Overcoming Family Crisis: Power in Perception

All families deal with stressful events. Some are more extreme than others. Some stressors, such as the birth of a child or a family move, can be expected or even planned. Some, however, seem to strike out of nowhere, such as the death of a loved one or a job loss. Whether this event is planned or not, minor or large scale, there is always something we can control. That is our perception of the event.

There are three aspects that make up a stressful experience in a family. First is the actual event. We typically don’t have control of this event or its timing, and even if we do it might prove to be more challenging than we anticipated. Second is the resources we have available and how we apply them to the situation. We can maximize the way we use the resources within our reach, but, like the event, we don’t have a lot of control of what is available once we are presented with this challenging event. Third, which is the part I want to focus my post on today, is our perception or how we view the stressor.

We know family life is no walk in the park. It requires great effort to build a loving atmosphere in your home and a strong lasting marriage and family. No matter the stressor that comes to a family, and we know they will come, we can change how we view the situation to enable ourselves to find greater happiness as we go through a difficult time. I’d like to share an example from my own life.

About 15 months into my mission, I got sick. This sickness didn’t go away and ended up requiring me to return home to figure out exactly what was going on. Now this was a difficult trial in my life, but it also had a profound affect on my family. Any time a member of the family unit is struggling, it disturbs the functionality in the home. In my situation, we didn’t know when, or even if I would get better. It was scary. This event could have had an incredibly negative impact on my family, but instead it had the opposite effect. I felt as if going through this trial allowed my parents and little brother and my sisters and their families to unite. I drew strength from them, their prayers, and their faith.

For those of us blessed to be surrounded by family strong in the gospel, it can greatly improve our reaction to the circumstances. But, above all, it was my positive perception of this trial that enabled me to progress when it would have been easy to regress. Even with a supportive family, there were times I could have easily become frustrated with them for not understanding exactly what I was going through or knowing how to help me in just the way I needed. At times I felt I was slipping into depression. It’s certainly not easy to go from living the missionary lifestyle, active, social, and structured, to laying in your bed 24/7. I chose to set specific and realistic goals. Of course, there were many hours spent watching television and movies, but I chose to spend the majority of my time reading the scriptures and listening to general conference talks and other gospel-oriented books. I can honestly say my personal and spiritual growth during this time was analogous with my growth as a missionary. I strengthened relationships with many different family members and felt as though this experience gave my family a unique opportunity to grow in ways we would not have been able to otherwise.

I’ve seen examples of stressors either drawing a family closer together or pulling them apart in other families I have interacted with. There are sad tales of families torn apart by a crisis and inspiring tales of families rising above the pain of a crisis to become stronger than ever before. I believe the many times the difference between these outcomes is not that one event was necessarily worse than the other or that one family had more resources available, but whether the family viewed their trial as a stumbling block or a stepping stone.