Leeza's Care Connection Offers Support for Caregivers

Leeza Gibbons is best known as a co-host of "Entertainment Tonight" and for "Leeza," her syndicated daytime talk show. She is also an author and, since 2017, has hosted the Tournament of Roses Parade on local television.

In 2007, she was appointed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to a board that oversees the state's stem cell research agency.

Gibbons' current passion is Leeza's Care Connection, which helps caregivers learn ways to cope and manage their role.

She called what would become Leeza's Care Connection "a calling that came to me with great clarity" when her family was struggling with her mother's Alzheimer's disease.

"As part of that journey, our family did what most families do, we fell apart," she said. "We each kind of went to our own respective corners to lick our wounds of hurt and worry and anger. We felt alone and misunderstood.

"So basically, I created what we wish we'd had, a place for the care partners – the husbands, the wives, the sons, the daughters, the family friends – to gather together and lean on each other and to bear witness to a very difficult path.

"When I learned that caregivers are at an exponentially greater risk of getting the disease themselves, I realized we can make a big difference there," Gibbons said. "The assault on your immune system, the amount of stress, the lack of sleep, the anxiety, the lack of socialization, the isolation, all of these are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. And for caregivers, they are front and center in their daily lives.

"We may not be able to cure these diseases yet, but that sobering statistic we can change," she added.

The programs at Leeza's Care Connection include those for both caregivers and their diagnosed loved ones.

"We have lots of programs and respite for people who are diagnosed with the disease," Gibbons said. "But what we realize is that better care for caregivers creates better outcomes for care receivers."

The HUGS Program

"The first line of action for me, for any family, is who's in your care crew," Gibbons said. "Who are the people that can support you and understand you and see what you're going through? And it may not always be your biological family. It may not be those closest to you. You may have to identify people who get it."

To help families establish their "care crews," Gibbons created a program called HUGS, which is "helping you grow strong."

"The whole reason to have this peer-to-peer mentor program is there are so many people who lost their loved one to neurological disease, chronic illness and Alzheimer's, and they developed ways to cope, techniques that work, sanity sanctuaries and ways to survive it," she said. "So when their loved ones pass, no one was asking them for that knowledge. They have a Ph.D. in caring. So I created a program that says we want to empower those people and make those people the mentors to the next ones who are standing where they have stood.

"The HUGS program is a proprietary curriculum offered virtually and in-person to really validate the experience of the caregiver, to help them grow what they innately already know about caring by teaching them to be more empathetic listeners, teaching them ways to communicate with individuals that can best be of service," she said.

Gibbons considers HUGS to be similar to a dating site.

"You, as the caregiver, get to be matched with the person that you think best fits your needs," she explained. "So if I'm going on the site and my mom has Alzheimer's, and she's wandering at night and my dad is having trouble coping, I'm going to try to find someone that I think will understand that.

"With HUGS, you connect with your mentor, either by text, by phone, in person or email, and it may be that you just need someone in the middle of the night to get you through a vulnerable moment," she said. "It may be that you develop a lifelong friendship with someone who understands what you're going through.

"So that's the program that we are rolling out across the country now, and I'm really excited about it."

Gibbons considers HUGS to be a very simple approach to a very complicated challenge.

"If it's specifically Alzheimer's disease, there's a process by which the caregiver begins to understand that arguing and correcting and trying to get your loved one into your world will never work," she said. "There are skills and techniques and behaviors of ways that are more effective to make your loved one feel safe and secure.

"For example, if your loved one is saying, 'I want to go home,' and you know, in reality, they are at their home, that feeling comes from a place of fear and insecurity. They're uncomfortable with something.

"So the caregiver learns how to read behind the language," she added. "And rather than saying, 'Mom, you are home. You've lived here for 20 years,' the caregiver can learn to say things like, 'Tell me about your home,' or 'Let's go for a walk and then we can talk about going home.' But trying to correct them just makes everybody anxious and frustrated. So there's a series of tips and techniques that make your life more efficient as a caregiver. And certainly, it makes it easier for you to maintain some emotional stability."

Gibbons described the journey of caring for someone with Alzheimer's as being emotionally volatile.

"One of the things that caregivers need to learn instinctively is that they have to care for themselves first," she said. "It sounds cliche to say, take your oxygen first. However, it's still something that has to be learned.

"And for us, that means creating programs that empower caregivers, that energize them and that educate them," Gibbons said. "One of the real things that many caregivers will push back on is saying, 'I don't have time for a support group,' for example. 'I don't have time for an exercise class.' And yet, those are the very things that are going to give them the ability to run this marathon."

If a person is developing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, the chances are they are at some level aware that something's wrong, according to Gibbons.

"They may not be able to articulate it or even identify it because of the changes that are going on in their brain," she said. "It would require us to assume that they can logically connect A to B. They can't."

Some people, however, become aware that they may be slipping into Alzheimer's.

"From my own personal experience with my mom, she knew something was going on with her," Gibbons recalled. "She'd seen her mother, my granny, go through the same thing. And yet our family members, all of whom had experienced that same relationship with granny, failed to see it in mom because we didn't want to. We didn't believe it. Mom was the rock of the family. She had an answer for everything.

"So she lined us up one day and said, look, I've paid this bill three times. Something's going on. And at first I really thought, well, mom's an alcoholic and that's why she's acting this way. And in reality, she probably was self-medicating with wine at night to deal with her stress and her fear.

"My mother was a rare exception when she said, 'Something is wrong, I think I have Alzheimer's.'

"That almost never happens," Gibbons said. "Not only was it courageous, but it was also very helpful for us as a family because it kept us from unraveling.

"And she gave us basically her wishes and our marching orders," Gibbons said. "She said to the three kids and my dad, 'When I kick and scream and can no longer call you by name, I don't want to live with you. And kids, you have to tell daddy when it's time to let me go.' And she actually said, 'Here's the kind of place where I would like to go.'

"She identified some assisted living and some memory care units, and it was quite remarkable," Gibbons said. "Then when my mother was diagnosed, she was able to exhale because she knew that the expectations of her would be adjusted, and that we would understand if she was uncomfortable in a crowd. We would understand if the music was bothering her. We would understand if she didn't dress herself particularly correct. But also, she felt a real sense of purpose."

For families and those diagnosed with the disease, each case of Alzheimer's creates its own unique path.

"My mom did public service announcements about awareness of Alzheimer's disease and knowing that you're not alone and knowing that there is help," Gibbons said. "That made her feel purposeful.

"And we learned some tricks along the way that helped us," she continued. "My mother loved to smoke and she loved to drive, two things that were dangerous before Alzheimer's and especially dangerous with a diagnosed person. We never said, 'Mom, you can't smoke, your memory is going, you're going to burn the house down.' Instead, we let her keep her cigarettes and we took the lighters and all the matches away.

"So my mother would have that familiar cigarette in her hand. And she, after a while, didn't realize or she would say, 'Well, I can't find a match.'

"We would say, 'Let us help you. We'll look for that for you.' And by the time we would look for it, she'd be on to something else. She would say, 'I'm going to the car.' We would respond, 'Okay. Pick me up some milk.'

"And the car wouldn't start because we had disabled the battery," Gibbons said. "Then she would say, 'I need to get the mechanic.' We would say, 'You're right. We'll call the mechanic.' And she would ultimately forget that she had done the same thing the day before. Now, I'm not saying that's a solution for everyone. It worked for us in our family."

For more information about Leeza's Care Connection, visit https://leezascareconnection.org.