Coping refers to conscious or unconscious strategies used to reduce and manage unpleasant emotions.
Researchers try to group coping responses rationally, empirically by factor analysis, or through a blend of both techniques.
Typically, people use a mixture of several functions of coping strategies,[11] which may change over time.
Appraisal-focused (adaptive cognitive) strategies occur when the person modifies the way they think, for example: employing denial, or distancing oneself from the problem.
[14] An example of appraisal coping strategies could be individuals purchasing tickets to a football game, knowing their medical condition would likely cause them to not be able to attend.
The three problem-focused coping strategies identified by Folkman and Lazarus are: taking control, information seeking, and evaluating the pros and cons.
[20] For example, reappraising tries to find a more positive meaning of the cause of the stress in order to reduce the emotional component of the stressor.
[22] Other examples include relaxation training through deep breathing, meditation, yoga, music and art therapy, and aromatherapy.
Unhealthy coping categories are negative self-talk, harmful activities (e.g., emotional eating, verbal or physical aggression, drugs such as alcohol, self-harm), social withdrawal, and suicidality.
[26] Research has shown that everyone has personal healthy coping strategies (self-soothing, relaxation/distraction), however, access to social and professional support varies.
Increasing distress and inadequate support results in the additional use of unhealthy coping strategies.
For example, laughing may reduce muscle tension, increase the flow of oxygen to the blood, exercise the cardiovascular region, and produce endorphins in the body.
Examples of maladaptive behavior strategies include anxious avoidance, dissociation, escape (including self-medication), use of maladaptive humor styles such as self-defeating humor, procrastination, rationalization, safety behaviors, and sensitization.
[42] Many people think that meditation "not only calms our emotions, but...makes us feel more 'together'", as too can "the kind of prayer in which you're trying to achieve an inner quietness and peace".
[44] Otto Fenichel summarized early psychoanalytic studies of coping mechanisms in children as "a gradual substitution of actions for mere discharge reactions...[&] the development of the function of judgement" – noting however that "behind all active types of mastery of external and internal tasks, a readiness remains to fall back on passive-receptive types of mastery.
"[45] In adult cases of "acute and more or less 'traumatic' upsetting events in the life of normal persons", Fenichel stressed that in coping, "in carrying out a 'work of learning' or 'work of adjustment', [s]he must acknowledge the new and less comfortable reality and fight tendencies towards regression, towards the misinterpretation of reality", though such rational strategies "may be mixed with relative allowances for rest and for small regressions and compensatory wish fulfillment, which are recuperative in effect".
[46] In the 1940s, the German Freudian psychoanalyst Karen Horney "developed her mature theory in which individuals cope with the anxiety produced by feeling unsafe, unloved, and undervalued by disowning their spontaneous feelings and developing elaborate strategies of defence.
[51] In Withdrawal, also known as "Moving away" or the "Resigning solution", individuals distance themselves from anyone perceived as a threat to avoid getting hurt – "the 'mouse-hole' attitude ... the security of unobtrusiveness.
[51] In Aggression, also known as the "Moving against" or the "Expansive solution", the individual threatens those perceived as a threat to avoid getting hurt.
[56] In fact, according to his adaptive point of view, once infants were born they have the ability to be able to cope with the demands of their surroundings.
[57] Emotional intelligence has stressed the importance of "the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability....People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life's setbacks and upsets".
[58] From this perspective, "the art of soothing ourselves is a fundamental life skill; some psychoanalytic thinkers, such as John Bowlby and D. W. Winnicott see this as the most essential of all psychic tools.
"[63] In general, such differences as exist indicate that women tend to employ emotion-focused coping and the "tend-and-befriend" response to stress, whereas men tend to use problem-focused coping and the "fight-or-flight" response, perhaps because societal standards encourage men to be more individualistic, while women are often expected to be interpersonal.
The degree to which genetic factors and social conditioning influence behavior, is the subject of ongoing debate.
In females, however, cortisol levels were decreased in stressful situations, and instead, an increase in limbic activity was discovered.
[65] The "fight-or-flight" response activates the sympathetic nervous system in the form of increased focus levels, adrenaline, and epinephrine.
Additionally, this study implied differing health impacts for each gender as a result of the contrasting stress-processes.