Families are a source of strength and unconditional love. But to enjoy the benefits of having a family, you need to improve your family relationships with our tips.
There are so many opportunities to throw a family party. But, seeing your family and having a good relationship with them are two different things.
In fact, if you often try to make excuses to skip family reunions, chances are that you probably need to figure out how to improve your family relationships.
Sometimes, you choose to cut contact with relatives whose toxic habits have long affected your relationship. But, more often than not, family relationships are difficult to maintain even when there are no obvious problems. So why should you try to make it work?
As Elizabeth Scott, PhD and author of 8 Keys to Stress Management, explains “families can be a life-giving force when they are healthy and relatively stress-free.” Your family provides a sense of belonging and unconditional love. This gives you strength and stability in your life. In other words, of course, it is worth investing in your family relationships.
But, it’s not easy to build strong and healthy bonds. So, where do you start? This article gives you some helpful tips on how to transform your family relationships for the better.
Why should you improve my family relationships?
Identify the core issues with your family relationships
Encourage active and transparent communication
Healing intergenerational traumas
Treat your family with respect
Why should you improve your family relationships?
Every family has its own quirks and issues. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t build healthy and positive relationships with your relatives.
In fact, good family relationships can improve your overall well-being. According to a study, improving family relationships can significantly improve your self-esteem, satisfaction with life, and even your resilience.
In comparison, when the relationships are poor and the level of emotional support from your family reduces, this can impact your health and well-being. Early experience with stress as part of having unbalanced family relationships can often lead to developing problem behaviours as an adult, such as heavy drinking for example.
Of course, families are complicated and the relationships can evolve in many ways. But, if you think that maintaining a healthy bond with your relatives is too much hassle, you are missing out on important health and mental health benefits!
Identify the core issues with your family relationships
So, if you have decided to work on your family relationships, the first question you need to ask yourself is: What has drained the relationships in the family?
Sometimes, families are close together until the children grow up and move out. It can be tough to find the right balance to stay connected. Ultimately, the failure to establish a balance can drain the relationship.
There could be a lot of other reasons for drained family relationships, even among healthy families. More often than not, not spending enough time together and not feeling you can be yourself with your relatives are the most common issues.
Therefore, once you’ve decided to improve your family relationships, you need to identify what weakens them in the first place.
Here, it is important to be honest with yourself. In some rare situations, there are unsurmountable obstacles with some relatives. This is why you need to carefully consider the reasons that could have weakened the family relationships, so you can recognise risks.
Quality time together to bond
When it comes to building stronger family bonds, the easiest approach is to spend time together. You want to focus on sharing quality time over quantity.
So, it can be a good idea to look for activities that everyone will be able to enjoy, such as sharing a meal or scheduling time for entertainment or sports together.
Family dinner “was the one time in all of our days when we as a family were present with each other—making eye contact, talking about our days, and most importantly, feeling connected.” – Hannah Leib LCSW
Many families choose to have a pizza night at home when they relax together or simply enjoy everybody’s favourite TV show, for example. You can create simple family rituals that are easy to prepare and don’t require too much time.
The quality of the moment you share together has got nothing to do with how much you spend, both in terms of money or time.
Encourage active and transparent communication
Communication goes both ways. That is why families with healthy relationships know how to talk to and listen to each other. It is easy to get lost in your surroundings, such as being distracted by your phone or the TV, when you are talking to those around you. But in the end, if you don’t focus on what your relatives are saying, why would they want to carry on talking to you?
So, it is important to make a conscious choice about being fully present, whether you are the person talking or listening. Being physically and emotionally engaged can completely transform how you communicate with your family.
But there is more to good communication with your relatives than knowing how to listen. It is also about creating a safe space where you and your relatives can talk openly. Situations where you need to avoid topics that could upset someone can lead to miscommunication and frustration. In the long term, this will create conflicts among your family and damage family relationships.
Emotional Intelligence
When you try to restore family relationships, it can be helpful to have good Emotional intelligence (EQ) to understand the relationships and the potential issues and triggers. Keeping your EQ strong can help you actively improve relationships and repair broken connections.
How does EQ help improve your family relationships? EQ refers to being aware of your emotions. This means that you are less likely to react emotionally when you are with your relatives.
For example, you can use EQ to:
- Recognise your triggers and not let them affect you
- Being aware of how others feel
- Avoid acting like your younger self when you talk to your parents
- Understand someone’s intention behind the words
- Etc.
Healing intergenerational traumas
Did you know that many adult children decide to go low contact with their parents as a result of intergenerational traumas? What are intergenerational traumas? Often, these are linked to unhealed childhood traumas from parenting behaviours or complex events.
A parent’s childhood trauma can affect their ability to parent and create positive experiences for their child. When the trauma remains unhealed, it can further affect the next generations.
In fact, many families carry intergenerational traumas that have been left unhealed. Unfortunately, childhood traumas do not disappear with time. They can impact their relationships in adulthood. More importantly, unhealed childhood traumas often create toxic parenting, which can lead to damaged family relationships.
So, it is worth investing time talking to your parents about healing their traumas or healing your inner child before you can focus on your family relationships.
Treat every member of your family with respect
Respect plays a crucial role to every relationship. It is true for family relationships too. Ultimately, you can’t build strong bonds if you don’t treat every family member respectfully. When you approach everyone with respect, you can help create the safe environment you need for transparent communication and quality time.
There’s another reason why respect is particularly important. For example, as a parent, if you show favouritism towards one child, other children will sense they don’t have your respect. This will create an environment where they don’t feel safe to be themselves or share their thoughts with you. This does not just affect your relationship with your children, but it can also drain family relationships in the long term.
Are you ready to improve your family relationships? You have to be prepared to invest in the process. Indeed, you won’t notice any significant results overnight. It is a long-term process that starts with being honest with yourself. It’s a case of understanding the many benefits of having healthy family relationships. You also want to focus on identifying the potential problems or obstacles in your own family.
You will want to need on your emotional intelligence. EQ puts you a better position to create a respectful, transparent, and safe place for communication and quality time together. More importantly, growing closer together means you need to work on yourself first. This can involve healing your past traumas or knowing your triggers. However, when you choose to put the work in, your family can become a source of strength and happiness.