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4.3 Coping Styles There have been numerous research attempts to understand how individuals cope with negative life events. Freud (1993) refer to defence mechanisms and the unconscious processes individuals resort to in an attempt to address the internal conflicts they experience. Coping strategies serves as a mediator between perceived threats and their anticipated consequences (Endler and Parker, 1990). When confronted with a threat individuals resort to certain behaviour responses in order to cope with the perceived threat. More and more evidence acknowledge the important role that coping strategies play when individuals respond to perceived stressful life events. In 1966 Lazarus presented an analysis of stress and coping. In this analysis, …show more content…
They refer to active coping and define it as “the process of taking active steps to try to remove or circumvent the stressor or to ameliorate its effects”, it further involves taking direct action and can be compared to Lazarus’s problem focussed coping strategy but with “additional distinctions” which include: • Planning: the individual “think about what steps to take to handle the problem”. • Constrictions: the individual may choose to “suppress involvement in competing activities” which could include avoiding distractions focussing only on what needs to be done or to not give attention to certain things. • Restraint: The individual could use this response as an active strategy by waiting for “the right moment” to act or a passive strategy by not acting at all. • Seeking out social support: the person could seek advice or assistance. Seeking social support for emotional reasons for example sympathy or understanding would be a more emotional focussed coping …show more content…
Results of studies that focussed on internal versus external control suggests that strategies associated with positive psychosocial adaptation to change are connected to feelings of being in control of the threat or stressor, while feeling that external factors control the individual provoke coping responses for example blaming shifting. Other coping styles to acknowledge are optimism versus pessimism, where optimism is positively related to coping strategies that enhances adaptation to changed circumstances and overall psychological well-being. Studies showed that the psychosocial adjustment of optimistic individuals are higher (Miller, Manne, Taylor, Keates and Dougherty, 1996). Individual who resort to repression uses avoidance as a coping strategy in an effort to not have to deal with the threat (Krohne, 1996). When an individual exercise self-restraint or cognitive restraint as a coping mechanism, they and place themselves in control of the threat. This coping strategy also show a high correlation with psychosocial adaptation (Manne et al,
Everyone has to deal with struggles during their everyday life. Some people’s problems are more serious than others, and the way that people deal with their problems varies. Everybody has a coping mechanism, something they can use to make the struggle that they’re going through easier, but they’re usually different. Some people drink, some people smoke, some people pretend there is no problem. There are healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, and people will vary the one they use depending on the problem they’re facing. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author and her family deal with their struggles in multiple different ways as time goes on. However, the severity of her situation means that the methods she uses to deal with it are very important. That’s why it’s bad that Jeanette’s and her family have such unhealthy coping mechanisms, such
Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1987). Transactional theory and research on emotions and coping. European Journal of Personality, 1(3), 141-169. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com.library.gcu.edu:2048/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=6af88033-cdff-4c3b-8b49-dadc2d302c35%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4105
First off, going with the "I don't care" approach is not a good way in handling the situation. If one gets used to this approach, it may affect the development of emotional instincts and become habitual. This means, one may lose the ability to care. Another misconception regarding the coping process relates to letting our instinctive reptilian brain take over. This part of the brain senses danger and becomes an offensive and defensive responses in actions. If one lets their survival side take over whenever there was a problem, anger and impulse would rule over whenever we feel hurt. The third misconception on coping is completely forgetting how to deal with situations with our thinking mechanism. If one completely relies on instinctive responses, one would never learn how to express these emotions into words. They would also not be able to learn from experience for future
Smeets, T., Otgaar, H., & Raymaekers, L. (2012). Survival processing in times of stress. Psychon Bull Rev, 19, 113-118.
