S2E20 The Sandwich Generation Squeeze

We talk about what it feels like to live in the middle of three generations, with kids launching into adulthood while parents begin to need care and oversight. We focus on staying emotionally healthy through grief, sibling stress, and identity shifts so we can show up with steadiness instead of exhaustion. 
• the sandwich generation reality of simultaneous transitions 
• using the oxygen mask rule to prevent resentment 
• navigating siblings, fairness, and different family histories 
• recognising grief inside “normal” life changes and delayed grief 
• needing safe places to tell the grief story repeatedly 
• separating identity from trauma and from vocation 
• preparing for retirement and role changes by building a life on purpose 
• noticing family of origin triggers without getting pulled into dysfunction 
If you're enjoying the podcast, we'd love for you to follow, rate, or share it with someone who might appreciate it as well. 

You can connect with the cohosts through their respective websites:

AFCCounselors.com (Dr. Shalley) / https://www.inyourdreams.coach/contact (Dr. Kelley)

Transcript

Section A

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome to Therapy Coaching in Dreams. My name is Dee Kelly. I'm your co-host here with Jim Shale. It is great to be back, Dee. It is good. It's good to be with you. And so enjoy those who tune in. We hear comments about the ways in which some of the things we talk about result in conversations outside of the podcast, which is wonderful. So I'd love to jump right in to a particular topic today, Jim, and that is the issue of people who are going through multi-generational transitions. So I think particularly of a group of individuals who maybe have children who are beginning to individuate. Some are going off to college, maybe some are getting married. So there's the transition of that younger age group, but the parents are going through issues during that time of wrestling with it. Yeah, that's true. And maybe simultaneously they are dealing with their parents who are maybe needing more care or maybe even supervision.

unknown 1:19

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Yeah, maybe transitioning into some kind of a long-term care facility or a three-tier system. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

So it gives us a chance to maybe talk developmentally about all three of those kind of generations, but focusing in particularly on what sometimes is referred to as those who are sandwiched in the middle. But even for those who are singles, they often have parents and are wrestling with what role they play, how do they structure their life in such a way to mitigate the pressures and difficulties that sometimes are being faced. I I've had the privilege you probably have too at some point in time, but of sitting with adult children who are trying to explain to one of their parents why they need to be in an Alzheimer's unit or a facility. Those are incredibly painful conversations, or can be, not always, but they can be very, very hard. So I I think maybe a good place to start is simply to focus in maybe on that middle-aged person who's finding themselves all of a sudden in the midst of all kinds of relational things that are taking place while maybe trying to hold down a vocation or trying to make sense of their own journey.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

I think that's I I think to to tie it into our whole podcast, I think that's why, again, to reiterate how important it is to stay vital and aware and how things affect you so that you can move into these transitions a little bit more effective or easy more easily. I don't know if it's ever easy, but at least you'd be more cognizant of the possibilities and the ramifications of the transition.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

So one of the things that my one of my daughters often says, and I I don't know where she picked it at. It's been around for a while, I think, but is the reminder when you're on an airplane that when you ask oxygen masks come down, put yours on first before you try and help anyone else with theirs. And that that is, I think this is one of those times where that saying is so very helpful that if you're not mindful of your own emotional weight and issues, it's going to be incredibly exhausting because you're not giving out of health, you're giving out of exhaustion. And that first thing then is to take care of yourself. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

And that breeds bitterness, that breeds kind of resentment, having to take care of elderly parents or whatever, or kids that are leaving home. Again, there's lots of different directions we could go with that. Yeah. Some parents are can't wait for their kids to leave. Some parents are devastated when they do leave. A lot of a lot of adults don't want to really deal with their parents, but they know they feel obligated to do it. Depends on their relationship they've had with them. I mean, there's so many different aspects of trying to navigate those transitions.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

I'm going to ask you a particular question, and please feel free to defer if you'd rather not answer. But one of the tough dynamics, I think, is when dealing with parents who are aging and you have siblings, and not all the siblings are involved equally or think differently about how things ought to proceed. And I know you've got three brothers. I've got a sister. Both you and I have been through this with parents. Any thoughts about how those conversations get started or how you navigate those water?

