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These methods usually impede emotional processing, worsen our stress, and hinder efficient problem-solving. Unhealthy coping mechanisms can result in a cycle of adverse feelings, decreased vanity, sick well being, and even bodily hurt (Suls & Fletcher, 1985; Zuckerman, 1999).
Components influencing our coping selections
Our selection of coping mechanisms is influenced by elements resembling character traits, cultural norms, and, most significantly, our previous experiences.
Usually, the roots of our unhealthy coping mechanisms might be present in our childhood, and they’re additionally formed by our early attachment types.
We might, for instance, have lacked good coping function fashions, our feelings might have been delegitimized or ridiculed, or we might have grown up in an unstable and even violent setting, the place we have been uncovered to many threatening stressors.
A few of us might resort to unhealthy coping because of a lack of understanding of more healthy alternate options (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Moreover, social help and entry to assets play essential roles in shaping our particular person coping methods (Thoits, 1995).
Typically, unhealthy coping mechanisms can simply grow to be dangerous habits – automated, default responses to our stressors, and in these circumstances we may have to hunt skilled assist to develop extra generative methods to reinforce our emotional resilience.
Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms: A Listing
Unhealthy coping mechanisms, outlined as maladaptive methods, used to deal with hostile feelings or irritating conditions, have been the topic of in depth psychological analysis (Smith et al., 2017).
Whereas these mechanisms usually present short-term reduction, they often result in long-term psychological, emotional, and even bodily hurt (Jones & Oliver, 2015). In the long term, unhealthy coping perpetuates adverse outcomes.
The most typical maladaptive coping strategies embody the next (Thompson et al., 2010; Enns et al., 2018; Wadsworth, 2015; Tapu, 2016):
1. Substance abuse
Substance abuse, together with alcohol, drug, and ache killer consumption, is a quite common unhealthy coping mechanism (Dawson et al., 2018).
The short-term reduction provided by substances might result in dependancy, exacerbating our psychological well being points (Hawke et al., 2019).
As with most unhealthy coping mechanisms, extended and extreme substance abuse often turns into probably the most urgent problem in our life and turns into the best menace to our wellbeing.
2. Avoidance and denial
Avoidance and denial contain ignoring or suppressing distressing feelings or conditions (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).
Such mechanisms hinder our emotional processing and contribute to heightened stress and nervousness (Carver & Scheier, 2016).
If we keep away from tackling our issues or deny that they even exist, we can not resolve them. This coping mechanism results in stagnation and paralysis and hinders our emotional progress (Smith et al., 2017).
3. Self-harm
Self-harm, resembling slicing or burning oneself, is a very distressing and a counterproductive coping technique (Klonsky et al., 2018).
This conduct can provide a fleeting sense of management and reduction however usually leads to elevated emotional turmoil and might result in harmful bodily accidents (Zetterqvist, 2015).
4. Adverse self-talk
Partaking in adverse self-talk, throughout which we criticize or put ourselves down excessively, is linked to lowered vanity and heightened melancholy (Brakemeier et al., 2014).
The reinforcement of pessimistic ideas and adverse assumptions about ourselves can perpetuate and enlarge our misery (Beck, 2019).
Adverse self-talk is a quite common coping mechanism, and, once more, it’s a mechanism that begins out as a protecting technique designed to avoid wasting us from hazard that subsequently morphs right into a maladaptive one which holds us again in quite a few areas of our life.
David Burns and different CBT-practitioners have supplied extra detailed descriptions of the assorted cognitive distortions that often decide our adverse self-talk (Burns, 1999).
The most typical cognitive distortions contain all-or-nothing pondering, overgeneralization, psychological filtering, disqualifying positives, leaping to conclusions within the type of mind-reading and fortune-telling, magnification and minimization, emotional reasoning, ought to statements, labeling and mislabeling, and personalization (Burns, 1999).
5. Emotional consuming or binge consuming
We can also have interaction in emotional consuming or binge consuming to numb our feelings and to deal with overwhelming stressors in our lives.
Like different maladaptive coping methods, this one, too, leads to a basic vicious circle, in that our unhealthy response to issues quickly turns into the primary problem in our life.
These of us participating in binge consuming grow to be trapped in a cycle of guilt, disgrace, and self-hatred which is the direct consequence of this coping mechanism.
6. Isolation
One other unhealthy coping mechanism is withdrawing from social interactions. Isolating ourselves from our friends, too, is a detrimental selection of coping mechanism as a result of avoidance- or fear-driven isolation can result in psychological well being and wellbeing points.
Once we lower ties with different individuals, we deprive ourselves of energizing human interactions and nourishing relationships, and thus considerably slim our alternatives for therapeutic and rising.
7. Procrastination
Procrastination means avoiding vital duties or delaying their completion. Curiously, we frequently procrastinate on exactly the duties which can be most vital to us as a result of we can not bear the considered doing them in a not quite perfect manner and even failing at them.
Once more, procrastination might present short-term reduction as a result of after we procrastinate, we stay within the sphere of risk the place we will bask in fantasies of good or near-perfect outcomes.
Nevertheless, procrastination will increase our stress in the long term, for it massively decreases our sense of self-efficacy and can also be associated to emotions of guilt and disgrace.
8. Overworking
Many people additionally have interaction in overworking to deal with emotions of disconnection, vacancy, lack of function, and alienation. We can also self-medicate with work to keep away from addressing issues in different areas of our lives, resembling our household, partnerships, or friendship circles.
But the issue with overworking is that it’s more likely to irritate the challenges we don’t handle. And the extra time we spend at work, the emptier our lives grow to be in different domains.
It turns into more and more troublesome to cease and face that vacancy. What’s extra, overworking additionally will increase our threat of burnout and results in a lower in total life satisfaction. It may well additionally result in numerous stress-related well being issues.
9. Aggression
Aggression, too, generally is a maladaptive coping mechanism, which might take the type of expressing anger, frustration, and irritation in dangerous and upsetting methods and inappropriate contexts.
Aggression results in strained relationships and can in the end hurt and push the people who find themselves closest to us away.
In the event you need assistance with this unhealthy coping mechanism, head on over to this Anger Administration Information for constructive steering.
10. Extreme display screen time
Lastly, we can also bask in extreme display screen time to numb disagreeable emotions and ideas, or to keep away from complicated duties or challenges.
What counts as extreme and unhealthy display screen time is troublesome to generalize, although. Many people have to make use of screens for work, and screens may also be platforms for significant social interactions, or present us with stimulating concepts, or else assist us loosen up.
Most of us can be responsible of losing a while day by day on social media or gaming platforms, or else we might have a Netflix binge-watching behavior.
Display time as a coping mechanism turns into problematic after we are hooked on gaming or spend a lot time on-line that we can not address our day by day duties and neglect our real-life relationships and self-care.
To conclude, in all ten circumstances, we will observe the identical underlying mechanism at work: The conduct or ideas that have been initially designed to assist us cope grow to be addictive or routine, and shortly flip into our most urgent main downside. In different phrases: our methods to answer our emotional crises find yourself turning into the disaster.
You might also get pleasure from this quick explanatory video on barely completely different alternatives of unhealthy coping mechanisms.
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