Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Ten Warning Signs You Are Working With a Dysfunctional Family

August 8, 2023

Working with Dysfunctional Family

Ten Warning Signs you are Working with Dysfunctional Family represents critical information to share with long-distance caregivers before their holiday visit. Do you know them? They include contentiousness, anger, and cut off and all are listed below. These clinical issues give the visiting caregiver signs that they need to call a care manager and you the care manager the most challenging job of an aging professional. What you have to know is family system theory and be clinically skilled in entering this treacherous family system – to get care for an older person

1. Contentiousness – Old fights erupt; the siblings and parents get into arguments with one another about an old issue

2. Anger – Siblings and family members express physical anger, emotional abuse, financial abuse

3. Distancing & cut off – Some siblings or parents have nothing to do with family and may not speak to parents or siblings for long periods of time.

Ten Warning Signs You are Working with the  Dysfunctional Family – Fusion, Denial, Triangulation, Entitlement

4. Fusion – Siblings and family members, such as the mother and eldest daughter, blend into one another, For example, the daughter sounds, acts, and has the same prejudices as the mother. . Think of the media’s portrayal of Lindsay Lohan and her mother.

5. Denial – Adult siblings do not see a decline in a parent, do not face reality, and do not take care of parent if he or she needs care.                           

6. Triangulation – Tension between two family members or siblings causes one to enlist a third family member or sibling to avoid change For example, two adult sibling object to the cost of care of an aging parent. They gang up on the third adult sibling who thinks the cost of care is reasonable and justified.

7. Sense of Entitlement – Siblings who are accustomed to purchasing services need not personally solve their own, children’s siblings or parents’ problems. This lack of engagement leaves them, unprepared and unwilling in getting involved in solving family tribulations.

Ten Warning Signs You Are Working with a Dysfunctional Family – Narcissism, Needy Adult Siblings, Substance Abuse, and Cut Off

8. Narcissism – One or more siblings has an “it’s all about me” attitude and

other siblings resent this. The self-absorbed sibling either does not participate

9. Needy Adult Siblings – These adult siblings feel starved for affection and often seek affection from professionals and other people in their lives for compensation for the care they didn’t receive as children.

10 . Substance and Other Abuse – The family and siblings have a history of drug, alcohol, and/or child abuse.

If this fits you you and your aging parent needs care may need to contact a geriatric care manager.

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

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
  • Know The Ten Warning Signs you are working with a dysfunctional family and 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     

Find Out More 

 

 

 

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

 

 

Filed Under: abusive aging parents, adult child physical abuse, Adult children, aging family crisis, aging family system, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, Aging therapist, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, Dysfunctional Family System, elder abuse, elder care manager, elder fiscal abuse, elder mediator, entitled family, estranged siblings, FREE WEBINAR, GCM COACHING SKILLS, geriatric care manager, geriatric care manager start up, midlife siblings, Siblings Tagged With: adult children of borderline narcissistic VIP families, aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, blaming familiy members, boundaries dysfunctional families, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional Holiday, cut -off, cut-off sibling, dysfunctional aging family, geriatric care manager, help with dysfunctional family, midlife siblings, Narcissistic Personality, sibling, Substance abuse in the elderly

Dysfunctional Families Facing Death Wreak Havoc at End of Life

August 3, 2023

What do Dysfunctional Families do at the End of Life?

 

Dysfunctional families facing death and dying have flawed fractured family conversations. Often they do not communicate at all or engage in destructive accusations lobbed at others. They see one another as enemies. They demonize one another!

Dysfunctional families facing death are feuding families, escalating the pain of death to a chaotic war room. They blame each other instead of locking arms in a crisis.

Dysfunctional families facing death sabotage resolution.

Facing Fractured Family Communication

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

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

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 then dysfunctional families facing death the adult children and/or spouse disagree

Pain management  Dysfunctiona families facing death adult children and/or spouses disagree.

Answer to Fractured Family at End of Life – Mediation.

