We're ready to get started.
Okay.
So, welcome everybody for our this is our second, IPS Global Lecture Series.
We began in the fall just trying to build a little bit more of an online community and just giving exposure to people in the workplace in different settings.
So, I'm very, very excited to have doctor almost doctor Barbosa, Jessica Barbosa, speak with us tonight.
She is a marriage and family therapist in Austin, right, Austin, Texas.
And, I love I was looking at her website.
I think your private practice called Divine Mercy Counseling, which fits so very well with being at Divine Mercy University.
It's just a coincidence, but I love it.
She has done research in marriage and family work, especially looking at family resilience and grief, looking at families who are facing loss, who are facing, you know, hard times, and looking at meaning making and looking at processes to help strengthen the family overcome, this window of grief.
Right?
So, she will teach for us in spring two.
So if you are, choosing that elective, she'll teach our marriage and family systems course.
So we are very, very excited to have her, and I'm really looking forward to having you speak to us tonight about the topic that you're doing your research in.
So welcome.
Thank you, Julia.
Thank you, doctor Classley.
I'm glad to be here.
So excited.
You saw me get up.
I'm also very pregnant.
So if you, anyway, so I will do the best I can to not be fidgety, and she moves around a lot.
And, I'll try to to And it fits perfectly with the marriage and family track.
So wonderful.
Love it.
That's right.
Okay.
So I do have a couple of times where we will I'll ask a question.
So feel free to just kinda put your answers in the chat, and we'll, see how that goes.
Hopefully, that's a more engaging way to to present.
Alright.
Let me see.
I'm gonna share my screen.
I have a little bit of a presentation tonight just to help us follow along together.
And I like to use closed captioning, just for, you know, those who need it.
Okay.
So I know this will also be recorded, so I think closed captioning is helpful for those who are going to be watching the recording of this.
So as Doctor.
Closley mentioned, my name is Jessica Barbosa.
I am a marriage and family therapist licensed in the state of Texas.
And my research focuses a lot on how do we help families grow together in spaces of adversity and transitional phases of their, of their family life cycle.
And one of those transitional phases is, with the death of a family member and which brings up a lot of grief.
So that's what we're going to talk specifically about today.
So first, my big question to you guys is, when I say the word resilience, what does that mean to you?
So feel free to think about that for a minute and then put your answers in the chat.
So I do you want to maybe read out what's in the chat?
So what somebody's saying the ability to adapt.
Yes.
Growth.
Love it.
Yes.
Resilience means the ability to overcome, getting back up, inner strength, ability to persevere, to be able to bounce back from adversity, ability to bounce back from adversity or that twice.
Overcome adversity, ability to persevere through difficult situations.
Yeah.
Adjust with strength.
Very good.
So Yes.
Thank you, everybody.
Wonderful.
Oh, wonderful.
That's a lot of really great work.
Going.
There's one more.
Keeping going.
Love it.
Going.
Keeping going.
So some of us are talking about adapting, right, that that requires some, some change on our part.
Some of us are talking also about, maybe overcoming or withstanding, right, which means that we're kind of a force that faces adversity, and we try to kind of maintain what we already are.
So there's there's kind of resilience, is this as a concept.
We think about it as both a transformation, but also as, a staying stable.
Right?
It's a it's a stability and a transformation at the same time.
Right?
And especially when you think about individual resilience, I think so many of the words that you guys use tend to be what people say.
So it kind of created this little word cloud for us.
But a lot of these words are the same words that you guys use, withstanding, overcoming, facing challenges, adapting, a willingness to learn, perseverance.
So so when we talk about individual resilience, what are some of the barriers to this stability and transformation that we're trying to achieve as we face adversity?
What are some barriers to individual resilience?
This is also open ended, so feel free to put your answers in the chat.
And I will read again when it says traumatic memories is one area, fear of change, loss of security and control, personality, lack of personal skills and resources, not enough self awareness, unable to accept what happened.
Yes.
Lack of family support, fear, negativity, pessimism, lack of supportive relationships, compassion, fatigue.
