Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T14:27:44.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

22 - What supports resilient coping among family members? A systemic practitioner's perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2022

Jane Ribbens McCarthy
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
Val Gillies
Affiliation:
University of Westminster
Get access

Summary

Introduction: learning from practice, linking to theory

What helps family members develop shared, supportive and constructive ways of responding to life events, both expected and unexpected? This chapter will explore how their relational and social context supports the development of resilient coping in a family/kin group. Individual definitions of resilience speak of the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity and overcome life challenges (Rutter, 1999). Joseph and Linley (2008) write of the potential we as individuals hold for post-traumatic growth. Resilience is not about invulnerability or untested capacity to cope. Interestingly, much of the research on the development of individual resilience posits the importance of others, as sources of support and esteem, or the importance of other activities and contexts that support competence, again often involving others (Rutter, 1999). In my therapeutic practice, I am keen to identify and strengthen key interactional processes that support resourcefulness in the couple or family group, in the face of trials, tribulations and too much uncertainty (Smith, 1999). Thus, for me, resilience becomes a concept of ‘within and between’ – the formulation of a set of hypotheses both about what supports resilient coping in individuals and what leads to a shared set of beliefs about, and practices of, resilient coping in the family group. Families will be defined here either as the resident household group, which may span a number of generations, with legal, birth and/or psychological ties, and/or as the ‘problem-determined system’, that is, that group of people with intimate emotional connections organised around particular psychological dilemmas and problems in living. This sometimes includes non-resident members, such as life partners and ex-spouses, and the boundaries may change over time.

To put my thinking about family resilience into context, I am a clinical psychologist and a systemic family psychotherapist and for the past 16 years, I have co-directed a domestic violence project where we work therapeutically with both victims and perpetrators of violence, in all its forms, within any family relationship, for example, siblings, parents and children (of any age), couples, older people and their carers, and so on (Cooper and Vetere, 2005).

Type
Chapter
Information
Family Troubles?
Exploring Changes and Challenges in the Family Lives of Children and Young People
, pp. 279 - 290
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×