____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Subject PSYCHOLOGY

Paper No and Title Paper no.9: Positive Psychology

Module No and Title Module no.29: Coping: An Introduction

Module Tag PSY_P9_M29

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.Learning Outcomes
2. Toward a positive psychology coping
3. The coping process
4. Theoretical understandings on coping: Psychodynamic & Transactional
5. Applications: Positive coping in everyday life- emerging from stress, anxiety, grief and
traumatic experiences
5.1 Case study: How to harness your negative energies for positive outcomes
6. Summary

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

1.LEARNING OUTCOMES

After studying this module you will be able to:

 Understand the idea of coping from positive psychological perspective.

 Know pros and cons of positive psychological approach to coping.

 Know how the coping process works.

 Evaluate how coping process works and psychodynamic and transactional explanation of coping
process.

 Learn with the help of a model that will guideyou about how to practically cope in daily life.

2. INTRODUCTION TO POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF COPING

Coping refers to a psychological mechanism of stress management in which the organism resorts
to various strategies and employers the available resources to deal with the potential stressor. A
stressor is a stimulus that threatens organism’s equilibrium or his ability to deal with the
threatening situation. In this way coping is related to adjustment of the organism in a given
environment, and it comes into action as soon as this adjustment or equilibrium is disturbed.
Psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984) have defined coping as the sum of
cognitive and behavioral efforts, which are constantly changing, that aim to handle particular
demands, whether internal or external, that are viewed as taxing or demanding. The definition
focuses on the dynamism underlying coping process. It seems the word stress or stressor has
been deliberately avoided in this definition, as coping is not necessarily evoked only when there
is something called stressor. However, writers of coping literature seem to be highly obsessed
with stress. Coping mechanism can be activated under any situation that is perceived taxing or
demanding which might not necessarily fall into category of stressor.

The positive psychology movement has touched almost every aspect of psychology and is
gaining new followers with each passing day. However, it has also drawn concern from the
many quarters for the same reason (some call it a new fad of psychology). One of the foremost
spokesperson on Stress & Coping Dr. Richard Lazarus once raised concern over the too much
focusing of positive psychology over the positive aspects of human endeavor and he emphasized
that though it is welcomed but it should not occurat the cost of ignoring the so called negative
aspects of human behavior. It is true that we seek happiness, love to be in company of optimists
and enjoy personal freedom but anger, frustrations, struggles and sufferings make us as much as
these positive aspects of life. Also rather than just being a psychology and research sub-

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

discipline positive psychology has emerged as a big

business over the years. The capitalist overtones and fee
that we pay for being happy and optimistic is gradually becoming new stressor. The stress has
already got enough treatment in traditional, if not negative, psychology and positive psychology
has a big challenge and responsibility ahead to devise a truly positive coping mechanism for
stress and such disintegrating experiences of life.

There are many tasks ahead for the new positive psychology of coping and it should begin with
how it sees coping. Traditionally it has been understood as a stress containing mechanism where
we employ various strategies to contain and emerge (successfully) from the stressing
experiences. Like many other psychological attributes, traditionally, coping was also considered
to be determined partly by natural endowments and partly by environmental factors. Some of the
differences between traditional approach to coping and positive psychological approach to
coping are highlighted in the table below.

Table 1: Differences between traditional approach to coping and positive psychology approach to coping

Traditional Approaches to Positive Psychology approach to coping

coping
1. Approach to It adopts a reductionist approach to Positive psychology approach brings more
issue coping where both cause and effect holistic approach to coping by looking at
can be understood in terms of individuals, events, situations and other
smaller units or mechanisms related variables in integrated and holistic
manner
2. Factors & The coping here is a struggle There is more to coping than just focusing
forces between stressor potency and on input-output factors and taking the help
properties and devising ways and of experts to fight it. If all you needed to
means (called coping strategies) to cope were a mechanism and expertise then
overcome it. all the systematic people with capacity to
afford expert consultation would have never
been at loss.

