The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Truth, Lies & Alzheimer’s: Its Secret Faces by Lisa Skinner

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Truth, Lies & Alzheimer's: Its Secret Faces by Lisa Skinner https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Lies-Alzheimers-Secret-Faces/dp/195734413X TRUTH, LIES & ALZHEIMER'S Its Secret Faces is a concise guide to navigating the heartbreaking challenges of having a loved one diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or other dementias. Through a rich trove of stories culled from her years in the eldercare industry, author Lisa Skinner offers insight into the difficult questions families face, including: - How do I respond to a loved one's false belief? - Am I abandoning my parent if I place them in the care of professionals? - How do we make the best of our time left together? Skinner's original thinking and counter-intuitive solutions provide family members, spouses, children, caregivers, and others with the tools they need to effectively manage the symptoms of brain disease. Readers will feel empowered to work through the difficulties of the disease and return to what matters - enjoying their remaining time with their loved one.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss here from the chris voss show dot com ladies in there early season that makes official welcome big show as always the christmas show is the fan that brings you the most amazing minds stories and journeys lessons of life that you can learn from to make your life better and if you're not getting better listen to this damn show after 16 years and 24 episodes we'll go back and listen to all 16 years again Could you clearly miss a couple episodes? Don't me pull the car and come over there, folks.

Back there, folks. We're going to get into it with a wonderful young lady and her book and how she can give you some great advice in life. In the meantime, we must guilt, shame, and cajole you into trying to go refer your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, Wawn on the TikTok, and all those crazy places of the internet.

Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. She's the author of the book called Truth, Lies, and Alzheimer's. Its Secret Faces Out May 6, 2022 by Lisa Skinner and Douglas W. Collins. We're going to be talking to her about her knowledge and insights and her stories of years that she spent in the business doing the thing. She is a behavioral specialist with expertise in Alzheimer's disease and related dementia in her 30-plus career year career, working with family members and caregivers, she taught them how to successfully navigate many of the challenges that accompany this heartbreaking

disease. Lisa is a certified dementia practitioner, a certified dementia care practitioner through the Alzheimer's Association, and a certified dementia care program director, as well as the internationally She recognized podcast hosts of The Truth, Lies, and Alzheimer's Show. She also has a degree in human behavior and is a best-selling international author. Welcome to show, Lisa. How are you? Oh, I'm doing great, Chris.

How are you? Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Mindingdementia.com. So give us a 30,000 over you.

What's inside the book? Probably the most significant thing that I have observed in the 30-plus years that I have been helping families through their journey is that the majority of people, and I'm talking thousands of people, really don't completely understand the damage being done to the brain as a result of, one of the brain diseases that causes dementia, Alzheimer's being the number one and the most common one that we see. There are actually about 200 known brain diseases that cause dementia. And when I use the term dementia, I am referring to the signs, the symptoms, and the behaviors that show up as a result of the changing brain that is being damaged due to one of the these brain diseases. So my observation has been clear that most people associate dementia or Alzheimer's disease exclusively with memory loss and confusion. But it is so much more complex than just

memory loss and confusion. And this is where people struggle. They struggle not knowing what to expect. It's a long course throughout the progression of this disease. The average person lives with it between eight and 15 years. Some people, my grandmother, for example, once her diagnosis was made, she lived in another 20 years. That is a really long time to try to maintain a healthy relationship with somebody who is basically losing all of their cognitive function. And when they continue to lose the different cognitive functions, their ability to make logical decisions and communicate and just perform the simplest of tasks that they've been doing for decades, it manifests in what we call behavioral expressions or these behaviors. or these behaviors that show up, and in a variety of different ways, everybody displays the symptomology differently. There are hundreds of these signs symptoms and behaviors, but some of

the very common ones and the ones that some people don't associate with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia are having hallucinations, false beliefs or delusions, as we call them. becoming extremely paranoid and suspicious about everything, severe personality changes, responding to every little thing as if it's a great big, huge deal. You know, when they had a healthier brain, their response might have been, oh, that's no big deal. But once the damage continues to progress throughout the disease,

they really are falling back on their raw emotion response. So everything kind of becomes a big deal. I wrote the book to help others have a resource, an accurate resource that would provide them with a really fundamental understanding of what presents in this disease. so they can be more prepared and offering solutions, best practices for effective communication, but it really needed to start with a much more complete awareness

of what these diseases do to people's brains and why they see the things that they see as a reason. Yeah. It's, as we mentioned before the show, my sister is going through MS and then late stage dementia, I guess. And it's hard to see people disappear. It's hard for families and stuff to see that loved one, you know, my sister at one years ago used to call me every week to tell me happy birthday.

