Overcoming Being Overwhelmed with Difficult Aging Parents

so you can actually hear in somebody's voice when they call you that they're getting pretty overwhelmed absolutely there's a lot of fear there's a lot of anger sometimes there's a lot of distress within the family people in conflict they're just a lot of things that emotions that people have to deal with and when one feels overwhelmed you're not able to really cope very well and use your kind of traditional coping mechanisms to deal with the stress and then what happens when you reach that threshold of feeling overwhelmed which is the the subjective experience of what happens then is that you feel like you're lacking in the resources to know what to do what's your priorities what kind of strategy you need to be able to figure out what needs to happen first and consequently then you just start to shut down so what's the first step that you take as professionals well the first thing that's most important for everyone is to feel that when they're talking to us either in person or on the phone that there's someone on the other side of the line that acknowledges that what they're experiencing and feeling is very normal and and that there's a way out when people reach a place of being overwhelmed they're not able to access their kind of traditional day-to-day resources to be able to figure out how to solve the problems that they're having to confront and deal with it's a matter setting priorities a lot of people have come in to the office and sat down almost in tears feeling so stressed because they had so many different things to do and didn't even know where to start often they haven't been close to their parents for some time there may be a long history of conflicts that existed between them and their parents they may not be the best child adult child to deal with mom or dad but often it's the one that's geographically closest to mom or dad that often is kind of forced elected to be the one on the scenes to deal with the health care problems the legal problems the money problems whatever it is there's resentment and there's this long history that plays into their ability to be good advocates and if they were advocating for their neighbor or someone in their community without the emotional baggage in history it'd be a whole different thing but this is mom or dad who I never could make happy I never was a good enough for and now all of a sudden it's clear that they're not able to be capable to take care of themselves and I've got to step in and be responsible there's no manual that tells you how to take care of your parents when they start to get old and their health starts to fail or their mind starts to fail and there's no operating instructions set that comes to you in the mail the minute you are called to action to be the one responsible so people struggle they don't have an easy place to get information that's that's why we're here I can speak to the question about how to deal with immediately stepping into action as a caregiver in my own experience in doing that let's take a couple days ago as the most prime and fresh example my wife and I are at lunch my cell phone rings and I noticed that on the cell phone it's my mother's cell phone that's calling so I pick up the phone and I say hello mom and there's a male voice on the other end the man identifies himself as an emergency medic who's on the scene my mother is unconscious and he's calling me to let me know that they're there and that my mother is coming too but her speech is slurred and garbled and that they're trying to evaluate her and determine what they're going to do next my mother lives 500 miles from where I do I was having a nice lunch I wasn't worried about mom so now all of a sudden I have to step into action and figure out what is the likely scenario of what's going to happen next to an 86 year old woman's living by herself who's now fallen and went unconscious in her community so you're in there and I think the first thing I needed to do was talk to the paramedic or ask some more questions and to get someone else over to the hospital so that we could get a better read sometimes when a person faints passes out they'll wake up a little groggy and their speech will be garbled a little bit but it clears up because the problem was very temporary that's quite different of course from a stroke which may leave them not able to speak but we needed to get more information but I could see Nicole's manner completely changing in in an instant he he began to worry he's not especially a worrier he had clients to see after lunch we both had appointments there were things to keep us busy and at the same time we had to pay attention to what was going on make sure that someone could get there to be with his mom and find out if we could what needed to happen next was it truly an emergency that was life-threatening did we need to get on a plane was there some help we needed to recruit to assist us right then was she in danger it was very frightening and very upsetting and combined with the responsibilities of everyday life I think that's what a lot of people go through they get overwhelmed because everything is happening at once so you just you did something that you would suggest your clients do which is to step back for an instant and take a look at to get the most information as you possibly can and in a way you started to activate a a support system yes and I'm trained not to panic that's what nurses are trained to get we're educated about how to set priorities how to figure out what the most important thing to do first is and then to act and that's what I was trying