SPEAKER_03 5:04

That's such a great, uh wonderfully entangled question. Because I have processed that with many clients over the years. And yeah, the fairness issue. One feels entitled because they live close and they they do most of the work. So if when they pass away, who gets the house? I mean, there are so many aspects to that. Fortunately, I think for both me and you, at least speaking for me, my three brothers, we we worked pretty well together. We were on the same page, we didn't have any problems really navigating it. We agreed on on the care. We we basically agreed what we would do, what our limits were, and we stuck to those. But you're right, with some siblings, you know, somebody will pop in, they'll they'll come in once every few months, and then they'll demand to be heard and have a lot of input while another another sibling could be living right there and doing most of the work. And yeah, it's yeah, it's it's challenging.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

And is I guess it makes perfect sense that this is true as much as you wish it weren't true, that when there's an estate involved, when there's money involved, that really adds to the difficulty of some of those conversations. Yes, it does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

And if you can't if you don't have pretty healthy people, those conversations can go off the proverbial rails quite easily.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah. Also, it seems to me one of the things that's really important is to acknowledge that siblings have different family of origin stories. And so one may have all kinds of problems with the mom, the other one could have all kinds of problems with the dad. Another sibling may have no problems and doesn't understand why the others have problems. Those kinds of pieces also contribute to the mix of who communicates with mom and dad, who steps in and does the interactions with the physicians. I I felt very fortunate in that my sister and I have I don't necessarily want to say different skill sets, but we felt comfortable handling different parts. And so all of the medical stuff she's great at because that's her field of study. And I handled a lot of the paperwork and ensuring that all the powers of attorney things were taken care of and interacting with my parents in regard to that. And then we touched base regularly to make sure that things were coming. You were cooperative. Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Right. And that's why it's it's and I I'm not sure if there's a if there's a clear answer to the R.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

I agree completely. Absolutely. So because there's not a clear answer, what's the process?

SPEAKER_03 8:06

Oh man. The process is to try to keep yourself as healthy as you can emotionally. And does that mean speaking up? That means knowing the limits to what somebody else will hear from you, uh set boundaries that you are comfortable with, even though you might feel guilty about them, to simply say, I can't visit, I can't visit dad as much as you can. Or even to be as honest to say, I had a difficult relationship with him. I I don't need to see dad, but I'll go see him when I need- I mean, that's why and then other other siblings that are in a different place, they might get upset by that. I can't believe you're not visiting. They're upset by you're not coming. I mean, yeah, there's there's so many factors to that. The main thing is if someone's coming in to talk about that part of it, then it's really trying to encourage them to be as healthy as they can be with their relationship that they have with their elderly parents. I think it's same thing almost with uh with kids leaving home or getting married or whatever. All that depends on how close you were to the kids, and that that transition can be equally as emotional emotional in some ways. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

And if you're married, you it's like grief. You grieve in different ways on a different timetable.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

Absolutely true. Yep. I think one of the most un untalked about, untalked about, is that a word? Yeah, it is now. Things we don't talk about is how much grief there is in the living process. That's a great point. Series of losses that we uh the normal life transitions, but they're also a really a grief experience that we I think minimize sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

And I also think that we do the same thing with grief that sometimes we do with a cold that's coming on when we've got deadlines. Somehow we can tell the body, I don't have time for it just yet, and it's coming, but then all of a sudden it just kind of crashes. And I think we hold off on grief sometimes because we don't think we have either the capacity or the time. Or we don't think or we don't think it's impacted us that much. Yeah. Sometimes uh in the case of a death of a loved one, you're so busy taking care of details that while others are grieving, you're trying to arrange take care of whatever paperwork has to be done, get everything together for a memorial if you're doing that. And you your grief then comes after.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Basically delayed, yes. Delayed grief. And a year later you might find yourself really like, what's going on here? You go back and trace it, and it's usually because that you've delayed it.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Aaron Ross Powell I become far more familiar and grateful that I've had the privilege of doing so with a certain segment of the adoptee population, those who are adopted and come to a point in time where they are experiencing a great deal of grief over being adopted, but it typically gets postponed because there is so much guilt surrounding making well, culture says you ought to be thrilled that somebody adopted you. Like this was the answer to your issues. And so there's not a much of a support system by those parents who adopted, as well as the culture. And so there is often a delayed grief to that trauma of being adopted. And I think it's so important to validate yourself and say, I I I'm not choosing to grieve. It it is, it just is coming over me. That's the feeling. Yeah. I go back to what you have often said. It's not good or bad, right or wrong. It just is. And when it comes on you, taking care of your own health, and and I know we kind of slipped into the passing of somebody, but grieving the loss of a child in the home who's gone off to who's getting married.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

Even grieving parent parents that are no longer uh as viable or vital as they used to be, there's all all kinds of ways that life changes that we kind of minimize and act like, oh, that's just part of life. And we lose the the sacredness on some level of what that means about the whole process of living and how we take for granted every day. Uh as you know, uh both me and you, as we age, we look back and think, man, where did the where did the time go? And it's like they that's often reported that two or three generations after kind of an average person is gone, they're forgotten. And I think that's why so many people strive for some kind of legacy as though they want to continue on. But the majority of us, I think we just two or three generations, it's like, oh yeah, wasn't Jim around at some point?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Nope, don't think he was. Jim, I promise I'll keep talking about you as long as I can. Well no, I wasn't referring to this Jim.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

