Honoring Legacies: Grief Counseling for Adult Children of Aging Parents in Seattle
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Your time is spread thin. Most of your time goes towards raising your kids, making sure their needs are taken care of as well as making sure they’re happy and healthy. You know what you signed up for. A different challenge has slowly crept up and now you’re feeling overwhelmed, sad, and even angry at times.
Your parents are getting older. They’ve had some health challenges, and you can predict what will be happening in the future. If you think about it too hard you become paralyzed. Aging parents can bring up a lot of family dynamics and family issues that exist just below the surface. Caring for aging parents carries its own grieving process as roles start to reverse and you start to care for the people who always cared for you. This can become more complicated if abuse or neglect existed in the relationship previously. Different cultural messages blend with more western ideas to create complicated and confusing role expectations, leaving adult children and their families unsure how to handle the situation. Sibling relationships can become adversarial, especially if one sibling is doing most of the caregiving. Fear can also be experienced as you wonder if the condition that’s impacting your parent is going to impact yourself.
As our population ages, more adult children will face grief related to this life transition. It’s important we normalize how challenging of a time this can be while also discussing solutions for support.
Common Emotional Experiences Felt by Adult Children Coping with the Grief of Aging Parents:
Fear: Fear can be related both to worrying about the loss of a parent, worrying about them experiencing suffering, but it can also apply to fear around how family dynamics are changing, your own health, or financial concerns.
Anger: Anger is what we call a ‘secondary emotion.’ This means that it often is felt secondarily to a primary emotion as a response. Typically, it’s helpful to identify the primary emotion underlying the anger. Anger is a normal response to a perceived injustice. It may feel like the universe if slamming you with an injustice as the person whose been your protector is now withering away.
Isolation: Caregiving of any kind can be extremely isolating, especially if you are the primary caregiver or isolated from other friends/family. This is often the case as most people don’t live in the same town for the rest of their lives and often the family member who is closest to the parent ends up being the one to take on the bulk of the caregiving.
Hopelessness: Hopelessness can be a sign of burnout and need for respite care. Often caring for aging parents can be a long-term commitment, not a sprint but a marathon.
Frustration: Our society is still one to avoid discussing death and dying or really anything that is uncomfortable. This can make aging more difficult because families don’t often have a clear plan for this time. Dealing with financial, emotional, and relational impacts of aging parents can test your nerves.
Overwhelm: There are so many components to take care of when caring for an aging parent. You may need to manage their housing, finances, medical issues/procedures/appointments, enrichment, meals, etc. The list goes on. It’s a lot. And most people are not only caring and grieving the decline of their parents, but holding down jobs, taking care of children, and maintaining other relationships.
Apathy: As mentioned earlier, this entire time can be complicated if there was abuse or neglect between the parent and child and any point in their relationships. There is a cultural assumption adult children will be involved in some way in the care of aging parents, but that is difficult or impossible if that relationship is unsafe for the adult child. Everyone has parents, whether you have a relationship with them or not. Thus, there will always be an emotional response of some kind, even if it’s numbness or apathy to the decline, aging, and eventual death of such parents. It can be helpful to process these emotions with a professional, a faith leader, a family member or friend.
Seattle Support: Prioritizing Self-Care with Grief Counseling Amidst Aging Parent Challenges
Below are some strategies for you to enact now to help minimize frustration and overwhelm in the future.
Create memories, ask questions, take photos.
Talk to your parent(s) now about planning for aging. Consider making sure they have legal documents in place such as a will, estate planning, and power of attorney. Discuss their wishes, concerns, and plans they have for themselves as they age.
If you have siblings or close family friends, engage them in the conversation. The more you can address these things down, the easier it will be down the road when emotions are running higher.
Talk to friends your age when may be dealing with similar challenges.
Look for resources in the community that gear themselves towards aging adults. Senior centers, community centers, volunteer organizations are all great options. Aging adults are a huge asset to our communities and there are some great activities they can get involved in.
Get a updated assessment on cost for living for the community in which your parent plans to age.
Discuss your parents preferences and wishes related to death.
Look into long term care options in your community now to see what kind of availabilities or wait times exist.
Connect to other people coping with aging parents, whether they are directly caring for them or not. Accessing peer support is one of the greatest things we can do to when dealing with a specific kind of challenge.
Need More Care? Grief Counseling Can Help
If you’re facing the anticipation of coping with aging parents or you’re actively amid this life change, you don’t have to face the emotional roller coaster alone. Grief Counseling in Seattle can be a staple of yourself care practice to make sure you have energy to give to your parent. Remember, not all parent-child relationships are built on positive memories and support and therapy is a safe place to explore those dynamics and heal. Schedule a free consultation today.
Check out my other blogs on grief or learn about my other specialties: infertility, pregnancy loss, medical trauma, health issues, and anxiety.
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