Ch.7 Coping, resilience, and social support

  • Coping with stress

    • Coping- thoughts and behaviors used to manage events that are appraised as stressful

    • Influenced by 2 things:

      • 1. personal characteristics

      • 2. Environmental Characteristics

  • Negative Affectivity & Coping

    • Pervasive megative mood

    • More likely to:

      • Express distress and dissatisfaction across situations

      • have poor coping strategies

      • engage in poor health habits

      • Develop Chronic Disorders

  • Positivity & coping

    • stressful events are more likely to be viewed as a challenge

    • have beteer coping strategies

    • engage in more positive health behaviors

    • have a lower levels of stress indicators and better immune system functioning

  • Coping Style Vs. Coping Strategies

    • COping style- individual’s preferred method for dealing with stressful situations

    • Coping strategies- attempts to address a specific stressful experience

  • Approach VS Avoidance Coping Style

    • Avoidance- oriented coping style- attempts to push away stressful thoughts and feelings, deny the existence or seriousness of the stressor, or distract oneself through other actvities

    • Approach-oriented coping style- attempts to solve the problem, seeks support from others, and actively accepts and/or finds benefits in stressful experience

  • Problem Focused VS Emotion FOcused Coping

    • Problem focused coping- Attempts to do something constructive about the stressful situation

    • Emotion-focused coping- efforts to regulate emotions caused by stressful situation

  • Proactive coping ####

    • Anticipating potential stressors and acting to prevent them or reduce their impact

  • Psychosocial Resources & COping

    • optimism

    • Psychological control

      • Colletive control- group effort control that the belief with other people you can control the situation

    • high self-esteem

    • conscientiousness 

    • intelligence

    • sense of meaning and purpose of life

  • External Resources & Coping    

    • Time

    • Money    

    • education

      • higher SES has more resources and access to stress

    • social support

    • positive life events

    • absence of other stressors

  • Measures of Coping Success:

    • Resilience- the ability to quickly recover from difficult experiences

    • Sometimes, stressful events can result in an Improvement in life

  • Coping Interventions: Improving coping skills

    • Mindfulness meditation

    • Relaxation training

    • expressive writing

    • CBT Coping Skills Training

  • Stress Management Programs

    • 1. Learn what stress is/ how to identify stressors in their life

    • 2. learn coping techniques

    • 3. practice techniques in stressful situations in their lives

  • Time Management

    • set specific goals

    • establish priorities

    • Avoid time wasters

    • Learn what to ignore

  • Social Support

    • Information from others that one is loved and cared for, esteemed and valued

    • Being a part of a network of communications and mutual obligations

  • Benefits of social support:

    • improves mental health

    • improves physical health

    • linked to longevity

  • Types of social support:

    • Tangible Assistance- Material support (goods, financial assistance, helpful services)

    • Informational Support- information about events and what to expect 

    • Emotional Support- Expressions that one is loved, valued, and cared for

  • Most effective social support:

    • family support in early life 

    • one close confidant 

    • marriage (for men)

  • Threats to social support 

    • When under stress, people may act withdrawn from others or act out in ways to drive others away

    • Sometimes, those in one’s social network do not provide the needed support 

    • Dense social networks can actually cause more stress