Coping strategies are mechanisms for dealing with stress. What do you do in difficult situations? Some people prefer to be active rather than sit idly by. Others prefer to shift responsibility onto others, sometimes even blaming them for what happened. There are also those who let everything take its course. What behavior can be considered correct? How should you behave in critical situations?
What are coping strategies
Coping strategies are one or more actions designed to protect a person from a stressful situation or reduce its impact on the psyche. In another way, they can be called methods of psychological protection from problems in different areas of life, be it the process of searching for a job or relationships within the family.
In psychology, it is believed that absolutely all people use coping strategies. Some people distract themselves from stress with the help of humor. Some people find it easier to express their emotions. There are also those who simply try to avoid unpleasant situations. All this happens at the subconscious level and is considered a reflex activity of the brain.
Difficulties appear every day. Even in seemingly mundane situations, you may experience stress. If you have difficulty managing your emotions, stress can become chronic. Following it will appear neuroses, depression and other mental disorders.
A little history
Methods of psychological defense have been carefully studied over the past two centuries. Both psychologists and doctors were involved in this, since this area is closely related to psychiatry and neurophysiology. The information obtained about coping strategies helped doctors understand the mechanisms of development of certain diseases, as well as develop methods to combat them. Today, coping strategies have found their application in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Some scientists have formed their opinion about the protective methods used by the psyche:
- Karen Horney was developing his own theory about how the human psyche adapts to everyday problems. They discovered one of the strategies, according to which a person finds and accepts compromises that help get out of a conflict situation. The scientist also revealed the existence of incorrect methods of protection. One of them is a constant return to an unpleasant situation that happened in the past.
- Otto Fenichel devoted several years to studying how coping strategies manifest themselves in childhood. According to him, children are distracted from negative phenomena by getting used to the mental reaction to them. Over time, this method of protection transforms, because an adult needs not only to distract himself from stress, but also learn to accept it as something that happens every day.
- According to Heinz Hartmann, coping strategies are an expression of the inner “I”, the ego. The scientist believed that even young children have psychological defense reflexes. As they grow older, they are supplemented and modernized. As a result, an adult develops a stable adaptation to the negative impact of the surrounding world.
Research on coping strategies currently being conducted is often based on the works of the listed scientists.
Efficiency and adaptability of coping
Coping strategies are used in many areas of life. They can be divided into those that are effective and, accordingly, ineffective. Coping is considered effective when an individual manages to get out of the stress zone with minimal emotional losses and with increased resistance to the emergence of uncomfortable problems.
Human resource management - what it is, principles and functions of the process
In different life situations, when self-control is lost, a person may not use coping strategies previously used in similar situations. This is due not only to temperament or character, but also to upbringing, socialization, etc.
Note! Adaptive coping should begin to be used as early as preschool age. With the help of these schemes, the child grows up more self-confident, with strong resistance to adverse moments, and more socialized.
There is another side to the coin. For example, if more emotionally oriented behaviors are used rather than problem-oriented ones, the child’s level of anxiety may increase and a tendency to depression may appear.
In psychology there is the concept of aggressive coping. It is a form of coping that involves physically influencing someone to resolve an uncomfortable situation. The strategy is effective, but it is not positive.
Effective strategies include actively searching for a way out of a stressful situation. Individuals who use this strategy adapt more easily and lose less emotionally.
Using a coping strategy can lead to increased comfort in life
Types of coping strategies
The classification of coping strategies looks like this:
- Adaptive. It is an active search for a possible solution to a problem that involves interaction with other people.
- Non-adaptive. Escaping from difficulties. In psychology, these are attempts to escape reality, aggression, submission.
- Partially adaptive. A person avoids the problem by inventing some excuse for it.
Depending on the goal, strategies are also divided into 3 types:
- aimed at maintaining mental and emotional balance;
- change the inner world, attitude to the situation;
- both the person and the problem are transformed.
It is worth noting that optimism and positive thinking are not coping strategies. These are qualities inherent in a particular person. Strategies are a set of measures, an action plan for a particular case. The qualities described above help put these plans into practice.
There are several other types of coping strategies. By direction they are:
- determining the degree of importance of what happened for a particular person;
- focused on combating stress;
- focused on maintaining normal mental and emotional health.
