Coping, Self-care, and Resilience

Our mental health impacts how we think, feel, and act when we’re faced with different citations in our lives

Stress is less about the event itself and more about how we react to what is happening

Types of Stressors

Daily hassles
- Micro-stressors, losing keys, phone dies, work conflict, relationship problems
Change
- Moving away, breakup, illness, death, meeting new people
Traumatic events
- War, accidents, sexual assault, violence
Chronic Situations
- Poverty, chronic illness, negative environment
Socio-cultural Conditions
- Immigrating, learning new language, balancing cultures

Forms of Coping

Emotion-focused: regulate emotional distress by addressing the emotional response, which may not address the actual stressor
Problem-focused: attempt to control stressors by defining and interpreting them, planning solutions, and choosing a course of action
Avoidance-focused: avoiding the stressor by engaging in other activities
Adaptive coping: coping strategies are aligned with the stressor and aim to reduce stress
Maladaptive coping: behaviors that are avoidance-based and do not lead to long term benefits

Emotional-Focused Coping

Moving toward the emotion, focus on emotional reactions
Emotional processing:
- Understanding one’s reactions to the stressor
Emotional Expression:
- Expression to one’s emotions related to stress
Supportive:
- Social support religious and spiritual coping, catharsis, crying, positive reinterpretation, benefit finding, meaning in life, post-traumatic growth, self-forgiveness, humour, self-soothing, exercise
Less supportive:
- Destructive relationships, seeking meaningless spiritual support, blaming, wishful thinking, aggression, self-harm, substance use

Problem-Focused Coping

Focus on attempting to change the situations that caused a stress
Behavioural:
- Take action to fix a real-world situation
Cognitive:
- Change one’s thinking to resolve a problem
Supportive:
- Taking responsibility for solving the problem, seeking accurate information, advice seeking, action planning and follow through, postponing competing activities, maintaining optimism
Less supportive:
- Taking little responsibility, seeking inaccurate information or questionable advice, creating unrealistic plans with no follow through, procrastinating

Avoidance-Focused Coping

Involves trying to escape or avoid stressors, challenges, or unpleasant situations rather than directly confronting or dealing with them
Behavioural:
- Physically avoiding situations, people, or activities that trigger stress or discomfort
Cognitive:
- Trying to ignore or suppress thoughts and emotions related to the stressor
Supportive:
- Strategies like physical avoidance, distraction, denial, or avoiding thinking about the stressor for a short time
Less supportive:
- Same strategies but when we engage in them for a long or indefinite period of time

Dimensions of Self-care

Self-care involves taking care of yourself in more ways than one
8 Dimensions of Self-care:
- Emotional, spiritual, financial, cognitive, aptitudinal, relational, environmental, physical

Resilience

Building Resilience

Identify and strengthen those strengths
- Gratitude, kindness, hope, and bravery have been shown to act as protective factors against adversity
- Intellectual, and restraint-related strengths are predictors of resilience
- Hope, bravery, and zest are strongly related to positive adaptation
Perspective Taking
- Place your individual situation into a bigger context and grasp on its real severity, or the lack of thereof
Reappraisal
- Developing a challenge perspective over a hindrance perspective
Foster Positive Emotions
- People who frequently experience positive emotions are more satisfied with their lives and develop resilience resources that help address challenges

What Causes Positive Emotions