Communications Chapter 11 Homework Parents Miss Important Events Children may Experience Emotional Difficulties Struggles Reintegrating iv Family Support

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Chapter 11:

Family Communication and Unpredictable Stress

Chapter Preview

• Unpredictable Stress and Family Coping Patterns

• Communication During Specific Crises

• Family Support and Communication

Chapter Outline

I. Introduction

a. Unpredictable stress is brought about by events or circumstances that disrupt life

patterns but cannot be foreseen (e.g., divorce, remarriage, teen pregnancy, death,

illness, disability, deployment)

long-lost relatives

b. All families experience stressors and strains

i. Strains: Tension or difficulty sensed by family members (indicates change is

needed in relationships and in family environment)

ii. Stressor events: Characterized by unexpectedness, greater intensity, a longer

duration, and by their undesirability and serious effects

iii. Crisis: Unexpected, negative event that inhibits a family from functioning;

family lacks resources or demands are greater than the ability to respond

iv. Ambiguous loss: Characterized by high uncertainty

1. Physically absence; psychological presence (e.g., kidnapped child)

2. Psychological absence; physical presence (e.g., addiction)

II. Unpredictable Stress and Family Coping Patterns

a. Individuals or family systems under stress experience physiological and

psychological changes as their heightened anxiety affects their coping patterns

b. Family stressors

i. Hill’s family disruptions

ii. Major stressors throw a family system out of balance and precipitate long-

term change; compounded with multiple stressors

iii. Family coping tied to 4 factors: Number of previous stressors, degree of role

change involved in coping, social support, and institutional support

v. Resilience: Family’s ability to function well in the midst of adversity

1. Constituted in and through communicative process that enhance ability

to create new normalcies

c. Family stress models

i. Coping: The central mechanism through which family stressors, demands, and

strains are eliminated, managed, or adapted to

ii. Hill’s ABCX model (Double ABCX model, based on ABCX model,

incorporates post-crisis variables or next stages of coping)

1. A: The stressor event

(a) Life event or transition that causes change to family system

(b) Not positive or negative; neutral until place meaning on it

2. B: Crisis-meeting resources

(a) Resources a family can use to manage a stressor and avoid

crisis (e.g., money, friends, time, space, problem-solving)

(b) Come from individuals, family members, and community

expanded social systems that emerge from the crisis itself

4. X: The crisis

(a) Represents amount of disruptiveness that occurs to the system

(b) Family’s inability to restore stability and continuous pressure

to make changes to structure and patterns of interaction

(d) Xx: Effect of the family’s adaptation; imbalance if demands

are too great for capabilities

(i) Bonadaptation: Positive outcomes result

(ii) Maladaptation: Negative outcomes result; incomplete,

inadequate, or faulty adaptation

iii. Multisystem assessment of stress and health (MASH): Measures the

relationships between stress, coping, system variables, and adaptation in the

four areas of life (individual, work, couple, and family)

iv. Theory of resilience and relational load (TRLL): Explains how family

members interact over time and adapt and thrive, creating resilience

iii. Adaptable and open families are more likely to seek social support

e. The communication-based coping model

i. Communication is central to five major factors of stress and coping

1. Communication as a source or symptom of stress

2. Communication as meaning-making

f. Stages of family crisis

i. Shock: Deny the event or its seriousness

1. Results in numbness, disbelief, denial

2. Transforms into an intense desire to recapture what’s been lost

ii. Recoil: Seeking reasoning, blaming, anger, bargaining

1. Results in anger, confusing, blaming, guilt

2. Thoughts that the world is unfair

III. Communication and Specific Crises

a. Major changes in family system require transition from earlier ways of functioning

and transformation of how they interact

b. Untimely death: Throws family into shock, often resulting in prolonged mourning

i. Death of a child

1. Loss of parental dreams, violates natural order of life

2. Changing parents’ identities

1. Family communication can be a deterrent to suicide

2. Important to recognize preparatory messages

loss internally and with their social network

c. Serious illness or disability

i. Requires major adjustments that can tax a family’s physical and emotional

energy; long-term drain on resources and energies

ii. Mourning process similar to stages of coping with death

1. Impact stage: Learn of member’s condition

iii. Family caregivers experience negative mental/physical health issues

iv. Illness can affect marital satisfaction and sibling relationships

1. High divorce rates for couples with children with disabilities

2. Marriages when wife has breast cancer can experience communication

difficulties and sexual relationship problems

v. Direct, supportive communication and reframing can help functioning

vi. Type of illness affects ability to cope

1. Alcoholism distorts patterns of behavior and communication; much

stress associated with the ability to talk about it

2. Mental illness is stigmatized and misunderstood, and family

communication can help improve or worsen experience

d. Separation and divorce: Transitional crises that create emotional and practical

upheaval, at least in short term

iv. Processes resemble mourning pattern

v. Often has adverse effects on children; before and long after the divorce

vi. Over time family system recalibrates to establish altered course

vii. Five themes of effective communication about the decision to divorce

3. Parents should emphasize that it is not the child’s/children’s fault

4. Parents should not give unnecessary or specific details about the

reasons for divorce (inappropriate disclosures)

