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
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Friends
and memories as you create the family tree that you would miss when they are gone.
Hanukkah. Geriatric Care Manager Julie Menack in her chapter “Long Distance Care Providers” in my book 
portrays the most miserable of dysfunctional families. Alcohol, secrets that have been kept by all for generations splatter the pages of this great play like it does in all the ruined holiday’s children of dysfunctional families recall with horror. 
best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming Christmas or Hanukkah.
Reaching adult children who will pile in over the holidays can position you over your competition. A Speaker’s Bureau mixed with great social media and a newsletter can be the tantalizing hook to get your phone to ring off the hook when adult kids discover the parent who is falling, forgetting and foundering over the holidays.
