Book: Coping and Self-Care

Throughout our lives, each of us is faced with stressful situations or events that we must deal with, or not. The psychological coping mechanisms that we develop over our lifetime are commonly termed coping strategies or coping skills. Some coping skills are healthy for us, some are not so.

People cope by using some or all of the following:

Distancing: trying not to think about the situation too much, detach yourself.

Self-control: trying to keep your feelings to yourself, carrying on as normal.

Confronted Coping: this is letting your feelings out,  it may be aggressive to the point of being risky and antagonistic.

Seeking social support: asking others for advice, sharing feelings with others.

Accepting responsibility: this is acknowledging your role, you want to make it better.

Escape-avoidance: hoping for miracles, fantasizing, comfort eating, smoking.

Planning, problem solving: making plans to resolve the stress, changing a life style.

Positive reappraisal: reconsidering what really matters, learning from your experiences and growing as a person.

As you can see, some of these coping strategies are more enabling than others.

Some can bring us confidence and bring a sense of control to our lives. For example, Plan full problem solving, Positive Reappraisal and Seeking social support are positive, empowering strategies.