I'm sorry. I was I was referring to somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Another grief that comes to mind is the first time a parent forgets your name or forgets your child's name. And you go, Oh, oh, we have hit a new point here.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

And then you think of all the conversations you haven't had, and is it too late to have some of those conversations? And there's grief over that. What what didn't I say that I should have said? It's so very difficult. So one of the things, and I'd love for you to react to this, agree or disagree, but one of the things that I think is such a wonderful benefit of it could be a therapist, could be a coach, could be a spiritual guide, could be just a close friend, but is a place where you can tell the story of your grief multiple times. Like you tell it often to a friend, and you know they don't want to hear it again. And so you you hold it inside, but the grief hasn't gone away yet. I mean, that's often the story of trauma. Trauma needs to be told numerous times to process the emotional weight that goes with it. Grief isn't much different, but who am I going to tell how sad I am or how empty I feel if I've already told most of my friends and a couple of them twice, and okay, it's d I can't do that anymore. Somebody who's who you can tell I need that to say this numerous times and they'll receive it is an incredible gift. It is. Yeah.

unknown 15:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

And I think uh that that's always a challenging thing in the sense that uh when you have a client who is uh has suffered a loss or trauma and they have said it many times, they'll come in and say, uh you've got to be tired, you've got to be tired of hearing this. Well, on some level it's a transition because they're tired of saying it on some level. And I say, No, you never it I said, I I tell them, I said it's never, it's never the same. Every time you tell, it's different. And then the other part of it is for s for just personality driven, do you tell the story to let go of it or to hang on to it? Great question. And in therapy, a lot of people define themselves by the trauma or the sadness, and it's it's tough to really be honest about that. They tell the story to keep the person alive, they tell the story because they don't want to move on. It's it's a part of who they are, as opposed to someone who's telling a story that you can tell they really are letting go of it.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

It's very subtle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

That's that's powerful. I know I've worked with individuals where that question has come up in regard to their identity. Is this story part of who you are? Absolutely. Does letting go of it feel like you're letting go of something that's a part of you? Yes, sir. Yeah. Or sometimes it is, do you feel like you're letting another person down if you let go of the story? Yeah. It's part of your grief. Yeah.

unknown 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

It's like the gifts you give someone who whose child died ten years ago and you still remember the birthday. Those kind of things are very meaningful because most people move on. And so to acknowledge that is it can be very helpful. They're not defining themselves by that, but just that someone remembers their child or whatever. It's it's so interesting from that perspective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Maybe some comments since we've talked about multiple generations here. Senior adults when they are going through some difficult transitions, helping them navigate those wires. You're referring to anybody in particular, or well, I'm just wondering if you have any insight for whatever reason, Jim.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

It is so interesting. I have I have several clients that are close close and aged with me, and those are regular conversations about what does aging look like. You know, they ask me questions of when you when are you going to retire? And it's just fascinating to to process. The aging and running out of time and how do you want to spend the latter years of your life? Yeah, all that is really, really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

I I would say one of the things that's I know you're not aging, so that's that's the that's the cool part.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Thanks, Jim. Here's what I think is a very there are numerous like markers on this pathway. But one of the markers is to what extent has vocation become your identity?

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

That's a great question. Because if you're going to retire from a job, and that is how you have introduced yourself, identified yourself, that's been your label, and it's no longer there, you're no longer the authority, you're no longer the person who does whatever that task was, then uh the question that seems far more philosophical than it actually is, but is who am I then? What is my identity? And I always think that wrestling with that before you make the shift is really important. Yes. I would agree.

unknown 18:53

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

And that's like I think we've I think we've said it before, the adage that if you're if you're not retiring retiring towards something, but away from something, it's a whole different dynamic. If you're if you're retiring, if you just can't wait to retire, but you have no clear idea of what you're retiring, what's going to happen after that, yeah. Give yourself about six months uh working with a few people that they're surprised, like, what am what am I doing? Well, because they didn't have a clear sense of it.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

There are some times, however, Jim, that you're not retiring by choice. That's raged out or forced out, and or an illness or an injury brings a vocation to an end. And same kind of thing. Who who am I then if I'm not that? And I think that's always a valuable thing to think about in your 30s, your forties, your fifties, prepare you for it.