3. Causality & Like most of psychological The nature nurture debate is very old. The
Explanation properties a nature-nurture tinge causalities of stress in modern life may knit
makes coping no different than technology, connectedness, freedom,
anything else psychological. isolation, intimacy, etc., in such a manner

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

that only a fresh look at the future can help

us understanding the realities better.
4. From Traditional approaches to coping Positive psychological approaches to coping
Methodologi are more methodological than are more experiential than methodological.
cal- experiential.
Therapeutic
approach to
Experiential-
Healing
paradigm
5. Scientific Traditionally theorists try to locate The new age researches of positive
Overtones coping constructs within prevalent psychology are amalgamating spirituality,
and popular psychological philosophy, science, theology, etc., to
paradigms like psychoanalysis, develop an integrated and interdisciplinary
biological approach field of positive psychology.

From a positive psychology perspective coping is not just individual’s conscious effort to deal
with a stressor that threatens his equilibrium but it is also a sense of faith and belief in one’s
ability to deal with a potential stressor. In true life we are not always able to deal with a stressor,
as it might be more powerful than our abilities to deal with it. Think of an entrepreneur who is
receiving a hostile bid from a fierce competitor. A good coping strategy is to avoid the bid by
summoning all the resources that he has while a better strategy might be to benefit from the bid
to appreciate the company’s shares. Another way to cope in this situation might be a proactive
coping approach in which there is preparedness from the beginning to deal with such hostilities.
And sometimes, like takeovers, stressors are not bad at all although they may be perceived to be
so. Coping is complex, and so is its definition. Let’s see one of the most scholarly definitions of
coping and try to understand it.

3. THE COPING PROCESS

The process of coping is dynamic and associative in a sense that the efforts that we employ in
dealing with a demanding situation keep changing in nature and quality depending upon the
situation and then there are many factors whose complex interplay will define the coping
process. A simplified model of coping process in given as follows:

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Figure 1: The coping process (from Carr, 2004)

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

A person’s personal system (resources, abilities, etc.) and

the environmental system (social support, noise, etc.)
mediated by his life crisis and transitions will determine the kind of appraisal and coping
strategies that he will resort in response to the stimuli which turns out to be demanding or taxing
for him. The coping and appraisal mechanisms sometime begin so close that they appear to begin
simultaneously. However, logically coping should follow appraisal.

There are two types of appraisal – primary and secondary. In case of primary appraisal the
person assesses two aspects of the stressor: one, its motivational relevance and, second, its
motivational congruence. Both of the aspects are defined in terms of the need of the person.
Think of the Buddha deciding to leave his palace to salvage the world from misery. The stressor
or threat here could be that he might fail (anyway, that’s impossible task! Supposedly!) But then
Buddha might have asked himself: is failure relevant to me! No. I want to do something so that I
can be at peace with myself, and if it comes at the cost of my failure then I am ready to pay it.
Buddha finds Motivational relevance. Now, Buddha asks second question to himself: is failure
congruent with my needs (read salvation for world). And he answers: No, I will guide myself.
Buddha finds Motivational congruence.

Once appraisal is done we move to coping, but sometimes they may appear side by each other as
previously said. Lets continue with Buddha’s example and try to understand coping strategies by
that metaphor. The challenge for Buddha continues, as now, he has to finally find a way that
puts an end to all miseries. He has so far overcome his fears of failure and renounced worldly
life. There could be three types of coping strategies that one can resort to: problem focused
coping, emotion focused coping, and avoidance focused coping. According to Carr (2004) all
these three strategies to coping can have functional and dysfunctional aspects. In problem
focused coping the person resorts to a problem solving strategy, like Buddha did (Buddhism is
full of rational tenets). He went to forest, meditated for around forty-nine days and wandered in
search of truth for around six years and found the four Noble Truths and devised his Eightfold
path to deal with it.