Thank you, everybody.
Great answers.
Wow.
Those are all good answers.
I have a shorter list, which I hope, encompasses a lot of what you guys have said.
So one of the big ones that we found in individual resilience research is a low self efficacy, which means, a lack of confidence in my own abilities to control my behavior and control my circumstances.
And so I have a low self efficacy, a low confidence in my ability to, to regulate myself or to manage things.
The other one is an external locus of control, which is similar to low self efficacy, but a little bit different.
An external locus of control is that I believe that things happen to me, and I don't have much control over what happens.
I just kind of have to accept what is going on, and I tend to leave it up to fate.
Right?
So, again, a a a lower sense of control over my environment.
The next one is a lack of support resources.
So I might feel like I have an internal locus of control, and I'm confident that I could potentially, overcome difficult challenges, but I don't have the resources to do that.
I don't have the things at my disposal to manage those demands or those stressors that are coming at me.
And then the last one actually is having very rigid and strict boundaries.
So when we're in a space where we need to be, we need to be more flexible, we need to kind of open ourselves up to some change when we have really rigid and strict boundaries that keeps us from being flexible in the ways that we need to.
And so we might this might show up as kind of extreme independence, extreme, like, I don't need anybody.
Right?
I don't I'm not willing to accept help.
And so I become very closed off and isolated, within my rigid boundaries.
So those are often the a lot of the barriers that we think of when we think about individual resilience.
So, family resilience, we take all that we know about individual resilience, and we apply it to a system.
Right?
A system is is a whole entity in and of itself that's made up of individual parts.
And so when we talk about family resilience, what we're really talking about is the ability of the entire system to adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining or even growing its basic functions.
So, again, it's can can the family be stable enough to support the functions that it had before this event happened or before this transition?
So there needs to be some element of stability, but I also have to adapt.
I have to change, based on what's needed in the moment.
So I have to be open to transformation and change at the same time.
One of the, another way to say this, this is how I describe family resilience, is the ability to evolve in the face of adversity.
I'm willing to evolve, to meet the demands that are taking place or that they're taking shape, and regaining my ability to thrive.
Right?
Regaining my ability to not just, withstand this adversity, but to also grow in it, to learn from it, make changes as I see that I need to.
So the family can use current resources, or they might need to develop new resources to meet the added demands and stressors.
And one of our goals, from a therapeutic perspective is is to help people get to a place of positive adaptation.
So, helping them seek this transformation that then leads to this ability to thrive, regaining their ability to thrive.
So I don't want them to just, to be so stable and so rigid that they just wanna return back to where they were right before this event happened.
They have to adapt a little bit.
They have to be willing to change and be flexible a little bit.
And so I want them to maybe, imagine at least that there could be a better way to even be more connected, as a result of this experience.
So when we talk about grief in particular well, I guess, let's pause.
If we're trying to maintain the basic functions of the family, we first need to know what those basic functions are.
So, let's chat a little bit about this.
What do you guys think the basic functions of the family are that we need to maintain, that we need to have some stability in, we're trying to get back to?
Your first answer is communication.
Somebody put in the chat.
Okay.
So everybody feel free to, sharing and openness.
Trust.
To love and support while respecting each other's boundaries.
Love and support, provide safety and support for each other.
Yes.
Formation of children, secure attachment relationships, listening, safety and support, support and collaboration, nurturing, trusting relationships, compassion.
Wonderful.
Good.
So these are the things these are the things that we want to make sure that the family, can still do.
Right?
It's still maintaining these functions.
So there's actually four basic functions of the family, and I think they encompass what you guys have all mentioned.
But the first one is membership and family formation.
And this benefits the individual, each individual member, because it provides a sense of belonging for them.
It provides personal and social identity.
So there's identity development that happens through membership.
And it provides meaning and direction for life.
We're gonna talk about that one in in more detail as we continue in the presentation.
But that's a really important, function of the family to provide meaning and direction for life.
The second is economic support.
