When the Room Becomes a Stranger
Gail stood in the doorway of our bedroom this afternoon—the room I built for her, the room with the river view and the fireplace—and I watched fear wash over her face.
“I don’t know where I am,” she said quietly.
Not angry. Not confused in the way we usually think of confusion. Scared.
Imagine it. You walk into a room in your own house and nothing looks familiar. The walls, the furniture, the light coming through the windows—it’s all wrong. You don’t recognize it. You can’t orient yourself. And somewhere deep in your brain, an alarm goes off: *This isn’t safe. I don’t belong here.*
That’s not confusion. That’s fear.
And when dementia strips away the ability to recognize the familiar, fear becomes a daily visitor.
I’ve learned to watch for it. The anxiousness shows up first—a tightness in her shoulders, a hesitation in her steps, a slight widening of her eyes. She’ll stop moving. She’ll look around like she’s trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces. And if I’m not paying attention, that anxiousness will escalate into full panic.
So I’ve learned to put myself in the same spot she’s standing in.
What would calm me if I suddenly didn’t recognize where I was?
Something familiar. A calm voice. A hand held. A comment that normalizes what I’m feeling without making me feel broken.
When Gail said she didn’t know where she was, I didn’t correct her. I didn’t say, “This is our bedroom. You’ve been here a thousand times.” That would’ve been true, but it wouldn’t have helped.
Instead, I walked over, took her hand, and said, “I get confused in here too sometimes with the new curtains. The light looks different.”
She looked at me. The fear softened just a little.
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” I said. “Come sit with me by the window. The river always looks the same.”
And she did. We sat together, and I pointed out the geese going by, the way the trees bend toward the water, the kingfisher that likes to stand on the wire over the bank.. Familiar things. Steady things. Things that don’t change even when everything else does.
Within a few minutes, the fear was gone. Not because she suddenly remembered where she was, but because she felt safe.
This is one of the principles I’ve built into what we call The Atenda Ten—a framework for supporting people with dementia that has guidelines like : *Meet them in their world, not yours.*
When someone you love is disoriented, your instinct is to pull them back to reality. To remind them. To correct them. But reality doesn’t comfort someone whose brain has rewritten the map. What comforts them is your presence. Your calm. Your willingness to sit in the disorientation with them and be the one steady thing they can hold onto.
Fear doesn’t need facts. Fear needs reassurance.
So now, when I see that look in Gail’s eyes—that moment when the room becomes a stranger—I don’t try to convince her she’s wrong. I don’t explain. I don’t teach.
I just step into her world and become the familiar thing she’s looking for.
A calm voice. A hand held. A comment that says, “You’re not alone in this. I’m confused too sometimes. Let’s figure it out together.”
Because the truth is, dementia doesn’t just take memory. It takes the sense of safety that comes from knowing where you are. And when someone you love loses that, your job isn’t to restore their memory.
Your job is to become their anchor.
The room might feel like a stranger. But you? You’re home.
– Gregg