By success:
- using constructive coping strategies;
- using destructive strategies.
By style:
- concentration on the problem (behavioral);
- focus on avoiding the problem (cognitive);
- attention is directed to emotions (emotional).
By how a person controls the situation:
- drawing up an action plan;
- antisocial behavior;
- indirect actions;
- active actions.
By type of situation:
- self-control;
- display of aggression when trying to change the situation;
- use of outside help;
- avoidance of a situation or withdrawal from reality;
- view from the other side;
- drawing up a plan to solve the problem.
By openness:
- solving a problem mentally;
- correcting the situation through active actions.
The 3 largest groups of coping strategies (adaptive, non-adaptive and combined) are divided into subtypes depending on style.
Adaptive:
- Behavioral: active actions of a person to eliminate a problem. He acts either himself or with the help of others.
- Cognitive: the current situation is analyzed. At the same time, the individual maintains his self-esteem at the proper level, develops self-control, and becomes more self-confident.
- Emotional: protest, optimistic view of what is happening around.
Non-adaptive:
- Behavioral: an attempt to escape reality, solitude, avoiding difficulties in thoughts, refusal to solve a problem.
- Cognitive: lack of faith in one’s abilities, confusion, humility, underestimation of the seriousness of the problem.
- Emotional: instilling feelings of guilt in oneself or others, suppression of feelings and emotions, hopelessness, submission to circumstances.
Lazarus and Folkman classification
Researchers R. Lazarus and S. Folkman proposed an original classification of coping strategies. In accordance with their categorization, they were divided into two main types - problem-oriented and emotion-oriented coping.
As for the strategies belonging to the first category, they are aimed at improving relationships within the “person-environment” system by transforming the cognitive assessment of the current situation. For example, a person can search for information about what to do and how to act, or restrain himself from hasty actions.
As for emotionally-oriented coping strategies, they are aimed at actions that are aimed at reducing the level of neuropsychic arousal.
Such actions (or even thoughts) give a feeling of relief. However, they cannot eliminate the current situation. An example of this type of coping could be avoiding or denying a situation, distancing oneself from it, or using tranquilizers.
Resource approach
As stated above, each person has a set of certain resources that help control the situation, feelings, and emotions. With their help, you can maintain mental and physical health even in the most difficult, one might say, critical situations.
These resources are internal and external. The first include innate abilities, as well as skills and abilities that were acquired as they grew older. External - tools for dealing with stress from the environment, moral and emotional support from loved ones.
Each psychologist has his own opinion about resources. S, Selingman believed that the most important thing to combat stress is optimism. Ah, Bandura was banking on self-efficacy. For others, resilience is considered the most important indicator. Be that as it may, all these qualities influence the formation of coping strategies as much as changing circumstances.
If material and social resources were lacking in childhood, the repertoire of strategies in the future will be small. A person can even consciously narrow their spectrum. A good example: reluctance to interact with other people. Because of this, not only the circle of contacts decreases, but also the resources of the environment become smaller.
The difference between coping and psychological defense
Psychologists identify coping strategies, as well as psychological defense mechanisms, as the main ways to adapt to difficult life situations. The latter are aimed at reducing psychological discomfort caused by difficult (and sometimes unbearable) circumstances.
As for the mechanisms of coping behavior, they represent a more advanced way to adapt to an extreme situation. Depending on the main danger, a person exhibits different types of coping; he directly interacts with the real situation. And psychological defense mechanisms are a distortion of the real situation. For example, the projection mechanism assumes that a person attributes to others the problems that he actually has. Coping deals with the real situation.
Coping behavior in stressful situations
As already mentioned, there are many different theories for the classification of coping strategies. Psychologists Folkman and Lazarus actively studied the topic of coping strategies and stress and created the most popular classification, in which they identify eight basic strategies.
List of these coping strategies:
— drawing up a plan for solving the problem, which will involve efforts to make changes to the situation, using an analytical approach in drawing up an algorithm of actions used to cope with stress;
- confrontational coping, includes aggression-filled attempts and measures to overcome a stressful stimulus, a high degree of hostility, readiness to make decisions using risk;
— taking responsibility for resolving the situation, and recognizing one’s own role when problems arise;
- enhanced self-control to regulate emotions and one’s own actions;
- intensified efforts to search for positive aspects, advantages in the current state of affairs, positive reappraisal;
- focus on seeking support in the immediate environment;
- distancing, cognitive-behavioral efforts to isolate from a stressful situation, reduce its importance and significance;
- avoidance-escape, intense attempts to avoid the problem or its consequences.