So the family, provides the basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing, other resources that help enhance human development.
We need the family to do that.
Then we have, nurturance, education, and socialization.
So that is the physical, psychological, and social spiritual development of both children and adults.
But this is a space for for them to learn, for them to be nurtured, for them to feel like they can fulfill a vocational role and need.
And it instills social values and norms.
And finally, there's a protection of vulnerable members.
So this is the safety, maybe piece.
So it provides protective care and support for the young, the ill, or the disabled, or anything anyone who's vulnerable.
So we need to have safety.
Yeah.
And so these functions of the family as we, understand resilience and we under we look for when an event happens that's particularly an adverse event, we're looking for how well the family is able to maintain these things.
Are these things still going on?
If a family is not able to support these demands, they might need to develop some new resources.
Right?
They might need to tap into resources they haven't used before, or they have but haven't used in a long time or or just aren't as familiar with.
So we also wanna see if the family is able to, I guess, if any of these demands were not met prior to the event, we wanna help the family, engage more in some of these functions.
So we want them to transform throughout this process as well.
So specifically when we talk about a death in the family, and I know grief can mean a lot of different things.
So grief pertains to a lot of different adverse events.
We can experience grief really in any transition of our life.
There's an element of grief.
And but today, I'm gonna talk specifically about the transition after the death of a family member and the grief that comes with that.
So what family functions, those that I just mentioned, membership, the economic support, the nurturance, and the protection of vulnerable members, which of those do you feel like are threatened by the death of a family member?
Feel free to put your thoughts on all of them, somebody says.
Possibly all of them.
Economic support, all of them.
Nerd surrends.
Yeah.
Okay.
So a lot of us a lot of us are in agreement as possibly all of them.
Right?
So let's let's explore that a little bit more about what, how could grief impact someone's ability to feel a sense of membership?
Right?
A sense of belonging and their purpose in life.
If you want wanna feel free to put a thought in the chat if you'd like to give a thought.
This is somewhat of a deeper question to answer, so, I know that it might take a few minutes to write it out.
So here's one role change, loss of husband, off oops.
Woah.
No.
It's coming too.
Sorry.
For a mom, the death of her child, not sure her purpose anymore.
Yeah.
Disrupt, losing the role in the family affecting other members.
Mom is the soul of the family.
If she is missing, people could feel the identity is lost.
Mhmm.
Then we have disrupts the identity and cohesion of the group because one concern, another change could come without warning.
Especially if it is a parent, you may think your family won't be the same.
Can repeat oh, can you repeat the question?
This one.
It's Sean, I wonder if anyone they love can die.
Yes.
Yeah.
It introduces some unknowns.
It's there's a there's a lot of role shifts that happen after the death of a family member.
As people try to take on new roles, they might transition or reposition attachment needs, within the family.
And so it kind of leaves everybody, a little bit in a state of limbo in terms of what my role is and how do I fulfill that purpose.
So economic support, I think I'll I'll explain for us, right, it impacts that family function.
The death of the family member impacts that family function because there could be a lot of financial burden that's placed on the family after the death of a loved one, and they don't have a lot of economic support to be able to support to be able to, maintain those stressors and those demands.
Then we have the nurturance piece.
So, if there was particularly a family member that was lost that didn't that was in charge of more nurturing.
So let's say mom died.
That role goes with it.
Maybe some some difficulties, in in maintaining the nurturance and education.
You also have, I think, difficulties with kind of the stigma around grief and loss and what's the social norms of that.
And so parents spend a lot of time maybe talking about or family members maybe spend a lot of time talking about how to grieve and what's appropriate way to grieve and how not to grieve and what does depression look like in grief and all of that.
And so we teach people how to how how to grieve, right, how to cry, how to how to live, how to, exist after someone has died.
And then we have the final one, which is, the the protection of vulnerable members.
That one's a little different, but maybe there's, if if a parent dies, there's less safety in the family, and and less ability to support those vulnerable members like children.
