Stress in the Family

This week’s topic is stress in the family. There are many kinds of stress that can happen in people’s lives. Some stressful events are money problems, family members injury or death, bills, work problems, and unemployment. These are only a few of the different things that could cause major stress on your family. 

    There are others factor that are important to consider when dealing with family stress. One of those factors is the fact the people react to stress differently. People also deal with stress very differently. So, when dealing with family stress it is important to take into consideration the different ways that your family will need to cope and try to understand the situation that is causing stress to the family. Another aspect of stress to think about it how some events can cause major stress to a family when that same stress will not cause stress to a different family.

    The textbook Lauer & Lauer, Chapter 13 - Family Crisis explains this well by saying “What is the worst thing that could happen to you? You can probably think of some undesirable events that you could deal with relatively easily, others that would be much more difficult to cope with, and perhaps one or more that would make you feel like life was no longer worth living. In other words, the various stressors do not affect us equally. ln fact, the same stressor may affect different people in different ways. Unemployment, for example, may be devastating to one person and a welcome break to another depending on circumstances. Caring for a chronically disabled family member, such as an Alzheimer's patient, is more or less difficult depending on such things as how close the caregiver feels to the patient and the extent to which the care-giver perceives that others understand what it is like to care for such a patient.” It is important to be considerate when discussing family stressors because they may be affecting people differently. 

    Over the years family scholars have created a model to try and help to understand the diverse response to stressful events. The creates the ABCX model and it was created by Reuben Hill. He explains the different factors of the models as “In essence, A is the stressor event and the hardships it produces. B is the management of the stress through coping resources that the family has. Since an important aspect of the impact of stress is the way in which the stressful situation is defined, C refers to the family's definition of the event.” A, B, and C all interact with one another to create X, which is the crisis. This is a very simplified version of the model, but it can help to see that there are different factor the buildup to create the family stress or crisis. 

     There are many ways that can help to reduce the impact that the family stress or crisis has on the family. The first way is knowing you own stress cues. This will help you be able to better understand and deal with your own stress so that you can focus on helping the family. Another thing that can help is take quality time to spend with your family. This can help your family to come together and realize that they can rely on each other when they need help. I know that this is a big one for me and my family. We all deal with stress very differently but knowing that my family is there and will always be there for is helpful when trying to deal with hard situations. The last thing I want to suggest is accepting your family emotions and feelings. Allowing everyone to feel their emotions will help the family to bond and get through the stressful situations.