Brian Can’t Stop Fact-Checking His Mother-in-Law

13:24Yowei Shaw:Wow.

13:25Brian:You know, and she's someone who's taken care of people her whole life. and she'll acknowledge that and be like, I've had to do this too and I'm so appreciative for all that you do. And one of the things this disease makes you very aware of is that, you know, just the value of time. It's a progressive disease that goes in one direction. And I do feel really bad when I'm spending time kind of arguing over these things because it feels like it's poisoning the time we have.

14:03Yowei Shaw:Brian has been dealing with this for three years now. He goes to therapy. He gets help from a social worker. He reads books. He goes to support groups. But even so, he needs help figuring out how to not be so frustrated with his mother-in-law. He doesn't want to spoil the precious time he and his family have left with her. And this is why Brian came to us.

14:27Brian:I think ultimately it comes down to like a matter of acceptance too, you know? I think with every correction or fact check that I'm doing, it's just a little bit of like, I don't want this to be true. I don't want my mother to want to have this. You know, it's like me swatting the disease away. But it ends up being directed at her rather than the kind of radical acceptance you need to have with a diagnosis like this.

14:57Yowei Shaw:I'm really sorry that you are dealing with this and I'm going to try to find a proxy that maybe can help

15:05Brian:Alright, let me know what you find, I'll be curious

15:16Yowei Shaw:After the break, somebody who gets it

15:36Brian:Hello, this is Jana calling in from Massachusetts. My too-niche-to-podcast conundrum is what do you do when you've been making small talk with a neighbor for like two years, but you still don't know their name and it's definitely too late to ask now. But I'm glad Proxy is investigating other niche emotional conundrums, which is why I recently became a member of Proxy's Patreon, because Yo-A and the team make this show independently and depend on listeners like you and me. When you join the Proxy Patreon,

16:11Brian:you get benefits like hearing episodes without ads and exclusive Patreon episodes. What a bargain! Plus, you'll get a gold star for helping make the world's first emotional investigative journalism, which is important because feelings are everywhere and it's about time someone looked into it. To become a member, go to patreon.com slash proxy podcast. That's patreon.com slash proxy podcast. Can I get the Windows 95 startup sound?

16:42Brian:Oh my God, I can't find the stop button.

16:51Yowei Shaw:The day of the proxy conversation

16:53Brian:Hello, hello

16:54Yowei Shaw:Brian seems surprisingly sunny on the video call

16:57Brian:I just went on vacation We went with just my wife and my daughter So we were relieved of dementia caretaking duties for a week

17:06Yowei Shaw:You seem refreshed I couldn't help but notice Brian was smiling more

17:11Brian:Actually turned my phone off I read two novels Which I can't remember the last time I did that

17:16Yowei Shaw:Of course, now he was back to real life. Back to all of life's problems. I just got a notification that the proxy's here. Okay.

17:24Brian:All right, let's do it.

17:25Yowei Shaw:Okay. You ready?

17:26Brian:Mm-hmm.

17:28Yowei Shaw:So, the proxy. As I was looking for a proxy for Brian, I thought about something he told me. How on the surface, the problem was that he couldn't stop correcting his mother-in-law. But deeper down, it was probably his way of responding to the disease and the pain and terror it was inflicting. Ryan said he probably needed to just learn how to accept the situation. But how? He didn't know. So the proxy team started poking around the research on acceptance. And we discovered something that seemed almost too on the nose. Something called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. a type of cognitive behavioral therapy.

18:13Yowei Shaw:I reached out to Stephen C. Hayes, the person who created ACT, and he was like, sure, I could talk. But you know who would even be better? I know someone who uses this therapy specifically with caregivers of people with neurocognitive disorders. People just like Brian.

18:36Yowei Shaw:This is how I found Claudia. Hi, Brian.

18:39Brian:Hi, Claudia. How are you? I don't know who you are or anything about you. Who are you? I'm here at Eastern Michigan University, where I'm an associate professor. Okay.

