Ep. 42 - Why Families in Crisis Feel So Lost

When a family is in crisis, having more information does not always mean knowing what to do next.

Pam Feinberg-Rivkin begins a new series exploring the path from crisis to healing with Steve Feldman, CEO of Feinberg Consulting. Together, they look at why families facing addiction, mental health challenges, aging, or complex medical concerns can quickly become overwhelmed. Emotions are high, decisions feel urgent, and even well-meaning advice from doctors, friends, books, and the internet can leave families with more information but no clear direction.

Pam and Steve reflect on the difference between temporary relief and having a real plan. They explore why families often try to manage a crisis alone, how fear and uncertainty can affect decision-making, and the value of having a calm, experienced guide who can assess what is happening, identify the right level of care, find appropriate providers, and create a strategy for moving forward.

At the heart of the conversation is a simple reminder that asking for help is not giving up control. It is creating the space for collaboration, clarity, and hope when a family needs it most. Sometimes healing begins with realizing you were never meant to find the way forward alone.

Looking for a practical takeaway from this conversation?
Download our complimentary companion resource, Looking Beyond the Behavior, designed to help parents and caregivers shift from asking "What's wrong with my child?" to "What might my child be communicating?" The guide explores how looking at children's emotional, behavioral, and physical health through a holistic lens can open the door to greater understanding, connection, and support.

Contact Pam Feinberg-Rivkin:
Facebook: @FeinbergCare
Instagram: @FeinbergCare
LinkedIn: Feinberg Consulting Inc
YouTube: @FeinbergConsulting8059 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to the Resilient Butterfly Podcast. My goal is to share inspiring stories of healing and recovery through many diverse approaches and models. Our guests bring incredible lived experiences, insights, andor professional expertise, each with their own unique path. While we highlight and celebrate these stories, our intention is to inform, inspire, and demonstrate resilience and creativity. This podcast does not endorse any one approach. We believe there is more than one way to heal, and we're here to showcase the resilience and possibilities that exist. Hello everyone. Thank you for coming to Resilient Butterfly. I am your host, Pam Feinberg Rifkin. I'm so delighted to tell you that we are starting a series with Feinberg Consulting over the next few months for families and professionals to look from crisis to healing and how we can go from crisis to healing. This will be, as I said, a series. We will have Feinberg consulting guests as well as outside guests who are professionals, who work with people or who've written books who will be able to give some insight from crisis to healing. And this crisis to healing can be addiction, mental health, aging, and medical concerns. So obviously, aging isn't always healing, but there's a lot of healing the family can do around someone and their aging process, as well as the person who is aging, a lot of healing. Emotional healing can be done as well as their physical being and being comforted, et cetera. So I have the first guest is Steve Feldman, and he is going to be taking us through with myself with um how first we start with why families in crisis are lost. And I want to first introduce Steve, but thank you for coming.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, thanks very much. I'm excited to be doing this together.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

And Steve Feldman is uh some of you may know and some of you may not know, is the CEO of Feinberg Consulting. So he really works with all of our staff and a lot of families that come to us in regard to their going from crisis to healing. So in taking people through this, um, I've watched families do everything right in their life in regard to something that may come up as a crisis. However, they're still lost because what I've found is that they haven't given been given direction. They've been given a lot of information. Doctors tell them what to do. You know, a lot of people out there tell people what to do, but they're lost with the direction and how to do that. What is your perspective of this?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

So uh yeah, it's really an interesting topic because one of the things that's common and a thread through most all families when they're in some type of crisis, some level of crisis, is emotions are higher. And typically when emotions are higher, people don't make their best decisions. So the combination of uh heightened emotions, and as you were talking about, you know we don't come with a with an owner's manual on how to deal with these types of things, whether it's addiction or mental health or a combination of both. So often what happens is we are reaching out for opinions and help from others that may or may not be qualified to provide that help. So, you know, I think part of this is that there is not a solid foundation of what to do, how to do it, where to do it, who to do it with. And and, you know, families become compromised in this in this type of situation.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Sure. And families only know what they know. And most families, this may be their first crisis that they've gone through with a loved one. It may not be their first crisis, but every person's different, right? So what what they may have done for one person in their family is going to be different for another person because that person's different, they react differently, and they have different situations that come up. So knowing what to do is pretty much impossible for families to know.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

I think the other thing that comes up as we're talking about this is in many cases, providers are um unknowingly not necessarily helping the situation. And what I mean by that is that there is no one type of provider that helps families and the individual in crisis deal with what's going on. So in many cases, what happens is the system allows for somebody to look at what their specific area of expertise is. Um and in many cases, so much of this is also indicated and directed by what insurance is reimburse. So it's part of being able to manage, direct, and help families and individuals is being able to wrap it around in some way with a guide, with some way to direct this.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

And so many families get guidance in other direction in other ways in their in their life. They get guidance in their finances, they get guidance in how to buy a house and how to construct something, you know, architecturally, et cetera. And this is what we do on the healthcare side that we can construct and plan and work with families to do this, and then guide them through that process and educate them every step of the way.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

