Blog Question for Chapter 3 of Handout - Family Affairs (Tan Hao Ming)

The Given Question: There are times when family affairs disappoint you. On Page 79 Outside the Box’, there are four suggestions on how to handle disappointment. What do you think of each suggestion? If you do not have issues that are family related (include the wider family, adoptive family, guardian), consider other disappointments in your life with other people who are supposedly close to you.

Actually, I do agree with all the suggestions given by the author. I feel that a lot of things can cause you to feel disappointed, which this chapter was talking about family affairs. The most common family affairs that will make you feel disappointed are sibling rivalry and divorce. 

1) For the first suggestion by the author of the book, which is 'Take it easy on yourself, especially when you are feeling down. Do something that makes you feel good about yourself.' 


I agree with this statement because it is not your responsibility or you are not responsible for some family matters like divorce and sibling rivalry. We should not give ourselves too much matters to handle and also more pressure, especially not when we still have problems in school to handle. This will only make us feel like cutting ourselves and letting go of the problems without handling or dealing with them which will affect us in different ways in the future. 


For example, if we do not solve the problems of understanding a concept well in school with the help from a teacher or your fellow classmates, then it will be too late for us when we had to face our big examinations which will decide whether which path we will go. We should always try not to keep thinking about what is happening to us in our family, and if we do when we are feeling down, we may get stressed up and sick easily. Also, when we do something that makes us feel good about ourselves, we will be happier and we will be able to discover or recall our strengths that we had.

2) For the second suggestion, which is 'No matter what the situation, try to look at it positively or in a positive way.'


I agree with it because I feel that everyone should keep looking forward to what will be happening in the future instead of thinking about what has happened that will upset them, especially things which we wished should not have happened to us. If we keep thinking about the bad memories we had, it will not only make us feel even  upset, it will also make the people around us feel upset and we may hurt them.


We will hurt them as when they see we are upset, they will feel sorry for us too, especially our families, which is  very close to us and almost everyday the see you. Only by looking forward then we will not feel disappointment which we will have to handle. Disappointment is really not an easy thing to handle as it requires us some time to get through it, and in fact, disappointment may cause people to suffer for as long as a few years. That is why we should look forward. 


One more reason why I think looking forward is very important is because the things that will happen in the future are considered hard to predict, and so you would not know what is going to happen, except for those planned things(which are usually good things), and you will not feel disappointment as you had not come across them.

3) For the third suggestion, which is 'To know that everyone faces and goes through disappointment and that the feelings that go with it won't last forever'.


I agree with it because when you think about it, you will know that you are not the only one who faces such disappointment as they are others who do too. This will give you a feeling that you are not the only one going to solve your problems and that there will be support for you. 


If we know that everyone faces problems and goes through disappointment, then we will also get a feeling that having us going through disappointment at this stage is a normal thing, so we do not really have to worry and think about whether we are abnormal and that something is going to happen to us. There will also be someone for us to talk to when we have such problems, which is the people who are going through the same phase or cycle as us, especially people who are of the same age as us.

For the fourth suggestion, which is 'Find a healthy way to express your emotions, like writing your thoughts down in a journal, going out for a walk, doing something creative and talking to someone'.


I agree with this statement as doing what we like to do or what we normally do will make us forget about the problems with our families/family affairs, no matter whether it does or does not concern us. Like, for example, if we have sibling rivalry with our siblings, then if we go our for a walk, we will realised that the walk was useful as it has helped us to refresh our mind in a way that we will stop thinking about the sibling rivalry we had at home. This is same for the others.


If we do what we like to do, then we will feel happy. In this suggestion, it also mentioned that writing down your thoughts on the journal also one way to express your emotions healthily. I agree with this suggestion as by writing down our thoughts, or especially our problems in our life, we can relieve the pain in our heart and release them off into the words on the journal while maintaining and controlling our stress level.

5) For the fifth suggestion, which is 'Try to keep things in perspective and think about the things you are grateful or thankful for. It may be things that can stretch from thinking about an important person in your life to eating an Oreo cookie at school'.


I agree with this statement as doing this will make us happy by letting us think of the wonderful memories we had in your life, and will also help us in reflecting what we had gone through. When we reflect in what we had gone through, especially on things which we are grateful and thankful for, as in the suggestion above, we will keep thinking about what has happened that make us feel grateful for it, and this will help us by letting our minds drift away from the problems at school or problems with family affairs.


Another reason why I agree with this statement is also because when we think of a person we are grateful for or want to thank, we can simply think of what he/she had done which helped us or make us want to thank him/her or what qualities does he/she has as some of this will really helped us in dealing with problems. For example, if a person in life helped us in our life with patience, you can learn from him that you need patience to deal with such problems. Then we would not have to worry too/so much about the problems we had.


Yes, of course all these suggestions are useful to me when dealing with the disappointments I had with my family because they are related to the topic given and they are good suggestions. Since I am not a person who really knows how to solve different types of problems, though I like to solve problems, they are useful to  me in a way that I will feel better when using these suggestions to deal with the problems and that there will be more suggestions for me, where I can choose what to do. When I face problems about family affairs in the future, I will definitely take a look back at the suggestions for help if I do not know what to do.