family under stress

It is no secret that there is a lot of stress on and in families. I know all of us have felt it. Whether it is stress from outside things or arguments/ disagreements within the family as well. The most attacked thing within this world, besides the belief and love of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, is the family.   With this being the most attacked, Satan uses his most clever tactics to get us to argue and have the ultimate goal, break the family apart.

For the last two years, I have been fighting the worst of my depression and anxiety. Before this, about two years prior, I was at the start of my emotional breaking point. This created immense stress with my family. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice for suicide prevention. You could imagine the level of stress on us. I am still surprised that our family is still intact. Luckily, we had resilience. There could have been very bad outcomes from this but instead, we were able to push through.

Now let’s talk about what stress really is. One definition on Merriam- Webster defines stress as constraining force or influence: such as a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. So this sounds like stress is really bad! Stress can literally cause physical health problems. I remember when my anxiety was through the roof and I was so stressed, my stomach hurt all the time and I couldn’t eat really anything. It can cause stomach ulcers, muscle pains, headaches, fatigue and it can affect your sleep like crazy. I know that My body gets so achy and I either can’t sleep or I have terrible nightmares. Stress, obviously, affects you mentally as well. It can change your mood, make you lack motivation and focus, it can make you irritable and angry, or it also can make you sad and depressed. Stress drives people to drink or start using tobacco products or drugs. People tend to withdraw from lots of activities and people when overly stressed as well as they can have angry outbursts. They can displace their feeling of stress onto you.

You can see how these symptoms can cause even more problems in the family but there are effects of families that affect more than just our bodies. They affect our relationships. WOAH. So you are telling me that my inside world and outside world both get affected… YEAH its crazy I know. So there are so many stressors that occur to a family, things like Sickness, loss of job, financial problems, natural disasters, depression, addictions and death of a family member. These create so much tension in families. These types of stressors can destroy families or make them closer but it all depends on what they do. Families that come together usually try to openly talk about the stressor, use each other for support, and allowing each other the tie to process alone. I know the last option is a little odd because you would think that leaving someone alone would be bad but when there is some big event affecting the family, people need time to process, cry, think, and feel. I know that for me, I need some space for people to think about what is going on and figure out what is really happening and what is my mind making up. I have a pretty creative mind. Families that pray together tend to have better success getting through the stressor at hand. They are brought together spiritually through prayer and they get to have an outlet to give their problems too.