And at first I used to push back and I'd be like, I'm telling you, it's not my birthday. And then I just realized that it was probably better for me to play along. And I'd be like, oh, thanks, Elena. I'd really appreciate you calling me this week to tell me that. And, you know, I made her feel good, and next week I get her in the call. Now she doesn't remember my number, so that got fixed, I guess, technically in some weird way. But, yeah, it's a challenge. It's hard for people.

And then suddenly, I think what your book tries to help is, you know, you can just be a normal person living your life, and suddenly you're thrust into this caregiver role, or you can be thrust in this caregiver role. And they don't really give you a good user manual for that. You're 100% right. And in my experience, family members, they don't intentionally sign up for this. It catches most people completely off guard. And once they hear that Alzheimer's or dementia diagnosis. And the thing is, a lot of people aren't aware of this, but it's the absolute true fact. People can actually live with more than one brain. disease consecutively. So they can have Alzheimer's. Oh, yeah. I think I've seen those people on Twitter.

That's a possibility. There's a lot. So that is actually not that uncommon to have two brain diseases damaging different parts of your brain at the same time. You can have vascular dementia and Alzheimer's at the same time. So that makes the situation even a little bit more complex than if it's just a singular brain disease causing the sign symptoms and behaviors. But I wanted to tell you that your response to your sister's happy birthday calls,

once you figured out that trying to correct or wasn't really working too well, you did exactly what we teach people. And this is why I refer to it, you saw in the book, the camera. intuitive approach to dementia care? Because your intuition, your instinctive reaction is pretty much the same as everybody's in the beginning. They want to fix the person they love. They want to correct them. They want to steer them back into their reality because they have the healthy brain. But seriously, the person that's going, progressing through dementia, whatever they believe is their reality. They believe at 100%. And what we discovered through decades and decades of, you know,

trial and error that trying to correct somebody or steer them back into your reality just exacerbated the situation even more and would have a tendency to set somebody off pretty extremely into what we call a catastrophic reaction and that basically is synonymous with a total meltdown because they believe what they're telling you is true so what you did by accepting and acknowledging the birthday wishes you did exactly what we teach now And it's called joining their reality or meeting them where they're at. Now, where they're at is temporary. Usually it's kind of think of it as a their short-term memory short-circuiting at that time.

And, you know, from the middle stage on, it is short-circuiting off and on, off and on. But you can tell by the cues they're giving you, by what they're talking about, if that short-term memory switch, let's call it, flipped off. Because they're talking about something that makes absolutely no sense to you. It's irrelevant. And so what we discovered over the decades of different theories and practices is that by joining their reality, and acknowledging what they're saying and is a much more effective approach than trying to correct them

and hoping that they'll snap back into the same reality as yours. It simply just doesn't happen until that switch flips back on and they are back to the same. They're aligned with your reality. But if she's calling you every week, was calling you every week to say, happy birthday.

That's a sure sign that her short-term memory isn't functioning properly. And every week, she thinks, oh, it's Chris's birthday. I got to call him and wish him a happy birthday. She believes that. So you handle that beautifully once you realize that you're trying to argue with her and say, hey, it's not my birthday. I don't know why you're calling me. Just simply wasn't working.

Yeah. Yeah. It's hard being a caregiver. You know, most people aren't prepared for it. I did a caregiver with my hospice care with my dog for about almost two years in cancer. And it was probably the most destructive thing ever. In fact, caregivers, to my understanding, usually end up with higher rates of, I think it's like 12 times higher the chance of having Alzheimer's or dementia because of the toll it takes on them being caregivers. Is that, I don't know. I don't know if those numbers are accurate, but something of that. Well, it is in fact that caregivers are at a much higher risk of developing medical conditions due to the stress. One of them could be Alzheimer's. The stress has been linked to increasing a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's. But unfortunately, it's such a stressful role, probably the hardest job any of us would ever take on. And a lot of caregivers do pass on before the people that they're caring for. Really?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Jeez. It's a really sad situation. What's the percentage of that happening? Do you know if there's a percentage to it? There is. I don't want to misquote off the top of my head.

