The Family Under Stress

     There are a lot of different factors, examples, situations, and other things that come to mind when we think of stress. As I go on to talk about stress in the family, we need to understand that stress is different than a crisis. Stress is just tension that is built up from different factors. It is the feeling of strain and pressure and unpleasant emotions. On the other hand, a crisis is something that actually necessitates change. You can have stress and not have it change anything, but when you have a crisis, things have to change in order to be solved. We learned that when you write crisis in Chinese, it puts two words together that we are familiar with. That is danger and opportunity. I feel like this really puts an understanding to what this word means and how we should perceive crisis in our lives. The first word, danger, means that there is something going on that is causing problems. We know we have to fix it in order to be okay again. However, the word opportunity means that we have the chance and opportunity to change and make ourselves better for the situation that we are in. It is important for us to see that if we have a crisis in our lives, we need to have the ability to see our potential in the future as we can change to become because of it.
     We will be talking more about a specific model that was created to focus on the pre crisis variables of families and how they relate to each other and how they can somewhat predict how they will react to the crisis. It goes A+B+C=X. I will go more into depth on each of these and what they mean, but first I will explain them in the way that my teacher, Brother Williams, taught us to remember them first. A stands for actual event. B stands for both resources and responses. C stands for cognitions. X stands for eXperience. Hill summarized the three points to be A (the crisis-precipitating event/stressor) interacting with B (the family's crisis-meeting resources) interacting with C (the definition the family makes of the event) produces X (the crisis). Hill regarded "A" to be when the family had no before-hand preparation for the event, so it was therefore viewed to be problematic. He said that these events affect families differently depending on the hardships that accompany them. A hardship in this case would then be something that would require "B", or their resources to cope with it. I like the way he describes resources in the family as, by their presence, "kept the family from crisis or, by their absence, urged a family into crisis." What this means, is that depending on the type of resources a family has and how they use them, can affect what things actually turn into problems for them. "C" is really just how the family perceives the stressors to be. "X" then is just the actual crisis it turns into. I think it was really interesting to learn and discuss this model through class this week. We were able to look deeper into actually examples of how this works and it was cool to see how this man was able to come up with a model that so accurately can describe a family's ability to cope with stress.
     Now I am going to talk a little about coping patterns. There are of course, ineffective ways to cope, as well as effective ways. The three main parts of ineffective ways to cope with stress are denial, avoidance, and scapegoating. Denial is usually the most common of these three ways, and it is when people will not believe what they observe. Sometimes short-term denial can be good and help in certain situations, but when it becomes a long-term pattern, that is when it becomes dangerous. Long-term denial can lead to emotional and physical damage in families and relationships. Avoidance is when people acknowledge that there is a problem, but they avoid dealing with and fixing it. This can also be harmful to relationships if it is a prolonged avoidance. Scapegoating is when someone recognizes the problem but feels the need to blame something or someone else for it. In the book, Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy, it states, "it is a way of shifting responsibility so that one does not have to feel guilt or personal responsibility for resolving the crisis". Moving on to effective ways! These are ways to effectively cope. Take responsibility, affirm your own and your family's worth, balance self-concern with other-concern, learn the art of reframing, and find and use available resources. Taking responsibility is the opposite of denial, avoidance, and scapegoating. It is accepting the problem for what it is, taking care of it, and not acting as the victim even if you had been victimized by it. Affirming your worth is believing in yourself and your ability to deal with the situations that are coming into your life because of the crisis. Balancing concern means to be able to have enough concern for your own well being but at the same time keeping others in mind and making sure that they can handle the stress that they are being given. Reframing means to redefine the meaning of something, or changing your perspective on a situation. You should be able to see your problem in a different perspective that can help you to cope more easily. Finally, available resources would be things such as other family members, communication, religious beliefs, friends, books, self-help groups, and therapists. There are many ways that you can positively cope with stress in a healthy way.
     This week was fun to learn all these things and understand that even though everyone will go through stress and crises, there are ways that you can get through it better and easier. I know that by learning these things now I will better be able to raise my family and lead them with a strong foundation through our tough times that I know will come.