If a caretaker dies, so even if it wasn't someone who let's say, a child dies, but the child was was older and they were responsible for taking care of the parents, there that caretaking relationship, there might not be anymore.
So how do we protect a vulnerable parent who maybe has an illness or something?
It would be the challenge.
Okay.
So it potentially can affect all of these family functions, which is why grief can be and and the death of a family member can be really challenging for families as they're trying to, maintain this stability but also transform their family functions.
They have a hard time doing that because grief impacts every single one of those.
So how does the family adapt?
How can the family adapt, as as all of their functions are being affected?
So we have these three synergistic processes of adaptation is what we call them.
They're synergistic, because they all work together.
There's not one that's more important than the other in terms of helping the family adapt.
The family needs a combination of all three of these, really, to meet the demands of of their additional stressors, right, in order to maintain their family functions.
They might need some combination of all three of these as they adapt.
So we're gonna go into them more detail, but it's shared belief systems, organizational processes, and communication and problem solving.
So one way that the family could meet their added demands and try to be more functional is if they, make meaning of the adverse event.
So they're able to find some purpose for the adverse event, and they can integrate that purpose into, you know, their family narrative, kind of their family story, that's a really big way that they can then reestablish purpose for themselves, but also reestablish maybe their what it means now that this person is no longer there.
So it helps them reestablish roles, as they make meaning of what of what happened.
It helps them reposition those rules.
Then we have if they're able to adopt a more positive outlook on their experience, it goes hand in hand with meaning making.
But, it's not just about, you know, being positive.
Everything is good.
You know, we wanted this person to die.
Right?
That's that's not the positivity we're talking about.
We're talking about, that there's some benefit to this experience for me.
That's the positivity we're talking about.
There is some there's something I can glean from this.
There's a there's a, again, a purpose or a meaning to it in my life.
That's what we mean when we say positive outlook, that we're able to find some benefit.
And we're able to use that maybe to support other people, in some way.
And then there's this ability to be transcendent and spiritual to use those, those skills, those resources to help us make meaning about our experience.
And that it takes the experience out of a problem that we're going through together and turns it into something bigger than us, bigger than me, bigger than my family.
Right?
This is part of something greater.
And our ability to to see that, to transcend our problems, all of these three, making making making meaning, having a positive outlook, transcendence, what it does is it helps to minimize the, I guess, the weight of the problem.
It helps make the problem feel less heavy.
Right?
If I can find meaning in it, then the burden of carrying this adversity, the burden of meeting these demands are not so bad.
So that's one, adaptive process that might be going on in the family system that they're using to try to, main regain their function, regain their ability to thrive.
Another process of adaptation they might use is their organizational process.
And that means that they might, restructure, the family.
So boundaries might be really, open and fluid during times of transition, and that's okay.
That might make certain family members really uncomfortable, but they actually need that flexibility.
They need things to be a little bit more flexible because they're transitioning into new roles and because we're trying to figure out, what that's going to look like and what feels comfortable for us.
So for a while, there there might actually be really flexible boundaries, and that's alright.
There might also be different levels of connectedness.
So sometimes in families, we actually see that, that especially with grief, they tend to process separately.
So there's actually less connectedness, but, in their own way, they're allowing themselves to be, to kind of process things and filter through what's a personal experience of their grief.
So connectedness might look very different, in this transitional phase than what what it had looked like before.
And we don't, even though we might interpret them not talking about their grief as being not connected, giving each other space might be the way that they're trying to connect with each other.
It might be a form of connection.
So it's okay for us to interpret it that way.
And then they might also be reaching out to other support resources, social and economic resources as they need to.
So how open is the family in accepting help and reaching out to people who could support them?
Again, that requires pretty flexible boundaries, external boundaries.
With their church communities, friends, other extended family members, how flexible is the family in reaching out for help?
And then we have communication and problem solving.
So, even in their ability to feel connected, is there an ability to communicate about certain things?
And who is doing the communication?
And how is communication run-in the family system?
So are people clear about what they need, and where the problems are and what the demands are?
