Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Ten Warning Signs You Are Working With a Dysfunctional Family

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     

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Sign Up for My Free January Webinar on Dysfunctional Aging Family

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

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More Ruinous Roles in the Dysfunctional Aging Family

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During the holiday season, dysfunctional families with gather and one of the adult siblings call may as a care manager . The Martyr below will object, the escapee may ignore the problem as they already fled from the family.If they hire you the meddler will try to sabotage your care plan. Check out these dysfunctional family roles before the call.

The Martyr has an innate need to nurture the older adult, even when this comes at the expense of the Martyr or the older adult. The Martyr’s seemingly endless devotion can sometimes interfere with an appropriate care plan. Most commonly, he or she will insist on carrying out the older adult’s wish to remain at home beyond the point that is safe or appropriate. Despite complaints of exhaustion, the Martyr will avoid opportunities for respite. He or she may be motivated by guilt or other unresolved issues underlying the relationship. 

The Escapee is typically an adult child who lives far away and has withdrawn or is entirely absent during a family crisis. Involved family members will resent the Escapee, particularly when there is a history of family conflict. The Escapee may withdraw from family problems in self-defense and resist being drawn back into a stressful relationship with siblings. 

The Meddler will interfere with an established care plan in an attempt to wrest control away from other family members, to compete with siblings, or to assert dominance within the family. The Meddler needs to be involved in every decision made and is overly involved with details. The Meddler will have frequent contact with the care manager to change or challenge recommendations.  

The older adult, of course, is the central figure in the drama of the so-called difficult family. The care manager must assess the older adult’s own role . That’s why the care manager must take a ” Whole Family ” approach with these hard to manage clans.

 

 

What Ruinous Roles in The Aging Dysfunctional Family Make Them Reject Care?

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During the holiday season the aging family under the most stress are dysfunctional families. There never was a ritual they did not ruin. If they must face care of an aging parent at the same time they may explode and call a care manager  for help.

So when they phone in the throes of an older adult crisis, the care manager needs to recognize familiar roles and characteristics that individual family members play.

The “preserver” will resist your help, the “victim” is none too happy as well and the “manager” just may be  very delighted, as someone else will deal with the aging parental mess. What are these roles?

The preserver is more comfortable with the status quo and resists getting help for the older adult. He or she is content if the older adult remains overly dependent on the family without access to appropriate external help or services. 

The victim perceives the older adult’s problems as a direct threat to his or her own needs or self-interest. The victim will see his or her own emotional needs as more important than the older adult’s needs. He or she will frequently contact the older adult or the care manager, but the purpose of the contact will involve seeking attention for his or her own problems. 

The manager tends to be calm, organized, and analytical during a crisis but is unable to provide emotional support to the older adult or to other family members. Often, the Manager lives at a distance, which can cause tension with family members who are more directly involved in daily care. 

More Ruinous Roles tomorrow.

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