Coping Strategies: How We Act In Stressful Situations And Are All Strategies Effective

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Coping strategies - strategies for overcoming stressful situations (cope - to cope). There are different approaches to the study of coping: resource, personal, situational.

The resource approach assumes that each person has a certain supply of resources (material, social, physical, spiritual), which helps him to overcome a stressful situation. According to this approach, the person who has enough resources to cope better with stress, and the psychologist's job is to help the person find internal resources.

Personal approach describes coping as working in two directions: working with a problem (11 strategies) and working on one's own attitude to the problem (62 strategies).

In the situational approach, there are three main areas of work with stress:

assessment of the situation, actions aimed at combating the situation or reducing its impact, restoration of emotional balance.

All coping strategies that are formed in a person in the course of life can be divided into three large groups:

Problem solving strategy is an active behavioral strategy in which a person tries to use all his personal resources to find possible ways to effectively resolve the problem. Social support search strategy - a person, in order to effectively resolve the problem, turns to family, friends, significant others for help and support. Avoidance strategy - a person tries to avoid contact with the surrounding reality, to avoid solving problems

if you want to know which strategy dominates you, take the “coping strategies indicator” test (it is easy to find in a search engine)

It is also customary to consider coping strategies from the position of effective / ineffective.

Problem-solving strategies are considered to be the most effective. Seeking social support can be both effective and ineffective strategy. Avoidance strategies are referred to as unproductive coping.

I disagree with the claim that avoidance strategies are unproductive. Sometimes avoidance strategies are the best thing a particular person can do in a particular situation. For example, my habit of going to the mountains when it is not clear what happens in my life is a strategy of avoidance. I come back full of energy, with a ready-made solution, sometimes I find out that the problems somehow resolved by themselves. Someone can "stick" in the series for a couple of days, and it helps to gain strength. Someone needs to fall asleep or immerse themselves in reading. In general, avoidance strategies are not so bad and meaningless. There are destructive ways of avoiding: going into illness, gambling addiction, the use of alcohol, drugs.

It is most effective to use all strategies, depending on the situation. In some cases, a person can independently cope with the difficulties that have arisen, in others he needs the support of others, in still others he can simply avoid facing a problem situation by thinking in advance about its negative consequences.