Learn How Family Therapy Can Help Family Caregivers

Although everyone loves to reach significant milestones in their life, even if those milestones aren’t negative, they can cause stress. Losing a job. Starting a new job. Getting married. Having children. And one that we here at Harmony Home Health & Hospice care deeply about: the mental and physical impact on family caregivers of aging parents. 

Family caregivers can experience a variety of conflicting emotions, which can be magnified when attempting to share responsibilities with siblings or other family members. Past resentments and hurts can resurface, the decision-making process can bring on disagreements, and there’s often a level of enhanced stress in facing what feels like a role reversal with a parent who once cared for us.

For these and a number of other reasons, family therapy is an ideal addition to a family caregiver’s toolbox to ensure their own mental wellbeing along with the best possible care for aging parents. Here are a few of the many benefits of family therapy as parents grow older:

1. Family therapy provides support through grief. Grief can arise in many forms, and quite often starts in the early stages of providing care, as family members work through today’s changes while facing those to come. When an elderly parent is identified as having dementia, the decline in cognitive ability results in an additional level of grief. A family counselor can help members of the family to manage their grief together.
2. Family therapy offers care for caregivers. Becoming a family caregiver can be overwhelming on its own, but add in other common responsibilities, like managing a home, caring for children, and maintaining employment, and you’ve got a recipe for stress. Family therapy helps care providers sort through difficult emotions and find solutions.
3. Family therapy helps the family as a whole. A family counselor’s goal is to achieve what is best for the whole family and its cohesiveness, through challenges surrounding issues like inheritance and other financial considerations, medical decisions, and family dynamics. 

If geographic restraints or other concerns make in-person therapy sessions for your family impossible, video chat sessions can be just as effective. However, participation needs to be a main priority for each family member involved, making therapy appointments a consistent, routine commitment.

If you could use the help of a trusted home care provider to offer in-home care and hospice care in Albuquerque, NM or the nearby areas that allows you to participate in family therapy, contact Harmony Home Health & Hospice online or at 1-877-I-NEED-CARE. With both a professional family counselor and our aging care experts on your side, your family can overcome any obstacles and get back to enjoying quality time together.