Managing Challenging Situations
Proactively Changing Your Approach
The person living with brain failure sees the world differently. The floor that looks shiny to you might look like a puddle of water to him/her. He/she doesn't recognize their own face in the mirror anymore; that might look like a stranger in his/her room.
It's easy to think that you can reason with him/her, but your reality is no longer their reality. They cannot change but you can.
When things go "haywire," pause, take a deep breath, stay calm and think. Pushing your reality will simply make things worse.
You have the opportunity to build trust and rapport, to guide the person through a panic moment and satisfy the unmet need that is present. This is not the time to push your agenda, unless you want to escalate their fear and cause resistance and resentment.
By assessing the situation, calmly, you become a detective. Put the facts together with what you know to be true about this individual. What is he/she trying to tell you?
Look at the environment and at what he/she is saying / doing. Look at the "puzzle pieces" and consider the person's needs. Is she hot or cold? Is the light too bright or is it too dark? Does she/he feel lonely or overwhelmed? Is she/he reacting to the environment (environmentally bound) and doing what people do under those circumstances.
One man wandered out of a tall building and down the street before caregivers realized he was gone. The reason? There was an elevator. When he was walking down the hallway on the second floor, the elevator door opened. He didn't intend to go downstairs, but the doors opened and he felt environmentally bound to enter the elevator. No one on the second floor noticed him get into the elevator. The elevator went down to the ground floor, the doors opened, so he walked out of the elevator. When he was in the lobby, no one noticed him. When he approached the front doors of the lobby, the doors automatically opened. He walked through the doors out to the front of the building. He went for a leisurely stroll - down the street - before anyone noticed he was missing. He didn't intend to escape or wander. But he did. He had some identification on him for relatives out-of-town. The police saw him and called the relatives. In the meantime, the caregivers and nurses in the nursing home are franticly looking everywhere in the building for him. They receive a call from the relatives, "Why are the police calling me to tell me my Dad is walking down the street?" After that, the man wore an electronic button that alerted the caregivers when he approached the elevator or the front door.
Sometimes we need to proactively alter our approaches and the environment to manage challenging situations and to keep people living with brain failure safe and to meet their emotional / physical needs.