irate siblings Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Adult Sibling Rivalry at Thanksgiving- Where To Get Help?

November 14, 2020

Siblings are The Biggest Source Of Stress Between Human Being

At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next week, adult siblings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast?

As Gail Sheehy says in her book, Passages in Caregiving, we think that siblings will automatically support each other when aging parents fall apart. Sheehy quotes sociologists, Karl Pillemer and J. Jill Suitor, in a study they did conclude that siblings are inherent rivals and the biggest source of stress between human beings.

If you are a midlife sibling, perhaps you have a brother or sister to whom you hardly speak. Maybe you are about to see your siblings at the coming Thanksgiving feast, even on zoom during COVID, and anticipate largely ignoring him or her or doing chitchat as you seethe the inside. If you fit this description, you are in the same lurching boat as uncounted baby boomer siblings all over the world.

Childhood Wound Ripped Open

nephew’s wedding or christening, help plan a parent’s anniversary dinner or, most important, oversee the increasing care of elderly family members.

Best Thanksgiving Sibling War Film

I suggest you watch Pieces of April, a fabulous Thanksgiving film ( lead Katy Holmes debuts in a standout performance) where the film’s dysfunctional family revolves around adult sibling rivalry. The film is also, in the end. around a catastrophic illness of the aging parent, where the siblings need to resolve their differences.

If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulfs you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association to find help before a parental crisis.

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Adult Sibling Rivalry at Thanksgiving- Where To Get Help?

November 21, 2019

Siblings are The Biggest Source Of Stress Between Human Being

At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next week, adult sibyoutube.com/watchlings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast?

If you are a midlife sibling, perhaps you have a brother or sister to whom you hardly speak. Maybe you are about to see your siblings at the coming Thanksgiving feast and anticipate largely ignoring him or her or doing chitchat as you seethe the inside. If you fit this description, you are in the same lurching boat as uncounted baby boomer siblings all over the world.

Childhood Wound Ripped Open

That wound from childhood may still ache enough to keep you on the furrowed path your family followed when you were young. Now, however, you and adult siblings, nearing or at retirement age, may need to come together again to be part of a niece or nephew’s wedding or christening, help plan a parent’s anniversary dinner or, most important, oversee the increasing care of elderly family members.

Best Thanksgiving Siblings War Film

If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulfs you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association or the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists or to find help before a parental crisis.

5 Steps to Avoid Midlife Step Sibling Fireworks on Fourth of July

July 3, 2019

Do You Expect Acid Reflux at 4th of July Barbecue From Step Sibling?

Are your midlife step siblings or half siblings coming July 4^th barbecue? Maybe you expect acid reflux from the hot sauce that parental divorce dribbles on family celebrations.

Rituals like July 4th events are the glue that bond family life. They patch up family and sibling disputes and give us the architecture of a year full of celebrations marking family history.

But the tidal wave of divorce among baby boomers and Generation X brings step siblings with old grudges, half siblings who lost family love, ½ their rooms, and gained a shredded family nest. Now the family does not know who it’s members really are and rituals like labor day – can turn into a nightmare.

Avoid the Drama of Step Siblings to Help Your Aging Parents

Aging parents, who may be at the labor day event, don’t need the drama and will need all of you to be a family team when they need care as they decline.

Here are some tips to include everyone including step siblings and half siblings

1.Ask everyone to bring a dish. That is the beginning of building a family team- to share care of aging parent care

2.Don’t make this a family meeting where old sibling grudges get hashed out. Celebrations are just that. If someone pushes you button, keep that angry response to yourself and maybe arrange a future family meeting.

3.Makes an effort to includes step and half siblings and glue that jagged bond. Create activities that everyone can join -– blood, step, or half siblings.

4. Find out what everyone likes to do. If they are step kids or step siblings make sure you have fun things to do ahead of time that they enjoy. Step siblings who may feel like third wheels in your clan. If they have a difficult time blend Reach out to make them part of the group. Understand their reluctance to join. Do Not make them feel like Cinderella. Bring them up to the top floor of the castle.

5. If none of this work and you face or are deep into aging parent care Family meetings can be planned post labor day with a geriatric care manager or a mediator’s help.

6. Find a geriatric care manager near you at Aging Life Care Association web site. Just put in your zip code and come up with a great care manager. Find an elder mediator

Dread Memorial Day with Midlife Sibings?

May 23, 2013

Are you dreading the Memorial Day family barbeque? . Will your estranged brother be manning the barbeque while you drink too much beer?

Are you a midlife sibling at war with sister or brother? Worse than that, do you feel like you and all your siblings are in not only a dysfunctional family but also an aging dysfunctional family?

What’s an aging dysfunctional family? Well they are very much like a war zone. Clans remain at war with each other, like the 1980’s Serbian conflict or the Iraq war pitting the Sunni’s against the Shia.These tribal battles have gone on for centuries and have the same bloody roots of the dysfunctional family -repeated from one generation to the next.

The hallmarks of the dysfunctional aging family, are after decades as a motley clan there is still not enough love in the family. The now midlife children have to fight for what little nurturance their older parents can bring to the ancient rickety nest they built.

Nurturing is often missing in the dysfunctional aging family because the aging parents themselves probably got little nurturing themselves as kids and on and on back down the family line. Parental neglect and abuse are frequent in the history of the aging dysfunctional family.

The now older parents can suffer from serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia or are bi-polar. Health and addiction problems like alcoholism are frequent. Family interaction and communication, -parental treatment of siblings, brother and sister treatment of each other stepparent interaction and interface of everyone in the family has wrought deep tissue damage that never healed.

These aging dysfunctional families generally negotiated all of life’s developmental phases with great difficulty. The role in the family, especially the parental one, was murky with a poor, abusive or mentally unfit leader of the family. The rules in the family were unfair ambiguous or full of double binds. There is deep-seated ambivalence. Finally the last life transition in the aging family, the care of the declining parent, implodes the family, which had little balance to begin with. They are asked to care for parents who did not care for them, thus reeking havoc on an already disorganized aging family.

So good luck at the Memorial Day family gathering and perhaps consider hiring a geriatric care manager if you sibling war is affecting not only rituals like family gatherings but also the care of your aging parents. The GCM can help you end the constant hangovers and /or acid reflux.

Find out About Sibling Sexual Abuse Pardora’s Project

September 22, 2012

MomLovesYouBest.3.15_20120810-233751_1.jpg

Sexual abuse among siblings leave siblings in the category of “irate siblings” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0-BxTgUHgs&feature=share&list=UU1TCK0KL2A8BGOD4dynFgbg

In researching sexual abuse with siblings I have discovered Pandora’s Project non-profit organization dedicated to providing information, support, and resources to survivors of rape and sexual abuse and their friends and family including siblings.

More information can be gotten by in their excellent article Sibling Sexual Abuse and Incest
During Childhood

In writing a book about sibling reconciliation and forgiveness, I think this is a critical subject to broach and bring out in the open.

If you are a professional who works with sibling victims of abuse or have been sexually abused by another sibling- or a parent who wants to learn more- I hope that you will open up discussion about this very taboo yet critical subject about siblings.

5 Steps to Avoid Midlife Step Sibling Fireworks on Fourth of July

Do You Expect Acid Reflux at 4th of July Barbecue From Step Sibling?

Avoid the Drama of Step Siblings to Help Your Aging Parents

Here are some tips to include everyone including step siblings and half siblings

Dread Memorial Day with Midlife Sibings?

Find out About Sibling Sexual Abuse Pardora’s Project

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