How do you get past negative responses from someone with dementia that you were caring for that have stuck with you?

Suzie, those with dementia often say things they do not mean or understand. I am sorry mom said this to you. Understand, though that mom's brain was broken and I am sure she did not understand what she was saying. A caregiver needs a very thick skin and often times very hurtful things are said by the loved one. I am sure she did not understand.

SuzieM
I'm so sorry that you are dealing with this particularly harsh memory at the same time you are grieving the loss of your mother. I don't think I have the words to tell you how to forget what you heard or for it to not make you feel alone and lonely. I remember hearing Harry Belafonte sing, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child" and I imagine that is what you felt like when your mom said that. I also wonder what was the state of your mothers mind when she spoke those words that were so hard for you to hear. Perhaps she realized that she didn't know who you were. Perhaps she remembered something about love but couldn't put it together with you as her brain was no longer functioning in a way that would allow her to remember. Perhaps it was a loss that she was sorry about or something she thought she should tell you. Perhaps she saw how much you were caring for her and she felt it only fair to let you know. Perhaps she heard something like that on tv and was only repeated something she had heard. Perhaps it was something someone had said to her. I know it won't make those words fade for me to write these words but your relationship was much more than those few unfortunate words and was for a time much longer than those 13 years or that last six months. It has not been long enough for the last months to shrink to their appropriate size in importance. Those few words seem to weigh more than all the rest of your relationship, but that's for now. They still loom large in your mind. They will recede. My own mother has been gone for two years this month and it is just now receding and I have yet to be able to remember better times, times before illness and death. We go into a sort of trance in our care giving. It takes a while to come out of it.
I do know that for you to dwell on those words is not healthy for you.
You may have heard this story. An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
So turn away from those words and that experience and think on more pleasing times with your mother. Its hard to stop doing something. Easier to start doing something that pushes the other thing away. "I am love" could be a mantra you could repeat when the memory comes back. Something simple that you can repeat over and over. Therapy might help you as well. Hugs

It sounds like your mother and you had a good relationship -- not something I would expect if people didn't love each other. I have a feeling that gladimhere is right. She didn't realize what she was saying. Another thing is that the disease could have affected her brain so she wasn't feeling love. Alzheimer's changes people so much that they can become like different people. If you know your mother loved you when she was well, it is what matters. If you loved her is even more important. I suspect that people who can love are lovable themselves.

Oh Jez. My mom told me. Way way before dementia she wanted to abort. Also told me the second she saw me she was so happy she didn't. That was hard to deal with The wanting to be aborted. She was a fairly decent mom. God only knows what will she will say to me as dementia progresses. I'm going to try really hard to remember how good she was to me and thank God she decided to have me.

Dear Suzie,

Reading your post made me tearful. I am so sorry you have been thinking of these words. I know how much it hurts. But I hope you know in your heart it was the disease talking and not your mom. You were a faithful and dutiful daughter for all your life. Your mom was so blessed to have you caring for her.

I know we want to hear the words "I love you" from our parents. After my dad had his stroke, I too tried to make him happy. But it felt like everything I tried to do was not good enough. He would constantly wave me off or tell me no. He passed last year and I'm still struggling.

It's not easy to let the past go, but others have suggested to me to focus on the whole relationship. Think of all the good moments and try to let those ones that hurt go.

Take care of yourself. Please know you did do everything possible for her. And you did right by her.

SuzieM - think of the happy years you spent together - obviously your mom loved you and delighted in spending time with you. Her brain was not functioning properly at the end. (it might have been in her mind to someone else she was saying this). Try to remember the good times - because that is who your mom really was.

My dad has dementia - and he says very hateful things to my wonderful step-mom (he thinks it is 30 years ago when my mom and dad were going through their divorce and he thinks my step-mom is my mother). My stepmom, on a logical level, knows this. However, it is hard not to be very hurt.

It might help to read up on dementia. I hope you can soon let this hurt go - it was not true.

