Coping Strategies

topic

Coping strategies are the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional responses to stress and adversity — with research distinguishing problem-focused coping (actions directly addressing the stressor), emotion-focused coping (managing the emotional response to the stressor), meaning-focused coping (finding meaning and benefit within the stressful experience), and social coping (seeking social support) — and with outcome prediction depending more on the strategic flexibility of coping approach (matching strategy to situational demands) than on any single coping strategy universally applied.

Role

Coping strategy flexibility — the capacity to select and deploy different strategies depending on situational demands — is the most robust predictor of adaptive coping outcomes, yet most people have a very restricted coping repertoire developed by available models and reinforced by what has worked in the past. The person who primarily copes through social support will struggle with situations requiring solitary problem-solving; the person who primarily copes through problem-solving will struggle with losses that cannot be solved; the person who primarily intellectualizes will struggle with situations requiring emotional processing — with the limitation of any single dominant strategy revealing itself when adversity presents the specific challenge that strategy is not equipped to address.

Explore "Coping Strategies" on the interactive map →