FAD3432 Exam 2

Military deployments

one of the most widely documented stressors for military families

What are the negative effects of deployment on families?

• loss of companionship and parental support

• increased risk of divorce

• increased spousal and child maltreatment

• higher instances of depression and anxiety among members

What are the 3 phases of the deployment cycle?

• Pre-deployment

• Deployment

• Reunion

Pre-deployment

Starts when the family is notified of the impending deployment and ends when the service member leaves the family for the actual mission.

• marked level of tension, protest or even anger in first couple of weeks

• service member is physically present but psychologically absent (ambiguous loss)

• the period just before separation can be especially stressful

Deployment

• Service members are physically absent but psychologically present (ambiguous loss)

• Period of emotional disorganization

• As time goes on the family gets used to new situation

Reunion

• Family members experience a sense of euphoria as they talk to one another and reestablish intimacy

• after honeymoon phase is over, family begins renegotiating relationships and redefining roles

• service member is physically present but psychologically absent (ambiguous loss)

• family regains new sense of normalcy

• reunion stressors

Resources that can determine successful adaptation for military families:

• flexible gender roles

• active coping strategies

• family coherence

• shared family values

• family communication

• social support

What are some possible pros of long-distance relationships according to Dr. Eve?

It gives you the independence and individuality to serve your own purposes while also having the benefits of a relationship.

What is one of the issues of long distance relationships?

You don’t get to share experiences regularly.

Why is breast cancer a family disease?

• Partner and children are deeply emotionally connected

• Partners often take on new responsibilities

• Female family members worry about their own health

What are the 3 unique stressors for breast cancer patients and their families?

• Initial diagnosis: shock, surprise, sadness, hope, fear, etc

• Treatment period: feeling alone, making treatment decisions, financial stress, dealing with bodily changes, changes in intimacy, telling others

• Post-treatment period: fears about recurrence, limitations in physical ability

What are resources for breast cancer patients and their families?

• Social support

  • partners

  • mother-daughter relationship

  • friends

  • counseling professionals

  • other survivors

• Communication

What is the percentage of spouse caregivers who become clinically depressed or anxious?

25-35%

How can one thrive as a caregiver?

• Take care of yourself

• Add two things to your toolbox

  • Silent attentive listening

  • Asking open-ended questions

What are myths about caregiving?

• Feelings are easily contained in an individual

• All you need is a happy marriage

• The spouse must swallow their feelings

The transition to parenthood can be described as…

a crisis in which families face extreme disorganization

What percentage of new mothers show symptoms of depression after the birth of a baby?

13-27%

fathers also show signs of increased stress and depression

What are some possible stressors to the transition of parenthood?

• Infertility issues

• Miscarriage

• Premature birth

• Having a child with special needs

• Multiple births

What are some possible stressors to the transition of parenthood for families who adopt?

• Getting health information about child’s biological parents

• Wondering what to tell the child about the adoption

• How to teach a child from another country or ethnicity

What are some stressors at the parental level?

• Increased age at marriage

• Unplanned pregnancy

• Low education level

What are some stressors at the child level?

• When children have trouble sleeping

• Colic or inconsolable crying for long periods

• The sex of the child

What are some stressors at the relational level?

• Destructive marital conflict has been linked to attentional and emotion regulation difficulties and psychological problems in children

• The roles new parents acquire upon the birth of their baby may result in role strain

What are some stressors at the individual level?

• High self-esteem

• Sense of control or mastery

Maternal gatekeeping

a collection of beliefs and behaviors that ultimately inhibit a collaborative effort between men and women in family work by limiting men’s opportunities for learning and growing through caring for home and children.

Mothers preferences and attempts to restrict and exclude fathers from childcare and involvement with children.

~23% of mothers in intact families

What is the percentage of couples that experience a drop in relationship happiness in the first 3 years of the baby’s life?

67%

What is the impact of relationship happiness on the development of the baby?

• Babys temperament

• Better cognitive and language development

• Calmer

• Happier

• Smile and laugh more

• Cry and fuss less

What is resilience according to Froma Walsh?

The ability to withstand and rebound from disruptive life challenges.