In the article, Coping with Anxiety, Depression, Anger, and Aggression: The Mediational Role of Resilience in Adolescents, focuses on how to be more proactive when it comes to treatment for psychological disorders and trying to find the relationship on resilience between coping vs psychopathology. Ng and Ang (2012) studied how positive thinking, persistence, and help-seeking influences approach/avoidance techniques and mental disorders. Seven-hundred-and-nineteen, 14-15 year old adolescents answered a series of questionnaires about avoidance/approach coping, tenacity, depression, anxiety, and aggression. Their results determined resilience characteristics did have a relationship between approach coping and mental disorders but not with avoidance. “Approach coping works via resilience processes to bring about a decrease in internalizing (anxiety and depression) and externalizing (anger and aggression) conditions” (Ng & Ang, 2012, p. 16). They found positive-thinking benefits anxiety and depression, and also that persistence/tenacity and seeking help can lower anxiety, depression, and anger. Keeping a focused and optimistic attitude throughout all of life’s struggles will keep you happier and
Emotion-focused coping is a form of coping that involves handling a situation/stressor that is inconsistent with a person’s goal. This form of coping, as opposed to problem-focused coping, should be used when the stressor is outside of the individual’s control. Some strategies used during emotion-focused coping include the following: distracting oneself, expressing your emotions (via talking or writing), praying, practicing mindfulness, and eating comfort food. Likewise some people engage in negative emotion focused strategies such as using drugs, drinking alcohol, and suppressing emotions which may increase the stressor instead of reducing it due to the fact that drug abuse leads to poor
When a person uses emotion focused coping they understand that they can’t change the distressing situation they are in, so
You understandably describing the difference between the two types of coping. I also like both of your examples for the direct coping and defensive coping. Withdrawal is always best for changing the uncomfortable situation, and I am glad to hear you love your new job. My example for the defensive coping is about denial too. Sometimes when something happens to a person that he or she did not expect to happen, he or she is denial to believe it.
Problem focused coping is a type of method use to reduce or eliminate stress in a practice and action-plan way. For example, if a person is getting stress by their parents because they did something in front of his or her friend, one might confront his or her parents and talk about the situation to prevent from happening it again. Emotion focused coping is another way to cope with a stress by switching one’s own thinking and emotion. For example, a girl is so upset because she had just broken up with her boyfriend and decides to take a shower to relax. During that time, she used emotion focused coping strategy to keep her mind positive and decide that they weren’t meant to be and moved
A study by Sliter, Kale & Yuan (2014) was conducted to examine coping humor as a method of coping with stressors. For this purpose, Coping Humor Scale was used to assess the degree to which an individual used humor as a means to deal with stressful situations. Stress was assessed using the Impact of Events Scale (Horowitz, Wilner, & Alvarez, 1979). Data was collected from firefighters as their job was full of traumatic stressors. It was expected that coping humor would act as a buffer against stressors. Results of the study were found to be in the expected direction. Coping humor was negatively correlated with stress. It was found that those having high levels of coping humor tend to generally experience a lessened negative impact as the result of exposure to traumatic stressors than do those having low levels of coping humor. According to the researchers, this buffering effect of coping humor could be attributed to various processes, such as reappraisal, social bonding and physiological effects of coping humor.
Ong, A. D., Bergeman, C. S., Bisconti, T. L., & Wallace, K. A. (2006). Psychological resilience, positive emotions, and successful adaptation to stress in later life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 730.
This research is guided by two major theories. First, Transactional Theory, which is a widely accepted theory of coping developed by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman. Second, the Control Theory developed by Charles Carver and Michael Scheier.
Question 1 One coping strategy that is a helpful understanding of stress, and has a huge impact on many problems in many ways is “Problem Focused strategy”. To begin with, “Problem focused strategy” is a constructive coping that leads to taking on a problem in a respectful manner in many ways that helps understand the situation better. Such as brainstorming and being flexible with the situation, so stress or complications won’t get out of hand. Many individuals have tendencies to view their problems as a stopping point and it leading to nowhere, and become automatically depressed or negative about the situation where it ends up nowhere. But by practicing or using the problem focus strategy it may lead to a better habit, and usage for taking on future problems that lead to lower stress levels and other anxietys that may affect someone.
ROY, S. C. (2013). Synthesis of a Middle Range Theory of Coping. Generating Middle Range
Coping styles are seen in an individual’s consistent use of particular strategies for managing stressors across contexts. An individual’s coping style is dependent on a number of interacting factors, including problem-solving skills, social skills, social support, health and energy, beliefs, material resources, temperament, developmental level, and familial coping patterns. Successful coping