Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 22, 2020

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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

 SIGN UP NOW

 

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Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

Dysfunctional Family Holiday Dinner- You Tube Version!

November 28, 2015

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Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging life or geriatric care manager, drunken holiday, dysfunctional aging family, My Dysfunctional Family

Cat and Dog fight on Thanksgiving. Are You Ready?

November 18, 2015

cat-dog-fight.jpg

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.

 

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves effectively 

face gut-wrenching eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more

stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

 

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.

Especially after some holiday liquid cheer, sour step-parents and angry step-siblings and mid-life adult kids who have grown up in a dysfunctional family can turn into cats and dogs with teeth bared and claws full out at Thanksgiving dinner.

 Read Lynn Lynn Hackstaff’s chapter,  Difficult Families: Conflict, Dependence, and Mutuality: Care Management with the Difficult Aging Family in HANDBOOK OF GERIATRIC CARE MANAGEMENT

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, cut -off, dysfunctional family, My Dysfunctional Family, Thanksgiving with aging parents

Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 25, 2014

images_20141216-184443_1.jpg

 

Merry Christmas Many family caregivers are drinking today . They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly watching” My Dysfunctional Family” on CMT  thinking compared to them I am so damn normal.

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 enter that living room with the TV blaring , bottle tipping and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

 

 

Use of self: Perhaps the most powerful tool for the geriatric care manager. Is use of self. . It provides to 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, confidentiality, consistency, and support. Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of perseverance. By not 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.

You are 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

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, My Dysfunctional Family

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