“I just feel so unloved,” shared a participant in our recent study, reflecting on the deep pain she experienced when her mother—once her best friend—could no longer celebrate her joys or respond to important moments in her life due to dementia.

If you’re caring for someone with dementia, you likely know this pain intimately. But that gut-wrenching feeling isn’t just heartbreak—it signals something deeper. In a recent study published in Aging & Mental Health, my team and I uncovered how dementia’s emotional unresponsiveness can feel like personal rejection, deeply eroding self-esteem and undermining relationships we’ve cherished our entire lives.

Because our earliest relationships shape our deepest sense of safety and worth, feeling ignored—even by someone whose behavior we rationally understand as dementia-related—can trigger ancient, preverbal fears of rejection and abandonment.

Below are three practical, therapeutic tools distilled from our research. These approaches can help caregivers and clinicians alike name, navigate, and heal from what I've termed "dementia relationship dissonance."

Most dementia conversations revolve around practical

© Psychology Today