The Family Under Stress

Crisis's can either bring families closer or farther apart.  This week in my family relations class I learned that there are many places that families have stress from internal sources like a alcoholic in the family, and external sources like inflation rate.  There are also normative stress which is the normal life cycle like having a new born baby increases the stress of a family.  Stress can come from anywhere and there are many differed types like non normative, ambiguous, non ambiguous, volitional, non volitional, chronic, acute, cumulative,  and isolated.  With so many things in this life that can make us stress we have to decide how we are going to react to stress.  What affects the process of a crisis is the actual event, the resources we have to solve the conflict, and cognition-the way we define a crisis.

The main emphasis that I understood from learning about crisis is the problem, how are you going to handle the crisis.  If you handle a crisis in a positive way then you and your family can grow closer.  When people have a crisis and turn away from others and handle it a negative way like drinking, then it can cause a family to distance them selves.  I think that Heavenly Father sent us on this earth to become a better person and more like thee.  He wants us to return to him and life on earth is a test, it isn't always easy and we need to learn from our experiences and help each other.  I think that we can bless the lives of others by learning through our trials and crisises to help people that are going through the same thing.  I need to have faith through my trails so that I won't give up and know that Heavenly Father loves me.

Crisis in the family changes the structure of the family and we need to learn how to accomidate to the stress by pulling our family closer to us.  A family should be a safe place where we can go to each other to be strengthened.  Crisises handled in the right way can bond families.  In class I learned about how abuse in the family can be really hard and we shouldn't cope with abuse like we would for other crisises.  We need to solve abuse and end it.  A therapist can help families if they are struggling with talking about it because you need to define the problem of abuse, exchange information, tell of the hurt that it is causeing to your spirit, and for the offender to confess and apologize.

Crisis can bring a family closer or father apart, it depends on how the family reacts to the stress.  I think we need to keep perspective that some problems will pass and we need to work together as a family to solve hard crisis's.  We can't solve some of our problems on our own and we need to be willing to get help from others like family, extended family, and Heavenly Father.  It is up to us how we are going to handle a crisis.