How well do you cope?
Hello dear reader. I hope you’re having a good April. How are you dealing with the stress and hustle of everyday life? Well, that’s something I want to share with you; knowing how to cope well
We all go through stressful situations. Whether it’s at home, at work, in our personal lives or roaming the streets of social media. Stress is ubiquitous and almost unavoidable. Yet, we sometimes respond to these stressors in ways that don’t deal with the situation or even make us feel better. So, today, let’s learn about how we can cope and find healthy strategies for doing so
What does coping mean?
Coping refers to the thoughts and behaviours mobilized to manage internal and external stressful situations. This means how we think and act when we're dealing with stress.
The goal of coping is to reduce our stress. And there are many ways we can do this, which is often referred to as coping styles
What are the coping styles (or strategies)?
According to experts, we use as many as 5 broad ways to deal with stress. These are
Emotion-focused coping
This is when you try to manage the emotions you feel about the stressor. That means you’re altering your emotional response, but not dealing with the actual cause of your stress. This is often how we respond in situations where the outcome is outside of our control e.g. dealing with the loss of a loved one.
Problem-focused coping
Here, we’re coping by “attempting to control the stressor by defining and interpreting them, and choosing a course of action”. This approach aims to address the problem head-on by finding potential solutions to our stressors.
Problem-focused coping is helpful when you’re dealing with situations in which you can control the outcome; for example, making a to-do list for all your tasks.
Meaning-focused coping
This involves using strategies that help you process and make sense of a situation. This means finding a way to derive and manage the meaning of any situation mentally. We may use this when the situation is outside our control. This coping style is also common among individuals who have religious/spiritual beliefs. (This rings true for me😅. There are times when situations don’t make sense to me, and I soothe myself by saying “All things work together for good…” Romans 8:28😅)
Social coping (support-seeking)
There are times when people cope best with their situations by finding and getting support from other people. This is social coping
For example, children will run to their parents when they’re hurt, and young people may seek the opinion of their friends etc.
Avoidance-focused coping
This refers to coping with a stressor by seeking an alternative activity. As the name suggests, it means looking for a way to distract yourself from the source of your stress.
This way of coping is a recent addition to the coping styles, yet it seems common. For example, I reflect in my mind on times when I chose to distract myself with YouTube videos when I felt down.
Now, many factors determine the way we cope with any one situation, and the style that would best address a situation varies. Also, there are healthy and unhealthy ways to use any of these coping styles. Ultimately, what determines if a method is healthy is the outcome.
Unhealthy (or maladaptive) coping strategies are often behaviours rooted in avoidance, that do not deal with the stressor and are not beneficial to you long-term. On the other hand, healthy (or adaptive) coping styles align with the stressor and help reduce the emotional stress or deal with the stressor directly or both.
Having said that, let’s look at healthy and unhealthy examples of these various coping styles (yes, there are healthy ways to cope using avoidance too 😉)
Healthy and unhealthy coping
Emotion-focused coping strategies
Unhealthy emotion-focused coping could involve:
Failing to talk about your emotions e.g. by suppressing your feelings so you don’t need to address them
Toxic positivity: this is a situation where you only choose to see the good side of something while completely denying or rejecting the stress or negative emotions
Healthy emotion-focused coping, however, refers to strategies such as
Meditation and other relaxation techniques
Cognitive reframing, that is mentally evaluating a stressful situation
Laughter (yes, laughter. Isn’t that the best medicine? Well, it for sure helps to improve moods and soothe us.)
Problem-focused coping strategies
Unhealthy ways of being problem-focused when coping involve overanalyzing/rumination. All these lead to dwelling on the stressor for extended periods, without taking any action to resolve the problem.
Healthy problem-focused coping is when you choose to actively plan and determine alternative solutions that will directly address the stressor at hand.
Meaning-focused coping strategies
Overthinking is also an unhealthy meaning-focused coping strategy. It can result in “disaster thinking”. Instead, the healthy thing to do is to try to find the “positive” in a bad situation. This doesn’t mean denying that a bad thing has happened; it’s simply finding a way to see the “silver lining”. It means acknowledging the bad while trying to find what is good.
Social coping strategies
Isolation and venting are two unhealthy ways to respond when dealing with stress. Isolating yourself from others (or even from your problems) will not make them go away. Isolation can also put you at risk of other mental health problems.
Similarly, venting (or ranting) may be unhealthy. This happens when you seem to be only focused on the stress alone and that’s all you seem to talk about. Or when you vent to the wrong person and don’t find the support you need.
Meanwhile, it’s perfectly OK to take a step back and cool off and it’s OK to even pour out your feelings to a trusted person who can support you. What sets these (i.e. isolation and ranting) apart as unhealthy is if these activities persist for long periods.
So, what are the healthy ways to cope socially? Well, that involves
Speaking with a professional (e.g therapist) to get a balanced perspective
Speaking to a trusted person, to express your emotions, deepen your connection and even work through solutions together
Avoidance-focused coping strategies
It’s easy to avoid dealing with a problem. There are so many things that we do to distract ourselves from issues such as
Using substances like alcohol or drugs
Smoking (to ease tension)
“Eating our feelings” and so forth
All these unhealthy avoidance-focused strategies not only fail to address our stressors, but as you can see they can have devastating effects on our health in the long-term.
So, what is a healthy way to cope using avoidance? Exercise is a great example of this. You get to take a step away from the problem, refocus and improve your physical health in the process. But you should remember that moderation is key when using this to cope with stress. It is possible to use exercise in an unhealthy manner.
How can you learn to cope better?
So, we’ve looked at healthy and unhealthy examples of the various coping styles. As I mentioned earlier, it’s up to you to look at your situation and determine which style best addresses your problem. And if you try one and you don’t get the outcome you’re looking for, try a different approach. You can mix and match all these various styles until you arrive at your desired result.
Maybe you’re thinking “Is there a useful shorthand that helps me see the various ways to cope with stress?” Enter the Adaptive Coping Wheel. This is a tool developed by Dr. Hugo Alberts from Positive Psychology. It asks a set of questions and offers possible healthy responses to try when you want to cope. You can find it at https://positive.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Coping-wheel-min.png
So…
Stress is a part of everyday life. The more tools you have to deal with it, the more you’re able to cope. You can look at your coping strategies and choose healthier options where you need them.
Thank you for reading,
Until next time.
Tertsegha /Tay-TEE-ah/