Family Crisis & Coping

Hello! Welcome back to my blog! This week I’d like to talk about a very important topic to me and that is- Family Crisis and Coping. This is an important thing to talk about because no family is immune to trials. And it’s essential to a family system to be aware of how stress can effect a family and how to best cope with those different stressors.

            There are a lot of crises that can happen within the lifetime of a family. Some of these are: unemployment, death, miscarriage or unwanted pregnancy, moving to a new location, mental illness or other chronic illnesses, and addictions (drugs, porn, alcohol, etc.). As we know from a gospel perspective, we learn in 2^nd Nephi 2:11, that there must be an “opposition in all things.”

Opposition, or otherwise know as trials, give us opportunities to grow and to learn as not only an individual, but as a family as well. We may think to ourselves, “Why does this have to happen to me?” or “Our family would be perfect if only ___ didn’t have to happen to us.”  

One interesting thing we talked about in my Family Relations class was that social media sites, especially Facebook, allow us to compare our lives to others. We get easily discouraged seeing other people’s achievements when we seem to be struggling. But that isn’t the whole picture. People don’t typically post their struggles all over Facebook. If only we knew how much each family struggles with different issues, we might have more compassion towards others, and have a grateful heart to count our own blessings.

When we work together as a family, it is much easier to cope with any family crisis that comes our way. I’ve received permission to share a personal story from my mom about her miscarriages and how they effected our family. First of all, it took my parents 8 long years to have me. I was supposed to be a twin, but the twin was miscarried very early in the pregnancy and that’s also a major reason I have scoliosis. After that, she miscarried 3 more times, with the last one also being twins. It was an extremely hard trial for my parents to go through. However, my parent’s outlook on it was always positive and they always relied on the gospel to strengthen them through these tragic losses. When asked about how the miscarriages effected her and my dad’s relationship she said, “For us as a couple it definitely brought us closer. I saw a sweeter side of dad. People think a miscarriage only effects the woman, but these trials showed us that’s not true. Dad mourned the losses as well. It made it easier to lean on each other for support. And on top of that, it humbled us to work together in unity and to focus on the gospel. We learned to be grateful for the fact that we even had one child.”

I know that not every trial that my family has gone through has been perfectly handled. There have been many arguments, silent treatments, feelings hurt, and other issues not dealt with how they probably should’ve been. However, when I think about the many trials my family has gone through, I can see how we have pulled together and strived to mend each problem. Because of our willingness to learn from each other, we have been blessed to get through every crisis thrown our way. Whether that was dealing with job loss, miscarriages, car accidents, or other smaller issues, we have learned and still continue to learn how to cope because of the gospel.

There is one thought I’d like to leave off on. Reuben Hill has a famous formula for the experiences we go through. It’s called the ABCX formula.  A (Actual Event that takes place) + B (Both the Resources available and how they are applied) + C (Cognitions or our thoughts about the event) = X (The Total Experience.) One thing my professor said that changed my view on trials is, “Events themselves do not create emotions. Our thoughts about the event cause the emotions.” If you or your family is going through a hard time, I ask you to remember that although you may not be able to control what’s happening to you, you CAN control how to react and feel towards the situation.