STRESS

How to best cope in stressful situations?

An integral part of coping with stressful situations is the ability to regulate our emotions. The most common coping strategies, as psychologists call them, can be divided into three categories: mindfulness, reappraisal, and emotion suppression. All of them aim some way or another to regulate emotions in stressful situations.

Common strategies to cope with stress – how they work

Mindfulness refers to a strategy of becoming deliberately aware of the ongoing situation and then accepting it and the thoughts and feelings it generates without judgment. When using the reappraisal strategy, the person focuses on reinterpreting the negative situation so that it is seen in a more positive light; for example, failing a test can be reinterpreted as a chance to challenge and develop oneself further. Emotion suppression is a strategy in which the individual simply aims at avoiding and ignoring the negative emotions. Although these strategies have traditionally been evaluated as being either good or bad, researchers are now coming to the conclusion that such a strict division may not be appropriate. Rather, people are very different in which coping strategy works for them the best. In their study, researchers from the universities of Sydney and USA examined the effects of the different coping strategies on emotional well-being, and how the effects vary between people. The study participants were asked to monitor and report their emotional well-being as well as the use of different coping strategies by filling out questionnaires before going to sleep for 21 days. By analyzing the data from the questionnaires, the researchers could profile the participants according to the coping strategy they tend to use and look how that strategy affects people’s emotional well-being.

What strategy works best – scientific findings

The effects varied largely between people: for some individuals a certain strategy led to more positive emotions while for some that same strategy actually made them feel worse. These results therefore imply that there is no “one-size-fits-all” coping strategy, but rather, you should use any strategy that just makes you feel better. However, the researchers did find some effects that seemed more common than others. Firstly, for most people mindfulness led to more positive emotions and less negative emotions. The opposite pattern was found for emotion suppression: people who concentrated on ignoring their negative feelings actually felt worse afterwards. Cognitive reappraisal, again, was found to work better for older people than for adolescents. Therefore, if you have to pick a strategy, mindfulness would be the strongest bet.