Coping With Crisis

Family life is not easy. In fact, I’m willing to say that I believe parenthood and family life to be one of the hardest/greatest jobs that exist. It can be the most challenging, yet also the most rewarding. One of the hard truths of family life is that throughout it each of us are bound to experience some sort of intense hardship and must learn to cope with the effects. We cannot control all the things that will happen to us in this life, however we can control how we choose to react. The purpose of this post is to focus more on family crisis and stressors, intense moments or things that can really impact the unity and structure of a family.

Here is a list of 10 significant stressors that I have witnessed in my own life or in the lives of people that I know:

1. Death of a loved one

2. Taking care of a child with developmental struggles

3. Moving to a new city or state

4. Divorce (Especially with the consequences that it has on children)

5. Family member fighting against a terminal illness

6. The difficult process of trying to adopt foster kids

7. One family member overworking(Leading to a lack of time spent with the rest of the family)

8. Relocating for work only to end up losing the job

9. The passing of a child (Be this a miscarriage, illness, accident, etc.)

10. One (or more than one) child (or possibly parent) struggling with anxiety, depression, anger, or etc.

Each of these situations are ones that bring hardship upon a family. (And these hardships are often more than just a stressor financially but mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually too.) During phases of life such as these it’s hard to see (or even want to see) how things could ever return to the way they once were. In fact, if you have ever been through, or are currently going through any situations such as this, have you noticed some of the things that are said in response? I’m thinking about literal phrases here, things people say through their trials.

Here is a small list of some of the things that I have heard said during trying times:

“God has a better/higher plan for me and my family.”

“Our family will never be the same again.”

“Why does God have to punish us? What did we do wrong?”

“Why do bad things happen to good people?”

“Why couldn’t it have been me instead?”

“This too shall pass.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just look for the silver lining.”

There’s a different attitude that can be noted between some of the responses here, no? Some appear to be more optimistic while others the complete opposite or even in denial. It’s hard to train oneself to react a certain way, especially when a crisis or stressor is rarely an even that is seen coming. However, I believe that it can still be quite important to understand the different types of coping mechanisms that exist, and which ones are the most effective.

Three types of coping mechanism that should be avoided are denial (the most common ineffective coping pattern), avoidance (accepting that the crisis or stressor happened but not confronting or dealing with it), and scapegoating (trying to find someone to blame for the things that happened).

Some of the forms of effective coping include changing one’s perspective on the situation (allowing yourself to have a growth-mindset), finding and using available resources (for example therapy or self-reliance courses), affirm your own and your family’s worth, and balancing the amount of self-concern with other-concern (turning to others who may have also gone through the situation and making sure that they are okay).

Clearly, these are not all the forms of coping that exist, and perhaps there is one that works better for you than others. (Which I would love to hear about if you don’t mind sharing, feel free to leave a comment.) I believe that one of the most important things to remember is to be patient with oneself and to know/understand that these stressors and crisis moments are often things that we cannot control, but that we can learn and grow from, no matter how difficult they may seem. We’ve got this.

I feel inclined to leave one of my favorite scriptures here, maybe it can help you as much as it helped me:

“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high…”

Doctrine and Covenants Section 121: 7-8

Stay Golden!