Pressure, Pushing Down on Me, Pushing Down on You...

"No man asks for, under pressure that brings a building down, Splits a family in two, puts people on streets Mm-ba-ba-beh, mm-ba-ba-beh." (Under Pressure by David Bowie and Queen) Haha I hope you enjoyed that small song. I think it introduces our topic this week really well actually. This week I wanted to talk about the different pressure's or crises that families and relationships can go through and how we can deal with them in a healthy manner. In the song it says "pressure that brings a building down, splits a family in two, puts people on streets." When something hard happens to our family, we sometimes break apart. In difficult times we let the experiences that we have get in the middle of our relationship, and end up hurting the ones we love rather than drawing closer to them. This is something that is fairly common with people, but it is not what happens to all. In some cases going through difficult things can help families to grow closer to one another. So how do we make that change, how do we make it so that when bad things happen in life our relationships become closer and deeper rather than shredding apart?

One way that we can change how we react is being aware of what is happening. Hopefully I can explain this pretty well. So according to a model that Dr. Rueben Hill came up with, there are a few things that contribute to the way we react to a crisis or family disaster. His model was called the ABCX model. First,  you go through the Actual event. Next, Both your Resources and Responses contribute to how you can view a certain situation. Thirdly, your Cognitions or perspective will contribute to how you will respond creating the total eXperience. All of these things will influence how we will view a crisis that is happening in our lives. How do each of these things affect how a crisis will influence your family then? Well let's break it down starting with the actual event. The actual event could influence the way your family reacts depending on what the event was. Was it something really big like a natural disaster which affected everyone around you, or was it a smaller but still damaging event like a grandparent dying. The type of event as well as the other stressors we have in life affect the way we react and the emotions we use to deal with them. Next are your resources and responses. How much money one has to take care of the disaster can affect how they react to it. How do you respond to things in general? Do you try to work more or be with your family during the disaster? That kind of plays into our perspective about the crisis. How do we view what is happening? Do we have a positive perspective and feel we can get through the situation, or is our perspective negative and we feel little hope for recovery? All of these things affect how we relate and react to our experiences in general. All of these things affect how we relate and react to our experiences in general. Maybe all we really need to do is change our perspective and attitude about different things. 

Can our thoughts really change how our family relations function? I think the answer to this question is yes. How we think relates to, and can cause different reactions that can make or break relationships. When our outlook is positive rather than negative, we are better able to cope with different things that happen in our lives. We are more creative in problem solving and finding solutions. We don't see the whole world as being against us. When we are negative however, the world is against us. We don't believe in our ability to improve the situation. We only pay attention to the things that are going wrong and looking for the bad. We are more willing to work on the things that are going wrong in our relationships when we have a more positive view of what could happen with it. Both  individuals in the relationship need to play their part in positively working through a crisis.  If just one person is positive all of the time, they will wear down and the relationship can be damaged. When you are in a relationship with someone you have to be willing to work with them and to grow and help each other grow.