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Family Communication

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Family Communication & Unpredictable Stress COM 3013 Unpredictable Stress Unpredictable stresses are brought about by events or circumstances that disrupt life ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Family Communication


1
Family Communication Unpredictable Stress
  • COM 3013

2
Unpredictable Stress
  • Unpredictable stresses are brought about by
    events or circumstances that disrupt life
    patterns but cannot be foreseen from either
    developmental or life course perspective.

3
Unpredictable Stress
  • Unpredictable stresses can maximize the
    dialectical tensions between individual family
    members and others or between family members and
    its environment.

4
Strain
  • That tension or difficulty sensed by family
    members, which indicates change is needed in
    their relationships and their family environment

5
Stressor Events
  • Events characterized by their unexpectedness,
    their greater intensity, and longer duration, and
    their undesirability and serious effects.

6
Unpredictable Stress and Coping
  • Stress involves a physiological response.
  • Individuals or families under stress reflect this
    in physiological changes and anxiety as they
    attempt to cope.

7
Stressors
  • Major stressors throw a family system out of its
    normal balance, and precipitate long-term change.

8
Coping Factors
  • How well a family copes depends on several
    factors.

9
Coping Factors
  • Family coping capacity is tied to four factors
  • Number of previous stressors the members faced
  • Degree of role change involved coping
  • Social support available
  • Institutional support available

10
Resilience
  • A familys ability to do well in the face of
    adversity.

11
Family Stress
  • All unpredictable stresses affect cohesion and
    adaptability and may modify boundaries, themes,
    images, and biosocial issues.
  • A family with a high capacity for adaptation and
    above-average cohesion is likely to weather
    stressor events more easily than families who are
    rigid and fragmented.

12
Family Stress
  • More adaptable families have the capacity to find
    alternative ways of relating and can adjust their
    communication behavior to encompass an event, but
    this is not easy.

13
Boundary Ambiguity
  • Families with rigid boundaries may be unable to
    cope adequately when severe external stresses
    occur.
  • Boundary ambiguity increases stress.

14
Boundary Ambiguity
  • This term refers to the degree of uncertainty in
    family members' perceptions of who "belongs," who
    is expected to function in various roles, and how
    much openness there should be in the system to
    permit various outside resources to be used to
    deal with stress.

15
Family Stress
  • Seemingly positive events can create great
    stress.
  • On occasion, communication improves when the
    family deals with major crises.

16
Communication Stress
  • In some families, members use direct verbal
    messages to explore options, negotiate needs,
    express feelings, and reduce tension.
  • In other families, the members' stress may be
    apparent through the nonverbal messages that
    indicate their anxiety and other feelings.
  • Members constantly interpret others' verbal and
    nonverbal messages as part of the coping pattern.

17
Stages of Family Crisis
  • In any serious crisis situation, a family goes
    through a definite process in handling the grief
    or chaos that results.
  • Depending on the event, the stages may last from
    a few days to several months or years.

18
Stages of Family Crisis
  • Yet, since no two families accept crisis in the
    same way, family systems are characterized by
    equifinality, which means each family will reach
    the final stages of the process in a variety of
    ways.

19
Stages of Family Crisis
  • Although the stages usually follow one another,
    they may overlap, and some may be repeated a
    number of times.
  • 1. Shock resulting in numbness, disbelief, or
    denial
  • 2. Recoil stage resulting in anger, confusion,
    blaming, guilt, and bargaining
  • 3. Depression
  • 4. Reorganization resulting in acceptance and
    recovery
  • (Kubler-Ross, 1970 Feifel, 1977 Mederer Hill,
    1983)

20
Coping Strategies Sequence
  • Level Strategy
  • 1 Change or adapt existing rules, ways of
    doing things, rearranging responsibiliti
    es to address the stress

21
Coping Strategies Sequence
  • Level Strategy
  • 2 Change metarules so that new areas of rules
    are created to address the stress

22
Coping Strategies Sequence
  • Level Strategy
  • 3 Change the basic assumptions about life
    reorder the value structure to address stress.
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