Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Adult Sibling Rivalry at Thanksgiving- Where To Get Help?

October 25, 2022

A sad woman crying as she prays.

Siblings are The Biggest Source Of Stress Between Human Beings

At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next month, adult siblings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast or wrecked by holiday sibling rivalry??

 

Sibling Rivalry Can Give Acid Reflux to Grandma’s Thanksgiving Dinner

As Gail Sheehy said in her book, Passages in Caregiving, we think that siblings will automatically support each other when aging parents fall apart. Sheehy quotes sociologists, Karl Pillemer and J. Jill Suitor, on sibling rivalry, in a study they did conclude that siblings are inherent rivals and the biggest source of stress between human beings.

If you are a midlife sibling, perhaps you have a brother or sister to whom you hardly speak because of sibling rivalry. Maybe you are about to see your siblings at the coming Thanksgiving feast, even on zoom during COVID, and anticipate largely ignoring him or her or doing chitchat as you seethe the inside. If you fit this description of sibling rivalry, you are in the same lurching boat as uncounted baby boomer siblings all over the world.

 

Childhood Wound Ripped Open

That wound from childhood may still ache enough to keep you on the furrowed path your family followed when you were young. Now, however, you and your adult siblings, nearing or at retirement age, may need to come together again to be part of a niece or

adult siblings need to come together for aging parents

 

 

nephew’s wedding or christening, help plan a parent’s anniversary dinner, or, most important, oversee the increasing care of elderly family members.

Best Thanksgiving Sibling Rivalry Film

I suggest you watch Pieces of April, a fabulous Thanksgiving film ( lead 21-year-old Katy Holmes debuts in a standout performance) where the film’s dysfunctional family revolves around adult sibling rivalry. The film is also about interracial couples, and in the end, around a catastrophic illness of the aging parent, where the siblings need to resolve their differences. It also makes it a trifecta with dementia. The grandmother, who has dementia is taken out of her nursing home to join the dysfunctional Thanksgiving feast and offers surprising sanity to the sibling-rivalry drama.

If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulf you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association to find help before a parental crisis.

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

holiday sibling rivalry

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

 Learn how to create!

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday Marketing to help you sign up families who might face a serious decline in aging parents
  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

  • Featuring Speaker

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

Free Webinar

 

 

 

Find out more about dysfunctional families and sibling rivalry from My YouTube, Channel  

 

 

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4 Dysfunctional Family Markers Clinicians Can Face In New Years

December 27, 2021

 

The normal family is the hand grenade compared to the nuclear bomb of the dysfunctional family

When both are faced with a filial crisis of aging parents being dependent and the adult child needs to take over they cower or explode.

How Do You Know a Dysfunctional Family

1. They lack the ability to resolve conflicts

The dysfunctional family has frequent psycho-social blockages that prevent the family from growing emotionally. They fail miserably at moving through all family stages and orchestrating family rituals.

2. They Cannot make Life transitions

In each dysfunctional family most life transitions in the family, like birth, adolescence, and marriage have been very difficult to make, marked by a lack of support from the parents. Every holiday might be drunkenly be ruined. The parental figures are usually not in charge, nurturing, or able to establish establishes clear rules. They have never created an excel spreadsheet on tasks to do to orchestrate a holiday. Like a disease spreading down generations, they never knew how happily celebrate anything together, as their parents wrecked ritual occasions as well.

3. There are murky roles in the  family family-fight-300x223.jpg

The chief role of the parent is characterized by a lack of leadership of the family and the ability to nurture the children. Mom rarely became the high priestess on Hanukkah or Christmas or any family ritual gathering, the family members generally do not believe the parent is there for them and can be depended upon. The concierge dysfunctional family is colored by bloody strained relationships and unresolved conflicts and ruined ritual memories.

