Coping
Understanding our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as behaviors we see in others, helps us understand how we and others are coping with stress. Each of us engage in different behaviors when we experience stress because we’re all affected by stress differently. Often, we are unaware of how we are managing or coping.
The behaviors we see in others and/or ourselves can help us understand what’s going on. Describing what we are feeling, thinking, and how we or others are behaving can also help us identify what’s causing stress.
No matter how difficult, stressful, or even hopeless, a situation seems, there are always ways to cope.
“It’s about more than stress, it’s about the effects of stress and how we manage that stress.”
Behaviors, Classified
Many behaviors can be considered maladaptive or adaptive. Maladaptive behaviors keep us from adjusting in a healthy way to particular situations, events, or people. Often, maladaptive behaviors result in dysfunctional and non-productive outcomes. Adaptive behaviors reflect practical, useful, and helpful ways to meet the demands of everyday living.
Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Behaviors
ADAPTIVE
Healthy, helpful coping behaviors
Supports healthy adjustments to life situations
Enables positive and successful outcomes
Allows coping well with the demands and stresses of life
MALADAPTIVE
More harmful than helpful coping behaviors
Inhibits ability to adjust healthily to particular situations
Leads to dysfunctional and non-productive
outcomesPrevents coping well with the demands and stresses of life
“Breaking maladaptive cycles is a choice.”
We all recognize that choices have consequences—both positive and negative. It’s easy to understand when good things happen to us because we recognize our choices helped set us up for success. However, sometimes we get stuck, don’t think before we respond to stress, and resort to unhelpful behaviors that lead to undesired outcomes. It’s during these times too, that it’s easy to adopt a powerless, “why-does-this-keep-happening-to-me” mentality—because we can’t clearly see how our behaviors influenced the negative outcomes due to the anger, sadness, frustration, or irritation we may be feeling. But it’s important to remember we have a choice and can change our behaviors to achieve better outcomes.
We can choose adaptive behaviors, which create more desirable outcomes and less stress. Or, we can choose maladaptive behaviors, which create undesirable outcomes and, ultimately, more stress. Although it's not easy, we can break out of this maladaptive cycle by:
Slowing our responses and creating time for mindful behaviors
Thinking about the outcome—what we want
Allowing for adaptive coping to reduce stress
Check out this list of healthy, Adaptive Coping Behaviors you can engage in based on your interests.