HEALTHY FAMILY REACTIONS TO ILLNESS

With whom do you compare yourselves when you are deciding how well you are adjusting to illness? Notice that my question implies that such a comparison is inevitable. Consciously or not, we tend to evaluate ourselves by observing how others appear to be. Based on such comparisons, some people settle for what is actually a poor way of coping. As the case example of the Johnsons demonstrated, the family tradition" may dictate that you act a certain way, but that is not necessarily the wise way to act. Continuing in these family ways might feel right because such ways of relating to one another and to the world are familiar. But this feeling of familiarity does not necessarily mean you are making wise choices in your current life.
Perhaps even more typical is the tendency to compare your marriage and family negatively with some imagined standard of perfection; feeling bad is the inevitable consequence. Somehow, other families just seem to struggle less, enjoy more, and manage better than the people who are living under your own roof. Much of my counseling with cardiac couples involves teaching them to use realistic standards in their self-analysis. Without accurate information about what is healthy, you run the risk of making one or both of the preceding mistakes; you might discount your own goodness, or you might accept as normal a form of family functioning that is actually impaired.
I have included the following descriptions of healthy family reactions to illness to give you a realistic picture with which you can compare yourselves. However, as you read on, you must remember one thing: There are no perfect families.
Even the healthiest families may react to the shock of illness with periods of distress, disorganization, and conflict. Therefore, the initial stages of family adjustments to illness are often similar in families with healthy coping patterns and in families with unhealthy coping patterns. What distinguishes these two groups is how the family ultimately responds to the disruption caused by illness.
Healthy families can be described as progressing through three stages of reaction while adjusting to the illness of a loved one. Each stage has certain behavioral, emotional, and interpersonal characteristics.
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