Stressed out

Any perception of reality in our time is stressful in whatever direction it is.

Stress is the flavor and taste of life, and only someone who does nothing can avoid it…

We should not, and cannot, avoid stress. Complete freedom from stress would mean death.

Hans Selye

Any difficulties in our life are an experience, and any experience is stress. However, it all depends on how we perceive it.

Since we are discussing family relationships in this blog, I want to focus on the types of stress in family relationships and marriage, how to cope with it and what useful conclusions can be drawn.

As in any situation, there are internal and external stressors, as well as normative and non-normative ones.

Any stressful event has a better visual understanding for us through the formula A+B+C=X, in which A is the actual event or event causing stress that is happening at the moment. B is both the resources available and the reaction you take. C is cognitive thoughts, views and opinions on a given situation. Well, X is the total acquired experience on this event that has arisen.

But if you dig a little deeper, you can touch on the 3-component model of family stress of Carney and Bradbury to explain the effect of the influence of external stressors on a married couple. It arises from a) persistent vulnerability (for example, problematic personality traits such as neuroticism or problems in the parental family), b) a stressful event (for example, life crisis events, stressful conditions, normative family crises), c) a low level of adaptation (for example, inability to empathize and support a partner, non-constructive ways to resolve conflicts).

During stressful events, two parts of the brain are involved - the frontal lobe and the limbic system. The frontal lobe is our intellectual part of the brain, it is thanks to this part of the brain that we make informed, reasonable decisions. The limbic part of our brain is just responsible for moral satisfaction, namely for the emotional state of our body and soul. Fighting, fleeing or fading are precisely those reactions that are survival instincts that take over at the moment of physical, emotional and any other crisis.

If we talk about the conclusions that we were able to identify about stress as one of the main aspects of family life, then it is characteristic to highlight the following and pay close attention to them:

Everyday stress affects different aspects of family functioning: satisfaction with marriage, marital communication, sexual activity;

Everyday external stressors affect the occurrence of stress in marital relationships. But at the same time, with the support of the spouse, it is possible to reduce the level of external stress of the partner;

Dyadic everyday stress (a stressful event or meeting related to both partners; or when both partners are directly confronted with the same stressful event) is more closely related to the quality of marital relations than external stress. External everyday stress affects the satisfaction and quality of marital relations indirectly - through an increase in dyadic stress. Moreover, the dyadic stress of one of the partners affects the quality of marital relations of both partners;

Parental everyday stress affects both the parents themselves (their mental health), and the peculiarities of parental behavior, and the occurrence of various problems in children;

And also parental everyday stress can be caused by the characteristics and behavior of children, as well as the sex of the child and the parent;

Life without stressful factors is impossible - they are found everywhere in every aspect of life. The most important thing is always, in any situation, to try to keep control of yourself, creating a healthy family climate and remember “It's not stress itself that kills us, but our reaction to it...”