I think it's very important to have an agenda for each meeting.  Planning, preparation, and order all go into the agenda.  It isn't something that's just whimsically thrown together at the last minute.  There is a lot of thought that goes into the agenda.  Also, having an agenda helps you stay focused in meetings.  I know I can easily be distracted by different things, but if I know what's suppose to happen, and the order it's going to happen in, it makes it a lot easier to focus on the tasks at hand.  I think also having an agenda makes it so nothing gets forgotten about.  It's easy for me to forget things unless I write them down.

It's also important to have a sacred time set aside each week.  Our lives can get so hectic sometimes, but I think it's much easier to do things when we know already know when they are to take place.  It's important to have it at a time that's also not going to be interrupted by anything else happening during the week.  The brethren meet on Thursdays, which I think is good because it's after church on Sunday, but prior to the upcoming Sunday, it's after family home evenings, mutual, and it comes before the weekend. 

Going along with sacred time is to have it in a sacred place.  This makes it so you don't have outside distractions or influences trying to take away your focus.  There are so many distractions these days.  I've noticed more and more how much my phone distracts me.  I loved how when my husband and I went on our honeymoon, we didn't have cell service or the internet, and it was so nice to have that time to ourselves without distractions.  I think the same is great when we have councils as well.  You need to focus on what's im

The Mood Logs and CBT have been very interesting to study.  As we kind of already learned towards the beginning of the semester, our thoughts and what we perceive have a huge impact on us.  After having some thoughts for so long, we actually start to believe they are true.  Also, after a long time, it's hard to change our thinking without actually writing our thoughts down, as well as the emotion we feel.  But it's also amazing how once we change our thinking, we can start moving towards getting rid of those negative thoughts.

Our thoughts, urges, and sensations/feelings are all interrelated.  If you can change any one of those, you can change them all!  That's kind of a lot of power we have.  But, it's also good to note that it doesn't happen right away.  It takes a little bit of time, but once you get started, and what I've noticed, is it becomes a lot easier to think through the negative thoughts when stressful events occur, and try to think of positive or at least true thoughts.

10 Cognitive Distortions we have:
1.  All or nothing thinking
2.  Overgeneralize
3.  Mental filter
4.  Discounting positives
5.  Jumping to conclusions (mind reading, fortune telling)
6.  Minimization/maximization
7.  Emotional reasoning
8.  Should statements
9.  Labeling
10.  Blame (self-blame, other

I really like that we got the chance to take a deeper look into Hill's ABCX stress model.  Using it when relating to the Fire case study helped me to understand it a lot more, and take a deeper look at the things I missed when I wrote my write up.  Also, taking the time to explain it on the discussion board helped as well. 

A is the Actual event.  B is Both resources and responses.  C is cognitions/thoughts.  X is the total eXperience.  I thought that this model best explained how my family handles stress.  And I think a lot of things also are dependent upon our family system and how well it functions.  If it doesn't function well before a stressor event, the likelihood of you bouncing back after isn't that high, unless you have good family flexibility and adaptability. 

This week in class we had the opportunity to, in a sense, sit in on a family therapy session.  It really gave us a chance to see what might occur in a real session.  I feel as if I learned more about how family systems work, seeing it play out and happen rather than if we had just talked about the key concepts of the theory.  It was easy to relate to a lot of different characters because it was something that could actually occur in families, so it was realistic.  Throughout the two days we had the "session" there were times I would put myself into the shoes of those that were acting things out, and it became very real to me.  I would have expressed some of the same emotions, if not more intense, myself. 

Also, on Monday, I learned more about how the body reacts to stressful situations.  There are a lot of things that happen automatically like our breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure.  As well as three different options we choose; flight, fight or freeze.  When stress occurs, the "thinking" part of our brain turns off and we just do things automatically.  When this happens, we start to believe some things are real, when in fact it's more a distorted perception we believe to be real.  If our brains believe something is happening, we can believe it actually happens.  Perhaps this is why when the group was acting and I put myself into their shoes, I felt as if it was happening to me.  Especially when the "dad" said, "This is my family."  I could feel his pain as if that were my family and me.