge about the disease. He describes that "we make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions." I may be going out on a limb by saying this, but there are no excuses to not ask questions and learn as much as you can about Alzheimer's disease. The more you know, the fewer assumptions you'll make and the less you'll suffer from all the strange things that go along with the disease.
   
The fourth and final agreement is "always do your best." This is a hard one to consider in terms of dementia, because somehow it feels like you're best is never good enough. When we do our best, it doesn't change the course of the disease or alter the challenging situations. I have to admit that I have a hard time with this agreement as it implies that we need to judge our best and the very nature of judging can result in beating ourselves up. Having said that , doing your best is about accepting yourself and accepting the situation that you find yourself in. Doing your best is something that happens in the moment and the good thing about that is that the moment is always changing.

Have you found other agreements that have been helpful when dealing with Alzheimer's disease??

Are Anxiety and Depression Related?

One of the most challenging symptoms of Alzheimer's disease to witness and alleviate is anxiety.
Anxiety is so common in Alzheimer's disease and dementia and is often an indicator that the person is "suffering" at some level. Dealing with anxiety is very complex as there are countless things that could be contributing to the anxiety. One thing is for certain, and that is we need to stand up and pay attention when anxiety is present because there is a reason for it.

One of my "pet peeves" in the dementia world is when medications that commonly have significant side effects are used to "dull" or attempt to alleviate the anxiety. While the goal to alleviate the anxiety, is a noble one, the way we go about it is so important in order that we enhance  quality of life and minimize adverse effects.

Whenever anxiety is present, it is vital that all psychosocial, environmental and underlying physical causes of anxiousness are ruled out.  This means that the environment needs to be calm, the person who is anxious is physically comfortable, the expectations being placed on the person are realistic, frustrations are minimized, and that the person has had a chance to burn off excess energy.

It is important to note that a very high percentage of people with dementia and anxiety also meet the criteria for a diagnosis of depression. Why is this important? This is important because we have a lot more success managing the anxiety when it's recognized as part of an underlying issue such as depression. Secondly, when we treat the depression the chances of improving quality of life and alleviating suffering is possible. When we just treat the anxiety with traditional medications, like benzodiazepines, such as Ativan, we often end up with significant side effects and a whole spectrum of other issues. James Clyde Sellman Ph.D,  provides a helpful overview about this in the article, Alzheimer's Disease and Anxiety.

In summary,  if the person is anxious and there is a chance that they are also depressed, I would focus on the depression and manage it with one of the newer antidepressants that have minimal side effects and a good chance of improving quality of life. I would love to hear your stories and experiences with anxiety and depression....