Is there any level of emotional sharings even if it's not something that I say or talk about?
You know, am I willing to let people know that I am feeling sad?
Do I cry in front of my children or my family members?
What would it be like for me to include them in that?
Do I show them my anger?
Who's allowed into that process?
And then we have collaborative problem solving.
So who's involved?
Who in the family, makes decisions?
And how is that distributed?
How do they decide who makes decisions in the family?
And and who's who's involved in this process of transformation?
Typically, if people are left out of that process, they tend to do worse, Even children.
So if children are left out of some of the decision making process, they tend to do not as well.
Alright.
So, again, all of these are related.
Right?
We have to communicate in order to make meaning.
We have to share some of our emotions in order to, feel a sense of connectedness.
We have to have a sense of flexibility in order to problem solve.
Right?
So all of these processes are connected.
So we wanna look at the whole all of the processes together when we talk about family resilience and how the family is adapting, how the family is coping.
So my question is, we talked about individual resilience, so you talked about family resilience.
So do we think that family resilience supports individual resilience?
So as the family is able to be more resilient in facing this transition, do we think that that impacts individual resilience?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Yes.
For sure.
Yes.
But not always.
Okay.
Yes.
So it's possible maybe that individuals could be resilient even when their family is not.
Mhmm.
What do we think about that?
Is that possible that individuals could be resilient even when their family is not?
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Alright.
So, that's the question that I asked was in bereavement and grief, does family resilience impact how well an individual is going to cope with their with the death of a family member?
So as the family becomes more resilient or less resilient, does that impact how the individual is going to be, or is it related at all?
We did find out.
This is a very complicated graphics.
I won't go into too much detail about it.
But, basically, what we looked at this is this is family resilience.
So we looked at the three processes, and then we, again, said that, well, we can't look at them individually.
We have to look at them as a whole.
And that's what is family what we called family resilience.
And then we said, I think that family resilience is actually going to impact individual coping.
So this on this side was individual coping.
We measured PTSD scores after the loss, after the death of a family member, their depression scores, and then prolonged grief scores.
And so we said, this is usually what symptoms look like for bereaved people.
Some combination of this.
They might have PTSD symptoms.
They might have depression symptoms, and they might have what we call prolonged grief symptoms.
And so higher scores for PTSD, depression, and prolonged grief would mean that this person, isn't as resilient.
Right?
They're not coping as well.
And we thought, well, I really think that family resilience is going to impact individual coping and symptoms through meaning.
Because as we what we know in bereavement literature is that meaning really, is that has the greatest impact on individual coping after loss.
It's someone's ability to find purpose for themselves again.
That I feel a sense of purpose for my life.
And so we thought, okay.
If people are able if the family is able to make meaning through shared beliefs, but they're also able to do all these other things.
And it's likely that the individual is able to make meaning as well, and then that is what's going to impact your coping.
So that's just a little bit about this graphic so you know what you're looking at.
So we did find that overall, family resilience had, was significantly related to lower individual grief symptoms.
So overall, family resilience does have an impact on some level.
Right?
They're related at least.
We don't know which direction.
We know that family resilience might have an impact on individual symptoms, but we also might it could be the case that individual symptoms have an impact on family resilience.
But we know that at least they are related.
And we learned that these processes of adaptation are positively related to someone's ability to make meaning out of their loss experience.
So, the family's ability to be resilient or the family's resilience does impact in a positive way, how an individual makes me makes personal meaning out of their experience.
So it does impact their own personal purpose that they find in life again, Which, again, none of this is surprising.
It's cool, but maybe it's not surprising.
Right?
Because because that is a part of the family function.
If the family is able to be more resilient, they're sharing their beliefs with one another.
It's likely that that family function of membership in a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose for one's life is going to be impacted.
And then we also learned that specifically shared beliefs, when it comes to bereavement, when it comes to grieving the loss of a family member, that shared beliefs oops.
Sorry.
Where did I go?
Shared beliefs had the greatest impact overall on all of this, on meaning that's made, on even on family resilience overall and on individual coping.
