End of Life-When Do You Need Mediation?

February 23, 2021

Why do some families need mediation at the end of life? Mediation is a voluntary process in which the parties, with the help of an impartial third party mediator, work together to resolve their differences or solve a problem they were unable to address satisfactorily without help. These family differences especially happen to dysfunctional families but can beset any family at the end of life. They are faced with overwhelming emotions and decisions that demand that the family work together as a team. What happens to dysfunctional and even nearly normal families during this trying time? They don’t gather as a team. They fight. They fret and they feud. What are the results of this fighting, fretting, and feuding in families at the end of life?

Unresolved family conflicts emerge

Dysfunctional families become more dysfunctional

Family members’ grief, pain, and anxiety are often masked as anger and presents as conflict (past and present)

Older person dies without resolving important family issues

Older person dies in conflict, not in peace

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

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

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

Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death
Help clients be active participants in their care
Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care
Provide family center care to caregiver and family
Choose the right support services through all stages of death
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team
Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID
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

Dysfunctional Aging Families Can Wreak Havoc at End of Life

February 18, 2021

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

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 caregiver 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

10 Tinseled Topped Dysfunctional Family Holiday Films to Enjoy On Chrismas Day

December 7, 2018

Dysfunctional families dread rituals and Christmas or Hanakkuh is a ritual. In the dysfunctional clan, you gather, eat ritual foods and explode. That blast can be triggered by ritual infusions of alcohol, prescription drugs, long-simmering anger, and secrets.

In the film August Osage County, you get a cattle prod version of what family rituals can detonate in dysfunctional families. The ritual is a funeral and Meryl Streep plays the pill-popping mother from hell, Julia Roberts plays one of the angry family members who both hate and love this dying, drunken, 60’s, minted mother. The secret is prescription drugs.

In the film August Osage County, you get a cattle prod version of what family rituals can detonate in dysfunctional families.The ritual is a funeral and Meryl Streep plays the pill-popping mother from hell, Julia Roberts plays one of the angry family members who both hate and love this dying, drunken, 60’s, minted mother. The secret is prescription drugs.

Osage County is one of the nine picks for Best Dysfunctional Family Holiday film. I also favor Katy Holmes is Pieces of April, where she shows herself to be a highly talented actress. She plays a comic- the anguished role of a goth daughter& least favorite child trying to pull off the holiday for her suburban family and dying mother (award-winning actress Patricia Clarkson)in a drab New York walk up. This is actually a film with a surprisingly happy ending and is a cult film that will cheer up everyone nearly normal and dysfunctional families

In” A Merry Friggen Christmas, one of the final films Robin Williams did, this tells the story of Boyd Mitchler’s struggle of dealing with his eclectic family of misfits. When he realizes he left the presents at home, Boyd and his estranged dad (Williams) make the 8-hour drive together.

Here are the other 9

Have a Merry Christmas- share joy and watch movies

10 Tinseled Topped Dysfunctional Family Holiday Films to Enjoy On Chrismas Day

December 24, 2016

In the film August Osage County, you get a cattle prod version of what family rituals can detonate in dysfunctional families.The ritual is a funeral and Meryl Streep plays the pill-popping mother from hell, Julia Roberts plays one of the angry family members who both hate and love this dying, drunken, 60’s, minted mother. The secret is prescription drugs.

Osage County is one of the nine picks for Best Dysfunctional Family Holiday film. I also favor Katy Holmes is Pieces of April, where she shows herself to be a highly talented actress.She plays a comic- the anguished role of a goth daughter& least favorite child trying to pull off the holiday for her suburban family and dying mother (award-winning actress Patricia Clarkson)in a drab New York walk up. This is actually a film with a surprisingly happy ending and is a cult film that will cheer up everyone nearly normal and dysfunctional families Here are the other 9

Have a Merry Christmas- share joy and watch movies

Oscar Winning Dysfunctional Devil Mother From Hell- East of Eden

December 6, 2015

The holiday season is when nearly normal family- happily gather. Dysfunctional families feel uncertain dread .

They ponder -do they even want to go ? Do they really love certain family members ,like them or just hate them?. Should they take 2 Zanex to face relatives they despise or stock up on wine as a house gift to themselves ?

Dysfunctional families have a sense of ambivalence- a love hate relationship with parents and or siblings. Daughters and sons who had a distant, abusive Mom may still love her. At the same time, however, these adult children recall the splintered and miserable childhoods they endured with internal strife and feelings of anger towards their older Mom or Dad. Similarly, sisters who have been abused or even molested by a brother often feel the contradictory impulses of love and loathing.

A good example of brother-to-brother ambivalence on the holidays is Cal in Steinbeck’s East of Eden , played by James Dean in the brilliant classic film.

He both loves and hates his twin brother Aaron for being the favorite child. This ambivalence leads to him introduce Aaron to their mother ,who he also loves and loathes.A Monster, she abandoned them as babies and is now a Cruella deVil Madame at a Salinas whorehouse.

A remake of the film was planned starring Jennifer Lawrence of the Hunger Games. If the film is remade she may reprise Jo Van Fleet’s Oscar winning role as Cathy ,the demon mother, who Cal both loved and despised.

10 Tinseled Topped Dysfunctional Family Holiday Films to Enjoy On Chrismas Day

10 Tinseled Topped Dysfunctional Family Holiday Films to Enjoy On Chrismas Day

Oscar Winning Dysfunctional Devil Mother From Hell- East of Eden

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