Dysfunctional families facing death

 

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

SIGN UP FOR NEW FREE WEBINAR

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders in aging dysfunctional families
Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family

Master 10 Clinical Tools Professionals Must learn before they work with These Difficult Families
Learn how to solve dysfunctional family problems like End of Life family chaos after you master these tools  for aging dysfunctional families
Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist
Learn how to work with characters like Rupert Murdock & Logan Roy

Sign Up Now

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

 

 

 

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, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, care planning, caregiver burnout, conservator, death, dysfunctional aging family, dysfunctional family, dysfunctional siblings, dysfuntional family, elder care crisis, end of life, end of life family meeting, estranged siblings, families fretting at end of life, free webinar, 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

How to Help Avoid a Cat and Dog fight Among the Dysfunctional Family On Holidays

November 1, 2022

cat-dog-fight.jpg

Sparring Cats and Dogs AKA Siblings

Learn how to calm the chaos of the dysfunctional family on the holiday.  During the coming holiday season, especially after some liquid cheer, sour step-parents, angry step-siblings, and mid-life adult kids who grew -up in a dysfunctional family can spin into sparring cats and dogs with teeth bared at Thanksgiving Hannaka, Christmas dinner. Sign -up for my  holiday webinar

 Why Their Stocking is Full of Coal

As if COVID has not made the holidays hard enough for family gatherings, the ordinary

 

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

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves

Dysfunctional Familiy on the holidays

They effectively face gut-wrenching eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory. the dysfunctional family on holidays like Thanksgiving can face an emotional detonation then an explosion with siblings laying into each other not the turkey.

 Why Cut-OFF Ruins the Celebration 4The Dysfunctional family on holidays

The dysfunctional family on the holidays faces shunning or cutoff. What if adult kids “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke- what do they do when caught between I hate you and now I love you. One sibling has taken over Mom or Dad’s care and her/his dysfunctional midlife adult siblings just don’t want her to do this. It only takes a few drinks at dinner  and snarky remarks start a fracas that leads to cut-off, which leads to them not sharing in Mom’s care, overloading the sibling caregiver, and endangering Mom’s care, through this shunning.

 

Now that the holidays are soon arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

 

 

Dysfunctional family on holidays

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

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

 Learn how to create marketing to alert adult children you are there

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday e-newsletters, podcasts, speakers bureau, blogs-to market

Learn clinical skills to covert and tools to serve frantic adult children and their declining, resistant parents and the dysfunctional family on the holiday

  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain sibling 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 the dysfunctional family or nearly normal family during the holidays
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

 

  • Dysfunctional family on holidays

 

 

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Filed Under: ADULT SIBling, Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, black care manager, black concieirge nurse, black concierge care manager, black concierge RN, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Blog, Care Management Inquiry Call, care manager, case manager, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, estranged siblings, Families, GCM Sales, 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 Technology, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holiday Social Media, Holiday Webinar, Holidays, inquiry call, Long Distance Care, Long Distance Care Holidays, Long distance caregiver, Marketing during Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, SIBLING, sibling rivalry, Sibling Strife Holidays, Sibling Strife Thanksgiving, Siblings, Social Media Holidays, social media marketing, technology for long distance care, Telehealth with GCM, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving and COVID, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging family, aging life care manager, aging life care on holidays, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, alcohol on the holidays, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, danger signs for holiday visit, drunken holiday, dysfunctional family on the holiday, dysfuntional family, Dysfuntional family on holidays, GRANDMA VISIT THANKSGIVING, Holiday sibling rivalry, Holidays Crisis in aging family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, post holiday parent care, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings

Caregiver Assessment- What Does It Takes Professionally ?

March 30, 2021

Doing TWO Assessments

To meet the needs of the whole aging family, the care receiver, and the caregivers, GCMs need to begin assessing the caregiver as well as the care receiver. There is a synergy between the caregiver and client – they are interdependent. If the caregiver is stressed or weak the client does not receive good care. They both suffer without supports that a care manager can give them.

A caregiver assessment helps the GCM see this faltering interdependence by using a caregiver assessment. The National Center on Caregiving at the Family Caregiver Alliance calls this a process gathering information describing the caregiving situation and identifying the family caregivers’ particular problems, needs, resources, and strengths. This means that the care manager can see issues from a caregiver’s perspective and can focus on what supports they need to give them the best care. The GCM compares this to the client’s assessment of needs. The result of doing two assessments is discovering both the client/ care receiver needs and restore health and well-being, prevent poor care, client injury or illness, caregiver burnout, trauma or quiting, and unnecessary placement in a nursing home.