 

4. They inspire great literature

The family is the inspiration for great literature. O’Neil’s wrenching plays A Long Day’s Journey into Night” portray the most miserable of dysfunctional families. Alcohol, drugs, and secrets that have been kept by all for generations splatter the pages of this great play mirroring all the ruined holidays children of dysfunctional families recall with horror.  Prince of Tides a tale of a southern concierge dysfunctional family gives us a timelier glimpse of a family whose center can never hold together and whose blood oozes all over everyone from one generation to the next. Award-winning plays and films, like Tracey Letts August in Osage County about a ruined ritual funeral from hell when Julia Roberts tries to beat up drug-addled, drunk presiding mother Meryl Streep.ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

 Rituals Bring Out the Worst in this family

In the dysfunctional family when an aging  Mom does not make the very small things she was able to pull off like the Latkes or the Christmas cookies she always made every Hanukkah and Christmas,  or cannot pull off big things like the daughter’s wedding someone has got to be the cook and family organizer, and resentments skyrocket – tempers flare – and the torch just might never get passed.

The family is again thrown into crisis. That means someone in the tribe has to take over -yet the dysfunctional family has no model or spreadsheet for any transition in power. They cannot pull off any ritual celebrations or even family Taco Tuesdays. Most critically when the rudderless head of the family needs care, these adult children cannot care for a parent who did not care for them.

Sign Up for My January Webinar on Working With the Dysfunctional Family

 

 

 

 

11 Clinical Steps to Work with Dysfunctional Families-Post Holidays –

Thursday, January 6, 2021, 2:00-3:30 PM

 

Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday 

Join me 

and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stockings.

 

 

 

 Learn how to:

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders

 

Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family 

 

Master the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families

Sign -Up Now 

 

 

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel                                                                  Geriatric Care 1

Learn more about how to work with the dysfunctional family in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 5th edition 

 

Filed Under: adult child pain-point, adult child physical abuse, Adult children, Aduly Child Stress, Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Black, Black Aging Family, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, Black Travel Nurses, Blog, case manager, Cut Off, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging life care manager, boundaries dysfunctional families, care manager, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional Holiday, Dysfunctional Concierge Family, dysfuntional family, geriatric care manager, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Long Days Journey Into Night, nurse care manager

FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR- BEAT HOLIDAY RUSH -One Day Left to Sign -up

November 15, 2021

One Day Left to sign up for my free webinar to beat Holiday Rush

HURRY- UP and  SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR

 

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

SIGN UP NOW!
Tomorrow November 16th 2021 @2PM-3:30

 Learn!

  • How to  create Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers

     

  • How to create Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • How to usePre-Holiday Technology to help you move people from discovery to signing on the dotted line
  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain Holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday social media and marketing campaigns. Get ahead  of competitors who lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care  
  •  
  • Featuring Speakers

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management       

 

 

 

 

 

Natasha Beauchamp- MSc, Webmaster and Research    Scientist at Elder Pages Online, LLC

 

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

 

 


  CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Filed Under: Aging, Aging technology, ALCA Concierge, ALCA Marketing, Black Aging Family, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, Black Travel Nurses, Blog, Care management, Caregiver Stress, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional families, complementary consultatiom, Cut Off, Dysfunctional Family System, Families, FREE WEBINAR, GCM Start-Up, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rush for care managers, Holiday Rush Technology, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holiday Social Media, Holiday Webinar, Holidays, inquiry from adult child, Long Distance travel Holidays, Natasha Beauchamp, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, Post holidays aging dysfunctional family, Sibling Strife Holidays, Social Media for eldercare, Social Media Holidays, social media marketing, social media marketing campaign, Technology for Geriatric Care Managers, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving with Dysfuntional Family, Webinar, Webinar ALCA GCM Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, aging parent crisis on holiday, care manager, case manager, Dysfuntional family on holidays, Free Webinar geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, Holiday Crisis For Aging Family, Holidays calls to GCM's, marketing plam holiday, Nearly Normal family inquiry holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Social Media for holidays, technology for holidays, Webinar ALCA

When “Cut Off” in The Family is a ” Phantom Limb” at Thanksgiving

November 7, 2021

The Dysfunctional Family’s Worst Time of The Year

Thanksgiving, coming up soon, is the gateway to the dysfunctional family’s worst time of year- the holidays. Families face each other across the table they despise or just both love and hate. Or there is that empty seat- the uninvited guest- the brother-sister, aunt, son, daughter who is never invited- the cut off-family member. 

Families Phantom Limb

But since this leaves the family with that “phantom limb”- like the awful sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached and where it was is pulsating in pain- families reach out for someone to fix it.

