Marriage and Family Therapist Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Ten Warning Signs of a Dysfunctional Family- Warning Sign Number Three

October 31, 2019

What is scarier than Halloween?

Happy Halloween –Kids and adults have fun being scary on Halloween. The Dysfunctional Aging Family is really scary. What is the third sign that you as an aging professional or geriatric care manager are working with an aging family- Cut off

Distancing & cut off- are pulling away and having nothing to do with family or an individual in your family.

You find adult children who have not spoken to parents or siblings for years.

Angela Jolie’s Cut-off With Her Dad

The celebrity feud and cut off between actress Angela Jolie and her Dad actor John Voigt is a well-publicized example of this.

What prompted reconciliation? Helping grandchildren- is one goal that professionals working with aging families can follow. Among the reasons, according to the press, that Jolie- Pit reconciled with her Dad was her children’s need for a grandparent . She learned that your children just have a very different version of a relationship with your parents than you do.

Assessing the Aging Family for Cut-off

When you assess the aging family as a professional you look at several signs for dysfunction. Has the family been stable over time? Is there a history of emotional cut-offs or distance on the part of one or more family members? Is there a pattern of divorce, remarriage, or other disruptions in relationships that change the balance within the family system if you look at a family and they have a history of fragility rather than stability, that a red flag that they are a dysfunctional aging family.

If there a history of emotional cut-offs or distance on the part of one or more family member or a pattern of divorce, remarriage, or other disruptions in relationships that change the balance within the family system- you are working with a difficult aging family

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When Cut Off in The Family is a ” Phantom Limb” at Thanksgiving

October 24, 2019

The Dysfunctional Family’s Worst Time of The Year

Thanksgiving can be the gateway to the dysfunctional family’s worst time of year- the holidays. You face family across the table you despise or just both love and hate. Or there is that empty seat- the uninvited guest- the brother-sister, aunt, son, daughter who you never invite- the cut off-family member.

Families Phantom Limb

But since this leaves the family with that “phantom limb”- like the awful sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached and where it was is pulsating in pain- families reach out for someone to fix it.

The ordinary aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families around this time of year.

Dysfunctional Families Fail Eldercare

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves effectively in the face of eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

Family” Cut” off faces Phantom Limb at Thanksgiving

What if they “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke-what do they do?? Someone has to take over Mom or Dad’s care and these dysfunctional midlife adult kids are heavy ambivalent or just don’t want to do it. Now that the holidays are arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

My favorite aging dysfunctional family ” cut off ” Thanksgiving film is Pieces of April Made as a comedy in 2003, it touches death and dying, sibling rivalry, mother-daughter estrangement, interracial love- and Alzheimer’s all fueled by deep family fault lines and how to cook a turkey on a broken stove. The film manages to make the old theme of fraught family Thanksgiving, crisp, funny and ultra worth watching.

Shot in 3 weeks for a measly $350 K, it received a Sundance Film award and accolades for its pedigree cast including 21 year old Katie Holmes as the grunge Goth daughter who her family has ” Cut Off”,Patricia Clarkson as the dying Mom who distains then forgives her rebellious eldest child and Alice Drummond as the demented grandmother who comes along and plays the most rational person in the film in her obliviousness to the family holiday freak-out.

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Caregiver Assessment- Can it Prevent Caregiver Burnout?

October 3, 2019

Caregiver Burnout is Big Federal Problem

Family caregivers are so many times in a complete state of caregiver burnout. From a policy perspective, the federal government and the long-term care system in the United State cannot afford to neglect the burnout and strain of millions of Americans caregivers any longer.

Despite the rewards caregivers get from giving care we know from years of research that being a family caregiver results in brutal losses. These degradations and deficits include role conflict and overload from the never-ending tasks demanded of a caregiver. Left in a permanent state of worry and anxiety much of the time, caregivers are working in a deteriorating and unpredictable situation.

Caregivers Feel Trapped

Caregivers can feel entrapped by there the restrictions on their own life. They are often beset by fiscal worries because they are not paid except in some states, like California under Medicaid. Yet the caregiving situation explodes in cost through medical bills, medical equipment and informal care that must be brought in, if the family can afford it.

