Chapter 15: Family Change: Stress, Crisis, and Transition

Life change event

A life change event is typically an event that is forever life-altering and requires significant social and psychological adjustment.

Distress

A stressor can be "bad stress" or "negative stress" or "harmful stress."

Eustress

A stressor can be "good stress" or "positive stress" or "productive stress."

Transactional Model of Stress

According to this model, stress is thought to be the result of an interaction between the person and his or her environment.

Family crisis

Along with the transitions throughout the lifecourse of the family, many of these transitions often cause stress; sometimes this stress is experienced as a family crisis.

Emotion-focused coping

An attempt to cope with feelings of fear and anxiety and to maintain hope.

Stressor

Anything that elicits a physiological and/or psychological response to any stimuli.

Fight or flight

Because of our inborn fight or flight tendency, our normal state of homeostasis (balance) in the mind and body become upset when exposed to stress or stressors.

Cognitive avoidance or denial

Cognitive avoidance or denial is an attempt to deny the seriousness of the situation.

Cognitive redefinition

Cognitive redefinition occurs when families attempt to re-frame the life event or stressor in ways that are more favorable.

Domestic violence/Family violence

Domestic violence is violence that is perpetrated against family members by an offender who is related to the victim either biologically or legally, such as by marriage or through adoption.

Emotional discharge

Emotional discharge entails venting anger, frustration, confusion, disappointment, hatred, and despair in response to tragic or sudden/unexpected news.

Emotional regulation

Emotional regulation strategies help individuals and families change their perception, interpretation, and the meaning of the stressor.

Normative

Expected events that take place throughout the family life cycle.

External locus of control

External locus of control refers to the perception that we cannot control what happens in some aspects of our lives.

Family resiliency

Family resilience refers to a family's ability to function in a healthy fashion during times of change, stress, adversity, crisis, and transition.

Internal locus of control

Internal locus of control refers to the perception that we are, to a large extent, in control of our destiny.

Non-normative

Life events that cannot be predicted or anticipated.

Meaning-based coping

Meaning-based coping strategies are those coping techniques that produced positive emotion, such as equipping ourselves with as much information about my illness and treatment plan as we could we chose to remain optimistic.

A factor

Part of Hill's ABC-X Family Crisis Model, A factors are the initial crisis-causing events.

B factor

Part of Hill's ABC-X Family Crisis Model, B factors are the resources a family has at its disposal to meet the demands of the crisis.

C factor

Part of Hill's ABC-X Family Crisis Model, C factors are the meanings families ascribe to the event.

X factor

Part of Hill's ABC-X Family Crisis Model, X factors are the outcomes of the event, the results of whether or not a family copes effectively with the crisis event.

General Adaptation Syndrome

Physician Hans Selye (1975) developed the three-stage General Adaptation Syndrome to describe the physiological responses to eustress and distress. The stages are: alarm reaction, stage of resistance, and exhaustion.

Pile-up

Pile-up can result from either a single stressor that coincides with life events/changes, multiple stressors, or multiple stressors that coincide with life events/changes.

Progressive desensitization

Progressive desensitization occurs when family members gradually allow themselves increasing exposure to the varying aspects of the stressor.

Resigned acceptance

Resigned acceptance occurs when the family ultimately accepts the situation, and recognizes that nothing will change the course their family life has taken.

ABC-X Family Crisis Model

Reuben Hill's ABC-X model, views a family crisis situation as a combination of various factors.

Family coping skills

Skills that families tend to use in times of change and crisis.

Acute

Stressors are considered to be acute, if they last a relatively short period of time.

Chronic

Stressors that last longer in duration.

Cycle of Violence

The Cycle of Violence illustrates three phases of violence commonly seen in abusive relationships: the tension-building phase, the acute battering or violent act, and the respite (non-violent) phase.

The Power and Control Wheel

The Power and Control Wheel, which depicts behaviors that batterers use to control and dominate their intimate partners and/or children.

Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)

The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) identifies associations between life events and life transitions, and the impact of these events and transitions on individual physical health and well-being.

Problem focused coping

The family confronts the reality of the crisis head-on by seeking and obtaining information about the crisis in an effort to gain a sense of control over their situation.

Batterer

The people who perpetrate family violence. Intimate partner violence (IPV)- Any violence perpetrated by one partner against the other.

Family stress

The result of an imbalance between the demands an event places on a family, and that family's ability—or inability—to meet them.

Problem management

These management strategies are aimed at directly attacking the stressor or changing the stressor.

Double ABC-X Model

Using Hill's ABC-X Model as the foundation, noted and influential family researchers developed the Double ABC-X Model to better understand the effects of the accumulation, or pile-up, of stressors and strains and how families adapt to them.

Appraisal focused coping

With appraisal-focused coping, families try to understand why the crisis occurred and attempt to find meaning in the circumstances that caused the crisis. Skills needed include the ability to logically analyze the situation and mentally prepare for certain events to unfold.