Coping Mechanism

• STRESS

  ● “Emotional factor that causes bodily or mental

  tension.”
• STRESS RESPONSE

  ● the collection of physiological changes that occur

  when you face a perceived threat
• Compensation

  ● a person tries to "make up for" a perceived area of

  weakness in their life.
• Compensation

  ● People overachieve in one area of their lives to

  compensate for failures in another.
• Conversion

  ● converts cognitive tensions and anxiety into

  physical symptoms.
• Denial

  ● refusal to acknowledge certain facts about a

  particular situation.
• Displacement

  ● changing or displacing the original target of a

  particular impulse to another similar target

  (Baumeister et al., 1998).
• Displacement

  it occurs because the response to the initial target is

  considered unacceptable or impossible, so a more

  suitable target is found.
• Dissociation

  ● The client experiences a short-lived gap in

  consciousness in response to anxiety and stress.
• Dissociation

  ● When the mind “cuts off” a part of itself, a thought, a

  feeling, or a memory to protect the greater whole.
• Identification

  ● An individual, in varying degrees, makes himself or

  herself like someone else; he identifies with another

  person.
• Identification

  This results in the unconscious taking over of

  various elements of another
• Intellectualization

  ● which reasoning is used to block confrontation with

  an unconscious conflict and its associated

  emotional stress – where thinking is used to avoid

  feeling
• Intellectualization

  ● It involves emotionally removing one's self from a

  stressful event.
• Introjection

  ● occurs when a person internalizes the beliefs of

  other people.
• Projection

  ● not acknowledging threatening traits in themselves,

  and seeing them in other people instead, the client

  can protect their self-concept
• Rationalization

  ● apparent logical reasons are given to justify

  behavior that is motivated by unconscious

  instinctual impulses.
• Rationalization

  ● It is an attempt to find reasons for behaviors,

  especially one's own.
• Sourgrape - People justify good things with

  bad reasons
• Sweet lemon - People justify bad things

  with good reasons
• Repression

  ● is the withdrawal from the consciousness of an

  unwanted idea, affect, or desire by pushing it down,or repressing it, into the unconscious part of the

  mind.
• Regression

  ● In response to stress or distress, clients display

  age-inappropriate behavior; that is, they regress or

  move back to an early developmental stage and

  adopt immature patterns of behavior and emotions
• Regression is considered maladaptive
• Reaction Formation

  ● A person unconsciously replaces an unwanted or

  anxiety-provoking impulse with its opposite, often

  expressed in an exaggerated or showy way.
• Splitting

  ● refers to the tendency to “split” people, things,

  beliefs, or situations into one of two extreme

  categories: either good or bad
• Sublimation

  ● socially unacceptable impulses or energies into

  socially acceptable activities or behaviors
• Undoing

  ● Individuals avoid conscious awareness of disturbing

  impulses by thinking or acting in a way intended to

  revert (“make un-happen”) those impulses, even if

  only at a symbolic level.