You are so fortunate to have a loving Mother that you spent so many happy years with. My life is just the opposite. My happiest memories of childhood was the three dogs I was friends with. Whitey, Ginger and Buddie. I was abused and told not to talk to others. I used to go into the woods and play with then. When I was school age I used to run home to be with them. When a bully bothered me it was Whitey that protected me. My Mom now has pleasant dementia, mild. Sometimes she is great at interacting. Yesterday I asked her if she would go to a Dr. appointment with me. She took my hand and looked at me in a loving manner and said, I want to go with my little girl to the Dr. She said she wants me to feel safe. That makes me cry. I think it is happiness to finally be hearing that. Between my Mom, the cat, Kitty, and my son, we are a loving supportive family. Something I have always wanted. Just keep on loving your Mother.  Two years ago Mom got real negative like she was when I was a child. I forget what she said now. I told her, Mom, that's not very nice and dropped it. She thought about that for a minute. She hasn't said a bad word since. I have been care taking full time since Jan 2015. You are fortunate to have so many years caretaking  your Mother. Mom is going to be 100 next month. I don't know how we could do it but 10 more years would be good. 

Hi Suzie,

My dad died of Alzheimer's and at the end of his life told me "I used to love you". This stung because I knew that he loved me and that I had been the apple of his eye until the last few years. These people gradually lose their brain function as the disease progresses but that doesn't mean they never loved you.

Hi, SuzieM.
You've received a lot of good advice here. It is hard to move on after things people have said and done, especially when it's your Mom and you were so close. The best you can do for yourself, and for her memory, is to remember the good times. Push the bad back and eventually you will concentrate mostly on those good memories. I had an alcoholic father and my narcissistic mother is still alive (who I care for despite all of the past and present things she says and does). I could focus on the bad memories from both, but I chose to focus on the good in them. I recently read a statement "You bring out the best in yourself by looking for the best in others." If you need help working past this, develop a strong support system to talk about it so you can move past it. It's the most productive way to honor your mother and yourself. I wish you all the best.

Suzie, read what you wrote: "We laughed together. Took day trips together..."
THIS is what you remember.
It was the NASTY THIEF dementia who uttered that heart breaking statement.

Your Mom LOVED her daughter.
Your Mom probably did not like the woman that was taking care of her.
To your Moms mind they are/were not the same person.

I bet when you were little there were times you told your Mom that you hated her. Did she truly think that you hated her? I bet you don't even remember saying that but all kids do at some time utter those words.
Forget that your Mom said those hurtful to you as she forgot and forgave you for saying the same words to her probably 60+ years ago.
Remember the Day Trips, the times you sat and had coffee or tea while talking about the trip you came back from, planning the next one or solving some problem.
Just like you don't dwell on changing her briefs, changing the soiled sheets, getting up at 3 am because you heard her try to get out of bed, don't dwell on one sentence that was said.
Recall the good not the hurt.

My wife and I enjoyed 65 years of a happy marriage before dementia robbed her of her mind. At one stage of her dementia she said she hated me. She accused me of all sorts of evil things, even claiming that I was trying to kill her. Once she came at me with a kitchen knife. To make a long story short, she's now in an ALF. She has passed the hostile stage, and is now much better. I visit her often, and when I do she happily greets me and expresses her love for me. I believe your mom was going through a nasty stage of dementia, and unfortunately she passed before she got past the nasty stage. Please keep in mind that your mother loved you and the hurtful words were not really hers. God bless.

Hi SuzieM,
My mother died three weeks ago, in hospice care in a nursing facility, and although she (or the NASTY THIEF, dementia, as Edna317 so aptly put it) never said she didn't love me, she began to lash out in the last week of her life, ordering people out of the room and saying she didn't know them. I was frozen with shock when I came into her room a week before she died and she started yelling at everyone to get out. Mercifully, the hospice social worker was with me and took me firmly by the shoulders and out of the room and enveloped me in a huge hug.

Now, granted, even in her best years, Mom was capable of blurting out remarks that could sting; but being on the receiving end of the screaming at people to get out/telling a daughter, like you, who took care of your mom for years and did all sorts of fun things together can feel really devastating. I confess I felt pretty unloved, myself; then I realized Mom was just not in control of her faculties any longer. What has helped me a lot is going through old photos. Do you have a collection that you can sift through? Do you need to put together pictures for a slide show for her memorial service, or a book--or would it help to do it just for you? I have spent several days doing this for the first reason -- the service. I am deliberately picking out only ones in which she's smiling in the friendliest way and/or surrounded by her kids. It is another version of seeing the best in a person, I suppose. It is already helping me suppress the unpleasant, and move on. I wish you the best in getting beyond this and I know it isn't easy!

