When crisis comes

We all have had family crisis.

However, crisis isn't that bad if you know how to cope with it.

Seen it with another perspective, or another language will make more sense...

危机 is the Chinese word for crisis.

(Wéijī)

If we separate the characters it will be 危 : Danger / Dangerous

机: Chance / Opportunity

So, Crisis is an opportunity to grow, to learn how to rely more in your Heavenly Father, to increase your experience, to change for better.

Experiences like loosing a child, unexpected death of a family member, substance abuse and so on..

All of us, without exception have had one or many difficult experiences for which we are grateful now because they helped us become the person we are now.

The most important thing when facing a trial like those is how we react.

David D. Burns MD explained some ways people wrongly react to those circumstances : 1. All-or-Nothing Thinking

You see everything as black or white.  There are no shades of gray with this type of thinking.

You can recognize it when you say: "I am bad at that skill. I will never be good"

2. Overgeneralization

You assume that because something bad happened once, it’s bound to happen again and again.

You can recognize it when you say: "I made a mistake while giving an example in class. I am not going to give more examples to practices because I always do them wrong"

3. Mental Filter

You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of all of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water.

You can recognize it when you say: "I gave this presentation to the class, but a classmate was bored. Even though all the others payed attention, I did something wrong!"

4. Disqualifying the positive

Along the same lines, when you disqualify the positive, you never accept that anything good is happening to you.  Your mind filters out the positive moments and you discount them in one way or another.  

You can recognize it when you say: "My husband gave me a compliment, but it doesn't count because he is just saying it to be nice to me"

 5. Jumping to Conclusions

We call this “mind-reading” and the “fortune-teller error”.  Mind reading is when you assume you know the intentions behind someone’s actions, or you assume you know what someone is thinking (and it’s usually negative).  The problem with this is it leads you to respond defensively and/or withdraw from people which creates more negative interactions, causing a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.  The fortune-teller error happens when you assume you know that something bad is going to happen.  Most of the time, these negative expectations are unrealistic, but they can cause pessimism and hopelessness, which leads to depression.

6. Magnification and Minimization

You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the "binocular trick."

You can recognize it when you say: "I am going through this and it is too much for me , why is it happening to me if I can't with such a big thing?"

7. Emotional Reasoning

You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly." Or "I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person." Or "I feel angry. This proves I'm being treated unfairly." Or "I feel so inferior. This means I'm a second-rate person." Or "I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless."

You can recognize it when you say: "I don't feel like doing my homework right know, so I should not do it.. If I feel it it's because a reason"

8. Should Statements

Your main source of motivation is telling yourself that you “should” do this or that.  Instead of this motivating you to move forward, however, you feel guilty when you don’t live up to these “should” statements and this makes you apathetic and unmotivated.  You could also be directing should statements toward others by expecting them to behave a certain way.  When they don’t live up to your expectations, you become frustrated and resentful, which takes a lot of energy on your part to keep up.

You can recognize it when you say: "I should have done everything she did so I would have her better life"

9. Labeling and Mislabeling

Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." You might also label yourself a "fool" or a "failure" or a "jerk." Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but "fools," "losers," and "jerks" do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration, and low self-esteem.

You can recognize it when you say: "I'm so stupid, how did I do that?

10. Personalization

This is where we run into the problem with guilt.  When you personalize, you take responsibility for negative events even when they’re not your fault.  For example, if a teacher has a student who fails his state standardized tests, she might feel that his failing is her fault for being a bad teacher.  In reality, she can only influence her students, not control what they do.  In the end, the choice is up to them how they want to act.

You can recognize it when you say: "It was all my fault, if I would put it in another place, my baby wouldn't climb the kitchen and fell.

retrieved from (https://relateinstitute.com/10-ways-thinking-twisted/) and (https://hams.cc/ten/)

You see? We all have said one of these 10 at least once in our lives.

Now that you can recognize them, you can choose how to react when a crisis comes. Will I get stuck in my head thinking the things I could have done, why it happened, If I...?

Or are you going to take that family crisis as an opportunity to increase your faith in the Lord, recognizing that He has all power, and he can help you through it?