18:52Yowei Shaw:Claudia Dressel is a psychologist who helps people with a neurodegenerative disease and their caregivers figure out how to make life easier and healthier for everyone involved.

19:02Brian:I train people. I do research in that area. and for over 20 years. I have worked with families where one person has cognitive decline. I kind of want to tell my origin story here too. I'd love to hear that, yeah.

19:18Yowei Shaw:When Claudia was in grad school, she actually had no plans to work in dementia care. She wanted to teach psychology at a university. But then one day, a friend from school asked for a favor. Could Claudia come to a senior center and sit with a man who has Alzheimer's while she met with his caregiver? And she told me that I didn't need to do much, that the person with a neurodegenerative disease

19:41Brian:had basically stopped speaking. And I come from a little village in Germany, you hear my accent, and had always lived with my grandparents. And many of my peers also really had close ties with their grandparents. So I had seen older adults of all ability levels, really. And I thought, you know, I can do this. I can be in the senior center and sit with this person. And while we were sitting there, somebody switched on music and a boombox. They started line dancing. And suddenly I hear this voice next to me that says, this is all a bunch of crap. And I thought, wow, you know, he can speak. And I took him into a quiet area.

20:26Brian:And he told me a lot about his life.

20:29Yowei Shaw:The man told Claudia about his kids, how he used to work at a department store. He talked a lot, if not always clearly, but she was able to figure out what he was saying.

20:40Brian:And I thought this was quite amazing because he was somebody who was described to me as nonverbal and hardly speaking. And so ever since then, really, I've worked with people with cognitive impairment to try to find out how to best support them and their caregivers in terms of communication and relationships. The question is, what is so difficult about it and how can we remove the barriers? And perhaps, if not making it necessarily easier, perhaps even make it more predictable. Is that the best you can hope for? Is it more predictable? Or is there some higher goal you can have? What I hope for is that when people live together, that they can really make their life work together.

21:25Yowei Shaw:Claudia's goal is to not just stop problematic behaviors. She's focused on holistically helping both caregivers and the care recipient have a nicer time together. Ryan, of course, is nowhere near that. So I asked him to give the rundown of a situation. How he can't stop correcting his mother-in-law.

21:45Brian:And that was leading to just a ton of tension, upset, strife.

21:50Yowei Shaw:How even when he does try to get help, some of the resources just make him angrier. He talked about watching this one webinar in a support group that particularly pissed him off. The webinar presented a bunch of scenarios of what someone with Alzheimer's might do and asked how the caregiver should respond.

22:09Brian:One of them was like, your loved one keeps going to the door and checking whether it's locked. Is this a problem or not? This might be annoying, but it's not harmful to your husband or anyone else. And it was like just one thing after another like that. Problem two. And I remember my experience in the group after watching this was just the tone, delivery, and presentation of that exercise, of that webinar, was so at odds with my experience of this. It was just so calm, and this is not a problem. Let them check the door if it's locked, and then just go up as the caregiver and make sure the door's locked, and it's fine.

22:51Brian:This is not actually a problem. They can check the door if they want. You don't need to get up in arms about it. It might be annoying, but it's not a serious problem for anyone. And in my head, I'm just like, yeah, this happened in my house. I will spend an hour and a half of my evening doing that. Like, that's not not a problem to me. I don't know. I don't know if that's just me being self-centered, but I would not say that's not a problem. I would say it's not a problem if I'm willing to make like a huge sacrifice. Even just like this influencer that I follow. Hold on. Give me one second.

23:25Yowei Shaw:Ryan holds up his phone to show us a video from Instagram. The caregiver is looking into the camera with a knowing look on her face and hits the camera in time to the beat of the song with the caption, Stop correcting them. And I'm just like, easier said than done.

