Coping and Copers: What It Is to Cope, Personalities, and Effective and Non-Effective Coping Strategies

Coping and Copers: What it is to Cope, Personalities, and Effective and Non-effective Coping Strategies Kerry Williams Psychology of Stress The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand

Coping and Copers: What it is to Cope, Personalities and Effective and Non-effective Coping Strategies This essay discusses coping, a complex process exercised by people to suppress, change, or eliminate stress or threat. This essay also discusses copers, that is, people who exhibit certain personality characteristics, known as distress resistant personality patterns, which can significantly influence whether they stay healthy or become ill. Also covered are coping strategies, -strategies people draw upon to solve life’s stressors, some effective, while others are ineffective and often result in causing ill health. Coping is viewed as a process used to reduce or eliminate stressors or threats. Coping is an approach, or set of strategies, used to ease, change, or eliminate unpleasant emotions or situations. Coping is the way people respond to a problem that causes stress. Schafer (2000) defines coping as a response, which reflects the way a person thinks, behaves, and the way they negotiate demands. Weisman (1979) as cited in (Miller, 2000) defines coping as the way a person resolves a problem, that results in release, reward, serenity, and balance. A psychoanalysis perspective refers to coping as a stable personality-based response that corresponds to a person’s emotional and behavioural modes (Miller, 2000). Lazarus and Folkman (1984) as cited in (Miller, 2000) view coping as emotional and behavioural processes, involving the way an individual assesses, encounters, and recuperates from a stressful situation. In all definitions, the coping response constantly changes and shifts, which determines how the person reacts and adapts to an event or to the people they are dealing with. There are three stages in which people cope (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) as

References: Cramer, P., Ford, R. Q., & Blatt, S. J. (1988). Defense mechanisms in the anaclitic and introjection personality configuration. Journal of Consulting and Clinicial Psychology , 56 (4), 610-616. Dolbier, C., Leiferman, J., Steinhardt, M., & Soderstrom, M. (2000). The relationship of hardiness, coping strategies, and perceived stress to symptoms of illness. Journal of Behavioural Medicine , 23 (3), 311-328. Hamburg, D. A., Elliott, G. R., & Parron, D. L. (1982). Stress, coping and health. In Health and behaviour: Frontiers of research in the biobehavioural sciences (pp. 74-87). Washington, DC: Academy Press. Lazarus, R. S. (1993). From psychological stress to the emotions: A history of changing outlooks. Annual Review Psychology , 1-21. Miller, J. F. (2000). Analysis of coping with illness. In Coping with chronic illness (pp. 21-53). Philadelphia, MA: FA Davis Company. Morris, C. G., & Maisto, A. A. (2005). Stress and health psychology. In Psychology: An introduction (pp. 450-483). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. Schafer. (2000). Stress management for wellness (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson. Weisman, A. D. (1984). Common coping strategies. In The coping capacity on the nature of being mortal (pp. 31-62). New York, NY: Human Sciences Press, Inc. Westen, D., Burton, L., & Kowalski, R. (2006). Psychology: Australian and New Zealand edition (4th ed.). Qld, Australia: John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd.