Family Crisis

Reuben Hill created a model to understand why families react differently to the same stress or crisis. His developed the ABCX model.

• A is the Actual event: what happened
• B is the Behavioral responses: resources the family has and uses to cope with the stress
• C is Cognitions: the way the family defines the stressful situation. 
• X is the total eXperience: everything that happened as a result and the outcomes of the event

The families that were able to overcome the crisis and return to the same level of happiness they were at before the event or to a higher level, were those families who used their resources and defined the event as a hardship but not something they couldn't overcome. 

For example two families, the Smith's and the Jones's, face the event of their fathers being laid off of work. The Actual event is the same for both families. Say the Smith's define this event as the end of the world and that their way of life is ending. None of the other family members seek to find work to help provide income. And they don't have very much money saved up for emergencies like these. Obviously the Smith's will struggle and do very poorly if their father doesn't find work quickly.
The Jones's, on the other hand, define the event as a hardship but they know it will pass. Every able family member decides to look for work to help the family through this hard time. They also have some money saved up to spend if necessary. The Jones's will do okay even if their father doesn't find work very quickly. Even though both the families had their fathers out of a job, the Jones's will do better in the long run because of the way they defined the event and because they used all their resources available to them.