Stressors

There are so many different family crisis's that can cause stress in the family structure. Some examples are the death of a child, loss of job, or maybe a parent who drinks. All these stressors have a chain reaction in the family structure. They cause the balance to shift and bring about more problems. This is called a pile up. One problem causes many different problems in the family that they might not even realize.
At the end of my junior year in high school my family experienced our own family crisis. My dad lost his job and we were also having problems with a building that we owned. The apartment building used to give us some income but because of recent bad tenants, the building was costing us more than benefiting. My mom still had her job so our family still had some income, but it did not cover everything that was needed. This brought about a lot of stress and concern in our house. This situation could have gone one of two ways. This could have torn my family apart or we could have used this obstacle to strengthen our family more.
In the textbook Marriage and Family-The Quest for Intimacy, it goes over the tools you need to successfully cope or overcome your family crisis. The first step is taking responsibility. In this instance taking responsibility means making sure you are not playing the victim. You need to make sure you and your family are taken care of and to do that you can not deny, run away, or blame others for what happened to you. When my dad lost his job, he accepted what happened and then started to look for new jobs. He didn't blame anyone or run from his problem, he was able to take responsibility and move forward.
The next two steps are to affirm your's and your family's worth and make sure to also worry about each other concerns. It is important to make sure that you believe in yourself. If you have no self worth then you will be unable to feel confident in yourself to get out of this hard situation. While you are going through this, you need to make sure that your family is a concern to you. Relay to them your plans and talk with them about what they are concerned about. This will keep an open communication letting the worries of family members decrease. While my dad was going through the job loss, I asked questions and we talked as a family. We made plans and kept this bottle of sparkling grape juice in the fridge. We decided as a family that when he first gets a new job we would open it to celebrate. This allowed us to become closer and being able to understand what was going on brought about its own sense of relief.
The last two steps to deal with a family crisis are being able to use resources around you and being able to reframe the situation. Reframing means being able to change the way you perceive a situation. My dad could have come home from work the day he was fired with the idea that he was worthless and would never be able to get another job. That is not how he perceived the situation though. He saw this as an opportunity to start something new and get away from a place that wasn't treating him the best. My dad was also able to reframe the situation for his family. For us, especially my mom, we did not see this as a good thing at all. But he was able to explain the situation for us and reassure us that him losing his job will eventually be a good thing. From there on we were able to put together the resources we had to help out with the current situation. We were all involved in the problem so instead of one person dealing with it, we all were. This is how, as a family, we were able to become stronger from a family crisis.