Marital and Familial Stress

Last week in Family Relations we were challenged to come up with a definition for family stress. The definition my group came up with was "feelings of overwhelming pressure which effect the chemistry, attitude, and well-being of the family." We talked about how stress is produced when the brain senses danger and sparks the fight or flight response. In that moment of stress, the mind and body is programmed to fully focus on the perceived danger to escape it. Because of this, it inhibits a person's ability to think clearly about other things and in the case of chronic stress, results in neglect toward other aspects of their lives. It is interesting how stress can have very different effects on different families. In some cases, a family comes out from a stressful experience better than they were before and in other instances, they are worse-off after the event. This can be attributed to the ABCX model which explains that a combination of the Actual even, Both resources and responses, and Cognitions make up the total eXperience. We learned that the Chinese characters for crisis actually mean "danger" and "opportunity." Every event is what we make it and I believe that we are agents of our lives, emotions, and responses. No one and nothing can make us feel a certain way without our own perception and permission.