Coping

As human beings we learn to deal with stress in many ways. This is called coping. there are many different types of coping forms. Good ones, bad ones, healthy ones, not healthy ones. What is coping exactly? Coping is doing something that will help you ignore something that's important or that you're dealing with at the time. According to google - “Coping is defined as what people do to try to minimize stress and is commonly seen in health psychology as problem-focused, that is, directed at reducing the threats and losses of the illness, or emotion-focused, namely directed at reducing the negative emotional consequences” Now that makes coping sound good and it can be a good thing. However there are many different ways that people cope that are not so good and not so healthy. For example I have a friend and she copes with emotional stress and emotional pressure by cutting herself. Now this isn’t so great mentally or physically. How there are other forms of coping that aren't as bad such as denial an avoidance. Denial can be pretty unhealthy because you're just living in the dark or you are believing something that's not true. And avoidance is pretty unhealthy just because you're not actually fixing any of the problems you're just avoiding them they're still going to be there when you decide to do something about it. There are other things other coping mechanisms that we use that are just as bad or worse such as drugs and alcohol. I like to call these matters infective coping mechanisms, not because they don't work in the time of a need to feel a release of stress but because in the long run they will only make things worse. They can cause a new form of stress or they can be a new form of stress if you become addicted to drugs and alcohol or even cutting yourself and being abusive.

 

 

Now you may ask how can we cope in a healthy way or in a way that we feel like we are getting the help that we need and the relief that we need from the stress. The healthiest and probably one of the most effective ways of coping is taking responsibility for what is going on. Now this may not feel like or seem like a coping but in reality it's the best way to cope because you're actually confronting the issue and the problem in your getting it taken care of. Taking responsibility not only helps you not avoid the issue or deny what is going on, but it helps you take control and it helps you get moving in the right direction. By taking responsibility it will help you find available resources to you that will help you in the time of crisis. these resources could be internal or external, family members, brother or sister. it could even be a therapist or a counselor or somebody that you need to talk to or somebody that you trust.