Treating neural networks đ§ under pressure
The synaptic rivers in your brain require conscious care đïž
Dementia is not just about someone âlosing his or her mindâ.
Caregivers experience their own trauma. Both the caregiver and the cared-for have neural networks operating under pressure.
My own brain has been under pressure many times, but one of the most intense pressure situations came as a caregiver. The neural network that once helped me to be an adept survivor through reactivity and adaptiveness began to shift and show gaps.
If you are reading this and are a caregiver, you have probably systemically denied or repressed a difficult reality you have faced with a loved one. My own experience as a caregiver is that community can help with your treatment. A strong community of supportive people is needed to punch through the fuzzy cocoon of stories we tell ourselves. Through community, we can be introduced to love, and with love, we can find the strength to bear reality. Love is the only thing strong enough to bear reality.
The neural network very rarely collapses in one fell swoop. I was attached to denial for a while around my fatherâs decline.  Observers are so desperate to believe what they want to believe, that they ignore other facts.
Iâm not sure if Dadâs denial was conscious, or if he didnât understand what was happening.  My father started talking about his legs ânot listeningâ when he attempted to move them. I now believe his Louis Body dementia was slowly creating a roadblock on the neural highway which made it increasingly difficult for his brain to effectively communicate with his legs. My mother, brothers, and I spoke to him and tried to talk him into new behavior. I admit, not my best moment. I did not have the experience to accurately assess the situation, so I was more prone to denial around Dadâs decline. I now know that my father was in earnest saying, âHelp! My brain is not working like it has all my life!âÂ
As I now look at things through the rearview mirror, my family and I adopted denial as a means not to have to cope with the grim reality we were facing as a family. Rather than focus on the long-term impact of Dadâs neural net wiring going down on him, we instead focused our energy talking about using railings more and removing small rugs from around the house.
The reshaping of the neural network results in strange behaviors.Â
Hereâs Dadâs example:
My father was a carpenter. Working with wood was his therapy. As dad crafted objects for use, he developed the habit of inscribing the wood with his name and the date. His maker's mark.  Â
When my father fell into the grips of Louis Body dementia, he would call the sheriffâs office at 3 am and say, "They took my furniture, it has my name on it. Â You'll see it if you look."Â Â He was credentialing, frantically citing details to enhance the veracity of their argument/statements.
Dadâs memory rivers were shifting.  For him it made perfect sense to call and explain to the police that they needed to look for furniture with his carved signature. His past met with his new reality. Â
Now the caregiverâs problem:Â
My poor momâs brain, exhausted by the hypervigilance of living with someone who would call the police at 3 am, suffered. However, because the damage she suffered was emotional, it was invisible. She wasnât calling the police at 3 am asking for them to look for furniture with signatures. But she was being placed under immense pressure. So she got snippy. She dissolved into rants against certain people. She became âdifficultâ. She was lashing out.  Anger was her legal drug. The white-hot focus of anger became her private fire. It kept her warm. Maybe it treated her wounds temporarily. But like any fire, it had the potential to burn her if not contained. đ„
How do we carry invisible wounds?Â
The dominant answer is by hiding them.Â
Many of us are raised to comply with the societal norm of âjust dealing with itâ when it comes to caregiving. But trauma cannot be repressed for long. There are a few ways invisible wounds seek treatment. Anger is one. However, I want to spend a few paragraphs on other ways that those before us have used to treat these invisible wounds.
Spiritualism is a religious movement based on the belief that the spirits of the dead exist and have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living.
Immediately following the American Civil War, spiritualism experienced hockey stick growth in the USA. Mary Todd Lincoln, wife to American President Abraham Lincoln, became obsessed with sĂ©ances. She had suffered twin traumas of losing her son and witnessing her husband be assassinated. I see Mrs. Lincolnâs attraction to spiritualism as a path her synaptic rivers took when they needed a detour from the pain.
Following World War One, spiritualism swept over Europe. Any port in a storm perhaps. It is hard to carry invisible wounds alone, how comforting the belief must have been that you could speak to those who had died. Debunkers of this belief system found it hardest to explain strange physical phenomena, normally exhibited by women who had a history of some type of trauma. Women â more than men it seems â would claim to be âscratchedâ by a spirit in a sĂ©ance. Sometimes their bodies would swell. Slowly, doctors began to understand and name new phenomena. The human body is capable of manifesting spontaneous welts, dematographic urticana and swelling waistlines (caused by swallowing air, sometimes unconsciously) - aerophagia.Â
Our bodies manifest our wounding and process the stress of our experience in ways we still donât fully understand. This mind-body link makes the maintenance step of self-care essential.
I learned this the hard way. As a caregiver under stress, I once broke out in shingles.  Like someone who claimed to have been scratched in a sĂ©ance, my own body was directly damaged by my overdoing it.  My mind, under stress, turned my body on me. We understand so little about the relationship between the neural stress we are under, and the ways in which our body can manifest its wounding. Ask most doctors what brings on shingles, and they will rather vaguely say, âA virus that is reactivated by stressâ.Â
We are still learning about stress, neural networks under pressure, and caregiving.
But itâs not just the person being taken care of that needs care.
Caregivers need care too!
đ Do you feel you are carrying an invisible wound from caregiving?
âđŒ đ What advice would you share with others?