Caregiving in a Broken Family w/ Angela Caldwell

So Angela, you know, I think a lot of caregivers go into a family crisis hoping that everyone will finally show up.

But then the old pattern returns almost instantly.

The responsible one takes charge.

The avoidant one disappears.

The critic starts criticizing.

What does caregiving bring back into those old roles?

Hmm.

I might prefer to look at your question more that these crises actually... highlight what the roles are.

So it's interesting if you think of daily life in a family on a regular Tuesday, your roles don't necessarily announce themselves when you're fixing lunch for the day or when you're getting chores done or getting, you know, coming home from work or something like that.

It's in these emergencies and crises that the roles emerge.

And so we will find that—and, you know, every family defines a crisis and emergency differently in probably what medical professionals would consider real emergencies, like a health crisis or something like that.

The roles will emerge.

Like you said, you will find that everyone will not be surprised who the leader is and everyone will not be surprised who the Debbie Downer is.

And so it's— We talk in terms of these old roles.

And it's funny because I notice in the family therapy that I do, we use this term a lot.

I have this old role in my family.

It's old and then it was instilled a long time ago, but it is quite current.

We don't do a lot of role updating in families.

And in fact, I mean, who wants to do that? I want to go to work and I want to go swimming on Saturday and I want to go to Disneyland.

I want to do all these other things with my time.

It doesn't occur to us to say...

You know, it's probably time to update my role in my family, first of all.

Secondly, you don't have much of an audience with a family.

Can you imagine going to your family and saying, hey, guys, can we sit down and update our family roles? I mean, they'd look at you like you were a two-headed monster from Jupiter.

And so these old roles that we have, they emerge because we don't do a very good job restructuring our family as we transition through the different life stages and different stages of family development.

So Angela, you know, I think a lot of caregivers go into a family crisis hoping that everyone will finally show up.

But then the old pattern returns almost instantly.

The responsible one takes charge.

The avoidant one disappears.

The critic starts criticizing.

What does caregiving bring back into those old roles?

Hmm.

I might prefer to look at your question more that these crises actually... highlight what the roles are.

So it's interesting if you think of daily life in a family on a regular Tuesday, your roles don't necessarily announce themselves when you're fixing lunch for the day or when you're getting chores done or getting, you know, coming home from work or something like that.

It's in these emergencies and crises that the roles emerge.

And so we will find that—and, you know, every family defines a crisis and emergency differently in probably what medical professionals would consider real emergencies, like a health crisis or something like that.

The roles will emerge.

Like you said, you will find that everyone will not be surprised who the leader is and everyone will not be surprised who the Debbie Downer is.

And so it's— We talk in terms of these old roles.

And it's funny because I notice in the family therapy that I do, we use this term a lot.

I have this old role in my family.

It's old and then it was instilled a long time ago, but it is quite current.

We don't do a lot of role updating in families.

And in fact, I mean, who wants to do that? I want to go to work and I want to go swimming on Saturday and I want to go to Disneyland.

I want to do all these other things with my time.

It doesn't occur to us to say...

You know, it's probably time to update my role in my family, first of all.

Secondly, you don't have much of an audience with a family.

Can you imagine going to your family and saying, hey, guys, can we sit down and update our family roles? I mean, they'd look at you like you were a two-headed monster from Jupiter.

And so these old roles that we have, they emerge because we don't do a very good job restructuring our family as we transition through the different life stages and different stages of family development.