So shared beliefs seem to have the biggest weight in terms of its impact.
So even accounting for these other ones, shared beliefs tended to have more weight.
So what that means, I guess sorry.
I went too fast.
What that means for us is that as we try to help families develop more resilience, we might wanna focus on how are they making meaning out of their experience together.
What does it look like to co construct meaning in the family?
And that's kind of where my research is going now.
So how do we help families create these shared beliefs, help them tap into that development developing that resource for themselves?
Because that tends to have, the greatest weight.
How can we help them find purpose and benefit, and integrate that into their understanding of the loss overall?
So one way that we've, thought about doing that is helping families create what we call the family resilience tree.
And this really taps into the meaning that they have about their experience.
And so we have families imagine this tree or draw it out, and then we define each of the parts of the tree.
So what supports and nourishes your family?
Could be it could be economic resources.
It could be tangible things.
Also, it could be intangible things.
What events, positive or negative, have shaped your family?
And then spring from that, what meaning was made from those events?
So what did that event mean to you?
How did you guys, what did you learn from that experience as a family?
And then the leaves are, what are you hoping that positive outlook?
What are you hoping or hopeful for as a family moving forward?
What does it even look like to move forward?
Can you even imagine or hope in something for the future?
And so hopefully, by doing this, what we're what we're doing is we're tapping into the family's ability to make meaning and co construct meaning together.
So what does this mean for us overall?
K.
I see that there are some questions in the chat.
So, so, yeah, I'm open to questions, comments.
Yeah.
There are two comments.
One was the thought this would be wonderful for a pre Cana.
Discussion, more meetings, and then just summarizing loving the family tree.
Yeah.
Good.
Good then.
Alright.
Well, let's, let's see how much we have about ten minutes or so for questions.
So, yeah, any questions that you guys have about family resilience or grief They're just questions for me.
Feel free to put your questions in the chat.
Marie, thank you so much for sharing your research work, and you're wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
So if you wanna ask questions about interventions or research in general or go deeper in how to build resiliency in the family, which is you can put your questions in the chat.
Sure.
While we're waiting for questions, I have actually a question for you.
Wondering what your thoughts are.
So, of course, there's a death in the family is one way of grieving.
What if a spouse leaves in divorce?
Does it affect the grieving process, how you work with those families?
I mean, there's some similarities, but then the, you know, the the other parent is still somewhere around.
So Yeah.
What's your thought?
There's definitely I mean, there's definitely still a transition of roles that's happening.
And and it's interesting because now we have, we're still a family, and so but we're also maybe two families.
Right?
And so there might be an experience where we make meaning about it within with mom, and then we make meaning about it with dad, and those meanings might be similar, and those meanings might be different.
And actually, that's okay for children experiencing divorce.
That's okay that their meanings are different, but that that there's still a level that both entities have to adapt.
Right?
I have to adapt with mom, and I'm adapting with dad, and my relationship with them is changing.
And then my and then the spousal relationship changes.
And so what does that look like?
How does that relationship shift and change?
So there there tends to need to be a lot of flexibility, but what happens often in divorce is that people become really rigid.
So so a lot of, a lot of the focus, I think, is sometimes on meaning making, but I think in divorce especially, there's more of a focus on the organizational aspect of adaptation.
So how do we, be more flexible while remaining connected with our boundaries, and what does that look like?
So I tend I wonder if maybe there's there's more of a focus on that, when it comes to divorce versus the meaning of it all.
Yeah.
Thank you.
So first question, what are some places to find resiliency activities?
Oh, that's a good question.
Honestly, there's not a ton.
There's a lot for for individuals.
So there's, you know, positive psychology talks a lot about helping with individual resilience.
There's therapist aide.
It does a lot of positive psychology, activities and work.
But when it comes to family resilience, there's not a lot of resources out there.
So I think that could be a really beautiful thing for us to grow.
Thank you.
Next one, are the first six months after someone's passing particularly important in grieving?
