Regardless of our definitions of family, kinship, bonding and attachment, this article places parenting at the centre of family support systems and aims to inspire implementation of ‘brain-based’ strategies to boost the effectiveness of this support.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Tolstoy, opening line of Anna Karenina, 1878
Parents, schools ‘passing buck’: more discipline needed.
Sproul-Mellis, on the ‘medicalisation of discipline issues’, The Courier Mail Feb 2023
Attachment and emotional regulation
The emotional climate of a family is often reflected in the development of a secure or insecure attachment style. Children tend to form secure attachments to caregivers who are responsive and nurturing, which leads to less emotional reactivity upon short separations.
Additionally, children learn through modelling and observation of parents’, siblings’, and others’ emotions and emotional regulation, and are guided in the development of their own emotional regulation through socialisation efforts and specific parenting behaviours in response to emotions.
Characteristics of family support systems which promote strong attachment security and emotional regulation include:
- Protection- providing safety, security, and consistent ‘back-up’.
- Nurturing- soothing and calming, modelling and promoting emotional self-regulation.
- Attunement- actively seeing, hearing, understanding, and recognising value.
- Reliability & consistency- promoting realistic expectations.
- Support and encouragement- helping members to rebound from disappointment and be resilient in the face of adversity.
- Novelty, play, and fun.
- Boundaries and structure.
Better living through neurobiology
We are socially ‘wired’ for survival, with our earliest interpersonal relationships activating the growth of those regions of the brain we use for relating lifelong, through emotional connections and reciprocal interactions. Additionally, our brains can activate in response to observing an action performed by another individual, so called ‘mirroring’.
By 12-18 months of age, although we are unaware of it, our brains have encoded ‘schemas’ (behavioural patterns and ‘rules’) based on our experiences of attachment to our caregivers.
Complicating things, there is significant overlap in the neurocircuitry (including the prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, and amygdala) and hormonal systems (cortisol, oxytocin) regulating social/relationship thought/emotion processing and threat/fear modulation.
To boil it down, neurobiological research indicates that if dysregulation is present in any day-to-day caregiver-child interaction (with back-and-forth triggering inescapable), then it is not a ‘teachable moment’, with attempts to explain or rationalise, doomed to fail.
Indeed, the neurobiological principle underpinning contemporary strategies to boost family support systems is that re-regulation must be achieved (‘cooling off’ or ‘time-out’ for the child, & ‘grounding’ exercises for the adult, depending on their ‘window of tolerance’) before they can be effectively taught/learned.
Fortunately, the human brain is neuroplastic, with an innate lifelong capacity to create/cull nerve cells and connections. All of us can all create new neural circuitry, pathways and networks that allow us to relate to others, moment by moment, in new, healthier, more resilient ways.
Tips to boost family support systems
Dealing with conflict: check for dysregulation
We all know the fight/flight/freeze/faint signs. Reacting immediately (eg doling out punishments) will rarely be processed and just escalate an already bad situation. One strategy involves 4 steps:
- Communicate Comfort: knowing behaviour is contagious, regulate your own first. Communicate comfort and make others feel safe.
- Validate: knowing that family members need to feel understood in order to calm down, validate their feelings (though not actions which break rules), by verbalising them.
- Listen: without jumping to conclusions, allow time for family members to fully express their thoughts and feelings.
- Reflect: when a family member tells you how they feel, repeat it back to them, remembering how powerful ‘mirroring’ is neurobiologically.
After you communicate comfort, validate feelings, listen and reflect, ask yourself one question: “Are they ready to hear, learn, and understand?” If not, repeat the steps.
Share appreciation
Show your family members that you care about them. If a family member does something impressive, at home or at work, let them know! It can be something as simple as thanking them for making you laugh or spending time with you. Make sure that you’re sincere.
Quality family time
Tried and trusted, this may consist of occasional family meal times, recreation time, and supporting each other’s interests. Decreasing distractions (eg turning off devices) decreases dysregulation.
Problem solving
Caregivers should model positive ways to handle life’s challenges and allow others’ some autonomy to solve their own problems. Of course, there are some times when you will need to intervene in a child’s challenges.
Individual accountability
All family members need to be held accountable: add an ‘assessment’ phase to any behavioural plan agreed upon, specify when this will occur, and ensure you follow up.
Healthy communication
The more you express your unwavering support for them with safe and direct communication, the more comfortable family members will be to come to you with their problems, concerns and triumphs.
- Embrace emotions: all feelings are permitted; all behaviour is not. Do not insist that another’s emotions be rational or make sense.