5. Parents should invite the children to respond or ask questions

viii. Coparenting relationship: At least two individuals are expected by agreement

or societal norms to have conjoint responsibility for child’s well-being

ix. Coparental communication: Interaction patterns that emerge as one coparent

supports and/or undermines parenting attempts of his/her coparenting partner

1. Successful when coparents learn new ways to interact and develop a

e. Military families: A special case of separation and unanticipated stress

i. Family communication and relational maintenance continue during

deployment, but occur through media other than face-to-face interactions

1. Delayed communication: Letters, packages, emails

2. Interactive communication: Phone calls, instant/video messaging

iii. Dialectical tensions

1. Pre-deployment: Uncertainty-certainty

2. During deployment: Autonomy-connection

3. Post deployment: Openness-closedness

iv. Disclosure issues

1. During combat may be unable to share feelings

2. Protective buffering may occur to hide worries and avoid

disagreements, reduce stress by protecting other

IV. Family Support and Communication

a. How much social support family members receive in crises depends on how much

support they have given one another prior to the crises

b. Communication and coping: Levels of coping; if first level fails, move to next

i. Level I process: Changing family rules or role expectations

the family means and how members can enhance each other’s lives

c. Immediate family, extended family, and voluntary kin are sources of support

d. Support groups: Interpersonal support from others who share similar experiences

i. Support networks help improve capacity to cope and reduce social isolation

and negative moods

ii. Online support groups important to those uncomfortable with face-to-face

disclosures; provide space to pose/respond to questions and feel less alone

V. Discussion Questions

a. Describe how a positive or happy event (eustress) has brought higher levels of stress

to either your family or a family you know. How can a family most effectively

communicate to manage these stressors?

b. How do different cultural and/or religious attitudes toward illness and death aid or

restrict the communication and the bereavement process for surviving family

members?

VI. Case Study Questions:

a. Analyzing the Perez family in the “Daughter or Counselor?” (or another real/fictional

family), how would you analyze the effects of a severe stress or crisis (e.g., drug

problem, serious car accident, or severe illness) on the family using a systems

perspective?

b. Using the same family from Question 1, how might you analyze the problem with the

ABCX model? And how might using the double ABCX model produce a different set

of insights into this particular crisis?

Activities

Divorce as Developmental Stage: Some current family experts argue divorce should be

Unpredictable Stress Roundtable: Separate students into groups. Tell students to first write

down an unpredictable stressful event they have experience in their families. Then take the piece

of paper (no name), crumple it into a ball, and throw it to the middle of the group’s table. Each

Children’s Literature Review: Have students bring in and share examples of children’s

literature (fiction or nonfiction) which attempts to help children understand and cope with loss.

Ask the students to focus on the author’s messages related to communication as one deals with a

crisis/loss. What are the messages that cultural stories give to children about coping and stress?

What are the bright and dark sides to these messages? How might you reconfigure children’s

books to support empirical knowledge about effective coping, especially in children?

Impact of Illness or Disability or Suicide: Invite a specialist to address the class on the impact

of an illness or a child’s learning disability on the family system. Prepare students to ask

The Double ABCX Application: Give students the following directions. “In discussion with a

partner apply the double ABCX model to a stressor with which you are both familiar. This may

be an experience you have witnessed or it can be a stressful event described in the news media,

such as the effect of serious flooding on families who lose their homes. In your conversation

identify the factors that contribute to the long-term effects. If you know the affected family, try

to come to some conclusion about the level of adaptation reached. If this is a news story, identify

the conditions under which a family might reach what is labeled “adaptation” in the ABCX

model.” Students may note their conclusions in journals, a reflection paper, or class discussion.

Ambiguous Loss: Ask students to identify characters experiencing ambiguous loss in the news,

Coping Strategies in the Family: Ask students to share examples of each of the Level I, II, and

III coping strategies that they have experienced in their own families or in families they have

observed (or in the media). Ask them to discuss: (1) the move to higher levels, if such a move

happened and (2) the effectiveness of the coping strategies. How do these levels differ and does

the timing vary from family to family?

Double ABCX Application: Have students read a work of non-fiction (or a chapter) and apply

Stage Model and Double ABCX Application: An apt application of the Double ABCX and

Stage Models of coping with unexpected stress is from the television series Parenthood (Season

2, Ep. 18) where parents Adam and Christina’s child Max is diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.

There are several scenes in the episode that display the process of coping with unexpected

stressors. On the television series Glee (Season 1, Ep. 20), Carole and Burt, parents of Finn and

Kurt, respectively, move in together with hopes of someday merging their two families together.

Unpredictable Stress and Online Support Groups: Because of their accessibility, anonymity,

and specificity, online support groups have become increasingly popular in recent years. This

assignment encourages students to analyze online coping behaviors through the lens of the

models proposed in the text. Students should be instructed to look up a website of an informative

and/or support group highlighting coping resources for families experiencing unpredictable stress.

Examining the website content and people’s posts, consider the following questions:

• How, if at all, is family communication represented on this website?

• What concepts from our reading do you notice on the website, in participants’

conversations, etc. (Stages of family crisis, Level I, II, and III coping, Double ABCX

model)?