Dear Suzie, those of us who have dealt with parents or other relatives with dementia totally understand how you feel. My mother was the master of snarky comments all my life. But we also had many good times and I know she loved me. When Mom went to a nursing home, I was charged with going through her papers. One day, I found my grandfather's death certificate. I had believed that he'd died from a heart attack. The cause of death was listed as "asphyxia by hanging". The fact that he'd committed suicide hit me like a tone of bricks. That I'd been lied to since I was 11 years old was even worse. By the time I discovered the real cause, my mother was too mentally unstable to talk to about it.

I got the usual insults and accusations as well. "How could you do this to me" When in reality, I'd done it FOR her. "I hope your kids never do this to you." Well, I'm my disabled husband's caregiver and I would never want to do to my kids what he's doing to me. If it's possible, I want to go to a nursing home and not expect my kids to give up their lives to do for me what I have to do for my husband.

Remember the good times you had with your mom. Dwelling on the hard times serves no purpose other than to anger and depress you. It's like picking at a scab. Unless you leave it alone, it won't heal. Best of luck to you. I hope you find some peace very soon.

97yroldmom said it all.

Don't beat yourself up for something your mother might not even have known she said. The other night my DH said he didn't know who I am. It hurts - but he can't help it and your mother couldn't either. She might not have known who you were when she said that. The mind plays cruel tricks.

Pray on it and ask your God to take the pain away. I will pray for you also.

Huggers,
Linda

Suzie, your mother had by definition lost her mind. It's not like being drunk, when the real truth comes out. She didn't really know who she was any more, let alone you.

What an awful thing for you to have heard, all the same. Dementia is a vile disease.

Hi Suzie,

You are blessed to have had a good relationship with your mother, to have good memories of it. Do you have pictures from some of the fun things you did with her? If so, why not create a collage? Copy the pictures on a colour copier, cut hem out and paste them on a poster board. (You don't want to use the original pictures for this, only a copy, so that you can preserve them). Put that poster board up somewhere you will see it when you start remembering the bad things she said. I know a surgeon who has an 'inspiration board' in his office near his desk. When he has a bad day, he spends time just looking at the 'inspiration board'. It reminds him of why he is a doctor. (He also spends time with his inspiration board before he's about to perform a difficult procedure.)

You might also benefit from Cognitive-Behavior Therapy. CBT helps people who are ruminating on bad thoughts and getting depressed. It's well worth it to learn the principles of CBT to stay emotionally healthy.

(I am the daughter of severely personality disordered parents and from a highly dysfunctional family. I was treated for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, causally related to all the trauma: severe verbal abuse at home and school, some physical abuse and neglect. What worked for me was trauma informed Modern Analysis. I was taught the principles of CBT during my termination period, when my analyst was teaching me tools I could use to stay emotionally healthy--without having to rely on someone else.)

Here are links to good explanations of what CBT is and how it works:
Psych Central:https://psychcentral.com/lib/in-depth-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/?all=1
Beck Institute FAQs (Dr Aron Beck initially developed this approach--it has evolved with the times) https://www.beckinstitute.org/get-informed/cbt-faqs/
Academy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists--keeps a registry of certified cognitive-behavioral therapists (the certification is rigorous): http://academyofct.site-ym.com/

Hope that helps
DoN

That is a very hard thing to hear - especially after you took 13 years out of your life to care for her. My mom never really told me she loved me - until I brought it up after a nasty argument and told her via a letter I would not tolerate our unhealthy relationship any longer. The criticism, never telling me she was proud of me or loved me. She never brought up that letter but started showing a more loving, appreciative side. We have had some great times together - shopping, road trips. She just can change on a dime - she is still sharp, can drive, shop, cook - so I'm not sure what is going on. It has gotten worse with age - I dread what she could possibly act like down the road. I'm sorry - I do not have a tough skin and am quite sensitive to words and my surroundings. It's been a struggle lately when she moved back in with me. I try to remember I am an awesome person, friend, co-worker. At least that is what I've been told. But it's hard when the very person who should love you unconditionally...does not act like it.

SuzieM - you have 13 years of GOOD memories! Focus on that. What she said is not what she truly believed, that was the dementia talking. People without dementia often say things hurtful like that and too often do not get a chance to undo the hurt it causes.

Long ago, because my mother was not really a lovable type I developed a thicker skin to ignore the nasty things she would say about me (and others.) I would guess that even before you started taking care of her she was a good mom. One statement, coming from, as others describe it, a broken mind, should be ignored. She might not have even realized who she was talking to at that time! My mother thinks my daughter is her cousin, not seen or talked to in eons!