Caregivers Are Not Attorneys

Family caregivers face a quagmire of legal problems including untangling wills, trusts, and inheritance issues which generally complicate care both emotionally and physically. Many times these family caregivers compound their fiscal woes by having to quit their job, running the risk of never being hired again, and that is if they can eventually return to work.

Caregivers Mental Health Ravaged

The caregivers own physical and mental health is often ravaged. They have to do medical tasks that years ago family caregivers never had to do. If they were paid by an agency, this would be a workman’s compensation nightmare for the company, yet these family caregivers are never even paid. So it is time that geriatric care managers and other professionals in aging started to respond to this family caregiver nightmare and use a caregiver assessment every time they assess an older client tended by a family caregiver.

Find out more in the YouTube below from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

How is a Geriatric Care Manager a Care Connector With Mid Life Siblings ?

July 15, 2019

We are creeping towards to August which means often seeing our midlife siblings at more summer vacation events. At times we are estranged from midlife sibling or we are polite at a family gathering but there is no real connection.siblings

Aging life or geriatric care managers are care connectors. They cannot do everything themselves for the family , like be the best geriatrician, accountant or home health aide nor do they have the skills to do that. What they have is the skill to connect to the right resource, like a geriatrician , elder-law attorney , support group or home health aide, especially for a family caregiver.

Emotional resources can link a circle of care for the direct family caregiver. These emotional supports could and should include adult siblings .Siblings are the longest and deepest relationship in any person’s life. Reconnecting midlife or aging brother’s and sisters, through the circle of care, is a critical GCM task but to achieve this, the care manager may have to depend his clinical skills in helping siblings with forgiveness or reconnecting siblings who live long distance.

Midlife siblings have often spent the last 30 years tending to their own families .So the point of reconnection with middle aged brothers and sisters often happens when they are still working or just retiring — unexpectedly thrown into a crisis in parent care.

This is where the GCM needs to have clinical skills to can help with healing this sibling disconnection-often short circuited by an old sibling wound that helping the sister and brother work together as a circle of care . You replace the shorted fuse in the fuse box.

If the family is dysfunctional, the care manager becomes a care connector and links the right resources that might include an mediator who specializes in aging families or a Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in Aging (hard to find)

If you are a geriatric care manager or therapist,you can find chapters on mediation, working with the nearly normal family and dysfunctional aging family, siblings, family meetings and care connection. Handbook of Geriatric Care Managers 4th edition

It may be 4 months away till Thanksgiving but a an aging parent crisis could happen tomorrow. Reach Out now.

Loneliness/Prolonged Isolation in seniors =Health Risk of Smoking 15 Cigarettes a Day

March 3, 2018

The AARP Foundation’s Connect2Affect has called social isolation a “growing health epidemic” among older adults. It equates the health risks of prolonged isolation with smoking 15 cigarettes daily.Adding a Quality of Life Program to a geriatric care management practice can help serve independent seniors who do not need hands-on care but do need more community and a way to help themselves overcome loneliness and social isolation.

In a recent study loneliness in seniors between the ages of 65 and 86 led to a 64 percent increase in the risk of developing dementia, an extraordinary spike in odds highlighting the importance of fostering meaningful relationships at all stages of life. Helping seniors, through a quality of life services, find new human connections and community , can give an older person a greater sense of happiness and joy. But as this study shows critically- better health.

Quality of Life of the older client can be important to the older person’s family.If the family is involved, which it often is, even if the senior is living alone, the care manager can assist families by beginning the dialogue to open discussions on preferences and values of the older client and the family. What would give the older person joy in their life? Would it be art, going to baseball games, being in a knitting group, having a tea for friends at their home, volunteering with a group?

Quality of Life issues that the care manager should assess is the individual’s need for social interaction or privacy; the value of family; proximity to cultural stimulation; and adaptability to change. These are just some of the many quality of life considerations.

When values and preferences differ between individuals, in the family, it is important to identify how the differences may impact all involved in the process. What if the older person wants an electric scooter so she can shop at Safeway, the store she has used since she was a young mother and wife? At the same time what if the adult son or daughter will only shop at organic, health food markets and wants her mother to shop there. On top of that, the daughter feels the electric scooter is unsafe and the aging mother feels she is safe. How do you solve this quality of life dilemma?

Care Managers can be so valuable in not only helping a senior create a path out of loneliness and isolation but assisting in removing barriers to quality of life that family members may, out of care and worry, put in the elder’s way.

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