Family Stress and Coping

What is Stress and why is it important in our lives?

Stress is strain and tension within our individual lives, but also in the family unit. Stress is a necessary part of our lives. Without it our lives would be easy, with no purpose or things to puss us to be better. Stress is especially important in the family unit because it can help to strengthen every member. When engineers are building bridges, they bundle material that is generally weak together to make it stronger. They then put those bundles under tension or strain to make the bridge function properly. It is fascinating that the bridges need stress to be held together. Another example of necessary stress would be our muscles and bones. First our bodies have a certain amount of stress placed on them from gravity. Along with gravity we can increase the stress by working out. With all this stress and strain placed on our bodies we strengthen our muscles and bones to function at a higher level. With these examples it should be evident that stress would also be a necessary part of strengthening family units. Sometimes however people feel that their stress has lead them to a crisis or a terrible situation. A crisis is not always something terrible. The marriage and family therapy field define crisis as something that necessitates change. The Chines definition for crisis is something that is a danger but also provides an opportunity. I really like how the Chine’s define it because it shows that a crisis has two outcomes depending on how we handle them.

Ruben Hill presented an ABCX model to show how stress and crisis can affect the family unit. In his model “A” represents the actual stressor event, “B” is the resources available and the response to the stressor, “C” is how a person defines or sees the stressor event, and “X” is the total experience or how we see it when we reflect it. After further research he realized that it really should be a the double ABCX model because previous stressor event will affect how we react to ones in the future. He also saw that A, B and C were all intertwined influencing one another. Therefore, the more successful a family can be in applying resource and responding positively to the stressor the easier it is to define the event differently. For me personally I know that I must be sarcastic and positive about any big stressors in my life. If I play it off like it is no big deal, then I am more likely to overcome the stress faster. Coping with situations falls into this model as well. Most people have a false definition of coping when they think it is distracting themselves from the stress in their lives. However, coping is really the small changes to the way we live or view situations the help things fit better under pressure. As a person learns to deal with stress using this ABCX model then they can be strengthened and learn many new things about themselves.

To end this week, I would like to talk a little about how to better deal with the stress that is from abuse or violence within a family. I grew up in a family that was not ideal, had I known what I know now about stress my life would have turned out a lot differently. Cloé Madanas is a very well-known family therapist that specializes in helping families that have been affected by violence in the home. She has created a protocol she uses to help these families to resolve stress but also to build healthy boundaries to continue to move forward.

Cloé Madanas Protocol

1. What happened? Have each member of the family tell their side of the story.
2. Why is it wrong? She says that violence or abuse are wrong because it hurts our spirits.
3. Who did it hurt? Events can hurt more than just the people directly involved.
4. The person who has do the wrong thing then has to get on their knees to apologize until the other family members feel they are being sincere.
5. Anyone else who feels they need to apologize can get on their knees and do so.
6. She explains that evil is always stupid. You cannot make sense out of nonsense. Most times it is just better to move past the situation and not try to understand how someone could be violent or abusive.
7. She then divides the minutes of the bad event by the minutes the victim has lived. This give a perspective of how the event has affected the person’s life. She also uses this to show that the bad event doesn’t have to define your life.   
8. Help the family to set healthy boundaries. Also allows the person who was violent or abusive to teach the family members how to avoid future encounters with bad people.

A sincere apology can change the course of a person’s life forever. Forgive a person for the wrongs they have done also can change lives. However, trusting person again isn’t necessary to forgive them.