How to Get Your Loved One to Accept Help

One of the toughest things that you can go through when you were trying to care for a loved one is the resistance to your care. It can be difficult to know how to help someone who doesn’t seem to want your help. However, you cannot just simply stop helping them because they need you. Hopefully this article will help you understand why they resist. If you can understand your loved one better then maybe this will help you develop a strategy to care for them better. This may mean putting them into a home care service, senior housing or perhaps in home care would help to at least give you a break.

Understanding Why
When someone goes through a disease like Alzheimer’s or dementia, they have a lucid periods where they do know what’s going on. They start to realize that they are losing their mental capacity, physical ability as well as their independence. Being willing to except your care means doing away with privacy and being fully reliant on someone else. This could make your loved one feel afraid or vulnerable and it might make them angry.

Your love one could also just be stubborn or think that if they accept help that they are giving up and will seem weak. It’s also possible that they’re concerned about how much it is going to cost to take care of them. Memory loss also makes it very hard for a patient to figure out why they need help in the first place.

What to do about it
If your loved one is resisting care from yourself, other family members or even an in home care service, the first thing you should do is communicate with your loved one. They need you to be honest with them and not treat them like children. Sit down with them when they are relaxed and lucid and ask them to speak their mind and tell you their preferences. You may not be able to do everything they want but it’s important that they know you were taking their desires into consideration. If your loved one has a difficult time expressing their mind, you might try taking a multiple choice option so they can at least tell you yes or no.

After you talk to your loved one regarding their care plan, make an assessment of what kind of help they need versus the kind of help that they want. Enlisting the help of friends and family may also be helpful when trying to convince someone that they need help. But most of all, don’t give up. If you find that your loved one isn’t ready to talk about it, try again later.

Here are a few things that you can suggest to your love one in order to encourage them to accept help.

1. Don’t force them to make a decision right away about care. Suggest that you all try a trial run to test the waters and see how systems might be helpful. Let your loved one know that if they absolutely hate it, you will find another way.
2. Make sure that you talk about in home care or other services like this in a positive manner. If they even overhear you speaking negatively about a care system, they will immediately shut off. You can refer to the care as an activity and let them know they are a volunteer at the center.
3. The person you’re caring for does love you. Especially if they were a parent or someone you were once close to. While they may not remember everything, that connection remains. Consider explaining to your loved one how you were feeling and let them know that you are The one that needs help.
4. Your loved one needs to know that accepting help and losing a certain amount of independence is not indicative of failure. Placing your loved one in I’m in home care facility that offers activity and encourages relationships with other people will help them to develop a new interests.
5. If your loved one still resists after being in an Alzheimer?s care facility and trying all these things, you may need to consider enlisting the help of a professional to come and sit down with your loved one and help them to understand.