Fosters the ability to “struggle well”, heal from painful experiences, and go on to live and love fully.

What is the definition of resilience?

• One’s ability to return to healthy functioning after being in a stressful situation.

• It does mean drawing on personal beliefs, behaviors, skills, and attitudes to move through stress, trauma, and tragedy rather than succumb to them.

• Emerging from stressful situations feeling normal and perhaps even stronger than before

Richardson’s resilience model includes:

• First wave: focused on protective factors that nurture personal strengths and help us recover from adversity

• Second wave: focused on understanding how we acquire resilient qualities

• Third wave: Focused on resilience as a force within everyone

First wave

List of qualities, assets, or protective factors that help people grow through adversity

• optimism

• creativity

• gratitude

• self-determination

• forgiveness

Second wave

• Biopsychospiritual homeostasis: The starting point of the model, representing a person's state of balance or comfort zone in their body, mind, and spirit.

• Disruption: An event that knocks a person out of homeostasis, such as a trauma, stressor, or adverse life event.

• Protective factors: An individual's qualities and external supports that help them cope with adversity and achieve resilient reintegration. These can be internal (e.g., self-efficacy, hope) or external (e.g., family support, community resources).

• Reintegration: The process of putting life back together after a disruption. People can reintegrate in four ways:

  • Dysfunctional reintegration: The individual does not recover or their situation worsens.

  • Reintegration with loss: The individual recovers but has lost something in the process.

  • Reintegration back to homeostasis: The individual returns to their previous state of balance.

  • Resilient reintegration: The individual not only recovers but also grows stronger and more capable than they were before the disruption. 

Third wave

teaching tool for resilience. focuses on the intrinsic and inherent motivation that drives individuals to grow through adversity.

What are the 5 basic components that lead to resilience?

• Personal control

• Positive relationships

• Therapeutic lifestyle changes

• Contributory activities

• Gratitude

Personal control

To expend our time and energy on situations over which we have influence rather than on situations that are beyond our control; we must remember that we are the authors of our own lives.

Suggested exercise:

• write down 3 things you would like to see different in your life

• put down whether someone else has to change first for you to realize those 3 things

Positive relationships

• To appreciate and concentrate on enriching our relationships and connections with others and lessening feelings of loneliness.

• Empathy serves as a basic component of positive relationships

Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes

• Exercise

• Healthy diet

• Meditation

• Mindfulness/ Kindness

Contributory Activities

To engage in activities that strengthen the lives of others and add meaning and purpose to our own lives.

Gratitude

To consider things for which we are grateful.

To express gratitude towards others - the impact of seemingly small gestures that last a lifetime

What are the stages of behavior change?

• Precontemplation: no intention to change behavior

• Contemplation: ambivalence: “Yes but…”

• Preparation: first step towards behavior change

• Action: behavior changed for longer than one day, but less than 6 months

• Termination: behavior changed for more than six months

What is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSBR)

• Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School

• 8-week program for people with stress-related disorders (e.g., chronic pain)

• Structured group program:

  • individual pre-interview or orientation session

  • 8 sessions of 2.5 hours each, once a week

  • 1 day of mindfulness in silence

  • 1 hour of daily home assignments

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction formal practices:

• body scan

• mindful yoga

• different forms of medication

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction informal practices:

• mindfulness in everyday life (e.g. eating, doing dishes, taking a shower

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Helps people become aware of the thoughts that go through their mind when they are depressed and helping them realize to change them.

Self-compassion

• involves being touched by and open to one’s own suffering

• also involves nonjudgemental understanding to one’s pain, inadequacies, and failures

• being kind to oneself when confronting personal inadequacies, mistakes, failures, and painful situations

What are 3 components of self-compassion

1. self kindness

2. common humanity

3. mindfulness

self-kindness

extending kindness and understanding to oneself rather than harsh judgement and self-criticism

common humanity

seeing one’s experiences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolating

mindfulness

holding one’s painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than over-identifying with them

How does mindfulness interact with the other components?

mindfulness is needed in order to allow enough mental distance from one’s negative experiences so that feelings of self-kindness and humanity can arise.