Are the first six months?
Yes and no.
So so the grief process lasts a lifetime.
We you know, and the meaning that we make out of our grief lasts forever as well.
So, I think sometimes we tend to focus on, you know, the first six months or even the first year and what does that mean and for coping and all of this.
But sometimes people aren't even able to make meaning out of anything for a year, two years, three years down the road, because they're just in shock.
Right?
They just don't know.
They're just trying to process the actual loss event itself and not so much, what does this mean for me.
Right?
And where's my purpose?
It's more just like, why did this happen?
And so so it depends.
I think for some people, the the first six months maybe has an impact overall, but, honestly, the grief process is so long.
We don't wanna, I guess, we don't wanna be nervous that if someone is not coping well in the first six months, that they're not going to be resilient later on.
They will be or they can be.
There's a potential still for them to be resilient later on.
Question.
How can you assist a member of the family who is not just coping at all, who is not, yeah, coping at all after the death of the father of the home?
At the after the death of the father of the home.
You know, maybe I would try to understand, for me, why they're not coping as well?
What is have they made meaning out of the experience?
Are they able to find any sort of, purpose for their life?
What does that look like for them?
So I just I'd wanna do more assessment.
Right?
What is what is, how did they cope before?
What's different now?
Just trying to understand where they're coming from and what seems to be the hardest, what's the hardest thing for them?
So so that would be my my curiosity.
And then a couple of questions about summary of the presentation on the DMU page, or will the recording be available?
And, yes, it will be.
If you're currently a student, there will be, the recording will be posted in all the classes currently, but it will also be sent out by the DMU communications.
So if you're on this mailing list, so you're here, you should receive the recording.
Have you seen children who are resilient and parents who are less so?
Yes.
I think I think children, tend to be more resilient than most of us because they they're tend to be more flexible, and they tend to adapt better to things because they don't have this need to maintain their less I guess their role in the system also plays an important factor in their resilience.
So when they have, children tend to have less of a, hopefully, caretaking role and less of all these other things, and they have less they attach less meaning to their role in the family.
And so when that role shifts or it changes, they tend to do better.
They're like that.
They're okay with that.
Whereas parents maybe have a harder time adjusting to new roles because there's a lot more meaning attached to their roles and, all of that.
So so, yes, that's very possible.
And so it says, they recently had two death in the family, a 90 year old father and a 60 year old son.
How would this impact the rest of the siblings and some of the geographically separated siblings?
Ah, yeah.
You know, I think it's hard, because families are becoming more geographically separated.
Just overall, we're seeing that trend in families.
And so so with that said, I also think people have found other ways to connect.
There's a lot.
I think technology has been helpful in that sense that people are finding lots more ways to connect with one another and feel close to one another.
And so, again, connection doesn't always have to be around the grief or around the event, but they might establish connection in other ways.
Like, I was actually just talking with a couple about this recently, but finding connection just in, like, being interested in each other's hobbies, something along those lines.
Finding a way to, to show to show that I'm here and that I care about you and that, you're still a member of this family, I think, is important when when especially a, I think, like, the like, a head of a household or the or kind of the caretaker of the household, like, when a when a grandmother dies or something like that, there still has to be something that, maybe connects us.
And so showing more interest in hobbies, activities, people's lives, and what they're doing, even simple things like, liking their things on Facebook, right, or commenting something.
That can be sometimes a great way to connect with each other.
One question.
What effects would it have when there is not enough flexibility with rules and demandingness during a time of grief?
Yeah.
I mean, it's hard to say the exact effect it's going to have.
Right?
Because it it might have lots of different effects on on the different people in the family, but we tend to see that that that does make things worse, for for all family members involved when there's a lot of rigidity in our boundaries and in our rules.
So it tends to make people feel like they, they can't be themselves.
They can't kind of explore new ways to thrive.
And so less flexibility in the family means less flexibility internally for myself.
And so then I I might not, I might feel like I have to meet expectations that I can't meet, that I can't do.
Then next question.
