Coping behaviour

Stress can produce some unpleasant physical and emotional symptoms. In response, people show various behaviour patterns called “coping behaviours.” Coping behaviour is really a form of problem solving where the object is to safeguard one’s own well-being but one is not quite certain how to do so. The two main types of coping behaviour are direct action and palliative.

Direct action tends to be dramatic, unthinking and automatic. Although it provides relief from stress in the short term, its long term effects may be deleterious as men or women under stress they can’t cope with may decide to escape from their environment. For example, a student unable to cope with exam pressure may simply drop out of university.

In short, direct action involves physical or psychological action designed to remove or lessen stress, by making a rational (or perhaps irrational) effort to alter one’s environment or circumstances.

Palliative behaviour can also take a number of forms. Firstly, there is the use of alcohol, tranquillizers or relaxation techniques, which are symptom-directed techniques, in that they are aimed at the physical and emotional effects of stress rather than its cause.

Secondly, there are intellectual defence mechanisms, which enable someone to disguise the existence of a real or imagined threat from him or herself. The most important of these are: displacement, repression, denial, rationalization, intellectualization and reaction formation.

Displacement simply means the redirection of activity into a different form. It is not a redirection of stress itself, but a redirection of direct coping activity in situations where the coping behavior is redirected and expressed as aggression, anger or sex. In the latter case, excessive sexual activity frequently hides the fact that a person is stressed. They may not be willing or able to alleviate the problem by direct coping behaviour.

(By the way, sex undoubtedly alleviates mild stress. There is a sound biological reason why a person comes to use sex as a method of reducing stress: the early stages of sexual activity are controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system, which, as you may recall, opposes the action of the sympathetic system.)

Repression means exactly what it implies: the suppression of stressful thoughts, perceptions and emotions from the conscious to the subconscious. Repression is probably the most harmful palliative behaviour pattern because childhood repression can lead to severe consequences for someone later in life.

As therapists we talk about the consequences of repression in terms of the shadow: the part of the unconscious mind which contains all the repressed material from childhood. That is, material of any sort (thoughts, feelings, impulses, and behaviours) which we could not accept in ourselves because (most likely) it was also unacceptable to the people around us. This repressed material does not lose its energy. Indeed, it can become more powerful because it is repressed. And it tends to emerge many years later,  often in a more powerful form, often in a harmful way. As a response to the simple fact that humans repress so much psychic material,  a therapeutic discipline called shadow work has grown up. This form of therapy can  help people who may otherwise suffer the adverse impacts of their repressed energy.

Often a person who has experienced a traumatic event or series of events in childhood may carry on into adult life, apparently quite normally, until the stress builds up to breaking point. And then, relationships fall apart, people get ill, the established order breaks down. At that point the help of a shadow work coach, counselllor or therapist may be needed!

Repression is actually very common.

For example, you may accidentally ‘forget’ an appointment or invitation that causes you great anxiety, or you may repress memories of an incident which caused you great embarrassment so that they cannot be consciously recalled and so evoke further emotional discomfort.

But whatever their cause, repressed thoughts, feelings and emotions do not just ‘go away’: they are retained in the subconscious, which is still affected by them. And this repression is the cause of anxiety, depression, phobias and worry, as well as physical illness.

Denial is a term which refers to psychological self-deceit. The student who is terrified by the prospect of his exams may neither decide to postpone them nor walk out in the middle; he may simply deny that they are of any relevance or importance to his future career, and that it will not matter if he fails them.

Rationalization involves reasoning out logically acceptable but false explanations for certain events. For example, suppose that an individual is competing for a greatly desired promotion at work. If he fails to get it, he may reduce his feelings of disappointment and failure by rationalizing that his employers were unfairly biased in favor of the other candidate or prejudiced against him. He may even convince himself that he ‘did not want the job anyway’. Thus he accepts an interpretation of the situation which means he does not have to admit that he simply was not good enough for the job.

Intellectualization is a process which operates in many situations where potentially enormous stress exists. A doctor who sees an endless succession of seriously ill patients may come to regard each person as an intellectual exercise in diagnosis rather than a ‘real’ man or woman. Intellectualization thus involves emotional detachment-in effect, a switching-off of our emotions, so that we cannot feel the effects of the stress under which we are working or living.

Reaction formation starts with the repression of unacceptable thoughts, feelings and emotions which are then replaced by exaggerated versions of their opposites. For example, a man who lacks confidence tries to be the life and soul of the party; or a person with feelings of guilt about sexual activity develops some kind of obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

The Benefits Of Stress

So far, we have been referring to stress in the sense of ‘distress’, but there are several ways in which stress can be beneficial or even enjoyable.

