Stress in the Family

   Have you ever had a moment when you were so scared you thought you might make it back home? Or maybe the feeling that you were up to your neck with homework and work? Or have you had an experience similar to when there is a minuet left in a tied soccer game and you have a penalty kick to take that could put your team ahead to win the game? If you have said yes to any of these questions than you have felt stress in your life. There are many forms of stress that take place in our lives and our families are no exception to this. I would like to talk a bit about stress in the family and how it can play out and be something that can make or break us.

   If you think stress is something that is horrible and to be avoided at all costs you are wrong. In fact there are many instances that stress can be a help to us and necessary. For instance one of the dangers for an astronauts body is that there is a lack of stress in space. Because of this, astronauts whom leave the earth often experience a deterioration in there bones and muscles. Often I like to think of stress as pressure. Sometimes it is good to have pressure and this may be what gets us going and motivates us to do good things. However, if we have too much stress or do not deal with our stress in a healthy way it can be harmful to us and our families. There was a famous researcher after world war ll named Reuben Hill who studied families and why some seem to handle stress better than others. HE looked at many families who were impacted by the leave of fathers during the war and he noticed that there were more or less three outcomes of these families. They all had a dip down after the stressor but some of the families jumped back and were just as strong as before the stressor. Other families after having the stressor hit were not as strong and never recovered. Finally, some families after the stressor took a dip down but in the end became more stronger than they were even before the stressor. After noticing thees patterns Reuben came up with the ABC- X stress model that explains how a family deals with the stress and how it can either make or break them or cause them to be the  same as before.

   The ABC-X stress model shows the relationship between stressors, the used resources of families, and how the family perceives or defines the stressor. The A in the model is the stressor or in other words the hardship or the event in the family that can cause the stress. As we know and as Hill noticed it is not always that the hard event will cause the same results in everybody. The letter B in the model represents the resources that a family has or the use or the resources. Some possible resources that can help a family in a stressful time may be things such as money, extended family members, education, church, support groups, and any other sources of help and support. Not all families that go through stressful events have the same resources and this influences how hard it may be to overcome there challenges. The letter c in the model represents the perception or the way that the family sees there stressor. Some families see there challenge as the end of the earth. Some see them as merely obstacles to overcome. The perceived and used resources of the families handling stressful events can have an influence on how the family perceives there stress. Often these letter s make a triangle in a way with the one letter influencing and leading to the next. All of them together make up the X of the model or the level of crisis. So the findings according to Hill where that it is not just the stress that determines how big of a crisis it will be for a family but also how they use there resources and how they perceive there stress.

  So in the end it is not stress that makes or breaks the family, but several factors put together. If we use our resources and we view the stress as something that is normal or something that is not unbearable than we will be able to overcome the stress in a healthy way and actually have the potential to come out as a stronger and better family than before.