How does self-kindness interact with the other components?

self-kindness lessens the negative impact of the emotional experience, making it easier to maintain a balanced awareness or mindfulness.

How does common humanity interact with the other components?

common humanity or remembering that suffering and personal failure happen to all people helps to not over identify with them or being mindful.

self-compassion vs self-esteem

• self-compassion is not based on the performance evaluations of self and others, or on congruence with ideal standards

• self-compassion counters the tendency towards narcissism and self-centeredness

• self-compassion does not engage in downward social comparisons in order to think of the self as acceptable

burnout

syndrome that occurs among individuals who do “people-work” of some kind

• emotional exhaustion

• depersonalization

• low personal accomplishment

High rates in psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers

Self-compassion has fewer pitfalls than self-esteem such as…

• fewer social comparisons

• no association with narcissism

• less maladaptive perfectionism

• less contingent self-worth

Myths about self-compassion:

• means weakness

• undermines motivation

• leads to self-indulgence

• its selfish

Realities of self-compassion:

• source of strength and resilience

• increases motivation

• leads to healthier behavior

• it enhances interpersonal relationships

What is posttraumatic growth

The experience of positive change that occurs as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life crises

What are the domains of posttraumatic growth?

• greater appreciation of life and changed sense of priorities

• warmer, more intimate relationships with others

• a greater sense of personal strength

• recognition of new possibilities or paths for one’s life

• spiritual development

What is the Calhoun & Tedeschi (1998) Model of Posttraumatic Growth?

A model explaining how individuals can experience positive psychological change after trauma through distress, cognitive processing, and meaning-making.

Step 1 in Calhoun & Tedeschi’s PTG model

Trauma shatters beliefs: Trauma disrupts core beliefs about the world, identity, safety, and control.

Step 2 in Calhoun & Tedeschi’s PTG model

Rumination: 2 types

• Intrusive rumination (automatic, distressing)

• deliberate rumination (purposeful meaning-making)

Step 3 in Calhoun & Tedeschi’s PTG model

Role of social support

• Helps emotional expression, belief reconstruction, and meaning-making.

Step 4 in Calhoun & Tedeschi’s PTG model

Reconstruction of beliefs

• Individuals rebuild worldview, find new meaning, and integrate trauma into their life narrative.

What types of people/personality characteristics are more likely to experience posttraumatic growth?

• open to experience

• curious

• open to novelty

• like to explore

• extroverted

• active in coping mechanisms

• have positive emotions

• adolescents and young adults

What is grief work?

cognitive process of confronting a loss, of going over the events before and at the time of death, of focusing on memories and working towards detachment from the deceased.

What is the grief work hypothesis?

one has to confront the experience of bereavement to come to terms with loss and avoid detrimental health outcomes.

Dual process model of coping with bereavement

The Dual Process Model says that people cope with grief by oscillating (moving back and forth) between two types of stressors: loss-oriented coping and restoration-oriented coping

Loss-oriented coping

Focuses directly on the grief and the person who died.
Includes:

• yearning, crying, remembering

• looking at photos

• thinking about the loss

• dealing with painful emotions

• talking about the loved one

This side is about confronting the loss.

Restoration-oriented coping

Focuses on rebuilding life and adapting to changes caused by the loss.
Includes:

• taking on new roles

• handling daily tasks

• solving practical problems

• making new routines

• engaging in life activities

• distracting oneself

This side is about adjusting and restoring functioning.

Oscillation

The most important part of the model:
People naturally switch back and forth between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping.

This oscillation:

• prevents emotional exhaustion

• allows periods of rest

• supports healthy long-term adjustment

• shows that grief is not linear

“Healthy Grieving”

What is disenfranchised grief and what are some examples?

A type of grief that is not socially recognized or supported.

• People who have lost ex-spouses

• People who are in dyadic relationships but not married (ex. engaged couples, long-term dating couples)

Categories of disenfranchised grief:

• When your relationship is not acknowledged (ex. ex-spouse)

• When you loss is not acknowledged (ex. divorce)

• The griever is not acknowledged (ex. someone very young or very old or has disability)