Human Strengths And Meeting Life Challenges — Psychology STD 12 Humanities — Question

Coping is a dynamic, situation-specific reaction to stress. It is a set of concrete responses to stressful situations that are intended to resolve the problem and reduces stress.
Endler and Parker gave following Coping Strategies:

1. Task-oriented Strategy:

1. It is goal management through confrontation with the problem.
2. This involves obtaining information about the stressful situation and making best use of resources available.
3. It also involves prioritising and acting so as to deal directly with the stressful situation.
4. Mostly it is used by optimists.

Task-oriented strategies are particularly effective when the resources in the environment are within the control of the individual.

It is cognitive response to stress.

2. Emotion-Hyper oriented Strategy:

1. It is emotion management.
2. This strategy involve efforts to maintain hope and to control one’s emotions. Individual works on his emotions rather than situations and goals.
3. This mainly happens when the stressful event is such that it can not be manipulated in any way eg. loss of spouse or a family member.
4. The individual deals with his emotions of anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness etc. and tries to gain hope and happiness again in his life.
5. It can also involve venting feelings of anger and frustration or deciding that nothing can be done to change things.
6. Emotion oriented strategies are particularly effective when the resources in the environment are beyond the controlled of the individual.

3. Avoidance-Hyper oriented strategy:

1. It is avoiding stressful event by indulging in different activities. Individual does not want to accept that he is facing such a stressful situation.
2. This involves denying or minimizing the seriousness of the situation.
3. It also involves conscious suppression of stressful thoughts and their replacement by self protective thoughts.
4. Watching T.V., attending parties or going to sleep are example of this type of coping.
5. It is basically escapism by using defense mechanisms.

According to Lazarus and Folkman, coping responses can be divided into two types of responses:

1. Problem-Focused:

• ​​​​​​​It includes taking direct action to solve the problem.
• It is seeking information that will be relevant to the solution for, e.g., developing a study schedule to cope up with the semester demands, and thereby reduce examination pressure.
• It is basically confronting with the problem using all the available resources.​​​​

2. Emotion-Focused: It refers to reduction of the negative emotional reaction to stress, e.g., by distracting oneself from the problem, relaxing or seeking comfort from others.