It's pretty significant, though. I mean, I don't think it's 50%, but it's significant enough to be alarming that a lot of caregivers do just from the stress of the caregiving tasks that are involved. I mean, think about it. You're caring for somebody that eventually has to be helped and need help with every single activity of daily living that exists. Eventually, they can't do anything for themselves. Eventually, a lot of people who live with dementia can no longer communicate with you and tell you what their needs and their wants are. So this is the area that I mentioned earlier

where their way of communicating is manifesting through behaviors like acting out or becoming anxious or aggressive or, you know, there's so many of them. And what caregivers then need to realize is this person isn't trying to be mean or obnoxious or difficult or anything like that. They're trying to tell us something. But part of the difficulty and why it is so difficult to care for people in the later stages of Alzheimer's disease is because the onus is on us to try to figure out what it is they're trying to tell us.

Because there are so many triggers of these behaviors. But, you know, there's kind of a whole formula to figure out. And eventually caregivers are capable of figuring out based on past ways they try to communicate. But it's still very, very difficult. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, to be honest with you. Okay, my, the person I'm caring for is, is clearly distressed about something. I don't know what just happened.

Something set her off. And it's up to me to figure out what that something is. And you're starting from having no clue to trying to figure out what just set my person off. But the more these things happen and you start seeing patterns, then it becomes a little bit less challenging to try to figure out what it is. trying to tell you. Yeah. And it's hard because, like, we get calls from the care center and, you know, she's like, they haven't fed me and they have fed her.

And, you know, she's, she's confused or she, you know, it's the care center is really hard to deal with these days. A lot of them seem to have been bought out by major corporate conglomerates that seem to thin out the, the, the employees and everyone's over understaffed, underwork, no one shows up for the job. It's just, it's crazy. And then, you know, sometimes, you know, just trying to make sure that she's, her diapers are changed and the fentanyl patch is working right. That's a whole new horror show of trying to get that thing going. And, yeah, it's, it's, it's quite interesting and some of the things you have to deal with. But it sounds like you really help people

work through this. Am I banning? You talk about things like, am I banning my parent? If I place some of the care professionals. How do I respond to loved ones, false beliefs? You know, my sister will come up with all sorts of things. She'll think that, you know, my dad's still alive. Oh, yeah. That's a common one. Yeah.

The sexual things, too, are a problem in these care centers because it seems like a lot of them lose their wall that, you know, the kind of social wall that we have, like, oh, we don't talk about these things. and so she'll she'll lash out at the at the at her caregivers she'll lash out at she'll say just just nasty ugly things sometimes and my mom sometimes has a hard time dealing with it I imagine the people at the care center too too which really surprises me I'm like aren't you supposed to know this is part of the job I mean she has dementia like this is this not she's gonna she's you know you're not you're not

an office with a normal person. But it's interesting what's out there, and I'm glad you talk about some of these different things. You talk about the secret faces. What does that refer to? What is the meaning behind that? I entitled the book, Tooth Lies and Alzheimer's It's Secret Faces because there are so many, so much misinformation, so much disinformation, so many myths, so many stigmas attached

to dementia. or Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's disease, all of them actually, but mostly Alzheimer's, because that's the one that most of us are most familiar with. And so one of my goals in writing the book and in my podcast that I've been hosting for two and a half years, also called Truth, Lies and Alzheimer's, is really aimed to dispel a lot of these myths, lies is synonymous with myths, to make sure that the information that I am presenting to people is the truth because there's a lot of inaccurate information out there. People don't know who they can believe. I've had that experience myself. I've had,

