From “Talking the Talk”

Control is the primary filter; nothing gets beyond control. Until you settle that score, the whole transaction will stop there. But once you settle that, once you reach a middle compromise with that, once you show that you are control-friendly, once you have flexibility on the control side, that’s when personalization is so powerful:

[As a prospect/resident] “I don’t want the lights turned on in my room when you come in.”

[As a seniors housing professional] “They won’t be turned on. It’s simply not going to happen.”

[As a prospect/resident] “I’m not a big fan of this food. My daughter will bring me food.”

[As a seniors housing professional] “Have her bring it, we’d love to have her to.”

Whatever the issue of people who may not be able to ambulate or people who cannot exercise their control factor—until you address the control issue, right, or get outright resistance or passive aggressive behavior or ambivalence, and either way you are up to your neck in battles. And so you have to find a better way to deal with control. Because [the prospect’s] tasks are not optional: they’re consumptive, subconscious and not avoidable.

Once you calm that down, then you create bandwidth to start asking the kinds of questions for life review that are really critical. These are intense moments, but these are really therapeutic. This is really big stuff, because we’re dealing with a real persons life and there will be resolutions, discoveries and dots connected that have never been connected in this person’s life. This will be a moment that has never happened, and some insight, decision or resolution will occur.

From a pure developmental point of view in terms of mental health, you want to calm down the control conflicts and events so you can open up this bandwidth which then helps give the person a great sense of integrity about their life and in many ways, probably deliver a lot of healing with that. We can’t cure the fact that they are older and have health problems and are going to pass away, but we can heal a lot of issues just in the process of listening and allowing them to disclose and put the pieces together from their life experiences that will be transformative for them.

This is not only an honor, but it’s a powerful position to be in [for the older adult] that everyone should have that right and that opportunity when they come to the end of their life. That’s why there is no workaround for control, that you only work through control, and you work through it by having an understanding of how it manifests itself and being able to be flexible and adjusted and to start to reshape your presentation of it in a way that allows you to partner with the older client or parent.