What do you find most helpful in restoring self efficacy if it has not been promoted in childhood?
That's a wonderful question.
I might have to think more about that because I think there's tons and tons of research about about that, of how how to support self efficacy.
But, I guess my initial reaction is inviting people to recognize where they have control and where they maybe don't have as much control.
And sometimes, you know, I think the serenity prayer is beautiful for that, but but helping people kind of sit and reflect on where where actually do I have some control over my life?
What would that look like for me?
What would it be like for me to engage in a little bit more control over my life?
And doing that in small ways.
Even even sometimes they're already doing it.
And so just pointing that out to them and validating that over and over and over again, I think the from a therapeutic perspective, the therapeutic relationship can be incredibly healing.
And so if you maybe provide that support, that encouragement when they're naturally doing things that are that are good and managing their own behaviors, then I think that that helps build that self confidence.
Like, oh, I can do this.
I'm already doing that.
Right.
Then how can family resiliency be built with older teens and college age children if it wasn't realized as a needed priority when the kids were younger until either grandparents start becoming sick or dying or a tragedy hits?
Just piggybacks a little bit on your last.
Sure.
So how do we build I think family resilience is not tied to any specific stage of life because, because resilience really isn't tied to any specific stage of our life.
It can be built in any one of our stages, any any stage of life.
And that's that's the beauty of resilience, I think, is that that just because we weren't resilient or we didn't have as much resilience in one phase of our life doesn't mean that we're gonna have less resilience in another phase.
And we can, we can be flexible regardless.
So so I guess I'm maybe not as concerned about that.
If they don't have resilience at one point and it comes later, then I think that's fine.
As long as at some point, we're we're building those skills and, allowing ourselves to be open to change.
Right.
The next question, what if you feel that this death in the family has not had any meaning to you?
Meaning, like, the death has no reason.
Yeah.
So meaning making is a multifaceted process, and I didn't feel like we had enough time today to go into it into it too much.
But a part of meaning making is about finding reason for the loss and finding purpose for the loss.
But, really, it starts with it starts with making sense of what happened.
Right?
Making sense of, like, what was actually going on in the last event.
How am I wrapping my head around?
Why this happened?
And what happened exactly?
And so my ability to do that then helps me start to recognize that, yeah, what what maybe if there is a purpose for it or all of these things.
So, so I think if people are resistant to the finding purpose or finding benefit in it, I think it's also because there's likely a lot of, feelings like I don't this person shouldn't have had to die in order for me to experience this meaning.
Right?
And so maybe reiterating that to them and say, you know, this just because you develop meaning about the loss doesn't mean that that you're justifying what happened.
I think sometimes making meaning feels like we're justifying it, and that's not what we're doing.
We're not saying, oh, this had to happen or that this was a good thing that happened or just trying to understand what what it could how it could impact our life.
How do we want it to impact my life?
And so that's maybe a question I would ask is, how do you want this loss to impact your life?
How do you see it impacting your life rather than, you know, is it a good thing?
Yeah.
Thank you.
And last was just a comment on similarities to maybe third culture kids and cultural transitions as, like, military families, foreign services.
So, finding some parallel, you know, situations there.
Absolutely.
I think we can look at, even the immigrant experience and how that transition requires a ton of resilience Mhmm.
Adaptation.
Thank you so very much.
That's what my what's the last question.
And, Thank you.
So grateful that you come speak with us and, of course, even more grateful that you'll be teaching for us, in spring two.
We are very excited to have you teach the marriage and family systems class in spring two.
And, our first year having a concentration.
So so wonderful presentation and so much more.
Whenever you have a presentation, right, there's always so much more.
And I'm so looking forward to reading your work when, you know, as publications come out and having you share in class.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was it was a joy to put together, and I'm looking forward to to teaching and getting to know some of you more.
So thank you for attending today.
I I was really, really grateful for your feedback and your thoughts and your comments as we presented.
So thank you.
Thank you so much.
Have a good night, everybody.
Good to have everybody.
Good night.
Bye bye.