Effective Coping

There are basically three ways to cope from a stressful situation as given by Endler and Parker: Task oriented, Emotion oriented and Avoidance oriented and in my humble opinion the first one works the best. I say this because if you try to do anything else it would give you momentary relief and once that subsides you’ll feel every sorrow, every stress so very deeply.

Now what are these strategies and how do people use them?

In Task-oriented strategy the person actually focuses on the problem (the object, event causing the stress) and tries to eliminate that problem in a very thoughtful and productive manner for example if a person is bad at maintaining good social relations then the person would try to identify his problem or as to where are things going wrong and then would take adequate steps and help if needed to solve the issue.

On the other hand if the same person would be using Emotion-oriented strategy the person instead of working on to his problem or stressful situation i.e. having bad social relations would in turn work on the negative emotions he has because of the above situation. What he’ll do is try to relax himself, take up a new hobby or meditation just to mitigate the bad feeling he has because his social support system sucks, this strategy though isn’t that bad yet the problem still persists and it’ll eventually show up.

The worst of them all is the third one (in my opinion of course) viz Avoidance-oriented strategy in this the person tries to totally avoid the situation (just like a pigeon closing his eyes and assuming that the cat is gone). The same person if were to use this strategy would simply indulge himself in work or any activity and make himself busy and would totally neglect he problem and even avoid the thought of it. This strategy has bad consequences coz by the time you do think about that problem that has already been worsened.

There’s this concept of Sunday neurosis given by Viktor E. Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. About this concept he says it’s the depressive feeling people have once they are done with a very busy work week, and when they finally see the amount of discontent that is there in their lives.

“Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.”

-Viktor E. Frankl

I think something similar happens to the people who use Avoidance-oriented strategy towards any problem, it’s at some point when they do realize that there actually is an issue, it’s very late and all they are left with is guilt, depressive feelings and what not.

So what I feel your best tool of solving any problem or tackling any stressful situation would be is going through that and having a positive attitude towards the outcome (I know not a very genius or new advice but it’s that simple and we’d all get it if we weren’t so hell bent on overcomplicating things ).