Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Ten Warning Signs That You Are Working With in a Dysfunctional Family

January 16, 2021

Warning Signs of Aging Dysfunctional Family – Contentiouness, Anger, and Cut Off

Do you know the 10  clinical manifestations that you are working with the dysfunctional family, 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 parent 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.

Warning Signs of Aging 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’s 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 the 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 they need not personally solving their own, children’s sibling or parents’ problems. This lack of engagement leaves them, unprepared and unwilling in getting involved in solving family tribulations.

Warning Signs of Aging 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 Free January Webinar  

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

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

F

  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, 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, 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

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar on Dysfunctional Aging Family

January 14, 2021

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

  Thursday, January 21, 2021

              2:00 3:20 Pacific Standard Time

  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 only 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

Filed Under: abusive aging parents, adult child physical abuse, Adult children, adult emotional abuse, Aging, Aging Alcohol Abuse, Aging Family, aging family and COVID, 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, Borderline narcissistic family, Caregiver Burn Out, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional families, Concierge aging clients, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family System, elder mediator, Families, Filial Crisis, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Move Management, narcissistic client, Narcissistic Personality, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, Post holidays aging dysfunctional family, Sibling Strife Christmas, Sibling Strife Holidays, Siblings, Stepmonster, Symptoms Dysfunctional Family, Webinar, Webinar ALCA GCM Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, boundaries dysfunctional families, care manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional Holiday, dysfunctional family roles, geriatric care manager, help with dysfunctional family, nurse care manager, Tools with Dysfunctional families

Does The Dysfunctional Aging Family Need Mediation Post The Holidays ?

January 4, 2021

If your clients  ‘holiday visit from their family was miserable and you are care manager to the aging parents, a family meeting between the adult sisters and brothers and a mediatory might be needed this January. This will help you decide if you need a mediator or you can be a facilitator at the family meeting. Care Managers can do facilitation but you need very advanced training to be a mediator.

a. Compatible. Does their family generally present as a unit and lock arms together in a crisis? Do you usually work as a team?

b. Fragmented: Is their family unable to work together as a unit? Do their family members and siblings contact friends and outside professionals with their problems, while failing to confide in each other? Do family members ask other family and other

siblings, friends, and outside professionals to keep conversations secret from certain relatives? Is there a cache of family secrets that some family members do not tell others or share? Do kin pit one another against each other when trouble arises? Instead of locking arms in a crisis, does their family point fingers and blame each other?

c. Is their family productive or non-productive?

        1.Productive: Are the family members able to respond to the suggestions of friends or professionals and take necessary action to create change in the family?

         2.Nonproductive: Are any family members unable to mobilize when help is really needed? Do any siblings or other kin feel powerless to act? Is “victim” a term you would use for some family members and or siblings? Do family members ignore the ideas friends or professionals who are trying to transform the sibling/ family dynamics

d. Is their family stable or fragile?

         1.. Stable – When family members have disagreements, do they find a way to solve their problems? Does the family have long-standing relationships and respect the differences in each other?

         2. Fragile: Is there a history of emotional cut-offs or distancing on the part of one or more family members? Is there a pattern of generational divorce, remarriage?

Each family is different but if this family scores 2 out of three you should investigate bringing in a mediator ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

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

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

              2:00-3:30 Pacific Standard Time

  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

Read Dana Curtis Esquire’s Mediation and Geriatric Care Management in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th Edition 

Filed Under: aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, case manager, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, elder mediator, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, mediation, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family holidays, dysfunctional family roles, elder mediation, elder mediator, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, mediation, mediator, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Psychosocial assessment

Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 22, 2020

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Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays

During Christmas and Hannaka family caregivers, especially in the dysfunctional family can be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of caregiving. They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. Depression and anxiety ( rife among caregivers) are predictors of increased alcohol use. Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

 

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform? 

