What Is Family Stress? – 5 Ways to Reduce Stress

What is Family stress? Do you know it? Do you experience it? Here you will find what is family stress and what can you do to relieve it and feel better in your family life?

Surely most of us love our families and sadly, dealing with everything in our family life causes us stress. Many of us are stressed also because we need to juggle both family and work life. It is not easy for sure.

If we want to be better for our loved ones, our families, we need to do everything we can to reduce stress. Let’s explore more what is family stress and what we can do to reduce it!

What is Family Stress?

Basically family stress is stress that the family faces, referring to an imbalance between the demands that the family faces and its ability to handle the demands. Family stress happens when there are more stressful events to a family than it can deal with it. 

Usually, we talk about how stress impacts one particular person and not something bigger like family. But there is family stress too and we need to talk about it even if just a little bit.

I think it is an interesting concept and reality for many of us.

Family stress could involve financial difficulties, arguments, bad grades, or unexpected illness. These things can impact everyone as part of the family. It is important to manage that and make it easier for ourselves and our families to get through that.

5 Ways to Reduce Stress

Here we are going to talk about fives ways how to reduce stress and make you and your family feel better.

1. Leave the Stress at the Door

After a stressful workday, calm down before going into your home, pause and do some deep breathing exercises or listen to relaxing music. This way you will greet your family in a better mood.

2. Eat Together

When I was younger than now I had diner with the whole family or most of the family (my dad usually was away for some reason).

At that time it didn’t seem that important to have meals together and I wanted to be left alone.

We didn’t have a big house or anything. But now I am smiling when I think about that time and place we shared together. Now I think those dinners or suppers together were nice and needed.

We usually tried not to speak when we ate. But I know that for a lot of families that is the best time if the not only time to talk with each other, share their day and experiences.

For sure, talking and being together like this helps with family stress, because, for example, you can see what your brother is worried about or your mom is feeling stressed. There you can see that and talk with each other and help.

Studies

There is even a 2011 study that shows that if children eat with their family at least 3 times per week, they are more likely to eat healthy foods and less likely to become overweight.

Eating with your family can also reduce stress, you can feel healthier and your job could feel more satisfying as one study said. Family meals for children are great, a 2017 study shows that it helps with long-term mental and physical health.

Spending time together gives an opportunity for relationship building and communication, and that way you could get to know about things that cause your family member to feel stressed and help them deal with them. 

3. Keep Communicating

Never stop asking questions and communicating when you see your dear family member feeling annoyed, angry, or stressed. Who knows them better than you if you are close with them? Right? 

Even if they will not answer you, it is important for them to feel that others want to help and are interested in their problems. When they will be ready to share, they will. 

4. Have Family Activities

It is important to spend time with your family for relaxation like playing board games or going for walk together.

This will help for family bonding and communication. It can help with managing family and personal stress. 

5. Share Tasks

If you are living in the same house, it is important to make sure you share tasks, household chores like taking out the trash, washing the dog, and so on.

Conclusion

Today we talked about what is family stress and ways how we can manage that. Hopefully, this post was helpful.

As we all know stress is everywhere and also in our family’s life so it is important to manage it and reduce the stress that we are experiencing. We all want to spend a nice and relaxing time together with our loved ones and there are ways how we can do it and it was talked about in this post.

How do you deal with family stress? What kind of tips or tricks you are using to make you feel better and reduce family stress? Let me know in the comment section below!

Thanks! Until next time! 

Have a nice day!

Linda Mo

Founder and owner of How To Reduce Stress Naturally