Unaffordable housing is forcing more New Zealanders to think about living with extended family members.
People who haven't grown up with it, fear multi-generational living will be too stressful but the kind of stress it generates can be healthy to work with, says psychotherapist Dr Zoë Krupka.
"The stress of living in a household where you have to negotiate your space, your role, yourself, is hard but it's productive stress," she tells Jim Mora.
Photo: Askar Abayev / Unsplash
Dr Zoë Krupka Photo: Dr Zoë Krupka / Twitter
Dr Zoë Krupka is a psychotherapist and Senior Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at Melbourne's Cairnmillar Institute.
People at different ends of the age spectrum living under the same roof brings challenges but also powerful benefits, Dr Krupka says.
"You don't necessarily leave all your unresolved issues – let's say with your parents and grandparents – when you go. And coming back into multi-general living offers a way to learn to understand those patterns and also how to resolve them that we don't get when we just rely on being in another suburb, another state or another country."
Every person has a need for privacy but we tend to over-equate this with physical space, she says, rather than viewing it as something we can hold within ourselves.
"Even in a really big [living] space, the space we really need to work on is the internal one – the part of me that knows who I am, whatever it is you think of me or if we're living together.
"[Feeling crowded generates] the stress we need to create ourselves and our place in the world."
Research shows that it's not helpful for generations to be isolated from each other, Dr Krupka says.
"One of the great things about multigenerational living is that you are with people who are ahead of you on life's path and people who have come after you. This is incredible learning but also helps to situate ourselves. We can imagine we're never going to grow old when we're not living with anybody much older than we are."
If you're living with people who don't pull their weight around the house, her best advice is to go on strike.
"Women who are [over-functioning in the home] need to absent themselves. Three's not a lot of evidence angry conversations about 'can you do more around the house?' are that effective. Strike action or absentee action is much more effective, I'm sorry to say."
Read: Being an 'empath' doesn't mean taking on other people's baggage by Dr Zoë Krupka