to do to help him one of the first things I did was call some of his mother's friends because fortunately were close enough to her and we try to follow our own advice about making sure we have the information to care for an aging parent from a distance and one of those things is to have handy the telephone numbers of some contacts who live nearby some good friends and so we call them and ask them if they would get out to the hospital and they did but I think one thing that I would recommend for people so that they don't feel this horrible sense of helplessness from a distance when something does go wrong is to make sure that they know at least several people who can visit their loved one and be a reporter to you about what's happening because you can't get there faster and and if you can't have family friends or neighbors that are able to step up and be available I I think the the other wonderful resource that most people don't know about is the notion of being able to hire what's called a geriatric care manager often these people are trained as nurses or have background in social work but they're available 24/7 and and that's a godsend for people that are care for their parents who live far away that they have an independent resource if they can't get a neighbor who ever available to help that they can get this independent resource that will step into action right away who will then be an advocate and can really be the eyes and ears for you which is so critical and is a very helpful aspect of reducing your level of being overwhelmed now let's change you're sensing that her capacities are not what they were and you're beginning to feel a need to do something there reaches a time when people feel that there's just they can't do anymore they're just trying to stay above water and cope with all of what they're dealing with particularly in this more difficult challenging economic time and they don't need heaped on their plate another responsibility if you're blessed and you have siblings that it doesn't have to be all your responsibility that there's a way to work out and share this responsibility with other siblings it seems that there's usually one person who has a great sense of responsibility and is competent and a lot of families there's one person who stands out as being the most capable and it isn't if the others aren't capable at all well sometimes that happen but there's just this person who's the first I call the one and the one has to be the initiator of everything they're the ones who would seek advice from us they're the ones who would hire the kind of help that might be necessary they're the ones who will initiate the discussion about getting the elder into a facility if caring for him or her at home has become completely too much for the family and that person is often very overwhelmed and overburdened it seems like there's a universal truth that if your father dies and your mom's alone and you're the son that there's a familial responsibility to take care of mom that's what dad probably said on his deathbed make sure you take care of mom even though you want to share that responsibility with your sister or other siblings you know sometimes you're not able to do that because you're trying to honor the responsibility that the dad left you with before he died about doing your best to take care of mom absolutely I think a lot of the time that we spend with people is encouraging them to get help helping them understand how to do that and giving them information about the resources that exist and there are many in most communities many resources to help people but again there's no operator's manual about being a caretaker for aging parents so people don't know how to find these so easily although there is a book yes the boomers guide to aging parents it's a how-to and it is somewhat of an instruction manual about a lot of these issues you wrote that book yes I did did you write it a lot of people were coming to us with questions and I noticed that there were recurring themes so I started to write things down and before I knew it I had a chapter and then one led to another but I also knew that not everyone could afford to pay a lawyer so I wanted to make the information more available to people and it's necessary information because I keep handing it out in person still but a lot of it is capsulized in the book this situation of becoming caregivers for our aging parents is not an area of which we ever study in school it's not a class that you take in college and furthermore it's not something that we do in our culture as far as planning ahead we don't want to do it no question about it who wants that burden and what it also does is it makes us reflect on our own mortality and that's a pretty scary thing to do on the other hand if you're taking on the responsibility and you have kids and your kids see you doing this that gives you a certain amount of confidence hopefully we're hoping our kids learn from us all the time I'm giving them the book to read now thank you for watching overcoming the feeling of being overwhelmed about aging and aging parents if you need more help with overcoming the feeling of being overwhelmed feel free to visit our website at aging parents calm to watch more helpful videos click here to subscribe or watch another video also check 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Channel: agingparents

Views: 22,172

Rating: 4.7433963 out of 5

Keywords: agingparents, elderly parents, aging parents, Ageing (Taxonomy Subject), difficult older parents, elderly, tips

Id: O9IFi5VlvoI

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 01 2014