Another way could be resorting to regulating one’s mood rather than focusing on solving the
problem. Like we go for a movie, shop unnecessarily or talk/fall to the people we don’t like
when we are in bad mood. This is known as emotion-focused coping. Another approach could
be avoiding the problem, which is known as avoidance-focused coping.

4. THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDINGS ON COPING:

PSYCHODYNAMIC AND TRANSACTIONAL APPROACHES
According to Krohne (2002) theories of coping can be broadly classified mainly in two ways:
one, based on their objective; two, based on the level of abstraction applied to these theories. As
depicted in the figure below:

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Figure 2: Classification of theories of coping (Krohne, 1996)

Based on objective theories could be trait oriented or state oriented. Trait oriented theories focus
on specific traits that individuals possess that could render him ineffective or vulnerable while
coping with potential threat. Such individuals can be identified early and put to training so that it
brings better coping skills to them. In state oriented coping the focus is on the strategies
employed by individuals and outcome of such strategies. It focuses more on situational warrants
and optimal strategies for a particular stressor.
The second classification is based on the level of abstraction employed. It has two sub types:
micro analytic and macro analytic. Micro analytic approaches focus on a large number of
specific coping strategies, whereas macro analytic analysis operates at a higher level of
abstraction, thus concentrating on more fundamental constructs (Krohne, 2002).

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

One of the most common and popular approach to coping

is to look at it through the glass of psychodynamic
perspective. Norma Haan (1969) has proposed the idea of ‘ego process’ by that she meant any
process employed to solve a problem. According to her, ego processes include coping, defenses
and fragmentations. Coping is the process of addressing the difficulties by taking help of both
internal and external resources. It is the healthiest of all the three components. The main aim of
all the three processes is to maintain a sense of self-integrating and self-consistency and the
choice of the method depends upon the intensity of stressors, our ability to cope and many other
factors. When sometimes dealing with the help of internal and external resources is not possible
we can indulge in fortification of our existing values and beliefs. It helps us in maintaining self-
consistency. However, in certain situations when fortification is not enough we may engage in
strategies that might consider as “adaptive failures”, like turning into a psychotic. This is known
as fragmentation (Radnitz&Tiersky, 2007). What happened to U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels
(Leonardo DiCaprio) in the Martin Scorsese movie,“The Shutter Island” was an adaptive failure.

Sigmund Freud (1926) considered the defense mechanisms as the foremost way of coping with
different stressors. Freud offered a large number of defense mechanisms (like repression,
rationalization, etc.) that one might employ in everyday life to varying degrees to deal with
stressors. An over reliance on such defense mechanism ultimately leads to psychologically
unhealthy personality, according to Freud.
In contrast to psychodynamic model transactional model presumes more rational and conscious
response to potential stressor. The transactional model believes that we consciously weigh the
pros and cons of various coping strategies (problem focused, emotion focused & avoidance
focused). So, would you make primary and secondary appraisal when you were standing nearby
World Trade tower building and the terrorists struck it! Probably you will run for life first!
(Avoidance focused coping). However, the problem with this approach seems that it focuses
more on transactional aspects (trade-offs) and parsimonious capacities of individuals, which may
sound unrealistic in many situations.

5. APPLICATIONS OF POSITIVE COPING IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Stress is part of everyday life and so is coping. But, unfortunately positive coping is not part of
everyday behavioral repertoire. For example when we get stressed from work or life with
decidedly to go for movie or vacation. This is an avoidant coping and not positive coping. There
are large number of books and scholars who have discussed in detail about the coping
mechanism for clinical as well non-clinical problems and hassles of life; here we would briefly
look at them from the perspective of positive psychology.