23:44Brian:I don't know. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah, duh. I don't know. So I actually commented on this. I was like, was this easy for you to acclimate to? I find this much easier said than done. And she wrote back like, it's not easy. Take it moment by moment. But it doesn't, I don't know, it just doesn't match my experience of it, which is this is fucking crazy. You're saying the same thing 40 times. How can I live like this? I mean, this is your experience and there is no arguing with that experience. I think, Brian, you give voice to what a lot of people are feeling. And I know that a lot of people are also exasperated because they feel as if there is a competition to be kind of a good caregiver without having these kinds of feelings.

24:34Brian:I'm just curious with Brian, would it help if you found other people who also are angry?

24:44Brian:I can't say for sure, but it would certainly feel different. I can't remember a time where I've heard someone express their experience and I've been like, that's exactly how I feel. So you're feeling alone with this. Yeah. And I think, you know, my wife and I are going through it together, but her experience of it is quite different. I mean, she's angry in her own ways and in ways it's much more acute for her. I mean, she's incredibly close to her mom, which both makes the pain of it all that much worse. but she had an incredibly good relationship and they really do have that to rely on. We had a good relationship, my mother-in-law and I, but she's my mother-in-law.

25:21Brian:It's not the same, you know? And so our experience isn't the same. So I feel like I'm often like holding a lot of like anger and frustration with the experience in the house. Yeah. I think I've vacillated feeling like I just must feel this differently than other people. And it feels very lonely or other times I do feel like I know other people are feeling this and nobody's being honest about this. And I feel like that's the big fact check here, frankly. This is the webinar that's created to help caregivers. This feels dishonest. It feels emotionally dishonest for what this experience is actually like.

25:55Brian:And noticing that different caregivers come from different kinds of perspectives, right? So I think, to tell you quite the truth, I think that And to some extent, at least, the expression is gendered, meaning more men are willing to talk about this being just really, really brutal and also infuriating. I think there is less acceptance, less welcoming for women who express similar kinds of things. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. But Claudia, you say they're out there? Other people feel this way? Or am I one of a kind? I am saying that they're out there, lots of them. I mean, I can quote some people who just say, you know.

26:50Brian:What do you got? We're totally fucked. Either we are going to be the person who is giving the care or the person who is receiving the care. And that's what our life is going to look like. And nothing else can make that better. You got more? Those kinds of things, lots of them. Yeah. Lots of people who are very angry because it also doesn't seem to be fair. And so fairness also comes up as one of those things, as you expected your life to be just different. Yeah. And you didn't have to think about how to adjust your life in these different ways that, like Brian said, are sometimes quite ridiculous.

27:41Yeah.

27:42Brian:It's almost as if there is this secret within our society that a lot of people will be affected by cognitive decline. Nobody really acknowledges it. Nobody prepares you for it. But then when you find yourself in the situation, everybody says to you, well, if you just did X, Y, and Z, then it would be okay. And everything rebels against the if only. Because you know that that is not true. It's not like if only one thing. It's a whole rearrangement of your life that is happening. when you think about it it's almost like a murder has been committed and there is kind of no corpse and you are the one who is saying can't anybody see just how incredibly fucked up this is right and so then when i'm like not getting that acknowledgement like the way that frustration is manifesting is like in my interactions with my mother-in-law taking it out there.

28:53Brian:Yes.

29:05Yowei Shaw:When we return, Claudia tells Brian about the tools he can use to help him stop venting at his mother-in-law.

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31:39Yowei Shaw:So Brian is feeling lots of shitty emotions. He's feeling angry. He's feeling frustrated, sad. This turns out to be the way a lot of dementia caregivers feel. Way higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress than the rest of us. And because we're talking about nearly 12 million Americans who, like Brian, are providing unpaid care to a loved one in this way, that's a huge steaming pile of shitty feelings. Shitty feelings that are affecting everyone involved. Researchers have found that these stressed-out caregivers tend to skip doctor's appointments, not take breaks, not exercise, not see friends.

