What is Dementia Coaching?
11.5 million Americans are providing care. Are you one of them?
If you’re one of the 11.5 million Americans providing unpaid care to a family member or friend who is living with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, you already have a sense of how challenging it can be—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and financially.
Meeting with a Dementia Coach can give you the support you need.
Answer the questions below to see if coaching could be right for you.
Do you have a family member or friend who is experiencing increased forgetfulness or confusion, behavioral changes, or is having more difficulty coping with day to day life because of memory changes or dementia?
Are you involved with providing support or caregiving for this family member or friend, and struggling with what to do or how to help?
Do you wish you had someone to provide you with personalized coaching and mentoring, so you would feel more confident and less stressed as a caregiver?
Are you searching for ways to preserve your relationship with the person you are caring for, while also taking care of yourself in the process?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, dementia coaching can give you the support you need.
Here are Some Benefits Coaching Offers
Access to Education, Support & Tools
Family members and care partners who are caring for someone living with dementia may face immense obstacles due to the complex and burdensome nature of this disease. That is why it is critically important for caregivers to have access to education, support and tools so that they are empowered to provide the best care possible, while simultaneously striving to honor their own needs and health in the process.
Dementia coaching can help care partners to successfully adapt to the challenges involved in caring for someone with dementia through active listening, skillful guidance, and individualized action plans designed to increase confidence and reduce stress for the journey ahead.
Taking Care of Yourself
Being a care partner to someone living with any form of dementia puts you at risk for many things yourself, including
There are ways to be pro-active as a care partner so that you can improve or maintain your own health and quality of life, while also providing the best possible care and quality of life to the person living with dementia in the process. Dementia coaching and consulting can help tremendously by providing emotional support, techniques and guidance in an authentic and compassionate way that makes the caregiving journey more manageable and successful for all involved.
Emotional Support
A dementia coach can help to improve the quality of life of the person living with dementia, as well as their care partners through rendering emotional, social and practical support along the way.
A dementia coach performs a wide variety of services including, but not limited to:
Specialized Resources
Partnering with a dementia coach gives you access to specialized resources in the community and direct referrals to trusted and vetted senior care professionals, including:
The Difference Between Coaching and Counseling
Traditional counseling or therapy approaches tend to be oriented towards exploring patterns or situations which occurred in the past, and were (or still are) creating problems in your current life. Traditional counseling or therapy are often accompanied by a mental health diagnosis and treatment plan.
While personal coaching also requires intensive training in listening and counseling skills, it is instead focused on what is happening now in your life, and where you would like to be in the future. Coaching provides personalized goals and an accountable partnership to help facilitate that process and support you along the way. Learn more about the benefits of coaching.