Family resilience in the face of short-term war trauma: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of iranian urban family members’ lived experiences during the 12-day Iran-Israel conflict

Abstract

Between June 13 and 24, 2025, the 12-day Iran-Israel conflict exposed Iranian urban families to missile strikes, air defense sirens, near-total internet blackouts, uncertainty about loved ones, and disruptions in essential services, creating an intense period of compressed trauma. While family resilience during prolonged wars has been extensively studied, less is known about resilience processes in short-term, high-intensity, technologically disrupted conflicts in digitally connected societies. This interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) explored the lived experiences of 22 individual parents and adult family members, comprising 14 women (all mothers) and 8 men (all fathers), from Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz, recruited via purposive and snowball sampling. Semi-structured in-depth interviews (60–90 min) were conducted one to three months after the ceasefire (July–September 2025) in Persian and analyzed following IPA procedures of idiographic case-by-case analysis, emergent theme identification, cross-case clustering, and maintenance of an audit trail. Analysis revealed four superordinate themes with associated sub-themes: (1) rapid reorganization of family organizational patterns under acute threat; (2) navigating technological disruption and information deprivation; (3) enhancing intra-family emotional communication and support; and (4) co-constructing shared meanings, spirituality, and posttraumatic growth. Findings illustrate how individual family members mobilized key domains of Walsh’s ([1], [2, 3]) Family Resilience Framework (organizational patterns, communication processes, and belief systems) under conditions of extreme temporal compression in this cultural and wartime context. Internet blackouts functioned paradoxically, intensifying ambiguous loss while simultaneously promoting deeper emotional connectedness and presence. Rather than claiming a formal theoretical extension of the framework, the study highlights sensory hyperarousal and sudden technological disconnection as salient contextual conditions that appeared to influence the activation of these resilience processes in acute urban warfare. No local Iranian resilience models were adopted as primary frameworks because Walsh’s model provided the most systematic mapping of the observed processes, although culturally resonant concepts such as family cohesion and spiritual endurance informed interpretation. Practical implications include the development of culturally sensitive, short-term family preparedness interventions addressing digital disconnection and sensory overload in conflict-affected urban settings.