32:20Yowei Shaw:But here's the thing. The more caregivers neglect their own well-being and the more they become distressed, the worse the people they're caring for tend to do. They're more likely to have worse symptoms of dementia, more likely to end up in the hospital, even more likely to be abused. It's this terrible irony. The more a caregiver gives up of their life to care for the person they love, the more the care they're giving can suffer. So what to do with all these shitty feelings? And how can Brian stop taking out his frustration on his mother-in-law? Claudia says typically, we feel a bad feeling and we want to get rid of it.

33:01Yowei Shaw:Maybe go to yoga, start boxing. The point is to purge the bad feeling so you can be a better caregiver who doesn't snap at your confused mother-in-law. But Claudia says that's just temporary. Because you can't really get rid of a feeling if you don't change the situation. And if you bat away the feeling without trying to understand it, like, no, no, no, no, no. Those are your clues. Claudia wants caregivers to sit with and feel all the feelings, even the bad ones, so together they can observe and trace the steps that led to them, to try to solve the mystery of why they're stuck, why the entire family might be.

33:46Yowei Shaw:When Claudia talked about her process, it really does sound like she's an emotional detective. She visits the homes of her clients. She'll interview the caregiver at great length, gathering all of their negative feelings. The expectations they're trapped by, the situations that make them upset, and the ripples of that upset. And then she'll gather their positive feelings, their hopes, their dreams, the moments they feel most connected. She'll pull their medical records. She'll find out how much support they have. The things they're good at, the things they're bad at. Just an unbelievably detailed profile of the person and their context.

34:23Yowei Shaw:And then she does that again with the person with Alzheimer's, then the wife, then the child. Meanwhile, Claudia is observing and recording all interactions on video to analyze later to look for patterns. Then with the caregiver, she'll throw the most salient factors on a whiteboard, kind of like a cork board in a police precinct, but more touchy-feely. No dead bodies. This is the family's map. It shows all the invisible forces shaping the situation. Claudia showed me one of these maps. It's broken up into different sections. There's one for the caregiver, let's call her Sally. Another for Sally's dad, who has dementia.

35:06Yowei Shaw:One for Sally's mom, who has trouble getting around. In each of these sections, there are a bunch of different shapes filled with text. The diamonds are the things that can't be changed. Like for Sally, it says, sudden death of husband. And then the circles, these represent the things that can be addressed, maybe in therapy. For instance, Sally feeling like she's the only one, that everyone has to rely on her, when in fact there are other family members who could step up. Finally, the squares. These are the potential effects of this challenging situation. For example, that Sally is burned out, or that her mom feels guilty about not being able to care for her husband.

35:49Yowei Shaw:Claudia and Sally will constantly return to this map, updating it and seeing what they can try to change to improve the situation. It's a lot of information, and the process can take months, even years. I'm really only scratching the surface. But these are the first steps of acceptance and commitment therapy, Claudia's version of it. And Claudia says early studies of this therapy have been promising. They're showing it can actually help with dementia caregiver burnout and depression.

36:23Brian:How long has this been around? It's been around since 1998. I just don't understand. How have I never heard of it? Like I'm in these, I'm having meetings with people and social workers. I've just never, you know, I don't know. The reason you haven't heard of it is because it comes from clinical psychology. Yeah. And sometimes the fields are so different that it takes a while for things that come from clinical psychology to go into this other context. which is the geropsychology context.

36:51Yowei Shaw:Oh, interesting.

36:52Brian:It's like balkanized.

36:54Yowei Shaw:Claudia walks us through how ACT could help Brian. She says a lot of the time, caregivers can get stuck in a specific situation because there's some feeling they have that they don't pause to investigate. They're just reacting. And it can prevent them from implementing a possibly really obvious fix. Yes.

37:14Brian:Imagine somebody has a really hard time knowing where things go in the kitchen. That's a very typical one. And what I see caregivers do is they label, often they label cupboards with post-its. Yeah, we've done that. And it actually turns out that does not work. Yeah. Most of the time, those kinds of things, they don't work for the person because they might not benefit from any kind of reminders or queuing at all. So then the next step would be, if you still want the person to be somewhat active in the kitchen, let's say they are supposed to get a cup and reheat their coffee still in the microwave in the morning.

