Chapter 1

Anxiety, Stress and Coping

Stress as well as some level of anxiety and worry are a natural and important part of life. They can help us identify areas of concern, know when we are in potential danger and, at times, moti-vate us to make changes in our lives. If we aren’t dealing with our stress (being mindful of it and working with it in a productive way) it can take on a life of its own, causing all sorts of difficul-ties that impact both emotional and physical health and our ability to effectively function in day to day life. The following steps can help you assess and address the stress and anxiety in your life more effectively to keep it from having a negative impact.

Step 1 Recognition: Notice your stress

Think for a moment …

When we are in stressful situations, our systems can get overwhelmed and we can get triggered into what is referred to as fight flight or freeze response. Our brain, trying to cope, will find a way to either:

Step 2 Appraisal: Assess the Stress

The Source: What’s it About?

What is causing you to feel stressed, anxious or worried? Is it a concern about something in the future, or the impact of something that already happened or a situation you are currently dealing with. Sometimes we experience multiple stresses.

If you are worrying about something which hasn’t actually happened yet, an important place to start is by asking yourself: How like likely is it?

1 to 10 with 1 being (highly unlikely) and 10 being (an almost certainty) how likely is it this worry or stressor will actually happen. For example, not being able to pay your rent check when you are unemployed and have no money left is probable going to be a 9 or a 10, while your house catching on fire because you forgot to take the phone charger out of the wall before leaving for work might be a 1 or 2.


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Significance and Controllability

How big a deal is it?

It can be easy to get overly worried about something that is unlikely to happen or may not have a great impact if it does, or to overassign importance to something that happened in the past. It is important that the response to the stressor matches its significance. To help calibrate, ask yourself, on a scale from 1 to 10, how significantly will this impact me if it does happen?


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Is it in your Control?

In order to effectively deal with a stressful situation, it is important to determine the extent to which it is changeable. Is changing it in your control?

Trying to change a situation which is out of our control will often increase our level of stress and anxiety.

Step 3 Coping: Dealing with it

Once you have determined what the stressor is and assessed its meaning, likelihood, significance and whether its in your control, the next step if to find the appropriate strategy for coping with it.

For a stressor or worry which is changeable or one you have some control over, the most effective strategy is what is referred to as Problem-Focused Coping. With stressors we have little or no control over changing, the best strategies are Emotion focused. (Folkman, et al., 1991; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

Problem-Focused Coping
Things we do (thoughts or actions) to remove or reduce the intensity of the stressor

Problem-focused coping involves utilizing a set of practical strategies that target the cause of stress and aim to either eliminate or significantly diminish the problem or stress-ful situation. The advantage of problem-focused coping is that it directly addresses the stressor and ideally takes care of it so it is not a problem in the future.

Problem-Focused Strategies include:

Emotion-Focused Coping

Things we do (thoughts and actions) to decrease the distress you feel about the situation without necessarily altering or removing the actual stressor. (Folkman, et al., 1991)

This is a coping strategy most relevant to when the stressor is out of your control or you determine that trying to change it at this time would be less helpful than decreasing how it is impacting you. Examples of emotion-focused coping strategies might include

Distracting vs. being present in your feelings

Emotion-focused coping can be broken down into two categories:

Some strategies such as physical exercise can have elements of both. It can be an escape and a way to work through the feelings, and sometimes escaping for a bit can help us come back to the stressor and work through it.

I had someone recently describe how taking his dog for a walk helps him not care as much about his worries and brings him more fully into the moment.

One of the challenges in learning to better cope with stress, is that without careful attention, we tend to rely heavily on the distraction strategies.

Distraction coping has its place

Sometimes, if the stressor feels too overwhelming, you may feel like you need to escape or distract to be able to cope. In these cases it is important to be mindful of how you are choosing to escape and the impact of the escape strategy.

For example, after initially being diagnosed with a serious illness, one may find that a few glasses of wine every night helps them manage the enormous sense of feeling overwhelmed and provide some relief from sitting with so much uncertainty, but over time, if that person turns to the same strategy night after night, not only is the stressor not being addressed but the coping strategy may bring its own set of problems and stressors. Escape strategies can be useful if utilized carefully and with the goal of eventually learning to face the distressing thought, event or feeling.

Shifting away from a distraction coping strategies we have learned to rely on, can be particularly challenging at first. Initially, the stress will go up and the present focused strategies will provide limited comfort, but over time that will start to shift.

There will always be stressors, but they way we deal with them can be a choice. The more we practice coping strategies, the more it becomes second nature.

Make it a Habit

Know your stressors

Take time to think about your current stressors.

Be aware of how you are coping

As you cope with the stressful situations in your life? Try to stay mindful of the ways you are coping.

Learn More

Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer Pub. Co.