Reaching up, down, in, and around: Couple and family coping during the coronavirus pandemic

Dr. Peter Fraenkel and Dr. Wonyoung Cho • August 15, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has had many effects on couples and families. This simple, culturally-flexible framework can help foster coping and resilience in couples and families.

The framework has four parts:

Reaching up includes accessing spiritual, religious, and ethical values.

Reaching down includes ideas and practices that foster a revised relationship with the Earth and its resources, and that engage families to participate in activities that aid the Earth’s recovery from decades of human-caused damage.

Reaching in represents a turn towards experiences available in the mind and in shared minds in relationships that provide pleasure, excitement, joy, and peace, given that external sources of these emotions are of limited availability due to quarantine.

Reaching around involves reframing the mandate for “social distancing” as fostering social connection and support while maintaining physical distancing. The challenges for family therapists, whose practices are confined largely to online therapy, and who are struggling with the same fears and constraints as those persons they are attempting to help, are also discussed.