Quite a while ago, I attended a
meeting in Delaware in which the presenters were an entire family who had
undergone the severe depression and suicide attempt of the father years before.
They were to enlighten the audience about how they managed their journey
through father’s battle with mental illness. 

As a psychologist and family
therapist, I was astounded at their lack of insight about their own family
system. They were presenting their “ordeal with Dad” all over the country and
throughout the media supposedly to help other families gain an understanding
into the issues of mental health.

However, their own
understanding appeared to be limited by not seeing the broader family system
picture. Actually, the now late teen and early adult children seemed to have
more of a handle of how they affected one another than the parents had of how
they affected the children.

Mother related that, oh Dad’s
suicide attempt didn’t affect our son as much as the girls because he was such
a youngster and they were teenagers and so knew more of what was going on. A
little junction in the talk, son piped up that he himself had been hospitalized
for depression when he became a teenager. No connection was made that indeed
the youngest child of the family was affected by the tension and stress of the
father’s illness and loss of work, and that perhaps his own depression was a
delayed reaction to the quiet trauma he endured earlier in life.

We are too quick to reduce
events to innate biological factors than to the effect of the system and the
environment on our very genetics. (Epigenetics is the burgeoning field which
links how stressors in the environment, e.g., the family can effect gene
functions—these are not genetic mutations but more like an on/off switch for
certain mechanisms.)

The bottom line is that the
stress of the parents can have a direct stressful effect on the children.
Children are emotional barometers for the feeling states of parents. Nothing
needs to be spoken for the emotional transfer to occur. (The hot pot doesn’t
have to speak to the cold pot for the heat transfer to occur!)

Recently, the American
Psychological Association (APA) conducted the 2010 Stress In America survey.
The findings sound the warning that chronic stress can have a profound impact
on not only parents but also their children.

One-third of the parents
surveyed noted that they experienced extreme stress. The survey of the children’s
perception of their stress levels indicated that parents in general are
underestimating “both how much stress their children are experiencing as well
as the impact their own stress has on their children.” The APA survey’s
conclusion is that parental stress level has a far more reaching effect on the
children and teens of the family than many parents have assumed.

“Even though children know when
their parents are stressed and admit that it directly affects them, parents are
grossly underestimating the impact that their stress is having on their
children,” says psychologist Katherine C. Nordal, Ph.D., APA’s exectutive
director for professional practice. “It’s critical that parents communicate
with their children about how to identify stress triggers and manage stress in
healthy ways while they're young and still developing behavioral patterns. If
children don't learn these lessons early on, it could significantly impact
their physical health and emotional well-being down the road, especially as
they become adults.”

There are so many stressors in
our lives these days. If we’re fortunate to be working, there is the stress of
work. And for those who have lost their jobs, the stress is worse. Somehow
through all the stressors, parents can take heed that their stress reverberates
throughout the family system. This is not about blame but about
acknowledgment—so action can be taken to find ways to de-stress the family with
little or no cost:

Go for a family walk in a state
park (Ridley Creek, for example).

Turn off the TV and play
Scrabble or charades together.

Learn some form of meditation
and relaxation, guided imagery (kids love guided imagery)

Breathe!

Links for more information:

·
http://www.stressinamerica.org

·
http://www.APAhelpcenter.org

* Kayta
Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private
practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments atMindMatters@DrGajdos.com or (610)388-2888. Past columns are posted to
www.drgajdos.com.