37:52Brian:And a caregiver might say, well, I'm under no circumstances. Am I going to take off my cupboard door?

37:58Yowei Shaw:Not wanting to take off the cupboard door could sound like a small thing, just setting a tiny boundary. But Claudia says behind it is this voice yelling, this is unfair. This is ridiculous. And so the first thing is to simply accept, this is how I'm feeling.

38:15Brian:That kind of acknowledgement, that in itself might create some space and some relief. So the more we argue with the feeling, the harder it is going to be to do what is effective.

38:28Yowei Shaw:Next up, deciding whether it's necessary to act on feelings that come up. Like that one about the kitchen cupboard. Do these feelings help solve the problem? Or do they just make me more miserable?

38:40Brian:It makes sense that they come up and they're not very useful. Both things can be true at the same time. So I hear the acceptance part. What's the commitment part? The commitment part is really thinking about what would I really like to have happen? And how can we help you go into the direction that will work for you and your family in the long term?

39:03Yowei Shaw:Claudia means over everything else. What's most important? Is it to enjoy the time you have left with your loved one who has Alzheimer's? Is it to give your kids a stress-free home? And how do you work toward that without getting tangled in feelings like shame and resentment?

39:20Brian:For example, I've worked with families who have promised their father on his deathbed that they will take care of mom. And what they found out is that mom was much more impaired than they had bargained for. and they tried to have her live independently in her home and then take shifts. Those were five siblings. And within a few weeks, it all had fallen apart. It was really untenable. And so it's really the thinking about the ideal situation, the practicalities of caregiving, how they really intersect with your life. Thinking about the four-year-old, you know, because you are also a sandwich caregiver.

40:05Brian:Yeah. Yeah. And so the commitment part is the work of actually figuring out not only what you ideally would like in terms of your relationship, for example, with your mother-in-law, but also what practically you could do in terms of steps to move into that direction. So yeah, walk me through that. How does this apply? because there's been a stretch recently of my mother-in-law, I guess, getting up in the middle of the night and opening her door and setting off the alarm. So we're being woken up two or three times a night and my wife's having to go down there and kind of settle her down. Generally, my wife puts her mom to bed, but sometimes her job, she has to work at night a lot or be out at night.

40:54Brian:So that time will kind of fall to me. and kind of the problem, like we'd done problem solving. This is credit to Solange, to my wife. Like she's figured out like, okay, if I really kind of make like a routine around bedtime, it's like clear that my mother-in-law's going to bed. She kind of tucks her in, turns the lights off in a certain way, shows her that the door's locked. That has seemed to like make it better that she's like not getting up in the middle of the night and opening the door and setting off the alarm and waking us up over and over and over again. So I tried to implement that when I was home alone with her.

41:30Brian:And, you know, I go to turn off the light. And my mother-in-law is like, no, no, no, leave the light on. And I'm like, no, it's really important to kind of turn off the light so that we know it's bedtime. No, no, no, no, leave the light on. And just like, you know, fighting with me with it and like won't get ready for bed. Just leave the light on. And I know that if like this doesn't happen, like we're probably going to be up a punch that night, you know. Or she could walk out the door. You know what I mean? It becomes urgent for you almost. Yeah. And so then I try to explain to her, listen, I'm doing this because the last few nights, you've gotten up several times in the middle of the night and woken us up or the alarm company was called.

42:09Brian:And so we found that it helps if you turn off the light. She's like, that didn't happen. I'm like, yes, it did happen. This is happening. It's happened like seven times in the last week. And I get activated like that. I'm like, you're denying this like incredibly present, exhausting reality. And I'm trying to stop it. And you won't let me just, you won't just trust me that this will help us all, you know? And you find yourself explaining over and over again. Yeah. And I think the self-talk there is just like, I'm already kind of frustrated in those situations. Because I'm like, we were up three times last night.

