8 Tips to Help You Build Strong Family Relationships

Building strong family relationships serves many purposes. It impacts your emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Plus, your family are usually the people closest to you. Your immediate family including your children and grandchildren can be some of the most meaningful relationships in your life. Here are some ways to help you build strong family relationships.

Get Professional Help For Addiction Issues

If you are facing addiction or mental health issues, it’s important to seek professional help. You can find a therapist or counselor through your insurance company or by contacting your local hospitals and clinics. You may need to stay at a rehab facility to give you the tools you need to overcome addiction. You may even need family rehab so that everyone who has been affected by your addiction can get the care and emotional support they need.

Heal From Your Own Childhood Hurts

Everyone has something that hurt them in their childhood. Some have more trauma than others. If you want to build new healthy family relationships, healing from your own childhood hurts can help tremendously.

There are books, groups, and other resources that can help. Additionally, you can seek out support and help from a good therapist who can help you untangle the emotional trauma and seek healing and safety in your relationships moving forward. This step is important for both men and women. This time can help you learn to set healthy boundaries and discern what is and what is not healthy in a family.

Make Time For Your Family

Making time for family is important, and it’s also fun. There are many ways to make sure you actually spend time with your loved ones. For example, you can plan regular family nights or outings where everyone gets together and does something fun together. You could also plan weekend activities that involve the whole family going on a hike or camping trip together. Sometimes just going to see local free sights can be all that you need. When you spend time together, make sure you aren’t distracted by smartphones and other devices.

Create a Safe Zone Where Everyone can be Truthful

Truth and transparency are important in relationships. Often it’s okay for the parents to be honest, but children don’t get the same freedom in a family. If you want to be a better parent, it’s important that you create a safe zone where everyone can be truthful. This means being honest with your family, getting to the root of problems, avoiding gaslighting and minimizing behaviors, and acknowledging when the truth is hard to handle. Listening to each person’s perspective is an important part of this process.

Learn About Different Parenting Approaches

You don’t have to parent the way that you were parented. You can make different decisions around how you will handle issues in your family. It helps to learn about different parenting styles, like Gentle Parenting, Respectful Parenting, Love and Logic, and other methods to help you improve as a parent. These tools are especially helpful for those who were harshly punished as children. Building these new habits can be a great way to break unhealthy family dynamics as well.

Give Yourself Permission to Have Feelings

The first step to building stronger family relationships is to give yourself permission to have feelings. It’s okay to be sad, angry, or hurt. You don’t need to pretend everything is fine when it isn’t. Being able to express your emotions in healthy ways is important. If you’re not sure how to do that, it’s okay to seek out counseling and therapy to help you learn better coping mechanisms. Learning to express a wide range of emotions without intentionally harming someone takes work.

Apologize When You’ve Caused Harm

Sometimes we do things that are hurtful to others. If you want strong family relationships, you need to learn to apologize when you’ve caused harm without blame-shifting or minimizing what you did.

You need to also look for ways to make amends and to walk in amends. Your apology doesn’t erase what you did, and it’s important to remember that it may take time for them to forgive.

Learn to Give Undivided Attention

Be present and be engaged. Nowadays adults have their noses in their phones and don’t interact well with the people around them. Learn to focus on the moment and to set aside the phone and other distractions when you are spending time with your family. These actions tell people that they matter and they are more important than whatever is on the other side of your phone.