Create a Circle of Care

One resource that a GCM can bring to a caregiving family is what Gail Sheehy calls a circle of care. To create this supportive connection, the GCM needs to take her or his coaching skills and put together a support system around the formerly isolated, solitary family caregiver. The GCM can coach the family caregiver to ask for help so the GCM can assist in reorganizing the family so adult siblings can share in the care of the older client with the identified family caregiver. The GCM is what Sheehy calls a compassionate coach who can help the beleaguered caregiver attract and assemble a platform to keep on giving the care she or he wants to give the aging person.

Caregiver Resources

A circle of care includes emotional resources for the direct family caregiver. These emotional resources could and should include adult siblings. Reconnecting midlife brothers and sisters, through the circle of care, is an important GCM task, as siblings are the longest and deepest relationships in any person’s life. The GCM may have to depend on his or her clinical skills in helping siblings with forgiveness or reconnecting siblings who live long distances apart to add them to a circle of care. Midlife siblings have often spent the last 30 years tending to their own families, so the point of reconnection of midlife brothers and sisters often happens when they are in middle age in the midst of a crisis in parent care. This is where the GCM needs to employ clinical skills in midlife sibling work or to find the resources for the family to help with this healing sibling reconnection.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, care manager, caregiver, caregiver assessment, Caregiver Burn Out, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, CIRCLE OF CARE, estranged siblings, GCM COACHING SKILLS, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, midlife siblings, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: caregiver assessment, CAREGIVER RESOURCES, caregiver strain, caregiver stress, Circle of Care, family caregivers, geriatric care manager

Why Do Adult Children Hate and Love Parents in Aging Dysfunctional Family?

January 11, 2021

ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

The aging dysfunctional family takes an expert to tackle because violence can break out at any time. In the film version of Tracy Letts  August in Osage County. Julia Roberts (the eldest daughter) attacks Meryl Streep (the pill-popping aging mother) at a ritual family gathering- the elder Dad’s funeral after he commits suicide.

 In the dysfunctional family, there have been symptoms of problems such as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, child abuse, or emotional abuse, like the demeaning mother the character Meryl Streep plays in August in Osage County. These dysfunctions usually create barriers to nurturing and this affects everyone in the family system.

The family system is also marked by ambivalence and all adults and children live in a love-hate relationship with other family members. (Julia Roberts character and all the daughter both love and revile their mother ).

 As systems resist change, it is even more difficult for members of the dysfunctional family to move to make changes when their parent needs care, like Meryl Streep does in August in Osage County. Julia Roberts and none of the daughters will care for their despised mother.

 The nearly normal system is shaken to its core by the parent being dependent. However, a care manager can guide the family members into reorganizing their family roles when the parent can no longer act as head of the family, while acknowledging the shift and changes they need to make both emotionally and practically. 

The members of the dysfunctional family who may have experienced a lack of nurturing by their parent and have no role model of caring. They are angry and resentful at caring for the parent, and thus will find it difficult to provide the practical and emotional care that their aging parent needs. The challenge to the adult child of the dysfunctional family is how to meet the dependency needs of the here and now old-old parent when the parent did not meet them dependency needs as a child.  That is why they need a highly experienced Geriatric Care Manager who can work with dysfunctional aging families.

 The challenge to the care manager is to bring the adult child of the dysfunctional family into the here and now and see their parents for who they are- an aging dependent person, flawed and imperfect, but a human being who needs their love, support and nurturing.

 

 

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

             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 on my YouTube Channel:  Geriatric Care 1 

 

 

 

Filed Under: adult child physical abuse, adult emotional abuse, Aging, aging family crisis, aging family system, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging Mother, Aging therapist, Blog, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, Dysfunctional Family System, estranged siblings, Families, fiscal abuse, Fiscal Elder Abuse, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, Siblings, Sign Up Dysfunctional Aging Family, Webinar, Webinar ALCA GCM Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging life and geriatric care management, aging life care management, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent crisis, care manager, caregiver assessment, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional Holiday, dysfunctional aging family, geriatric care manager, Holidays with midlife siblings, nurse care manager, Tools with Dysfunctional families, Violence Dysfunctional Family, Working With Dysfunctional family

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