Understanding Family Crises and Panic Attacks

This week’s topic was The Family Under Stress. A stressor is something that puts strain on the family or family relationships, and a crisis is anything that mandates a necessary change in the family’s system. The way that a crisis is determined can be explained with something called the ABCX Model. A represents the stressor, B is the resources and methods used to cope with the stressor, C is the perception of the stressor, and X is the result of those three combined: the crisis. A+B+C=X. A crisis can either destroy a family’s functioning or the family can become stronger and more unified because of the crisis. The key lies in B and C of the model. If the family uses ineffective coping methods such as denial, avoidance, or blaming, and sees the stressor as something that is impossible to overcome, the restructuring that occurs in the family will not be beneficial. On the other hand, if the members of the family choose to find and/or take advantage of resources available to them (which includes friends and other family members), use effective methods of coping such as taking responsibility to do something about the situation and helping one another, and reframe the situation as a challenge that has meaning, their family can end up functioning better than before the crisis.

In class, Brother Williams brought out a coping saw. We had no idea what it was. It appeared to be some sort of violence therapy tool. But he explained to us that it was used to make tiny cuts on the edge of a piece of trim (as in the kind that runs around the top or bottom of a room) and that those adjustments to the wood allowed the two pieces to fit together seamlessly as one. That’s what coping is. It is small adjustments, tiny restructures at a time, in a stressful situation that allow those undergoing the stress to come out better on the other side.

Family Relations is teaching me how to cope. Brother Williams shared us the story of how his parents went through an awful event early in their marriage that undid their good relationship and I sat there and thought “If they knew how to map their family system and compare it to the ideal, they would have been able to see the problems and this wouldn’t have had to turn out so badly. If they knew these family relations things....” I realized then that that is exactly why BYU-Idaho is offering this class: to teach us how to cope and have effective families, families that have the ability to help themselves and others. I now know how to map a family system and what the ideal family system should look like. I know what stressors are and ways of coping with them. That’s what I’ve been learning all along and it is going to help me someday when I have a family. I know that that doesn’t mean that I have all of the answers or that I’m not going to have problems, but as Brother Williams put it “Crisis isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes we need it the most.” In his family of origin, it was a second crisis like the first one that finally caused his family to restructure for the better. Sometimes the greatest stressors can be the greatest opportunities. “Please don’t delay family to avoid stressors,” he said. “They can help you grow.”

The other topic that we discussed was anxiety. Anxiety is a great thing; it’s a natural and healthy response to a perception of danger and without it we would die. The only problem is that the brain can’t differentiate between an actual danger and the perception of danger. For example, between physical danger and emotionally stressful situations. As Brother Williams put it, “The limbic system is like a surfer dude; he’s not brilliant, he’s ready for action.” So, no matter what the actual situation is, if there is any perception of danger by the brain (which can include simple things like change or a new situation), the limbic system goes off and puts the body into panic mode. It tells the frontal lobe (in charge of decision making, problem solving, and analytics) to only think about the threat, it shuts off digestion, and heightens the heart rate and breathing. In situations where there is no actual danger, this response can be frightening in and of itself because the person experiencing it is confused. The trick is to change the brain’s perception of danger. The brain, in some ways, only knows what we tell it. A trained therapist can be helpful in the process of retraining the brain’s responses. I’m seeing one currently and she has helped me a lot already in one session. Once I understood what was going on inside of my head, it wasn’t so scary anymore and I am able to deal with it a lot better.