Of all the issues of modern life stress is one of the most experienced processes. A search query
on coping with stress gives 1.4 million results in Google books and over 1.6 million results in
Google scholar. A truly positive way of coping would be harnessing your negative energies in a
positive manner, turning your anger, stress and defeating thoughts and schemas into a winning
benchmark for you. How? Read the story of Norlaila Kyrgios cited in Box below.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Past and present are replete with examples where people

have risen against all odds and doubts to find them a
transformed being. They not only overcame the stress and difficulties but also used their negative
energies in a more positive manner. In fact that’s the only true differentiator between good and
evil that good people are good at channelizing their negative energies more effectively. If we
believe in Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality then all of us possess a disproportionately large
store of negative energies and our daily life too is full of so many hassles and stress of varying
types around. Then can we afford to ignore that overwhelmingly large negative store of
personality? Of course not!We can have a two pronged coping strategy where strategic coping
mechanisms (like problem focused approaches) are used to rationally understand and solve the
external and internal threats, and secondly, we harness our negative energies for positive
outcomes like Norlaila Kyrgios did. For this we require self-possession and mindfulness- themes,
which is discussed in another chapter.

The lightening bolt

of external threats
like stress, anger &
such negative and
unseen things

Using strategic
coping
Mechanism like
(problem focused
approach)

Developing qualities like Positive

Coping
Renunciation, self-healing, Living
Strategies
contentment & resilience

Individual, Neutral
Harnessing
negative
energies
For positive
outcomes
The threat from
internal negative
factors like anger,
lack of self control
etc.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Figure 3: Emerging from negative life experiences and

living a positive life

5. 1 CASE STUDY

Case study: Tennis player harnesses anger over mom to defeat Rafael Nadal
Consider the case of Norlaila Kyrgios – the 19-year-old amateur tennis player who harnessed his
anger over his mom to defeat World champion Rafael Nadal to reach the quarterfinals on his debut
appearance at the All England Club. After toppling Nadal sensationally by 7-6(5), 5-7, 7-6 (5), 6-3,
Kyrgios, in an interview with Reuters, attributed his secret of success to his anger over her mother for
her praise for Nadal and doubt in the abilities of her son that he could be ever a challenge for Nadal in
any manner. According to the report:

“I saw in an interview that my mum thought Rafa was too good for me so that made me
a little angry,” world No. 144 Kyrgios told reporters.That anger fired up Kyrgios so much
that from the moment he swaggered on to Centre Court bopping his head to the music
blaring out of his pink headphones, he looked like a man possessed.

Kyrgios did not care a jot about what one of the all-time greats of the sport had
achieved. The entire Australian tyro cared about was that he possessed the belief and
the talent to prolong “the best week of my life” by turning Nadal out of the grass court
major. (Times of India, Date 3 July 2013, p.31)

6: SUMMARY

 Coping is the process of addressing the difficulties by taking help of both internal and
eternal resources.
 Coping is defined as the sums of cognitive and behavioral efforts, which are constantly
changing, that aim to handle particular demands, whether internal or external, those are
viewed as taxing or demanding.
 Traditional approaches to coping adopts a reductionist view where both cause and effect
can be understood in terms of smaller units or mechanisms while Positive psychology of
coping bring more holistic approach to coping by looking at individuals, events,
situations and other related variables in integrated and holistic manner.
 According to cognitive appraisal we make appraisal of the situation while selecting our
response to the situation.
PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology
MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

 In case of primary appraisal the person assesses

two aspects of the stressor: one, its motivational relevance and, second, its motivational
congruence.
 Secondary appraisal refers to the appraisal of the organism’s ability to cope with the
consequences of stressors.
 There are three types of coping strategies: problem focused coping, emotion focused
coping, and avoidance focused coping.
 Trait theories of coping focus on specific traits that individuals possess that could render
him ineffective or vulnerable while coping with potential threat. In state oriented coping
the focus is on the strategies employed by individuals and outcome of such strategies.
 According to classical psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud the defense mechanisms
are the foremost way of coping with different stressors. Freud offered a large number of
defense mechanisms (like repression, rationalization, etc.) that one might employ in
everyday life to varying degree to deal with stressors.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No.9: Positive Psychology

MODULE NO.29: Coping: An Introduction