42:42I'm exhausted, you know? And like, it shouldn't be this way.

42:47Brian:Like, I don't want to do this. like i don't want to live this way like this requires a professional so there might be a way that you can be effective while having these kinds of thoughts but here we also want to make sure that if you're saying you shouldn't be doing this and it needs a professional is it tenable or not Would you like to give direct care? You are giving direct care. Bedtime routines, night awakenings, those are direct care routines. Many family caregivers don't give direct care because it's just too much. Caregiving has a lot of different kinds of aspects. You can be a caregiver who does direct care.

43:33Brian:You can be a caregiver who checks in with people. You can be a caregiver who just monitors and supervises or manages. There's different ways of caregiving. There's a multitude of ways that you can actually show caring for somebody. And the question is, what is actually right for you? What is it that you would like to do? And what is it that matters to you? Is another way of putting it, like, what am I actually built for? Well, I don't know if it's your constitution, but the question would be, it has more like to do with willingness. What can you see yourself do in the service of what matters to you?

44:14Yowei Shaw:Claudia says, obviously, Brian only has so many resources. There are other people involved he has to negotiate with. But she says it's important to get clear on which caregiving tasks you can actually see yourself doing in the long run. Because a lot of people see caregiving as all or nothing. When maybe there's a creative, more sustainable solution. You'd be surprised, she says, how many caregivers don't ask for help from other family members or don't take advantage of in-home care, even when they get funding from community agencies.

44:50Brian:Taking myself as an example, I probably would not be a person, even though my parents matter to me tremendously, I probably won't be the person to do their direct care and to assist them with instrumental activities of daily living. Yeah. Because there's too much of a conflict there. I value being there for my parents. And at the same time, my job matters to me a lot. And now I'm here 4 ,000 miles away. It turns out that when you make a choice to do one thing, you often can't do all the other things. So how I can be there for them differs by my context. In the summers, I can spend time with them and I can be much more pragmatically involved.

45:46Brian:and work remotely. So what can you actually do? What would you be willing to do in the service of what matters to you? Yeah, I don't think I ever totally pictured this. I didn't picture myself as a caregiver giving care. I pictured living with my mother-in-law and there'll be professionals who will help us with that. Right. And we do. We do have an aid during the day sometimes. And that's also been very hard. Yes. You have somebody else in your home. Yeah. So it It comes with its own costs. Yes. It's not like, oh my God, this is perfect. Absolutely. But I mean, that's part of the acceptance part is just even like accepting this as part of my identity and role in life as being like a caregiver for an elder with dementia.

46:34Brian:A lot of people start caregiving because of a sense of duty or obligation. And at the same time, people are not prepared that caregiving can be longer than caregiving for a child. And so part of what we need to do is really kind of figure out how sustainable are things in the long run. Yeah. I mean, I have not prepared for that. Yes. How will relationships be actually okay? How can you maximize the relationship with your mother-in-law? Because it seems that kind of suffers from arguing. If you asked her, she probably wants to have great relationships with the three of you. The question is how to actually make that happen.

47:22Brian:So over the long term, it works.

47:26Yowei Shaw:Brian you were nodding when Claudia was speaking just now I'm curious what has been going on through your head

47:37Brian:I think like the first part of this conversation kind of just acknowledging affirming that it's okay to feel angry and kind of letting me feel that that actually like I felt that kind of very physically kind of a less pent-up feeling this doesn't feel that way it's more kind of we're talking about a process that i could see applying

48:01Brian:and it's trying to i guess trying to find the relationship between the two because yeah i do find this to just be like a very emotionally charged fraught just an experience It involves a lot of emotions. Is there sadness about trying so hard and not making it work? Yeah, of course. And I feel guilt and grief. And yeah, one thing this disease does is it certainly, or at least I'll speak for myself, It makes me very aware of how precious time is, you know, with this loved one who is declining. But we do get time with her. That's one of the great benefits of living with her. We get these small moments.