So I It's really uh I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you bring up a really interesting point. When somebody has a legal issue, they go to an attorney. When somebody needs help with their taxes, they go to an accountant. When somebody has uh, you know, an acute medical issue, they'll go see that specialist. In cases, uh especially in mental health and addiction, families don't know that there's even something available that can help and provide that kind of direction.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Absolutely. You know, they they don't this is maybe their first go-around, and there's so much shame around addiction and mental health uh that they even, you know, even medical situations, people don't want really, some people don't want to talk about it. So without that um guidance, they don't know where to go or how to even start. So they're getting guidance from maybe an emergency room physician who that's all they know is how to handle somebody in a medical crisis versus having someone there to really plan out and be able to have every um every station of the plan looked at and and re-planned and reorganized as it goes along because things change.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

So, really what you're saying is people can find good, maybe find good providers and good information, but contextually, the environment in which healing can happen is not set up. So being able to have somebody who's experienced, to be able to have somebody who's calm, because in so many cases with elevated emotions, things are going faster. Crisis looks maybe even more acute than it is, and and really being able to have that calm guide throughout this is uh is an important part of it, which really is building a case for having um case management or an advocacy and the ability to coordinate care as as the first stop, as the first part of this.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Sure. And there are um people who will make that first phone call, and as they explain everything of what's going on, and they start talking about it, they start feeling a relief. We talked about this. They start feeling a relief in their body because they're actually talking to someone, and that itself is somewhat healing, but that's just a little bit of a relief. It's like uh a little pressure valve. Exactly, a pressure valve. And with that relief, they feel, oh, you know, I can handle this. And they so they then go back to, well, I'm gonna handle this until they can no longer handle it.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I I think it's important. So you're really talking about like for for Feinberg, when the phone rings, we'll have somebody spend time with that caller, and that caller will start to get relief. And and then somebody will mistake that relief for a plan or healing. But that relief gives somebody the uh the fault, maybe in in many cases, the false sense of security to go do it themselves. Which really brings up in creating any great result, it happens best in a collaboration. It happens best with the ability to say, I need some help. And, you know, I think that's a really important part of how we kind of invite people in to work with us, is it it is collaborative. It is very relational.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Exactly. We bring the family to the table and side by side working with whatever plan that may be. And they individually can get help as well because there are some that are going to be more of the doing part of the that's what they do in their life, and they need some help being able to release some of that and be able to understand that they can they can let go of that.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

I think one of the biggest challenges for us and companies like us is that people don't really know that this kind of help is available. It as we were talking about before, in other areas, financial planning and legal and accounting, it's known and readily available. But in getting support with mental health and addiction and complex medical type of uh acute situations and even chronic situations, being able to have guidance and and feel comfortable about being able to reach out, share about it, and and work together to get to get help is something that you know I hope that thousands and thousands of people are able to listen to this kind of conversation in this series that that you're putting together to be able to recognize that there is a different way than to do it yourself. There is a different way than in many cases minimizing what the situation is as a way to help cope with somebody's own discomfort.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Sure. And there are lots of books out there that people people could put pick up and maybe be able to learn from.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

But on the internet.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Yeah. But that information doesn't really help put the pieces together, the puzzle together. That that book doesn't really guide you in the particular situation that you are in. So every, as I said, every crisis is different. In each person in each family, there may be two different situations that may be a crisis at two different times, but you're not going to handle them the same way because it's so different. So I want to ask you to explain how anyone can reach us to have that first phone call.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah, so we're so open to talking to people and providing value on an initial call, whether they the family becomes clients or not, to be able to have a contact, to be able to provide value is something that's really important. And typically there's two things that happen from the initial contact. One is, is the situation that the family member and the family is working with, can our services provide support and value? And the other part of it is, is this a qualified client or family to work with us? And in saying that, it's because these types of services are not reimbursed by insurance and they're privately paid. So we kind of establish if it's a good fit from that initial call. Can we provide a value? And and the process is is pretty similar no matter what the situation is that we're dealing with. It's the ability to gather information, understand what's going on, and really assess what's needed, and then provide recommendations. Those recommendations are three levels. One level of recommendation is what kind of care is needed. The second area is who can provide that care. We spend great time and go to great lengths to find the best uh ethical and uh efficacious uh providers. And then third, what's the strategy that's necessary to help get the plan implemented? Because sometimes, especially in the behavioral health or addiction space, people aren't raising their hands saying, you know, I want help. And a lot of times somebody uh needs to have a really great strategy put together to get them to say yes. And then from there, once a plan is agreed upon, then we help guide the family and the individual to implementing that plan. So in a in a quick synopsis, that's really how we can help take clients from feeling out of control and and families from feeling out of control and helpless to creating some hope and and and a direction.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

That's great. So thank you very much for coming on. As I said, there's this will be a series, so stay tuned because we have more to talk about. There's so much so much more. But in the meantime, if you want a phone call, reach out to feinbergcare.com is the website 248-538-5425, and someone would be able to have that first conversation with you in discussing whether this is a good fit for you or for us both. So thank you so much. Stay tuned. Thank you for joining the conversation today. If you are seeking help for yourself or a loved one, please reach out to our Feinberg Consulting Team at 248-538-5425. That's 248-538-5425. And check out our website at feinbergcare.com. I'm grateful for our guests and all who have joined us today. Make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.