Family Stress

This week we talked about family crisis or stress. That could be from anything like finances, mental health, the death of a family member, or an affair. All of those things can cause stress on the family.

At the beginning of the week, my teacher reminded us that stress doesn’t have to be bad. How can it be helpful? If we go through stress with the right attitude, it can be a growing experience. It can strengthen the family a lot. Growing up I don’t remember having any really big stressors. It was a pretty calm environment. Maybe my parents did the worrying and made sure the kids were happy and not worrying about things. But for as long as I can remember, my parents haven’t really struggled with money (a huge blessing because so many people do), they love each other so much, and no one in my immediate family has had any major health issues. I feel extremely blessed to have grown up the way I have. I know that trials and stressors do come, so maybe they will be when I am an adult. But I am grateful that I have had this class to teach me that it can make my family stronger. It doesn’t have to break my family. Right now, it’s just my husband and me, so we don’t have kids to worry about. It has been relatively easy. Maybe I shouldn’t say that and jinx it. However, when the stressors do come, I think I’ll be more prepared to deal with them.

(Another thing that I liked that we talked about is that a lack of stress makes things weak. Like our bones. If we aren’t using them and putting stress on them, then they will break down and become weaker. Just wanted to add that because I like the analogy!)

We learned about the ABCX model. A stands for the actual event or stressor. B stands for resources and how you use them. C stands for how you (and your family) define the event. X stands for the crisis. We have the most control over C. We can control how we are going to define the stress we have in our lives.  We don’t have to think of the stress as too much for us to handle or that it will ruin our families. We can try our best and ask other people for help.

So what can we do when the stress comes? How do we strengthen our family instead of letting it break down?

We talked about coping skills. Some are good and some are bad. Some bad ones are avoidance, denial, drugs, alcohol, and other things of that nature. Some good ones would be to ask someone else you know that has gone through the same trial or stressor. This can be a really good resource because they can tell you what they did that worked and what they did that didn’t work. Personally, I think that is the best way to handle the situation. You can sit down and make a game plan. You can try and figure out what you are going to do and hopefully apply that plan. I think it’s important to not get down on yourself when bad things happen. Bad things just happen. It’s not always because “everything happens for a reason”. While that may be true sometimes, I believe that thinking everything happens for a reason can be really sad. Why make ourselves depressed by thinking God (or the universe, whatever you believe) just made it happen for you to learn some lesson. I don’t think God would make your spouse cheat on you. What is the reason for that? I think sometimes things just happen. This may seem kind of random in here, but I think remembering that sometimes things just happen can help you get through the family stress.