The vulnerability stress adaptation model

Enduring vulnerabilities

These are personal traits and past experiences that each person brings to the relationship which are often related to attachment patterns. They are not weaknesses. They are formed by: 

• How we were raised. The culture and community we have lived in. Questions we can ask co-parents include the following which make up our ‘VSA model questionnaire for parents’ [see ‘Resources’]
  • Who raised you?
  • Were your parents together?
  • Do you have a faith that directs your values and how you live?
  • What strengths do you take from your upbringing?
  • Did your upbringing make you particularly vulnerable or sensitive in any way?
• Our genetic make-up, our personality
  • Do you see similarities between you and someone else in your family?
  • Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic?
  • Do you have a short fuse or lots of patience?
  • Do you like routine or are you more spontaneous? Relaxed or always busy?
• Our past relationships, romantic and family: the culture of relationships as we see it.
  • Did your upbringing or past friendships or relationships give you particular strengths or vulnerabilities/sensitivities?
• How we have dealt with stresses in the past.
  • What have you done in the past?
  • Who has supported you?
  • Are there skills you can use now?

Our vulnerabilities are emotional ‘lenses’ which ‘colour’ how we see future experiences. They can include negative feelings like:

• Being taken for granted, feeling unappreciated
• Being unheard or disrespected
• Feeling unloved
• Feeling that the other person is not committed to the relationship
• Feeling blamed
• Feeling guilty
• Feeling jealous

And positive feelings (strengths) like:

• Feeling able to cope
• Feeling heard and valued
• Feeling loved
• Seeing the other person’s perspective

Consider how parents from black and minority ethnic communities may have experienced stereotyping and discrimination intergenerationally and how this might affect their vulnerabilities. Or how parents with alcohol or drug dependency may have felt stigmatised.

• Have they felt unfairly judged or misunderstood?
• Have they been made to feel inferior?
• Have these experiences made them feel more sensitive to language or behaviour from the co-parent which creates the same feelings?
• Or have they developed strengths to protect themselves?

For same- sex couples, have their experiences of coming out to their parents and feeling  rejected, made them sensitive to signs of rejection or prejudice? For parents with mental health issues, are they more likely to feel unheard, stigmatised or blamed?

In examining our level of resilience and our enduring vulnerabilities, we can ask parents:

‘What do you bring with you?’

Stressful events

The life events they encounter, such as having a baby, illness and unemployment, increase co-parents’ need for support at the same time as reducing their capacity to provide it.

Consider the stresses associated with becoming first time parents, single parents, parents with a disability or the parents of a child with a disability. Consider how stress might impact parents with mental health issues or the coping mechanisms they have previously used. Have alcohol or drugs featured for parents in stressful situations in the past?

The struggles of living day to day as a Traveller parent, sometimes without basic utilities or the legal right to remain on a chosen site and the threat of eviction.

The young South Asian woman living with her in-laws and feeling watched and judged for everything she does.

The parent struggling with immigration status, not being able to settle and feel safe.

Adaptive processes

How the couple communicate, behave and cope during difficult times. How they resolve conflicts.

Practitioners should use the following diagram and example questions when working with parents. This exercise takes time and trust for people to self-reflect. Parents should be reassured that this is not about an overnight ‘fix’ but a way to begin to understand their own and their co-parent’s feelings behind their words and actions and thus improve distressing and harmful conflict.

Thoughts, feelings, behaviour cycle

Our ‘Thoughts, feelings, behaviour’ questions [see Resources] can help parents work out what is going on.