altered the resulting stress the event has on the family (X).
Case 2: Managing the Mundane Experience of Stress
This case begins with an 8-year-old female, Tonya, attending after-school programming in her neighborhood. Tonya lives with her dad and three older siblings. Her dad works multiple jobs, is not around much, and her siblings or a neighbor watch her at home when he is not there. She typically gets along well with other youth at the after-school program although she had been having some problems in the 3 weeks prior to the mindfulness facilitator’s arrival. The after-school program serves mostly African American youth between the ages of 5 and 12 who participate in after-school programming at a local club. Over 90% of youth participating in this after-school setting are on free and reduced lunch, live in high-poverty neighborhoods, and go to poor-performing schools. Tonya and 20 other students participated in the Mindful Schools curriculum once or twice a week in addition to their regular after-school activities. Each visit takes about 15 minutes and includes a theme, brief developmentally appropriate formal practice, educational component, brief experiential activity and suggestions for between meeting “practice” or attention to the theme. Youth in this setting showed significant decreases in anxiety pre- and post-mindful schools program start and completion. The program leader checks in with participants occasionally to ask if they “used their mindfulness” and if so, how. Tonya reported a specific story about how she used her mindfulness when her sibling was yelling at her. She typically would hit him leading to an afternoon of yelling, crying, and not being able to get her homework done. After being in the program for a few weeks, Tonya detailed a new option she had not tried yet at home. She decided to do mindful breathing on the bus to the after-school program and when she got home from the after-school program. She shared a specific detailed story about how she used mindfulness at home; when her brother started yelling, she left, went to her room, took some breaths, and then just colored. She noticed that her tummy did not hurt later that day, too. By the end of the program, Tonya’s teacher reported that she was doing something similar at the after-school program and had asked the after-school program director to take mindful breaths with her when she arrived off the bus.
In this case, Tonya’s life is saturated with chronic stress (e.g., poverty, lack of parent engagement), but there are also moments of acute stress due to normative interactions between siblings (X). However, these chronic and acute stressors can combine to produce somatic responses that manifest as the source of her stomach aches. Thus, the mindful program provided her with a breathing exercise (B) that she can implement when she experiences stress. This also changes her perception of stress (C) because she gains agency over coping strategies that produce outcomes that do not end with the aforementioned somatic response (X).
Discussion
Meditations on Systematic Oppression
We use family stress theory as a lens to postulate about mindfulness as both a resource or mechanism for perceptual change, as it relates to individuals and families’ response to stress. The Pali word for mindfulness meaning, to remember, calls us to remember minoritized and systematically oppressed families and individuals not prominently reflected in the mindfulness literature and health-care literature generally. What may be hidden in this discussion of family stress and mindfulness interventions for Jean and Tonya are the many ongoing stressors created by heterosexist and racist U.S. policies and practices. In the United States, one glaring instance of this can be the long battle of GLBTQ persons and families who only recently gained the right to even be considered as actual families. At the time of Jean’s case, she could legally be fired for being gay. This fact kept her from talking about her home life at work, leaving her with little relational support in a workplace that is quite stressful. Such an example highlights the many systems (e.g., family policy, health, workplace, cultural values) that create stress for minority families. There is disproportionate exposure to stress among ethnic and racial minority groups and in particular Black and U.S. Hispanics (Sternthal, Slopen, & Williams, 2011; see James, Barrios, Roy, & Lee, Chapter 4 in this volume for more on this). Among Black families, this stress cannot be separated from overtly discriminatory housing policies (redlining, National Housing Act of 1934; realtor discrimination, GI Bill of 1944) and the continued discrimination and segregation without legal recourse occurring until the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Even while policies change, there is a continuous and nuanced process of racial and ethnic socialization occurring among African American families (James, Coard, Fine, & Rudy, 2018). There may be additional stressors for Tonya and her family, too, as she attends a school where 90% or more students receive free and reduced lunch (e.g., Ohio Department of Education, 2015). These policies co-created the multigenerational segregated poverty experienced by Tonya and her family.
Interestingly, in the early days of MBSR, Kabat-Zinn (2011) recognized oppressive systems as an impetus for recruiting folks whose needs and pain are not eased through a “disease care” system and may benefit from a mindfulness-based program. Linehan (1993, 2020) too utilizes mindfulness as a tool to address people, mostly women, diagnosed with BPD, a doubly stigmatized diagnosis within a mental health system not designed to meet their needs and concurrently pushing them away. This chapter is about family stress and how mindfulness may be one of many ways to address it. We use the ABC-X model to highlight two cases and bring some attention to additional chronic ongoing stressors minoritized and systemically oppressed individuals and families face at potentially exacerbating their reaction or response due to the additional ongoing stressors.
Acceptance and Change
Linehan’s DBT model (1993, 2020) emphasizes a dialectic, or joining of opposites and in particular: acceptance and change. This stance is important for facilitators working with families similar to Jean and Tonya. The systemic oppressive practices are not their fault, yet they impact the real lived experiences of such families and many minoritized individuals and families. When utilizing tools such as mindfulness to create change, whether that change is designed to impact a mental health symptom, health issue, family, teaching quality, or agency morale, taking a stance of acceptance of the person just as they are is key especially when minoritized and systematically oppressed individuals and families have not caused the additional conditions (e.g., discriminatory policies, culturally condoned heterosexist, racist, and other related practices across multiple systems including healthcare, education, and “justice” to name a few) heightening their stress response. In other words, mindfulness facilitators, individuals, and families can endeavor for changes while accepting people for who they are.
For future research we might ask the following questions: “What strengths do the minoritized and systematically oppressed develop to manage through their lives?” “How can ‘home practice’ or ‘informal practice’ be cultivated through various forms of inquiry in order to understand and expand the availability of mindfulness among families who may not have access to traditional programming?” “Could there be a family ‘dispositional mindfulness’?” “How can we as practitioners, researchers, and facilitators be open to new categories and new possibilities (Langer, 1983, 2020) designed to empower and support mindfulness for families using a more participatory and culturally proficient lens (Lindsey, Nuri-Robins, Terrell, & Lindsey, 2010)?”
Discussion Questions
1 Refer back to the four DBT skills referenced in this chapter. How might each one of these skills impact families? How could these skills potentially benefit your own family?
2 Choose one of the cases listed above. Based on the information provided, brainstorm and then list (a) at least three additional potential stressors associated with the family over the life course and (b) how an intensive mindfulness program such as MBSR or DBT might impact family member perspectives about these stressors?
3 Consider multiple