 

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool in a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

 Use of Self

The use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to their nasty crippled, family

system is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and

nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for

stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, c

onfidentiality, consistency, and support.

Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of

perseverance. By giving up on the possibility of

positive change and by exploring all options,

the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

Be like Judy Garland  on the holiday offering hope


Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light


From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

 

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 need 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

 

SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL GERIATRIC CARE 1

Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

What Happens When Mom High Priestess of the Holidays Falls off her Throne?

December 20, 2020

 

Holidays have traditionally been women’s job.

Mothers are the high priestess of the ritual- like Queen Elizabeth without servants. The UK estimated the there are 25 to do’s women have on the holiday. It takes years to accumulate objects ritual dishes and religious objects used. It takes the left side of your brain executive skills, plans and organize, remember details, does things based on your experience.

Holidays are often done on autopilot

Women–recalling all the jobs that must be done year after year. It also takes  IADLs- (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living) meal planning, shopping, plus ambulation. Then add depression – widowhood, loss and you have the challenges of aging in managing this entire titanic ritual.  Many times the aging Mom can no longer balance all these plates and the holidays shatter with the crashing dishes.

At some point when Mom cannot do all the maybe 75 subsets of holiday preparation

Then the torch has to be passed and an adult child (usually an adult daughter must take over. This is like secession, – Princess Elizabeth taking over for her Dad, King George, (who hated it and had a lifelong stutter) made famous in The King’s Speech who was handed the throne by his brother Edward who quit being king.   

Mom needs to Pass the Torch- Baby Boomers Kids Shocked

Baby boomer- adult children and the aging parents are unprepared by their own culture for this new developmental phase of passing the torch. They do not expect it, like they did the nights of the crying newborn or the rebellious teen, and are thrown off balance by the sometimes sudden and usually unexpected loss of their anchoring aging parents, like when they find Elderly Mom is unable to pull off running the holidays  Indeed, what must happen in this new developmental phase is that the adult child must evolve beyond the needy child, (I will still have Mom pull of the holiday as she always did) he or she has been, depending on his or her parents for that fiscal, emotional, social support and ritual organizing parents, like managing of officiating over the Christmas or Hanukkah celebration.

 Geriatric Care Manager to the Rescue

In the normal healthy family system this filial crisis of Holiday rituals can be overcome and the adult children with the brief help of an aging life or geriatric care manager so they can let go of their former dependent roles and confront their parent’s loss by organizing and providing care. They can take over Christmas and Hanukkah by stepping in and grabbing that torch.

Dysfunctional Family Do Not Want to Take Over for Mom

In the dysfunctional aging family, this filial crisis is incredibly hard to trounce from both the parents and the adult child’s point of view. The really need a geriatric care manager’s services

  1. SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR To Find Out Clinical Tools to

  2. Work With These 

  3. Families 

  4.  

    Sign Up for My January Webinar  

     Working with Aging Dysfunctional Families- January and February-Long Day’s Journey into Night- 

                 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:family-charis1-226x300.jpg 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    

     

     

     

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

    t
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 SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL GERIATRIC CARE 1  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFp628rQosw&list=PLUJcFcSOVOC7tOF9l5fYNzzUwHFm6Hw1j      

Filed Under: ADL Loss & Holidays, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging Mother, Aging therapist, Alzheimers & Holidays, Blog, care manager, case manager, Dementia, Dementia & Holidays, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, Families, Filial Crisis, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care management emergency proceduress, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Hanukkah, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday on call, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holidays, Nearly Normal Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, sibling rivalry, Sibling Strife Christmas Tagged With: aging life care on holidays, Aging Mom on Christmas, aging Mom on holidays, aging parent crisis, aging parent crisis on holiday, alzheimers & holidays, Dementia & Holiday Tasks, dysfunctional family holidays, Filial crisis on Christmas, Filial crisis on Hanahka, geriatric care manager. aging family crisis, Holiday Crisis For Aging Family, holiday misery, Working With Dysfunctional family

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