Home
>
Stress Management
>
5 Stepst to Stress-Guard Your Family

5 Stepst to Stress-Guard Your Family

Part 1: Recognize the importance of family stress management

Joe and Emily live in Southern California with their three young children. Both work and must commute 2 hours daily on busy freeways, often not getting home until 7:30 PM, exhausted and depleted.

Stressed, they have little patience for the antics of their young children. This results in frequent shouting matches, defiance on the part of the children, and escalating family tension.

As the above illustrates, stress is often an underlying cause of anger in family members. Sometimes the stress is caused by events outside of the family which family members bring into the home. In other cases, the behavior of family members creates stress and tension in the home. In either case, it becomes a problem when parents find themselves constantly yelling at their children or disagreeing with each other on parenting strategies.

In the meantime their children continue to do what they please-or continue bickering and fighting with each other. When not addressed, stress becomes a major factor in marital unhappiness and, ultimately, divorce.

Stress and family members Joe and Emily both suffered individual stress symptoms. These included fatigue, irritability, angry outbursts, headaches and a discontent with their lives. They began feeling increasingly distant from each other.

Their children were also stressed-out; tired, irritable, cranky, and demanding of attention. They often fought with each other and deliberately did things to get each other in trouble with their parents.

Symptoms of family stress

Just as individuals can become overloaded and stressed-out, so can families. To understand how this can happen, we must remember that families such as Joe and Emily's are the basic building block of our society (like most societies).

Part 2: How empathy reduces family anger

Families consist of two or more people with shared goals and values and with a long term commitment to each other. Families are supposed to help children learn how to become responsible, successful, happy, and well-adjusted adults. When this no longer happens due to stress, the family unit becomes dysfunctional -as the family no longer serves its purpose fully, easily or consistently.

Individual isolation

We can recognize the dysfunctional family by noting that parents and children no longer turn to each other for support, encouragement, guidance, or even love. Such family members may continue to live in the same house-but not feel emotionally attached to each other. They fail to view their family as a warm place to retreat to from the stresses and demands of the outside world.

Stress-Guard your family

Tip #1- Teach your children "resiliency" -the ability to handle stress and respond more positively to difficult events. Help your children practice "bouncing back" by emphasizing the importance of having friends and being a friend; setting new goals and plans to reach them, and believing in themselves.

Tip #2? Commit to stable family rituals.

Have a way to leave each other in the morning, and to re-connect in the evening; have a Sunday morning ritual or a Friday night family pizza ritual. Rituals create a sense of security and predictability -both excellent stress buffers.

Tip #3- Model and teach your children conflict resolution skills.

Children learn how to handle conflict by watching their parents. All couples have conflicts; better parents model good conflict resolution skills for their children. These skills include compromise, calm discussion, and focus on problem-solving. Encourage your children to find a way to resolve their own conflicts rather than jumping in and punishing one or the other child whom you think (perhaps, wrongly) is the troublemaker.

Tip #4? Introduce a family "better health" plan.

This includes proper nutrition, exercise, and adequate sleep each night. The family may also want to look at time management-and explore how how better time management might reduce both personal and family stress.

Tip #5- Minimize criticism and take time to support each other each day.

Excessive criticism is extremely harmful to both children and parents. Emotional support by family members is an extremely important buffer to family stress.

Dr. Tony Fiore is a So. California licensed psychologist, and anger management trainer. His company, The Anger Coach, provides anger and stress management programs, training and products to individuals, couples, and the workplace. Sign up for his free monthly newsletter "Taming The Anger Bee" at http://www.angercoach.com and receive two bonus reports.

elite cleaning services Lake Forest ...

In The News:

Uber teen accounts now feature live video streaming from the driver's camera, but encrypted recordings stay on Uber's servers for up to 14 days.

Router firewalls and software firewalls serve different roles in protecting your home Wi-Fi from unwanted traffic and suspicious connections.

A Chrome extension with 70,000 users and a 4.7-star rating began injecting fake update warnings after a threat actor acquired and weaponized it.

Amazon's Alexa+ rolls out free to Fire TV devices across the U.S., but hands-free microphones and stored voice data raise key privacy questions.

Meta's new teen accounts settlement sets a default two-hour daily limit on Instagram and Facebook, plus night mode and school mode restrictions.

The CareCloud data breach exposed Social Security numbers, banking information and medical records belonging to more than 3.75 million people.

Waymo reveals its custom 5-nanometer chip and dual computing systems designed to take over instantly if the robotaxi's primary computer fails.

Identity theft now includes account takeover, phone hijacking and payment card exposure. Here's what to look for in identity theft protection services.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

The FBI and Justice Department seized domains tied to QScan and QTRouter, tools allegedly used by China-linked hackers to breach NASA and other agencies.

Uber Eats drone delivery launches later this year through a Zipline partnership, starting in Dallas and Houston with a goal of one million daily flights.

Medicare Open Enrollment scams start with data broker targeting months before October. Learn why August is the time to remove your personal info.

The World Humanoid Robot Games' crashes show how far the technology still needs to go to be useful, "Survivor" reality TV star and robotics scientist Christian Hubicki says.

X-Humanoid's TianGong Ultra ran 100 meters in 9.32 seconds at Beijing's World Humanoid Robot Games, beating last year's winner by more than half.

A tap-to-pay charity scam is turning small $15 or $20 donations into charges of nearly $5,000, with victims losing thousands before they notice.

Kurt Knutsson shares seven emergency preparedness lessons from surviving Hurricane Katrina inside a New Orleans hotel as conditions turned desperate.

A contractor stored credentials in a Google Doc set to "Anyone with the link," and Google Search autocomplete eventually surfaced the password string.

New Orleans 911 uses Carbyne AI to triage repeat auto crash calls, but strict limits keep human call-takers in control of all other emergencies.

A single card skimmer can generate $1 million in stolen funds, and Secret Service video shows criminals installing them in under two seconds.

ChatGPT, Meta AI and Google now use memory, connected apps and past chats to personalize ads and responses in ways most users overlook today.

MagicalAuth by Glide.id uses cryptographic SIM credentials to verify bank logins without sending SMS OTP codes that scammers can intercept or phish.

A humanoid robot named Lightning Bolt ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, edging Usain Bolt's record.

An AI agent using Claude AI canceled another person's gym booking after finding a security flaw in the reservation system's authorization checks.

Trump signed a memorandum allowing vetted private U.S. companies to conduct cyber operations against foreign criminal organizations under oversight.

Your Social Security number appeared in a breach, but exposure and identity theft are not the same. Here's how identity restoration actually works.

5 Stepst to Stress-Guard Your Family

Stress Management