- Emphasise the positive: rather than state what is unacceptable, re-state what is acceptable in the future. Remember to express praise and admiration around positive behaviour.
- Reduce words: again, listening trumps lecturing. Resist the urge to overtalk as dysregulation inhibits working memory, leading to ‘tuning out’.
- Describe, don’t lecture: simply calling attention to the effects of another’s behaviour is less likely to trigger defensiveness.
- Creatively approach the situation: eg pretend to stumble and fall over objects not put away after use. Humour can diffuse or reboot a tense situation.
- Use dialogue: ask clarifying questions and for others’ solutions to how things might be handled better in the future.
- Reframe a “no” into a conditional “yes”: eg “yes, you can go on instrgram— after dinner.” A supportive yes statement, even when not permitting a behaviour, turns on the social engagement circuitry, making the brain receptive to what’s happening, making learning more likely, and promoting connections with others.
- Experiment with Mindfulness techniques: “What is my brain doing right now?” is a useful opening. Follow up with a reflection around how quickly our mind states change from one moment to the next. Brain studies reveal that we actually have two different circuits—an experiencing circuit and an observing circuit. They are different, but each is important, and integrating them means building both and then linking them. We want family members to not only feel their feelings and sense their sensations, but also to be able to notice how their body feels and to be able to witness their own emotions.
Setting boundaries
What are good family boundaries? Generally, boundaries can be thought of as either physical (don’t hit …) or emotional (stop blaming ..), however there is some overlap (privacy, ownership, belief/opinion/values etc).
In setting limits (thresholds for action), ensure consequences are defined as well.
Care of caregivers first
It is important that caregivers themselves feel supported and are well-regulated. When parents are overly distressed, they may find it difficult to effectively buffer their children’s stress biology. However, when parents themselves are well and feel relatively secure, they are more effective in managing the emotional reactions of others.
Seeking help: family therapy
The development of ‘family therapy’ formally began about 60 years ago and represented a significant paradigm shift in counselling and psychotherapy. Instead of a focus on individual distress, it focuses on ‘the space between’ people (connections, patterns, processes) in families. That is, the relationship becomes the ‘client’, rather than the individuals involved within it.
Being trained in both attachment theory and neuroscience, psychologists work collaboratively with families. They are able to vary attendance to maximise overall effect, investigating patterns and behaviours which promote and sustain symptoms/problems, and find creative solutions which draw upon inherent family strengths.
From extensive reviews, there is good evidence that seeking professional help is prudent in the following areas:
- A history of childhood trauma, abuse or neglect
- Conduct problems in childhood and adolescence, including oppositional behaviour
- Difficulties and problems with attention and overactivity
- Drug, food, or behavioural compulsions/addictions (including gaming and social media)
- Emotional disorders including anxiety, depression and grief
- Psychosomatic problems (physical manifestations of psychological disturbances)
An experienced family therapist can, according to the needs of each case, utilise a variety of evidence-based therapeutic approaches including:
- Cognitive-behavioural family therapy. CBFT was born as the family therapy correlate to cognitive behavioural therapy. That is, it integrates behaviourism and cognitive approaches and applies them to family systems. Because of its flexibility and continued evolution, CBFT is able to focus on a variety of problems, from promoting changes within individuals in families to altering family interaction styles.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a non-pathologising, evidence-based model of psychotherapy developed in the 1980s by Dr Richard Schwartz. The IFS model allows those employing it to understand the individual mind and larger human systems in novel ways.
- IFS-informed EMDR integrates the practice of EMDR with the IFS model to promote positive resourcing, cognitive interweaves, and the restoration of balance.
- Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) for families. EFT therapy addresses the attachment longings, injuries, and fears of members, and encourages honesty and vulnerability. It focuses on experiences ‘in the moment’, exploring dis/engagement, closeness-distance, intimacy and individuation in creating new family dynamics and support systems.
If you feel that you or someone you know would benefit from family therapy, please contact us for more information.
References
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O’Shea Brown, G. (2020). Internal Family Systems Informed Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. International Body Psychotherapy Journal The Art and Science of Somatic Praxis Volume 19, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2020/2021, pp. 112-122
Lan,J, Sher, T.G. (2019). Cognitive-Behavioral Family Therapy. Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, J. L. Lebow et al. (eds.). Springer Publishing.
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Clark, E., Jiao, Y. (2021). Neurobiological Implications of Parent–Child Emotional Availability: A Review. Brain Sci. 2021, 11, 1016.
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