SOS 3200 Module 4 Coping Paper: Problem-Focused, Emotion-Focused and Meaning-Focused Strategies Example

What I Actually Do: Sorting My Coping Habits With the Brief COPE

Student Name

B.S. in Health Studies, Thomas Edison State University

SOS-3200: The Management of Stress and Tension

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

What I Actually Do: Sorting My Coping Habits With the Brief COPE

Introduction

Lazarus and Folkman define coping as the efforts people make to manage demands they appraise as taxing. In earlier papers I measured my stressors, traced my stress response and assessed my resilience. This paper asks what I actually do when I feel overloaded. I thought of myself as an organized problem solver, but I suspected that was true mainly at work.

The COPE Inventory

Carver et al. (1989) developed the COPE inventory to measure a wider range of coping than earlier tools. Drawing on Lazarus's model and on their own model of behavioral self-regulation, they defined scales for active coping, planning, suppressing competing activities, restraint, seeking instrumental support, seeking emotional support, positive reinterpretation and growth, acceptance, turning to religion, focusing on and venting emotions, denial, behavioral disengagement and mental disengagement. They argued that the common division into problem-focused and emotion-focused coping was too simple, since strategies within each group differ in how helpful they are. Denial and disengagement, for example, were linked to poorer adjustment, while acceptance and positive reinterpretation often helped.

The Brief COPE

Carver (1997) shortened the inventory to 14 scales of two items each, 28 items in all, for studies where participants could not complete a long questionnaire. He tested it with people recovering from Hurricane Andrew. The brief form added scales for self-blame, humor and substance use. It is meant to be used scale by scale rather than as a total.

I completed the Brief COPE for how I usually cope with stress. Each item ranges from 1, I haven't been doing this at all, to 4, I've been doing this a lot, so each two-item scale ranges from 2 to 8.

Reading My Profile

My scores show two patterns. At work, where stressors are mostly controllable, such as claim denials and staffing gaps, I use planning and active coping, which fit the situation well. At home and with my father, where stressors are often uncontrollable, such as the progress of his disease, I use venting, self-distraction and self-blame. I rarely use acceptance or positive reframing, and I seldom seek emotional support from friends.

What Coping Research Adds

Folkman and Moskowitz (2004) reviewed decades of coping research and identified both pitfalls and promise. One lesson is that a strategy's worth depends on context. Its value depends on the fit between the strategy and the situation: problem-focused strategies help most when a situation can be changed, while emotion-focused strategies such as acceptance help more when it cannot. A second lesson concerns meaning-focused coping, where values, beliefs and goals become resources for finding meaning in hard circumstances, for example by reordering priorities or noticing benefits. In studies of caregivers of men with AIDS, Folkman found that positive emotions occurred alongside distress, even during the hardest periods, and that meaning-focused coping helped sustain them. A third lesson is that coping is social: people cope together, and support given and received shapes outcomes.

Judging My Habits

By this standard, my work coping fits well. My home coping does not. Venting to my husband gives brief relief but often turns into rehearsing the problem, which keeps my stress response going at night. Self-distraction with my phone and snacks numbs the feeling but leaves me more tired. Self-blame after arguments with my teenagers adds to my distress without changing anything. My father's illness is largely uncontrollable, and it is exactly where acceptance and meaning-focused coping would fit best.

Humor and Support

Two scales surprised me by being low. Humor was 4, though my friends would call me funny; under stress I lose it. Folkman and Moskowitz's attention to positive emotion suggests humor could help me cope rather than distract me, as when my father and I laugh about his stubborn pill bottles. Emotional support was also low. I give support to my team, my children and my father but rarely ask for it. I worry that asking would burden others, a belief I want to test by telling one friend each week how I am really doing.

Patterns Across Settings

The biggest lesson of this inventory is that I am not one kind of coper. I bring my best tools to work, where I feel competent and where problems have procedures. At home I am tired and feel less in control, so I reach for quick relief. Planning my evenings with the same care I give my workday may carry some of those skills home.

Planned Changes

For uncontrollable stressors, I will practice acceptance, for example by naming what I cannot change about my father's illness and focusing on the time I spend with him rather than on what is lost. Following Folkman and Moskowitz, I will look for meaning in caregiving, which reflects values I hold about family. I will seek emotional support by joining the caregivers' group at church I described in module three. For family conflict, I will replace self-blame with a short problem-solving conversation the next day. For self-distraction, I will put my phone on a charger in the kitchen after 9 p.m.

Limits

The Brief COPE relies on my own report of what I usually do, which may differ from what I do in a specific crisis. Coping research is largely correlational. I will take the Brief COPE again in the final week and compare.

Conclusion

The Brief COPE confirmed that I am a planner at work, but it showed that I cope with uncontrollable stress through venting, distraction and self-blame. Carver and colleagues gave me the categories, and Folkman and Moskowitz showed that the fit between strategy and situation, meaning-focused coping and positive emotion matter. Acceptance, meaning and support are the tools I need most where I use them least.

References

Carver, C. S. (1997). You want to measure coping but your protocol's too long: Consider the Brief COPE. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4(1), 92-100. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327558ijbm0401_6

Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(2), 267-283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.2.267

Folkman, S., & Moskowitz, J. T. (2004). Coping: Pitfalls and promise. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 745-774. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141456