Emotions
Senior 6 · Psychology
Emotions
Lesson 4 of 5
25 min
Two first-year university students learn that their study allowance will arrive two months late. Uwase goes to the finance office to check the date, draws up a strict budget, and asks an aunt for a small loan until the money comes. Habimana tells everyone it does not bother him, stops opening his messages, and then shouts at his roommate over a missing cup. Both are coping, but in very different ways. (An illustrative case.)
Definition
Coping (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984): the constantly changing thoughts and actions a person uses to manage demands that he or she appraises as taxing or exceeding his or her resources.
Problem-focused coping: dealing with the stressor itself, for example making a budget. Emotion-focused coping: managing the feelings the stressor causes, for example talking to a friend.
Direct coping: a conscious, intentional effort to change or leave a stressful situation (confrontation, compromise, withdrawal).
Indirect coping: reducing the anxiety a stressor causes without changing the stressor, usually through defence mechanisms, which are unconscious ways of distorting or avoiding an uncomfortable reality (Sigmund and Anna Freud).
Stress management: planned techniques that reduce stress or its effects, such as exercise, relaxation and social support.
Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984) divided coping into two broad kinds. Neither is always better: what matters is the fit between the strategy and the situation (Figure 1). When a stressor can be changed, as with Uwase's budget, problem-focused coping tends to work best. When it cannot, as with a bereavement or a chronic illness, emotion-focused strategies such as reappraisal, acceptance and seeking support are more helpful. Folkman (1997) later added meaning-focused coping: finding purpose or benefit in a hard experience, which she observed in carers of partners with AIDS.
Figure 1. Matching the coping strategy to the stressor. Problem-focused coping works best when the situation can be changed; emotion-focused coping works best when it cannot, such as after a bereavement.
| Direct strategy | What it involves | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Confrontation | Facing the stressor openly and acting to change it, often by assertive communication: stating your needs clearly and respectfully | Asking a teacher to explain a mark you think is unfair |
| Compromise | Negotiating a middle way when people's goals conflict, so that each gives up something | Agreeing with a sibling on a timetable for the family's one laptop |
| Withdrawal | Leaving a situation that cannot be changed and is causing harm | Leaving a peer group that pressures you to drink |
Withdrawal can be wise when a situation is harmful and cannot be changed, but it becomes a problem when it turns into avoiding every difficulty, which keeps anxiety alive and lets problems grow.
Sigmund Freud proposed that the ego protects itself from anxiety with unconscious defence mechanisms; his daughter Anna Freud (1936) described them systematically.
| Mechanism | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Denial | Refusing to accept a painful reality | Habimana insisting the late allowance "doesn't matter" |
| Repression | Pushing distressing thoughts or memories out of awareness | Being unable to recall an embarrassing incident |
| Displacement | Redirecting feelings onto a safer target | Shouting at a roommate instead of at the finance office |
| Projection | Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings to others | A jealous student claiming everyone is jealous of him |
| Rationalisation | Giving a reasonable-sounding excuse for a failure | "I failed because the questions were unfair", after not revising |
| Reaction formation | Showing the opposite of what one really feels | Being extremely polite to a person one strongly dislikes |
| Regression | Returning to behaviour typical of an earlier stage | A ten-year-old starting to suck her thumb again when a new baby arrives |
| Sublimation | Channelling unacceptable impulses into socially valued activity | Turning anger into hard training for a boxing competition |
| Intellectualisation | Thinking about a painful event in cold, abstract terms | Discussing a parent's illness only in medical statistics |
Evaluation. Defences can give useful short-term relief, but relying on them distorts reality, so the stressor is never dealt with. George Vaillant's long study of Harvard graduates (1977) found that men who used more "mature" defences, such as humour, altruism, sublimation and suppression (consciously putting a worry aside until later), adjusted better in later life. But defences are, by definition, unconscious, which makes them hard to test: David Holmes (1990) reviewed sixty years of research and found little laboratory evidence for repression in particular. Treat defence mechanisms as a useful way of describing behaviour rather than as proven mental processes.
| Technique | How it works | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Physical exercise | Uses up the energy of the stress response; improves sleep and mood | Strong: a large umbrella review (Singh and others, 2023) found physical activity reduces symptoms of depression, anxiety and distress |
| Social support | Emotional, practical, informational and esteem support from others; the buffering hypothesis (Cohen and Wills, 1985) says it protects most when stress is high | Strong: you met the meta-analysis of 148 studies by Holt-Lunstad and others (2010) in Unit 5; social support is also among the best predictors of recovery from stressful events |
| Relaxation and breathing | Progressive muscle relaxation (Jacobson, 1938) tenses and relaxes muscle groups in turn; slow breathing calms the sympathetic nervous system | Moderate: helpful for anxiety and sleep, with modest effects |
| Mindfulness-based stress reduction | Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979: attending to the present moment without judging it | Moderate: a review of 47 trials (Goyal and others, 2014) found small improvements in anxiety, depression and pain, but no advantage over other active treatments such as exercise |
| Stress inoculation training | Donald Meichenbaum (1985): three phases, (1) understanding one's stress, (2) learning and rehearsing skills such as relaxation and positive self-talk, (3) applying them in gradually harder real situations | Good evidence for reducing anxiety before exams, surgery and performances |
| Time management and problem-solving | Breaking a task into steps, setting priorities and a realistic timetable | Useful when the stressor is a workload that can be organised |
| Medication | Prescribed only by a doctor: for example beta-blockers for the physical symptoms of performance anxiety; benzodiazepines for severe anxiety | Works quickly, but treats symptoms, not causes; benzodiazepines can cause dependence and are meant for short-term use only |
Faith is an important resource for many Rwandans. Kenneth Pargament's research distinguishes positive religious coping (seeking comfort and strength through prayer and a faith community), which is linked with better adjustment, from negative religious coping (believing one is being punished or abandoned), which is linked with more distress.
CrashCourse: "Emotion, Stress, and Health: Crash Course Psychology #26" (about 10 minutes). It links stress to the immune system and the heart, then turns to coping: control, optimism, social support, exercise and relaxation. List the coping methods it mentions and say which are problem-focused and which emotion-focused.
Warning
Alcohol, drugs and "energy" stimulants are not stress management. They may numb feelings for a few hours, but they disturb sleep, worsen anxiety and low mood, and can lead to dependence. If you or a friend are using them to cope, talk to a trusted adult or a health worker.
Tip
Change it, or change how you feel about it. Ask "Can I change the situation?" first. Yes: problem-focused (direct) coping. No: emotion-focused coping. And in an exam, for every defence mechanism give a one-line example; examiners reward clear examples.
Important
Discuss. Look back at Habimana. Which defence mechanisms did he use? Draw up a plan for him that uses at least two direct strategies and two evidence-based stress management techniques.
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the text, the diagram (Figure 1), the tables and the exercises. This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