In turn, they are systematized into four groups. The first group has the following tactics: decision planning, confrontation, taking responsibility for the decision. It is thanks to their active interaction that the connection between them is strengthened, which strengthens their action and strengthens the connection between the fairness of interaction and the emotional background of the individual. The use of tactics implies that a person will actively act independently, try to change the problematic circumstances that caused stress, and show a desire to be fully informed regarding this case. Consequently, a person pays attention to the special conditions of interaction, to justice, and analyzes these features. Thanks to this process, the assessment of justice has a significant impact on the general state of a person, his emotions and feelings.
The second group has coping strategies of self-control and positive reappraisal. They are very effective. Their power promotes the connection between fairness in interactions and people's emotions. Such processes occur because these coping strategies are a precondition for a person’s self-control over the state, searching for a solution to a stressful situation through its modification. Individuals who use these coping strategies perceive the conditions of interaction as a tool with the help of which their plans are accomplished. A good example would be that people who find themselves in stressful circumstances try to look for a positive aspect in them, a new meaning, a new idea, to think of them as a new experience. And the consequence of this process is the great influence and significance of justice assessment as a condition of interaction.
The third group of coping strategies includes the following strategies: distancing and avoidance. Using such strategies, there is no effect at all on the relationship between interaction fairness and emotions. This happens because a person refuses to somehow change his condition or situation, he simply avoids all responsibility. Individuals who use an avoidance strategy do not want to receive any information about the conditions of interaction, since they do not take part in it and do not attach importance to it, therefore, it does not affect their state in any way.
The fourth group of strategies includes the search for social support. Its use also has no effect on the relationship between interaction fairness and emotions. Since such a strategy does not imply that a person himself seeks and finds a solution to a problem situation, nor is it aimed at avoiding the problem. And such a person is not interested in additional information.
Copin's strategies and stress and their interactions are better understood through research. Especially foreign authors paid more attention to this topic; they defined coping as interindividual and intraindividual approaches. However, in any case, they rely on the subjects’ self-report about their behavior as the main methodological technique in the study of coping strategies, specific actions and stress.
In the interindividual approach to study coping strategies, the technique is used as a research tool, such as a questionnaire about coping methods. Using his ambushes, other techniques began to develop. The most common method used in coping strategy research is the WCQ. It is based on fifty questions that make up eight scales, and calculates two main coping strategies: emotion-focused and problem-focused coping in particularly stressful situations (for example, pain, illness, loss).
According to the intraindividual approach, the styles that a person uses in his coping behavior are studied. The basis of these styles is made up of personal variables in the role of stable dispositional structures. For this study, the “Coping Scale” technique is used.
The third method for studying coping strategy is the “Multidimensional Measurement of Coping” technique; it is used in empirical studies of coping behavior. It is a very affordable and high-quality domestic material.
Canadian psychological researchers in clinical and health psychology developed the popular C1SS technique. It includes forty-eight statements grouped into three factors. Each of which has a scale consisting of sixteen questions. The third factor, avoidance, has two subscales: personal distraction and social distraction. This technique measures the three main coping styles well and reliably. The first style is focused on making decisions in a stressful situation, that is, a problem-oriented coping style, the second is an emotionally-oriented style, and the third style is a style focused on avoiding a problematic or stressful situation. This technique, or more precisely its factor structure, has been validated using samples of students, senior university students and adequate healthy adults.
Where did the term come from?
Dr. Richard Lazarus
Coping strategies are everything that helps a person overcome stress. A stressful situation is characterized by anxiety, complexity, and uncertainty. Coping strategies provide an opportunity to cope with a difficult problem. The strategy can be emotional or behavioral. The Russian psychological school uses the concept of “experience” or coping behavior. The essence of coping is to enable a person to overcome life’s difficulties or reduce their impact on the body.
The term appeared in psychology in the early sixties of the last century. It was used by L. Murphy; he used it to describe how to overcome childhood developmental crises. A few years later, cognitive psychologist Richard Lazarus described strategies for coping with stressors in his book.
