For this assignment, you will need to choose a time of significant stress and crisis that your family has gone through that you are comfortable sharing. The goal of any of these assignments is NEVER to cause any student discomfort or to feel like they have to share distressing or uncomfortable matters of their personal lives. You only have to discuss what you are willing to present. The objective of this assignment is for you to apply what you are learning to your own life and to reflect on what you have gleaned from it.

Think about a time when your family experienced a significant time of stress and/or crisis and the reactions, ways of coping and how the family system worked through the difficulties experienced. Everyone has or will go through a challenge…

____________________________________________

You will need to read and review Chapter 13 in our Lamanna textbook to successfully complete this assignment because it is a personal application paper.

1. Identify and discuss what type of stressor(s) were present (the book provides the different types)? If it became a major crisis, what led to it becoming one?
   • Please note: the stressor or crisis you choose to discuss MUST 1) be in the past and one that your family has already gone through; not one that they are currently in, 2) one that you are old enough to recall and speak directly about and how it personally impacted you as a member of the family and 3) impacted your immediate family. This is important because you will not be able to answer all the questions if your family is still working through the challenge or if you are retelling something second hand such as you were too young to remember. If you are unsure about ANYTHING regarding this assignment, please email me 🙂
2. Then think about the “course of a family crisis” we learned about in chapter 13. Describe and summarize what your family looked like during these stages: how did your family handle it–what were the responses of the family system?
3. Address and discuss how your family coped, adjusted and or chose to adapt. Were they resilient or vulnerable and why? What resources/factors as addressed in the chapter did your family use, need, or should have used (this depends on what occurred as well as your own perception of what took place: remember how everyone appraises the situation/crisis/challenge differently)?
4. Finally, looking back, what came from this experience in the life of your family such as lessons learned or what you learned about your family and even yourself

It is critical and expected that when discussing family dynamics and personal reflections that you apply course information from chapter 13 in the Lamanna text to support and explain your assessment–by using terms and concepts presented throughout the chapter material as well as properly cite the information.