All families have their moments of stress. The more important concept of all of this is how those families cope with these events that can be stressful. So, what exactly is coping? Coping is how to effectively deal with a problem.
Overall I quite enjoyed this class this week, sensitive subjects were discussed, but it was a very effective class. Throughout the class, we talked about stressors when it comes to the family. Some stressors that I gathered with my family were losing a job, losing a family member, health problems, drug use and so forth. These things are all added stress to the family. How the family decides to deal with these stressor events can be important on determining relationships within the family. This week I want to share a story that was discussed in class. This may be a sensitive subject, but I really enjoyed it and thought that it could help others out there. This story is about sexual abuse. Our teacher is a Marriage and Family Therapist. One experience that he had over his time in family therapy was when he talked with a family that was dealing with sexual abuse within the family. It all started when one child in the family was sexually abused by another child in the family. For example, let’s have the sex abusers name be Sam while the victim child is Kathy. Their story begins like this, there were about 3-4 kids in the family. There was a mom and a step dad. When the family found out about the abuse between Kathy and Sam, therapy was issued right away and Sam was removed from the home to get further help. Sam kept in contact with the mother for quite some time, but for about two years kept distant from the family, never saying a word. Sam was put in a school to get him help, while Kathy dealt with the abuse talking with a therapist about her abuse. As time went on (around those two years like mentioned before) Sam had talked to his mother and she suggested to have a family therapy session together. They all went to the family therapist (my teacher) and talked to him individually about everything. After their individual discussions with the therapist the whole family, minus the step father (because he absolutely hated Sam and what he had done) all went to the session. Emotions were high during this time, but needed to be expressed. Everyone in the room went around telling each other how they felt and what happened. At the end of the session the therapist asked Sam to get on his knees and apologize to Kathy. He did and said in a sassy tone while rolling his eyes, “I am sorry what I did to you.” Then after those comments mentioned he turned to the therapist, “am I done now?” the therapist knew it wasn’t genuine and told him to be genuine. He got back down on his knees and then with tears in his eyes confessed everything, “Kathy I am sorry what I did to you. In all honesty, you are just so pretty and I am so insecure and nobody likes me compared to the way they like you. I just thought that if I did those things to you that I would be getting close to you and that people would see that I was more like you than they thought.” During these moments, the room was silent. Tears were streaming down everyone’s faces and Sam started apologizing to everyone on his knees. Then Kathy turned to Sam and said, “Sam I forgive you.” The therapist then turned to Kathy saying, “Kathy you don’t have to forgive him.” Then Kathy turned to the therapist and said, “that’s why I can forgive him.” After that the whole family dynamics changed. Everyone was different. The mother even ended up divorcing her husband because he didn’t want a part in that change that the family experienced. But the damage that had been done had been repaired, the love was growing back and everything changed. After that Sam apologized to many people, especially the people at his schooling of therapy and that amazed them. I loved this story and wanted to share it with you all today because it really touched me. Even though sometimes in life hard things happen, families become broken for a time, and people are the cause of that brokenness in the end everything can work itself out as long as people are willing to cope, working through their problems. Yeah, at times we may feel broken as a family or not understand how to fully cope with a situation, but in the end, we can do it if we believe that we can.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2017
Categories |