Coping Mechanisms; Stress & Anxiety

What do you do when you feel like you are in over your head, when you feel overwhelmed, or when the creative juices are just not flowing? You cope. You endure. You look for ways to relieve yourself of the stress and help you move on. Coping mechanisms are already part of our daily lives. The positive affirmations we tell ourselves every morning, listening to music, and Social media in the middle of work. These are all methods we use to relax ourselves and adapt to situations around us. In our everyday lives, coping mechanisms are necessary to overcome our challenges and promote more stable emotional health.

What are Coping Mechanisms?

Coping Mechanisms, in psychology, are practical methods that help us deal with stress, anxiety, and difficult or uncomfortable emotions. It helps us adapt to stressful situations without compromising our emotional well-being. There are stressful events in our lives that could take a toll on us and the things we do to reduce the stress are coping mechanisms. For example:

1. At work, your boss needs you to meet a deadline, In school, you have an assignment due but your parent asks you to run an errand. This is all happening at the same time and you feel overwhelmed. So you take three deep breaths and start the task that looks easier, maybe the errand from your parent. The three breaths you took when you felt overwhelmed are called deep breathing. It is a coping mechanism.
2. When as a writer or an artist, you feel like your mind is clogged and you need to clear it. So, you decide to take a walk to “clear your mind”. Taking a walk is another example of a coping mechanism.
3. Work is stressing you out and you just need to take a break, so you pause and start playing a game. The game eases your tension and relaxes you. Taking a break from a stressful activity to do something enjoyable is a coping mechanism.

Types of Coping Mechanisms

Coping Mechanisms can be mainly divided into two types. Maladaptive coping mechanisms and Adaptive coping mechanisms.

Adaptive Coping Mechanisms

These are healthy and effective techniques used to manage stress or emotional distress. Examples include:

1. Problem-solving: This involves identifying a problem, and creating practical solutions that would effectively resolve the issue.
2. Get support: Conversations with friends, family, or a community can help manage stress. Ranting to a trusted friend, instead of isolating, can help you understand your challenges or emotions and give you the empathetic or emotional support you need.
3. Self-care: Focusing on activities like exercise, journaling, and meditation, can help effective in adapting to stress or emotional distress.
4. Positive thinking: This is having positive thoughts toward a situation. It helps to reduce negative emotions and improve optimistic thinking.

Maladaptive Coping mechanisms

These are unhealthy and ineffective techniques that are used to cope with stress or emotional distress. These techniques provide temporary relief. They are futile and could cause negative consequences like physical end emotional harm. Examples include:

1. Substance abuse: This is when a person starts drinking alcohol or using drugs to escape emotion, pain, or stress.
2. Self-harm: This involves engaging in self-harming behaviors to endure stress or emotional turmoil. The physical pain is seen as a distraction from the temporary pain. These self-harming behaviors include: cutting, burning, or excessive risk-taking.
3. Withdrawal or Isolation: Some people tend to withdraw from friends and family. They exclude or isolate themselves when they feel stressed or emotional distress. These individuals throw themselves at solo activities such as watching tv or scrolling through social media. The activities can increase loneliness and depression symptoms.
4. Denial: This is when a person refuses to accept the difficult situation they are in. It prevents them from admitting they need help and getting the help.
5. Avoidance: This involves realizing something is wrong but refusing to address the problem or identify the problem. This could lead to the decline of the person’s mental health.

Coping Mechanisms vs Defense Mechanisms

Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological strategies that we use to protect ourselves while in stressful situations, or feeling emotional distress. Coping mechanisms and defense mechanisms are both used to cope and deal with stressful situations, emotional distress, and challenges. They both serve the same purpose but have major differences.

1. Coping mechanisms are conscious and purposeful techniques while defense mechanisms are unconscious methods.
2. Defense mechanisms involve evading the reality of uncomfortable emotions while Coping mechanisms involve facing the issues and aiming to decrease stress.
3. Defense mechanisms give short-term solutions while coping mechanisms allow for long-term relief and improve personal growth.
4. Coping mechanisms helps to adapt and maintain both physical and emotional well-being while defense mechanisms mainly reduce stress and anxiety.

Healthy coping mechanisms Vs Unhealthy coping mechanisms

Examples of Healthy coping mechanisms include:

1. Reading a book
2. Journaling
3. Positive thoughts
4. Exercise and meditation
5. Talking with a friend
6. Deep breaths

Examples of Unhealthy coping mechanisms include:

1. Drinking excessive alcohol
2. Abusing drugs
3. Denying the issue
4. Self-harm
5. Stress eating
6. Negative thoughts
7. Isolation and withdrawal

Conclusion

Coping mechanisms are techniques used to cope, endure or adapt to emotional distress, and stress. These techniques could either be healthy or unhealthy. We could choose to face the problem, identify the root issue, or avoid the issue. It is advised to go with the coping strategies that are healthy and would help long-term. The defense mechanisms might look easier but it’s unhealthy and has consequences.

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