48:51Yowei Shaw:Like when Brian's mother-in-law reads to his daughter, or when the family takes an extra long walk in the neighborhood, or sitting on the stoop together. Brian's personal favorite way to connect is to sing. Like some Donnie Hathaway song will come on, and Brian and his mother-in-law will end up singing together, sometimes dancing.

49:21Brian:And I both want that with her. I want to give it to my wife, to my daughter, to my mother-in-law. But then when that time is filled with this tension, these negative feelings, then I feel guilt about it. Cause it's like, oh, I'm polluting this precious time with this shit. And then that's like a self-talked album too. It's like, we shouldn't be having to spend the time having to figure out, like manage an aid and figure out care.com. And like, how do you know, like, you know, like all this stuff, like we don't have time for it. And it's not a nice use of this precious time. And then I feel resentful about that.

49:56Brian:But if we were working together, I would, I would actually put, I'm polluting this precious time with my shit. I would put that right now up on the whiteboard.

50:08why because there is so much judgment of you are the odd person out everybody can live with this arrangement and i'm the one who is just fucking it up we would put that thought on the

50:23Brian:whiteboard to actually then actively start working on that one and thinking about how useful it is and diffusing it. So there's a process that is called cognitive diffusion. What's that? This idea of taking away the strength of the words, the impact, saying it in a Mickey Mouse voice.

50:52Yowei Shaw:You mean literally saying it in a Mickey Mouse voice?

50:56Brian:Literally saying it in a Mickey Mouse voice, not believing yourself when you say it.

51:02Yowei Shaw:Yeah. I asked Claudia to send me a voice memo later to demonstrate.

51:06Brian:I'm poisoning this precious time with my shit.

51:09Yowei Shaw:Claudia says the act of Brian hearing himself say this thought in the voice of a cartoon mouse

51:15Brian:I'm poisoning this precious time with my shit.

51:18Yowei Shaw:can help him see it as ridiculous, can help him stop self-flagellating. Because it seems like you are really trying so hard.

51:26Brian:and your conclusion is because you're still feeling badly about it you're not trying hard enough that sums it up yeah i wish you know i could make this easier for you and i could take some of these things away i could tell you yeah i can make this easier but i can't it is that hard yeah it's so hard and what if you were in a situation in which you actually are doing your best and have done everything you could and are doing whatever you can do. Yeah. I feel like that's, that's where I turned to like acceptance. Cause it's like, okay, this is just a, this is just a terrible disease and a really difficult situation.

52:14Brian:And somehow millions of people are going through it and still we don't have the proper approaches or supports. There are therapies out there that could help that nobody knows about. um yeah what i'm taking from this is we should probably hire you that's that's my takeaway here yeah no i really appreciate it i would love to get more info uh claudia or if you if there are people we should reach out to here like i definitely you know we're in the middle of this and have many years ahead of us probably in one way or another so i'm certainly intrigued to learn more about this process i think it's really important.

52:52Brian:Thank you. Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you for sharing. All the best to you and your family. I really appreciate that. Bye.

53:17Yowei Shaw:Thank you to Brian Reed for being today's guest. And thank you to Claudia Drossel for being today's proxy. Claudia is a psychology professor at Eastern Michigan University, where she's the director of the Center for the Advancement of Neurobehavioral Health. After the proxy conversation, Ryan and his wife did a consult with Claudia to see about working together. But you do not have to personally reach out to get resources. Claudia put together a list for caregivers, which we'll put in our show notes.

53:56Yowei Shaw:Hi, it's Rose here again.

53:57Brian:So that was an episode of Proxy with host Yo-Ai Shah. If that episode got you thinking, got you interested in Proxy, you might want to listen to the episode Amanda and the Non-Stop Narrator next or Mike Chooses the Wrong Life. And we also recommend checking out Brian Reid's podcast, Question Everything. On the show, Brian takes on big tech and spotlights journalists and regular people who are fighting back against lies, stifled speech, and discontent. You can listen and subscribe to Proxy and Question Everything wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll fact you soon.