I didn't mention this before, but I actually have had eight family members who have lived with one of the brain diseases that causes dementia. My grandmother was my first. Seven more have followed in her footsteps. Five of those are blood relatives and three were through marriage. And interestingly enough, you mentioned your dog because I actually had a dog that lived with dementia too. Yes, dogs do get dementia just like people. He was diagnosed when he was about 13 and he lived until he was 18 and a half but he was displaying all the same symptoms I see in humans so I took him to the vet and sure enough vet said yeah this dog has doggy dementia they call it canine cognitive dysfunction but the behaviors the symptoms the signs are very similar to what we

see in humans but the good news is was that I knew how to care for him Yeah, you know, because he would, he, the poor, poor guy, he was as healthy as anything, but he didn't know what planet he was living on. He just didn't have a clue about anything anymore. So I knew how to, you know, how to care for him and provide him with a good quality of life for the rest of his years. Yeah. And that's really, you know, one of the things that, you know, we have to, you have to do with someone. And I believe maybe you talk about this in the book is advocating for your person. And, you know, there's all sorts of negotiations and different things we have to do to make sure the care centers are doing their jobs.

You know, make sure that she's getting the care she needs. Make sure she's not sitting in dirty diapers. Make sure the fentanyl pumps working. You know, there's all sorts of stuff that goes into processing all this stuff. And so I'm glad there's a book now and some help that you can give. Now, you mentioned that you have a podcast, and I believe on your website, too, what sort of offerings do you have? Do you personally work with people, coach, or consult different things like that? I do have a training program that I wrote.

It's six courses, and it basically covers pretty much everything that people need to know to be prepared for going through. this journey with a loved one or a caregiver and you were mentioning, I think this is probably a good segue into something that you were saying earlier because unfortunately it's a sad reality and the sad truth that caregivers, and I'm not saying all caregivers, but I'm saying a lot of the caregivers out there are not trained on a lot of these things that show up. unexpectedly that are part of the disease that they're witnessing and not knowing how to effectively, and I want to stress that word, effectively respond to somebody believing that their spouse is still alive, that there are no rats running around their living room. That was one of my grandmother's

hallucinations that she told me. She also told me that birds were living in her mattress and they came out at night and pecked her face and she couldn't sleep, she was scared to death. So there are best practices, best approaches to dealing with these things that we see every single day when we either have a loved one or we're caring for somebody that lives with these brain diseases and the responses that we all need to develop skills in are counterintuitive to the way we instinctively want to react. And that's what makes this disease so difficult to be involved in. Because as I mentioned before, you don't know from minute to minute, hour to hour and day today, what you're going to deal with. So it really puts you in a position where

you're in a constant state of chaos, for one, and being reactive, number two. So by learning the skills that are extremely vital to family members' experiences, to caregivers' experiences, is you really need to understand the disease, know what to expect, be prepared so you can be proactive in your role instead of reactive in your role. And you can honestly provide a much calmer and harmonious environment and relationship with your loved one or the person you're caring for. I have seen absolute miracles happen. Really? Oh, yes. Yes. I've witnessed this for over 30 years and been, you know, been trained people on how to do this. And they're effective. They really are. And it can make all the difference in the world to not just the quality of life for the person living with dementia, but for everybody involved. Because you're not constantly at odds with somebody or arguing with that person or, you know,

dealing with combative behavior, they're refusing to take a shower and you're trying to figure out why today is taking a shower such a big deal. Well, there's a lot of triggers that could have set somebody off and knowing what those triggers are and then having the tools already assembled in your toolbox, as I call it, to pull out and try, okay, well, maybe this will work or maybe this will work. And the more of these tools you're prepared with, the more chances you have of de-escalating the situation instead of escalating the situation into a meltdown. Yeah, I really like that because it's, you know, when you're kind of, at first, you kind of like, go, well, I need to keep them in reality. So I need to argue with them and tell them, you know,

what's truly happening. And then that just makes them more confused because they're already confused, right? And so you're just adding to the confusion, then they're going to get upset because they're more confused and they're already upset because they're confused. And yeah, I like the approach that you give to this. On your podcast, who do you usually talk to and what are some of the guests and topics that you go through over there? I am on my hundred and 27th episode, I think it is. Oh, thank you. And most people don't make it that far. Yeah. Well, in my show actually about six months ago on Listen Notes was rated in the top 10% popular listen to. So people may not want to talk about Alzheimer's disease, but they're listening. And I talk about everything, anything that has to do with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. We talk about, you know, legal documents that you might not be aware of and you should know about. So when you're talking with your care attorney, and they don't bring up a document that you're aware of, you might say,

