Family Crisis

This week in class we learned about the family crisis process. The process follows the ABCX model which is. . .

    Actual event
    Behavioral response
    Cognitions (thoughts/thought process)
    total eXperience

The family crisis process is extremely important to be able to identify with if a family crisis is to be understood as well as resolved or taken in the right way. dont get me wrong, people can handle and have handled family crises without any knowledge of this model, but it is helpful to use. What this model helps a person to do is to look past the actual even and the behavioral responses that most people get caught up on. i know for myself, when i look back at tough times in my family and even times of crisis, i remember that i tended to judge people very harshly only off of my knowledge of what happened during the crisis, and how a few people acted. what i have since learned is that if i do my best to take into account what others are thinking and what i myself and thinking during the crisis and how my thinking affects my actions and the actions of others, i can understand the total experience of the crisis in a much more complete way. i also am able to empathize with the people most affected by the crisis and forgive any rash behaviors that they perform because i can understand a little bit more about what they are thinking and feeling leading up to the behavioral response.

now i am no psychic or x-man but i have been working at this a lot in my own family and feel like i have been able to improve significantly after having learned this model and put it into practice. My family growing up and my family now has been strangely fortunate to be able to handle some crises fairly well and only a few pretty dang horribly. but my question is, why do some couples come out of a crisis so well and others so terribly? What makes the difference?