Dementia makes me dependent and being dependent causes dementia.
Dementia is both the cause & the effect of the loss of independence. With the ability to maintain my independence, I am not a problem to anyone, because they believe me to be capable of looking after myself.
We are all dependent on other people for our extrovert emotional needs. An extrovert emotional need, by definition, is an emotional need that I need someone else to meet for me. It is the emotional power that I get from someone else, and I depend on them for it.
Traditionally, western marriage is based on co-dependent partnership. Relating to our partner, in a co-dependent way means, I meet my partner’s needs and my partner meets mine.
Dementia breaks up this sub-conscious arrangement, which has been in force for the duration of the marriage. When dementia is diagnosed, a co-dependent relationship suddenly becomes a dependent relationship as one partner becomes dependent on the other and a dependant of the other. The caring partner is at risk of not getting their own emotional needs met by their demented partner. The only exception to this is when the caring partner has a strong emotional need to be needed.
In a spiritually aware society, where there is an awareness of emotional needs, and the emotional intelligence to consciously meet our own emotional needs, dementia never arises. You see, with the emotional intelligence to meet one’s own emotional needs, there is no dependence on other people. Having no emotional dependence on other people is the true definition of independence.
Once I understand how to meet my own emotional needs, I am on my path to becoming inter-developmental with all other people and there is no risk of dementia. Dementia may appear to be a loss of memory but it is in actuality, the loss of sufficient emotional power that is required to connect with one’s memory. With enough emotional power, there is no memory loss.
It is not possible to connect to my emotional power without my mental authority and neither is it possible to be emotionally competent and to be mentally incompetent.
Mental incapacity is relative to emotional incompetence, which is relative to emotional intelligence. The more emotionally intelligent I am, the more emotionally competent I am and the more mental capacity that I have.
As a society, we are all suffering from relative degrees of emotional incompetence, which means that we all suffer from relative degrees of mental incapacity. It is not uncommon in a co-dependent relationship for the one who wears the trousers to have the mental capacity to make decisions & choices for both partners in the relationship.
if I were to spend an adult lifetime in a relationship with a partner who made all my decisions for me, I could quite happily live in every moment of the present or the future without ever needing to remember anything. In this extreme scenario, I would not realise my loss of memory until my partner either died or was no longer able to make all my decisions for me.
If I were to spend an adult lifetime in an extreme relationship with a partner where I made absolutely all the decisions for them, I would never experience their dementia because no mental capacity would be required by them.
The reality is that no relationship is ever that black or white but every relationship exists on a spectrum of grey. It is when the grey areas become a particular problem that dementia is often blamed as the cause.
Remember, we live in a society that is medically either physical or mental and the emotional factor is never rationally considered. Our doctors and medical practitioners are trained to be rationally detached and emotionally disconnected or insensitive. Emotional sensitivity is not a personal attribute that is learned in our schools, colleges or universities.
Rational intelligence is confused with mental capacity but without emotional sensitivity, it has no competence to understand that dependence, co-dependence & independence are three ways in which we relate emotionally to the important other people in our life.