well, I know about this one. Do we need that? Do we need to execute that one in our situation? So knowledge is power, right? Knowledge is definitely power. We talk about triggers. We talk about, I spent a lot of time researching and staying on top of current and accurate information. I want people to feel that I am a resource in this arena for providing accurate and honest and truthful information that they can rely on. So I do a lot of, I talk about a lot of, you know, studies and current events and the drugs that are being tried and the claims that they make and what they're finding are the true result, the day-to-day things. I spent a lot of time talking and educating people on everything we've been talking about today, how they can be more prepared, what they need to know,

what they need to look for and recognize as being part of these diseases. And then, of course, how to best de-escalate a situation or approach a situation. So it has a positive outcome for everybody. And that's really what the secret sauce is all about. The secret sauce, is it worth. A secret sauce, yeah. And then on your website, people can reach out to you for advice, consulting things along those lines. Sure.

Sure. Yeah, there's a little form that people can fill out. Okay. Anything more we need to know before we go out? I just want to say that I cannot understate the importance of if you find yourself in this situation. My advice to everybody is learn as much as you can about this disease. There are a lot of secret faces. You ask me that question. The secret bases are things that most people aren't aware of that show. up and you're just so taken off guard because it's like, what's going on here?

Why is she talking about somebody that passed away five years ago? You're not expecting that. You're expecting other things as being part of this disease, but all these other sub-components to the disease a lot of people aren't prepared for. They just don't associate a lot of. of the things that we see with truly being part of the disease. So I think that that's a good place to start is to, you know, do your due diligence and educate yourself to find out as much as you can whether you're a caregiver or you are not quite as hands-on. You're a family member

who visits on a regular basis, you're going to encounter these things too, just in your relationship if you're visiting and spending time. So it's equally important to understand and be prepared for situations that come up. All of a sudden, let's say you go visit your father in a memory care neighborhood. And your father starts talking about wanting to go home so he can see his wife. But you know, this was your mom, she's been gone for years. There is a best practice approach to responding to that situation, and there is a not-so-good approach to responding to that situation.

So these are things that people need to know. And they can find a lot of this data in the book. They can. That's really important. My sister at one point was at that. She's like, why can I leave? And when do I get to go home? And it's really hard to, you know, you're kind of like, well, you're in a wheelchair and it takes four people to wash you. Well, that's a really, really good point that you bring up. And so let me just take a second to address that. That is actually a very, very common thing that we see with people living with dementia. Whether they're already in their own home, They're in an institutionalized setting. You hear a lot. I want to go home.

I want to go home. I want to go home. And our gut instinctive reaction is to say to them, what are you talking about? You're already home. Yeah, that is, that can really set off calamity. Yeah. First of all, they may be talking about a home that you're not, not aware of. They could be talking about the home that they grew up in as a young child.

They could be talking about a home that they lived in when they were a young adult. They could be trying to tell you that they want to go home because where they currently are, they don't feel secure and safe. And again, the onus is on us to try to figure out what does home represent here? So there's ways to get more information out of them to try to understand what home it is they're trying to get to. And that'll tell you a lot about where they are in their life's timeline. Wow. That is wild. That is wild. Well, I'm glad you have this book out because I know we need help with it. My family does. and I have you know I just I you know whatever it's tough it just really is tough and and

sometimes people get confused by the calls and emotional and then and she gets emotional and it just doesn't help anybody it just makes it all worse so I'm glad that there's these resources here and you're reaching out to people and educating them and helping them and all that good stuff so thank you very much for coming to show Lisa we really appreciate it I really appreciate you having me, Chris. I think that this is a really important topic that we need to keep talking about. So I really appreciate your support in allowing your listeners to, you know, to hear some truths about this disease that they may not have been aware of. Thank you. And if you have older parents or older people in your life, there's a good possibility that this is going to come

up on your doorstep. So it's good to be prepared and understand these things. Because Compassion is one of the most important things we need to have for these folks. Thanks for tuning in, folks. Order of the Book where books are sold. Truth lies in Alzheimer's. Its Secret Faces out May 6th, 2022. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss.

LinkedIn.com for Jess Chris Voss. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. I cracked.