Grace Care Partners knows that supporting you is a crucial part of supporting your aging loved one. .
What usually happens in families is that one individual shoulders primary responsibility.
Is that you?
While caring for an elderly parent can be very gratifying, it is also a lot to juggle.
- Is caregiving consuming your life?
- Are you feeling tired, frustrated, and guilty?
- Worried you can never do enough?
Family caregiver stress and burnout is very real. Let us work with you to develop a care plan that gives you time off to address your other responsibilities and recharge your batteries with activities that give you joy.
With Family Coaching we can help you:
- Gain peace of mind knowing you are not alone
- Identify and address signs of caregiver burnout
- Integrate stress management and self-care
- Constructively set limits and put balance back in your life
- Find resources to ease the load so you can be more of a daughter/son/spouse and less of a caregiver
- Strategize to work with parents who are resistant to care and having a hard time with life changes
- Learn skills for caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia
- Help make tough talks easier
- Foster healthy relationships
- Improve your overall well-being, physical, emotional and spiritual
- Rekindle your own goals and dreams and feel optimistic about your future
Check out these success stories to see how family coaching could ease your situation:
Dad has angry outbursts (case study).
The Channing sisters touch base about once every 3-4 months as their Dad’s dementia gets worse. We have worked together to help them address his repetitive questions in the earlier stages. (Sarah was going crazy!!) Then they needed to take away his driver’s license (HUGE!). We helped them navigate the issue with the doctor and DMV. Recently Dad is starting to have irrational, angry outbursts. It’s a bit scary as he was always such a gentle person before. It’s also embarrassing if they are out in public. Together we discussed common strategies for calming an agitated loved one with dementia. They also took notes and discovered his triggers. It turns out he was more likely to blow in public if they were out and about in the late afternoon. Helping the Channing sisters master proven dementia techniques has made their life much easier. They also feel more confident knowing they can pick up the phone and get expert advice whenever a new issue arises.
Long distance daughter struggles with care from afar.
Sal’s Mom died a few years ago and her dad, Mark, lives on his own. Mostly he’s okay, but Sal feels guilty that she isn’t able to visit as much as she’d like. Mark recently had a stroke and needs more help. Sal tried to arrange care from a distance, but it was not going well. Together we discussed the options for care and Sal was able to put together a local care team that could monitor her dad’s needs and be her eyes and ears long-distance.
Husband is getting no sleep as wife is up all night (case study)
Bob and Deborah have been married for 55 years. His health is good, but she has Alzheimer’s and is declining. Bob is proud of taking care of his wife and fulfilling his vows, but he is exhausted. In particular, his wife is starting to get very restless and anxious at night. She gets up and paces the floor. She even got out once and was wandering in the neighborhood. He is unable to sleep because he’s so worried she will get out again. Working together we helped Bob develop strategies that reduced Deborah’s nighttime restlessness and identified a local home care agency that could send in overnight help now and then when he really needed to catch up on his sleep.
Difficult relationship makes caregiving hard (case study)
Jennifer’s parents divorced when she was 12. Her mom was an alcoholic and was not very available to her during the difficulties of the divorce and her teen years. Jennifer and her mom grew apart and didn’t see each other much. Jennifer is married and now has teens of her own. Her mother was recently diagnosed with glaucoma, a disease that will eventually result in blindness. Jennifer’s mom has started calling and asking for rides, help with paying her bills, etc. but Jennifer isn’t sure how much she wants to participate. She feels guilty, but she also has resentments from the past. Together we were able to help Jennifer identify limits concerning what she was and wasn’t willing to do to help her mom. We also helped her Jennifer identify local resources that could provide support for her mom as her vision loss got worse.
You love the person you care for AND it may be that their care needs are consuming your life, leaving no room for other obligations and joys that are also important to you. We understand! We have been working with aging families for over 20 years.
Want to learn more? Schedule a free initial consultation