SPEAKER_03 19:48

If you if you don't have a again, there's a lot, a lot of times there's a built-in system. If you have children and grandchildren, you retire towards that. So you you go visit them, you hang out with them, you move to that area of the world with them, perhaps, because it organizes you. But if you don't have that, it's like, okay, then you have to organize yourself. And I think that's that's that's the challenge. It's like, okay, who am I? What do I do if I don't have any of those things? Or I or if I have them, but I don't I don't want to do that. It's like, again, the transition, speaking of that middle, the middle generation where they have kids leaving and parents going into perhaps assisted living, it's like the parents will want you to visit them more than probably you are able to. Your kids won't want you to visit them in some ways, or they might. Yeah. Be so sort of cynical about that. But that's where so how do you navigate all that? Well, developing your own life. What does that look like? You can react to people's worlds, or you can develop your own, let them react to you.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

That's a great distinction.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Yeah, that's the middle generation is like, okay, how about we build our lives? And then then people can be upset with you. Like if you have grandkids and you don't come, you don't come to visit. Well, we're we're traveling, we got a life. Well, you don't even come to visit your parents. Well, because we're we've figured out our lives. I mean, there needs to be a nice balance of that, obviously. But I think that's where the proactive initiating energy we talk about with the stir, the the stir example, the accessing that, saying, well, what do we want our retirement or our later years to look like when we have kids that have we have grandkids and we have elderly parents?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah. And and tapping into the personality style that is most comfortable or most natural to you with intent, like if I am a responder to acknowledge that to myself and say, How how would I like to use those toward the other generations in my life? And do it intentionally, not by default. Right. Not because it's a natural energy for me. Yeah. And not because everybody's expecting it of me, but I am intentionally doing it in this particular way. Same thing would be true for the stabilizer. If I'm very good at organizing, where do I choose to do that in trying to help my parents or working with my siblings? Or what do I want to stay out of with my kids because they're getting to a stage where they need to do this for themselves so I'll be available, but I'm not going to try and step in. It's a very conscious way of knowing that this is a strength of mine, but I'm not going to impose it on people. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Using using that model to really need to express my energy and where do I want to do that? Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 22:51

Good.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

And I think that when you function in that way, you automatically become more aware of where other people are operating out of their health or their dysfunction. And you are attentive to how it affects you, but you're not sucked into the circle of the dysfunction if you are attentive to it. Not judgmental, not angry, but just attentive to yourself makes you more attentive to those who are around you. Yep. Yeah. This one is a tough topic. This is not easy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

No, it's not. There's so many different directions we could have gone. And and maybe we feel a little incomplete in it. But I think, yeah, that's those transitions are really, really important to be as conscious as you can be. And they and they sneak up on you, too. All of a sudden you get a call from mom that says, you know what, dad's not doing well. We need to move him into a facility. Okay, well what that's out of the blue. Well, you know, we want to we want to live as if we live forever, but things change. But it is really hard back to originally your your original point. How do you start those conversations with siblings that may or may not want to entertain those conversations or have their own strong views about it? It brings up sibling rivalry, it brings up unresolved issues between siblings. It can be very contentious.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah. Yeah. And as many wonderful stories as we might hear about aging parents who handle their circumstances, very often aging parents are as unprepared as their children are for them to age. And all of a sudden they're in a situation where it requires some involvement. Like who's going to take care of this moment? And that kind of crisis, everyone responds to it differently. And if you have siblings, if if you're alone, that's incredibly hard because it's all in your shoulders. If you have siblings, it's incredibly hard because you're navigating waters you've never had to as siblings before. And so everything changes. And I think back to where we were 30 minutes ago, attentive to yourself and trying to be healthy and trusting that it's going to work if you are attentive to your own health and will step into it out of that place instead of out of panic.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Yeah, and trying work to work through it to the point where if you set a boundary and you feel guilty, just to stay steady because you know it's the healthiest. And that's that's addressing another issue where you do things out of obligation that you don't really want to do. It's addressing a lot of deeper, deeper issues for people when they're thoughtful about it.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

So I also think it's incredibly valuable to use some of the principles we've talked about over and over again. And that is if, for example, you have a sibling who is incredibly irritating to you, what is that talking about that's inside of you that could be just your projection that they is in me somewhere? Also, we talked about often the family of origin issues. When parents are in need, it almost always triggers family of origin stuff where you feel like you're back in the house again as a teenager. And to pay attention to how you feel about those family of origin issues and the work that you've done, and to recognize that it's triggering. So what does that trigger mean?

SPEAKER_03 26:28

Yeah, and and it could feel like sometimes you haven't done any work. That's right. Have I made no progress?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, that's well said. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

As always, great to be with you, Jim. Great to be with you, D. Dig a little bit more into this as time passes. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Bye-bye. Yeah. That's it for this episode of Therapy, Coaching, and Dreams. If you're enjoying the podcast, we'd love for you to follow, rate, or share it with someone who might appreciate it as well. Thanks for being here, and until next time, keep growing, stay curious, and take good care of yourself. Yeah, now it's good stuff.