Family Stress and Coping

When something crazy happens in your life, how do you deal with it? Some people go running, some eat crazy amounts of food, some people sleep and others lose sleep. There are a lot of ways people deal with stress, do you think about how that stress is going to effect your whole family?

There are a lot of big stressor things that can happen, there are also lots of small things and if we don’t deal with it we can drive a wedge between us and our families. There are two different forms of stress though, we have eustress and distress, so positive and negative stress. Positive stress is something that provides stress to motivate more than to tear down and overwhelm. Things like hw deadlines provide me some stress so I actually do assignments, getting good grades can motivate me to do my hw, otherwise I would probably not do them because I never had to turn it in. This can turn into distress though if I do procrastinate everything and I have lots going on in life as well as a lot of hw, something I am experiencing now. Distress can cause you to lose weight, gain weight, lose hair, over eat, skip meals, lose sleep or over sleep, it can also cause you to be so overwhelmed that you just break down and get really frustrated.

I am going to be real with you guys right now, I am stressed right now! I said yes to a cleaning job a couple months back and didn’t start it for a while, so I got another job last month that literally worked me over 80hrs the first 2weeks, then I started the cleaning job which isn’t often but its like taking up the small amount of time I have for HW and I am taking 14 credits right now. I also want to go to grad school so grades are real important! ALSO, to add to my mayhem, Dylan and I are moving right now and we need to get to our new place ASAP but who has time to pack right?! NOT THIS GIRL! Our place started getting messy cause we were never home, and we don’t cook meals often because we work all afternoon and evening after classes all morning. THEN, just to add to it… I have two classes that are calling for outside work, 28hrs of lab work for one and 30hrs of lab work for the other! I also have ongoing projects I have to keep up with the 200pages of reading I have to do for hw every week. WHAT AM I DOING!?! I am sure there are others who are taking on more than they can and have it so crazy. I don’t mean to complain but I am just trying to be real that its getting crazy over here! Life is so fun! (We are super excited for our new place though, we are going to have so much more storage and space we can breathe a little more through our stressful semester, the place we are at now we call the hallway because its so small).

Stress can turn into anxiety. Anxiety is a natural, normal, healthy response to percieved danger, when we perceive that we can’t escape the danger our body starts to shut down and that turns into depression. Depression is pretty stinky, a lot of people are depressed in today’s world and also the world has become more stressful. There is definetely a correlation there, maybe not causation fully, but definetely correlated. Most people I know who have depression also have anxiety.

I will say though, there are healthy ways to look at stress or deal with it. Sometimes the greatest stressors can be the greatest opportunities to grow together as families and as an individual. If you think of the metaphor for coal turning into a diamond because of the fire and intense pressure, we can become our own diamonds. I know that I have learned from lots of stressful situations and I am grateful for that! The way we cope can be a protection or a boundary for us to hold on to when its hard.