First of all, stressful situations or sports can be so uplifting and thrilling that adrenalin produces a sense of euphoria rather than danger. Similarly, joyous events may increase our arousal but our subjective impression is that they are highly enjoyable and well worth experiencing.

We can be fairly certain that stress can be beneficial by considering what happens when we are subjected to too little excitement and activity. During periods of dull monotony we become bored and the edge is removed from our intellectual and practical performance.

Equally, many actors and performers require a good dose of adrenalin to arouse them sufficiently to add life and sparkle to their performances.

And some exam candidates or men and women attending an interview are surprised to find that their increased arousal helps them to think more clearly and tackle the situation with far greater energy and determination than usual.

But when one’s level of arousal increases too much, it can be a hindrance rather than a help. When a person is over-aroused, he or she may feel nervous or frightened rather than excited, and, instead of performing well, may go to pieces. Clearly too little arousal can be just as bad as too much. Somewhere between is an optimum – a point at which your adrenalin flows just fast enough to make the brain sharper and quicker and improve our performance when you need to be at your best. That is the good and beneficial side of stress.

You can predict whether recent events in a person’s life are likely to induce a stress-related illness. This idea was derived from research by Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe of the University of Washington, who questioned over 5000 people and found a high degree of correlation between the onset of stress-related illness and certain life events.

Each of these events was then ascribed an LCU (Life Change Unit) value, which indicates the amount of stress it is potentially capable of producing. The full list is shown below. It is called the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, or SRRS for short.

If you were in any doubt about how important relationship break ups and relationship formation and repair are in our lives, the SRRS proves it. See how many of the events below center on relationship break up or relationship repair!

Social readjustment rating scale

Rank	Event	Value
1	Death of spouse	100
2	Divorce	73
3	Marital separation	65
4	Jail term	63
5	Death of close family member	63
6	Personal injury or illness	53
7	Marriage	50
8	Fired at work	47
9	Marital reconciliation	45
10	Retirement	45
11	Change in health of family member	44
12	Pregnancy	40
13	Sex difficulties	39
14	Gain of new family member	39
15	Business adjustment	39
16	Change of financial state	38
17	Death of close friend	37
18	Change to different line of work	36
19	Change in number of arguments with spouse	35
20	Mortgage over £100,000	31
21	Foreclosure of mortgage or loan	30
22	Change in responsibilities at work	29
23	Son or daughter leaving home	29
24	Trouble with in-laws	29
25	Outstanding personal achievement	28
26	Wife begins or stops work	26
27	Begin or end school	26
28	Change in living conditions	25
29	Revision of personal habits	24
30	Trouble with boss	23
31	Change in works hours or conditions	20
32	Change in residence	20
33	Change in schools	20
34	Change in recreation	19
35	Change in church activities	19
36	Change in social activities	18
37	Mortgage or loan less than £100,000	17
38	Change in sleeping habits	16
39	Change in number of family get-together	15
40	Change in eating habits	15
41	Vacation	13
42	Christmas	12
43	Minor violations of the law	11

You can use the SRRS by adding up all the LCU values of the events which have happened to you in the past year. Then:

• A score of less than 150 means there is a 37% probability (3.7 in 10 chance) of your becoming ill in the next two years.  
• A score between 150 and 300 means there is a 51% probability (5.1 in 10 chance) of your becoming ill in the next two years.

• A score over 300 means that there is an 80% probability (8 in 10 chance) of your becoming ill over the next two years.

We must emphasize certain points about the SRRS. First of all, if you obtain a score of, say, 320 you need not panic. The ratings were derived from an average American population between 1949 and 1967. Times have changed, and events which were very stressful at one time may no longer be so. What’s more, the table is an average, and in all averages there are extremes.

For example, retirement may be very boring and therefore unusually stressful for one person, but produce only average stress in someone whose time is fully occupied. Secondly, more recent research has indicated that events may produce harmful stress only if we regard them as negative or unpleasant.

But despite these notes of caution, the SRRS remains a useful general guide to your level of stress and the problems it can cause. To recognize and admit that you are stressed may require careful self-analysis and total honesty. If you’re interested in one to one counselling for personal growth,  click here.

Consciously recognizing that you are stressed means admitting that something in your environment disturbs you; and that implies change and effort to do something about it.