Anosognosia and Resistance to Dementia Care

A Note from Jennifer Muskat, Co-Founder

We touched on this in our last issue, and it's a topic that deserves more than a mention: resistance to care. It's what nearly every family runs into, again and again, when someone you love who is living with dementia needs help and won't accept it.

There's a reason for it, and it's not stubbornness. It's called anosognosia, a symptom of dementia that affects the part of the brain responsible for self-awareness. Research suggests it affects as many as 80% of people living with Alzheimer's, which means most of the families we meet are dealing with it, often without a name for what they're experiencing. Your client or loved one isn't refusing to see the truth. In most cases, they genuinely can't.

This month, we're doing a deep dive into what anosognosia is, why it explains so much of what families experience, and how we work with it, creatively and thoughtfully, to introduce care in a way that feels meaningful and acceptable to the person receiving it, not imposed on them.

Below, you'll find the resource we're sharing this issue: Breakthrough: The Full Bloom Method for Overcoming Resistance to Care, a new booklet we developed to help you introduce care to someone who doesn't believe they need it. It walks through why the usual approach doesn't work, and what to try instead, so you have a place to start the next time you're confronted with this challenge.

Jennifer Muskat
Co-Founder & Chief Client Officer, Full Bloom Memory Care

Understanding Anosognosia: The Condition Behind "I'm Fine!"

The word itself isn't new. Anosognosia comes from the Greek for "without knowledge of disease," first used in 1914 by neurologist Joseph Babinski to describe patients who couldn't recognize paralysis on one side of their own body. Decades later, researchers found the same phenomenon in dementia: people unable to perceive their own memory loss or decline, no matter how apparent it was to everyone around them.

Self-awareness depends on specific brain networks, particularly regions responsible for monitoring our own performance and comparing it to reality. In Alzheimer's and related dementias, those same networks are often among the first affected by disease. This isn't a psychological defense. It's physical: the brain's built-in ability to notice its own decline is damaged along with everything else.

Once you understand anosognosia as neurological rather than emotional, the question changes. It's no longer "How do I get them to see this?" It becomes "How do I meet them where they actually are?" That shift is where real progress starts, and it's exactly where we pick up next.

A New Partnership: Full Bloom Memory Care & Dementia Reality

Imagine seeing through the eyes of someone living with dementia: the frustration of a simple task suddenly turned confusing, the disorientation of a room that no longer feels familiar. Now imagine seeing through the eyes of their caregiver, and watching, in real time, the difference the right approach can make.

That's the experience behind Dementia Reality, the first virtual reality, role-specific training tool built to teach empathy rather than just information. We're proud to announce a new partnership with Dementia Reality, developed in collaboration with CJE Elderwerks, and to be the first dementia-specific care agency to put it to broad use across our team.

What this means for the families we serve:

• Every Memory Care Partner (MCP) experiences both perspectives, the person receiving care and the person providing it, leading to greater empathy and understanding.
• Training continues with ongoing sessions built into each MCP's first year and beyond.
• Families are welcome to experience it too. It's one more way we help you build the same awareness and empathy our team relies on every day.

Dementia Reality doesn't replace the relationships at the heart of the Full Bloom Approach. It deepens them, giving our team a felt understanding of what our clients are experiencing.

September Community Events

From Our Blog