So, revel in the good times and memories. Let that one slip go. You KNOW what times you had together and how she felt then. THAT is what is important and should be remembered!

Sometimes w alz desease the brain is screwed the wrong direction so things come out opposite...this has happened to my Alzheimer's hubby. Just discard it & turn it around. I know this is what your mom would want. Never to hurt you. Bless you.

Suzie,
I think you will find that most, if not all, caregivers experience this. Dementia is like having two personalities in one person. My wife would cuss at me, tell me she didn't love me, and more. But, an hour later she would not remember what she said. I hated it but I would give anything to have her back just to see that smile again.

Suzie--
I WISH I had 13 good years of memories with my mother. She didn't want me, didn't care much for me as I grew up and I spent so much of my life craving and almost begging for a scrap of attention. Nope. Now she has dementia and she is actually pretty sweet, but since I know it comes from her brain not working correctly, it kind of falls on deaf ears.

I'd hang on to the good memories. The bad will fade, in time, if you let them, if you don't they'll eat you up.

The "parable" of the Indian chief and the wolves is one I love--b/c it's simple and true.

Don't feed the bad wolf.

After 31years of marriage, my husband tells me at least once a week that he wants a divorce and begins putting his personal items into the car. The next day he does not remember this and "loves" me again. It was a shock the first couple of times, but I have learned to ignore it. It was not easy and if it were a parent, I am sure that it might be harder to hear, especially after such a good relationship. But please let your heart heal. Talk to a therapist or a support group.

I'm not sure if they even recall what they said when they reach a certain stage so try not to take it personally. If needed, go to your church and speak to your pastor or find someone who happens to be a Christian and speak to them and have them pray with you so God can heal you where you hurt. In time you will get past it with god's help

DofNarcissists and Digital Banker, (and many others) I like your posts. Thinking something similar. Hugs to you and SuzieM.

Remember Suzie all the years of loving, laughter, rides, shopping, she loved you then, don't think that before her death that this stupid disease took away what has always been in her 💙

I can only echo what others have said: That's the broken brain talking, not your real Mom. I know my mom loves me, but she does not always *like* the caretaker who pushes her to drink water, take her meds, etc., and sometimes that comes out, although not as starkly as in your case. For example, a couple of months ago my Mom was having a bout of constipation. Because she has a horror of laxatives, we had to pretend that the stool softeners and laxatives we were giving her were "nutritional supplements." But Mom quickly figured out that the pills were making her go No. 2 and refused to take them, because she fears having an "accident." So, with that avenue shut off, we started pushing the fruits and vegetables with increased enthusiasm. One evening when I was bringing Mom some fruit salad, she fixed me with a hard stare and said, "If I had a B-B gun, I know what I'd do. The next time you brought me that stuff, I would shoot you, ping, right in your little *ss." It made me laugh, but at the same time I recognized the deep frustration and fear of losing control that she must have been experiencing. So just keep reminding yourself: "It's not me, it's her broken brain" -- and likely her unhappiness.
I also have a close friend who cared for her husband, who suffered from Parkinson's, for years in their home. During the day, she had caregivers stay with him while she went to work. Now this man was besotted with my friend -- he continued to pursue her even after she rejected his first marriage proposal -- so in his "right" mind, he was a devoted husband. But he started giving money to one of the caregivers and even told my friend that he was going to leave her and run off with the caregiver. My friend, who is no creampuff, could not tell me about it until he'd been dead over 10 years, she was so hurt, even though she knew that the "real" him wasn't saying and doing those things. Hang in there, everybody.

Six years now since my husbands stroke & 1-3 times a month he's leaving me. I know it's not his fault. But it still hurts. A therapist told me, can you be mad at the stroke & not him. No matter what others tell you or article you've read it's still difficult. Take care of yourself. God Bless!

I know what you are going thru my dad has this terrible disease. You need to find someone that you can talk to when it's a bad day. My dad told my sister that I was changing. Because I do everything for him and he treats me like a dog.. But he is my father and I have to remember that. When I needed him he was there for me. I will always love him no matter how bad he gets, I'm his little girl

My mom died of cancer when I was 17 after two recurrences. I was a senior in high school and worked part time after school and evenings; Dad was retired and took care of her. I don't forget the time I came home for supper and she didn't recognize me. It's tough when people you love aren't the person you grew up with.
I suspect that in Suzie's case, her mom's image of her daughter was a much younger person, and she thought the daughter she saw was a random caregiver.