Can Your Coping Style Make You Ill?

Coping with stress is part of ordinary life. Coping styles influence many aspects of life—relationships, work, physical health, and psychological health. It may be helpful to learn and educate yourself about beneficial ways to cope. What is good coping in one situation may not be helpful for another type of stressful event. Coping encompasses conscious actions or behaviors for dealing with stressful encounters.

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Two Coping Styles

Two pioneers in coping research are Lazarus and Folkman. They uncovered two styles of coping—problem-focused and emotion-focused. In problem-focused coping, people look at the distressful problem to discern its cause and decide how to manage it before taking action. In emotion-focused coping people use emotional reactions to cope with their problems. Folkman and Lazarus find both personality factors and coping processes used contribute to how people manage.

Pearlin and Schooler examined personality characteristics. They discovered people’s personalities helped them in situations where they had little control over the situation, like in their work environment. In circumstances of greater control, as in their marriages, it was people’s coping responses, not their personalities, that helped them the most.

In the problem-focused way of coping, people engage in cognitive and behavioral efforts to problem solve. Their emotions are at low ebb. They might ask, is there harm to me? Is someone’s well-being or life at risk? What can be done to improve the situation?

In the emotion-focused way of coping, people may decide to avoid the situation by procrastinating, becoming addicted, or accepting the idea that there’s nothing they can do to manage the situation they are in.

Maladaptive Coping

Lazarus and Folkman found people experienced heightened psychological symptoms when they had more to lose in a stressful situation. Maladaptive styles of coping create greater psychological distress (Compas et al.). Such maladaptive grappling includes suppressing emotions and avoiding stressful situations.

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Avoidance Coping

In general, contending with a stressful situation by using avoidance is not helpful because it leads to psychological distress. Avoidance involves denying conscious concerns, putting off taking action, behavioral addictions, substance abuse, and distracting oneself from emotions and thoughts.

Poor coping due to avoidance is found in diagnoses of clinical depression, PTSD and other anxiety disorders. An avoidant coping style does not grapple with the underlying causes of urgency. Avoiding times of disquietude leads to poorer self-esteem, finds Moos and Schaefer.

There are some circumstances, however, where avoidance can be beneficial. These are when risk of harm is high to you or you are threatened. Another circumstance is when you are confronted with situations beyond your control. Steering clear of the situation may help you in those cases.

Confrontational Coping

Another mostly unhelpful coping style is confrontational coping, when a person encounters another person or circumstance in a tense situation. Confrontational coping produces more psychological symptoms because it usually does not solve the problem. It is used more when self-esteem is threatened. The exception is in cases of life-threatening illness like cancer, found Winger et al. Ill patients did better when asking confrontational questions, sharing thoughts and emotions and asking directly for emotional and practical support from medical personnel who treated them.

In conclusion, coping is highly variable, depending on circumstances and both cognitive appraisal and emotional responses to stressful plights. In general problem-focused coping styles are associated with better psychological outcomes than are emotion-focused coping of avoidance and confrontation, but not in all circumstances.