The ordinary aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. Aging professionals, like care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families around the holidays.

 Dysfunctional Families Fail Eldercare

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves effectively in the face of eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

Family” Cut” off  faces Phantom Limb at Thanksgivingimages_20141216-184443_1.jpg

What if they “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke-what do they do?? Someone has to take over Mom or Dad’s care and these dysfunctional midlife adult kids are heavy ambivalent or just don’t want to do it. Now that the holidays are arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

My favorite aging dysfunctional family  ” cut off ” Thanksgiving film is  Pieces of April  Made as a comedy in 2003, it touches death and dying, sibling rivalry, mother-daughter estrangement, interracial love- and Alzheimer’s all fueled by deep family fault lines and how to cook a turkey on a broken stove. The film manages to make the old theme of fraught family Thanksgiving, crisp, funny, and ultra worth watching.I ordered it from Netflix but you  can watch on YOUTUBE 

 Shot in 3 weeks for a measly $350 K, it received a Sundance Film award and accolades for its pedigree cast including 21-year-old Katie Holmes as the grunge Goth daughter who her family has ” Cut Off”, Patricia Clarkson as the dying  Mom who distains then forgives her rebellious eldest child and Alice Drummond as the demented grandmother who comes along and plays the most rational person in the film in her obliviousness to the family holiday freak-out.

 

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR – 

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional &long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain Holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday Technology to help you move people from discovery to signing on the dotted line
  • Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great preholiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care

Featuring Speakers

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management

 Natasha Beauchamp- MSc, Webmaster and Research    Scientist at Elder Pages Online, LLC

 THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

 

 

Find out more about Holiday Adult Child Freak out-in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel Geriatric Care 1

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging, Aging Alcohol Abuse, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Black, Black Aging Family, Black entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Travel Nurses, Blog, care manager, case manager, Cut Off, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, Dysfunctional Family Mediation, Dysfunctional Family System, elder care manager, Families, GCM Operation Manual Class, GCM Operations Manual, GCM Operations Manual Class, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday Rush for care managers, Holiday season, Holiday Webinar, Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving with Dysfuntional Family, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, aging parent Thanksgiving, care manager, case manager, cut -off, dysfunctional family holidays, geriatric care manager, Katie Holmes, Marriage and Family Therapist, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving with aging parents, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Therapist in Aging

Please Elvis – We had a Blue Christmas

December 26, 2020

Dys-fam90264_CH22_FIG02.jpg

      

A Blue Christmas or Hannakka is what the dysfunctional family always has. Elvis gets them. He sings it for this joyless broken-hearted –yet furious- family. They have a blue holiday filled with memories of ruined, -maybe drunken- giftless pain while most holiday songs warble their celebration should be white.


And when those blue snowflakes start falling
That’s when those blue memories start calling
You’ll be doin’ all right with your Christmas of white
But I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas

             You can’t be Elvis but here are some more steps a geriatric care manager can transform these families after they call on the holiday.

 

 

           

                        Identify intergenerational roles and conflicts: The GCM must ” get” existing power dynamics within the family, redefine responsibilities to move to generational maturity, and realign roles and tasks for each family member.

 

The GCM should encourage a new two-way nurturing relationship between the adult child and the aging parent that never existed. At the same time, the GCM must enable the adult child as a caregiver to set limits that are appropriate to a mature relationship  (a very hard redo) The GCM shapeshifts the adult child to identify and remove himself or herself from triangulated, fused, or other destructive family patterns that blue, blue Christmas

 

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

  Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday  

 Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  • Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
  • Master Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

    SIGN UP NOW

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

 

 

Filed Under: abusive aging parents, Aging, Aging Families and Disaster, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging family system, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Blog, borderline client, Borderline narcissistic family, Cut Off, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family System, entitled family, estranged elder parents and adult kids, estranged siblings, Families, fiscal abuse, Fiscal Elder Abuse, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, intergenerational conflict, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: adult child, aging family dynamics, Blue Christmas, boundary in aging families, Clinical Tools for Aging Family, destructive family pattern, Dysfuctional Family system, dysfunctional family roles, fusion, geriatric care manager, older parents refusing care, triangulated aging family system, Triangulation

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