Building a Family Resilience Plan: Strategies to Strengthen Bonds & Overcome Challenges

Stephanie Dasher
Dec 4, 2024
3 min read

Creating a resilient family is about fostering strong connections, open communication, and healthy coping strategies to navigate life's challenges. Here's how any family can start building a Family Resilience Plan to enhance well-being, build family resilience, strengthen bonds, and overcome challenges.

Family Goals

Family goals are objectives developed by soliciting feedback from all family members and devising goals that serve the entire family unit rather than any individual.

Strengthen Communication & Bonds: Objective: Create a nonjudgmental communication environment. Non-judgemental communication involves respectful communication and strengthens bonds between family members.

Regular family meetings to discuss successes and challenges (focus on positives).
Using "I" statements and positive language.
Agreeing to let everyone finish speaking- no interruptions.
Agreeing to take responsibility for your words and behaviors.
Listening to understand rather than respond.
Father and Son fishing

Build Emotional Support Objective: Cultivate a supportive atmosphere.

Weekly activities like surfing, hiking, fishing, movie nights, and family dinners.
Sharing affirmations to reinforce bonds.
Ensure each family member understands what makes other family members feel seen and heard. Encourage members to pratice showing up for each other in that way.

Foster Resilience Objective: Equip family members with tools to manage adversity.

Collaborative problem-solving through games and projects.
Engaging in yoga, mindfulness, and physical activities like jiu-jitsu, hiking, water sports, etc.
Understand that resilience is a function of the systems in which we live (bodily, family, social, community, etc) and not something that is simply innate in individuals.
Offer opportunities for resilience building in the Goldilocks zone (neither too difficult nor too easy).

Connection Activities

Daily: Family dinners without devices. Weekly: Outdoor activities, jiu-jitsu, karate, snowboarding, hiking, and game nights.

Monthly: One-on-one outings between parents and children, plus a dedicated parents' night.

Communication Practices

Mother and Daughter Talking in Bed — Mother and Daughter Talking

Open Dialogue

Practicing safe, open discussions with nonjudgmental language.
Example: "I feel [emotion] because of [situation]." Avoid phrases like, "You made me feel [emotion] because you did [situation."

Conflict Resolution

Cooling-off periods before engaging in structured, solution-focused dialogue.
Understanding that not all individuals can enter problem-solving sessions immediately, set a time to re-engage that feels safe and supportive for all parties.
Consider if your strong reaction to something is because you genuinely feel strongly about it or if it's a conditioned response based on earlier life events that your system has come to believe are true and require defense.

Coping Strategies

Stress Management

Learning relaxation techniques like grounding and meditation.
Participating in free community yoga sessions.
Spend quiet time in blue or green spaces.

Adaptability

Sharing stories of resilience. For example, "Remember when we all ran so hard to gather our groceries from the pouring ran before the paper bags melted? Benny's legs were so little he was running twice as hard as the rest of us. We came in drenched and exhausted, but we laughed so hard! Now, we make sure to back the car up to the garage in case of another freak thunderstorm." Sharing moments of overcoming little frustrations as a group and highlighting how, even in difficulty, your family unit overcame builds a sense of accomplishment that members can take into future problems. Remembering to touch on the strengths of individuals during those times increases their sense of self and is essential to the healthy functioning of your family unit.

Support Systems

Family Communicating Openly on Couch With Computer — Family Communicating Openly

Internal Support

Assigning roles based on family members' strengths.
Assist family members in understanding their strengths—no need to identify weaknesses.
If a family member identifies their own weaknesses, gently ask them how they might utilize their strengths to become adaptable.

External Support

Staying connected to community resources like the gym, sports organizations, church or spiritual practices, friends, family, volunteering, etc.

Evaluation and Reflection

Regular Check-Ins

Monthly family discussions to evaluate the plan's effectiveness.
Celebrating successes and setting future goals collaboratively.

This Family Resilience Plan demonstrates that with intentionality, any family can create a framework to grow stronger together, face challenges confidently, and nurture deeper relationships. Let's all aim to foster resilience within our own families.