Attention
Involving Family and Friends
Problems with attention can have subtle effects which wear away at communication and intimacy. You may have become aware of attention or concentration difficulties through not understanding information, or finding it hard to follow a TV soap. These difficulties will not be obvious to the people around you. Once they understand that this is part of your MS, they are likely to want to help. They can do this easily by:
- having important discussions at the best part of the day for you.
- speaking slowly and summarising the content of spoken information.
- checking your understanding of what has been said
- being part of important conversations, to help you and be a back-up for the information
Once you and your family are working together to overcome concentration problems, you can:
- start to identify when lapses occur
- work out what could be dome to make things easier in that or similar situations
- implement the new technique
Video: The time to talk about cognitive problems
Jeffrey Gingold explains that the best time to talk to family, friends or work colleagues about how cognitive problems affect you is when you are not experiencing a cognitive episode. This allows time to explain what cognitive difficulties you might experience and gives people the opportunity to ask questions to better understand this symptom.
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