One of the most common calls that our crisis counselors take involves family conflict. In Family Conflict-related crises severity can range from youth experiencing frustration with their parents, or siblings, to getting kicked out of the home for coming out LGBTQIA+, or experiencing any form of abuse (physical, mental, sexual) from a family member.
Our crisis counselors’ approach to handling family conflict is to first help the youth caller understand what they can do to deescalate from being in a state of high stress while allowing them to still feel frustrated and express their feelings. A lot of times youth feel like they aren’t heard and don’t know how to navigate through their crises.
In extreme cases where the family conflict shows signs of being physically abusive, sexually abusive, neglectful, or worse, our counselors can immediately discern it and alert child protective services or emergency responders.
While it being a very common call topic there is no “one-size-fits-all” method to approaching a caller dealing with a family conflict. Our crisis line counselors figure out how severe the youth’s crisis is and choose the correct course of action to pursue, whether that is de-escalating the youth’s emotions because they had a small argument with their parents or providing resources and services to a youth who has become homeless due to being ostracized by their family for being LGBTQIA+.
If you’re a youth, parent, or know a youth who is experiencing family conflict, please call or text one of our Crisis Line Counselors today at 800 843-5200, it’s free, confidential, and supportive.
You can also chat with us at www.calyouth.org/cycl.
Examples of Family Conflict include but are not limited to:
- A preteen youth feeling sad and frustrated that her mom is making the family move when all her friends and family live where they are currently.
- A teenage youth being kicked out of the house by his parents for coming out.
- A college-aged youth feeling alone and alienated from his family during the holidays for not being ‘good enough’.
- A youth experiencing abuse from a family member.
- A youth feeling that they’re being treated less favorably than their siblings.
- A school-aged youth being severely neglected by their parents.