Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Dysfunctional Aging Families Can Wreak Havoc at End of Life

December 6, 2022

What do Feuding families do at the end of life?

 

When a family member is facing death and dying dysfunctional families have flawed conversations. Often they do not communicate at all or engage in destructive banter. They see one another as enemies. They demonize one another.

Feuding families are what I call dysfunctional families. They blame each other instead of locking arms in a crisis.

They sabotage resolution.

They actively compound already difficult decisions with intractable, interpersonal conflict. They create problems independent of the underlying issues.

Facing Fractured Communication

What are some of the struggles that these aging dysfunctional families with fractured communication can face?

Aging parents who lack the capacity to make decisions have no advance directives, DPOA and a

health-care proxy, and adult siblings, who must make end of life decisions, can’t agree

Withdrawal of life support with no designated health care agent and adult children and/or spouse disagree

Pain management adult children and/or and spouse disagree.

Answer to Fractured Family at End of Life – Mediation.

Mediation is a tool that can be a good resource for dysfunctional families at the end of life. It can help with these difficult families face the death of a parent without fracturing the entire family. It can allow an older person to die without pain inflicted by their own family.

 

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

 

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

Upcoming Free Webinar

Deliver a Good End of Life 9 Steps to Death &Dying

Jan 24, 2023 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

SIGN-UP Description

Deliver a Good End of Life- 9 Steps to Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency
Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part
Join me on January 24 2023 and learn why End of Life Services re a perfect new service for care managers
 Learn to guide the patient/family through the five stages of death. Understand how to help clients be active participants in their care. Give the family caregivers tools to manage care. Find out how to provide family-centered care to caregivers and family. Learn to choose the right support services for the client through all stages of death.
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care to the client earlier and work with their team.
Find out how Use COVID -19 family coaching for GCM. Discover the role of Death Doula at end of life.

Time

Jan 24, 2023 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

SIGN-UP 

Join me Thursday, March 11, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers

 In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to

 1. Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death

2. Help clients be active participants in their care

3. Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care

4. Provide family center care to caregivers and family

5. Choose the right support services through all stages of death

6. Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team

7. Use ALCA End-of-Life Benefits During COVID

8.Use  COVID -19  Family Coaching for GCM

Sign Up 

If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

 

Filed Under: Advanced Directives, Advanced Directives and Covid-19, Aging, aging life care manager, Benefits of ALCA to Hospice, Death and Dying, Death and Dying Care Management, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family Mediation, End of Life, End of Life Care manager, End of life documents, estranged elder parents and adult kids, estranged siblings, Families, FREE WEBINAR, GCM COACHING SKILLS, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Good Death, Hospice Care, mediation, Mediation End of Life, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: adult sibling, aging family, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care planning, caregiver burnout, conservator, death, dysfunctional aging family, dysfunctional family, dysfuntional family, elder care crisis, end of life, end of life family meeting, estranged siblings, families fretting at end of life, fretting at end of life, geraitric assessment, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, mediation, mediator, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, no advanced directive, no DPOA, no health care proxy, withdraw of life support

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

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