Did you spend Labor Day with midlife and care of your aging parents came up. Did you wake with a horrible hangover- either from too much booze or just amplified emotional tension that turns you inside out next morning.
Perhaps it involved arguments over aging parent care? If dealing with your siblings gives you a royal headache, the tension may have been made worse by the conflagration of alcohol and /or age old rifts between you and your siblings that started in childhood.
It may be time to look into the roots of your family script before your parents do need care or if they need care now.
Did your step, half or blood sibling do something long ago that’s still a weeping wound in your mind? Does it keep you apart or in each other’s faces – – especially awkward- during a holiday gathering when families were flocking together consuming mounds of barbecue & pot luck food and sharing old stories or recent family news
If the main villain in the family tragedy is a sibling or step sibling or half sibling – here’s a post-Labor Day quiz to see if you need help from someone like a geriatric care manager
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Find out if have a sibling “ I Hate You Story”. Maybe you did not think you needed this test few weeks ago. Post Labor Day – if you know you need the test now- here it is.
Take the test below.
1. Have you told your sibling story more than once to the same person?
2. Do you play the sibling events more than two times in a day in your mind?
3. Do you find yourself speaking to the sibling who hurt you even when the person is not there?
4. Have you made a commitment to yourself to tell the sibling story without being upset then found yourself agitated anyway?
5. Is the sibling who hurt you a central character in your story?
6. When you tell your sibling story does it remind you of other painful things that happened to you?
7. Does the sibling story focus primarily on your pain and what you lost?
8. In your sibling story is there a villain?
9. Have you made a commitment not to tell the sibling story again and then broken your vow?
10. Do you look for other people with similar sibling problems to tell your story to?
11. Has your sibling story stayed the same over time?
12. Have you checked the details of your sibling story for accuracy?
If you answer yes to five or more the questions, there is a good chance you have a sibling I Hate You “ story. To end brother or sister blood step or half sibling blood feud and make peace makes forgiveness as a gift to you.
Try a change of season resolution and welcome autumn by taking the – a step towards sibling forgiveness and parent care with the help of a geriatric care manager to hopefully make the next holiday, sometimes the dreaded Thanksgiving with siblings will be spent hangover free with the parent care issue resolved
Professionals Check out my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family , with it’s chapter Working With Adult Aging Siblings Jones and Bartlett, to learn more about working with feuding midlife siblings.
