Читать книгу Families & Change - Группа авторов - Страница 56

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.