ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how caring behaviour can be influenced by someone's own life history, especially their own attachment history. It provides case study examples of persons with demantia. Caring behaviour is more than adding up all the mandatory little tasks listed in your job description. Acceptance is a different matter for families than for professional carers. Families are confronted with the loss or decline of a previous long-standing relationship. Sometimes a carer doesn't answer the closeness-seeking behaviour of a person with dementia with closeness-giving behaviour. Human behaviour continues to be 'formed' in the years thereafter. When children separate from their parents by leaving home, new behaviours are learned. Working with people with dementia can evoke feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. A feeling of sympathy doesn't have to be a problem, unless it is the only feeling that working with a person with dementia evokes. Sympathy can be so overwhelming that it can be paralysing.
