Welcome to our 2-part guide series regarding coping skills for anxiety. These guides were created because it’s important to be aware of unhealthy coping strategies or behavioural patterns that may poorly impact your mental well-being.
As we navigate through life, we encounter a variety of emotions such as stress, anxiety, and anger. Coping with these emotions is a shared human experience. While coping strategies are crucial for managing life’s obstacles, some methods can have detrimental effects to our mental health.
Breaking free from these behaviours can be challenging, but with the right support, it is possible to recognize and discontinue the use of unhealthy behavioural patterns. We encourage you to take this time now to educate yourself on these coping mechanisms in order to better safeguard your mental health.
What are Coping Mechanisms?
Coping mechanisms are essential strategies or behaviours that are used to effectively manage stress, anxiety, or complicated emotions and states of mind such as grief. These mechanisms can be either conscious or unconscious, and they vary in their levels of effectiveness. By assisting individuals in regulating their emotions and easing the impact of stressors on their mental and physical well-being, coping mechanisms play a crucial role in maintaining overall health.
There are two primary types of coping mechanisms:
Adaptive coping mechanisms (healthy coping): These are considered healthy and helpful ways of addressing stress, such as seeking social support, practicing mindfulness, or engaging in physical activity. Individuals who practice adaptive coping mechanisms typically experience better mental and physical health outcomes as a result. These patterns will be discussed in greater detail in part 2.
Maladaptive coping mechanisms (unhealthy coping): In contrast, these are deemed unhealthy and ineffective methods of coping with stress, such as substance abuse, avoidance, or isolation. Engaging in maladaptive coping mechanisms can lead to harmful consequences and worsen mental and physical health issues.
It’s crucial for individuals to recognize the distinction between adaptive and maladaptive coping mechanisms. That way, they can strive towards incorporating healthier coping strategies into their daily lives to promote overall well-being.
How are Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms Developed?
Individuals may form unhealthy coping mechanisms in life to manage challenging levels of emotions or situations that feel overwhelming and beyond their control. Factors such as childhood experiences, trauma, and genetics can also contribute to the development of these maladaptive coping strategies. Anxiety, depression, and similar mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can further exacerbate the use of unhealthy coping mechanisms.
External life stressors such as financial difficulties, relationship issues, and work-related stress can also prompt individuals to resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms. These stressors can create feelings of helplessness, leading individuals to turn to substances, addictive behaviours, or other harmful coping strategies to cope.
It’s crucial to recognize that while unhealthy coping mechanisms may offer temporary relief, they often result in unpleasant consequences and can worsen mental health outcomes. Seeking assistance from a mental health professional can aid individuals in developing healthier coping strategies.
While coping mechanisms themselves are not inherently harmful, they can become problematic if they’re relied upon excessively, particularly if they begin to poorly impact one’s mental or physical well-being. Initially, these behaviours may not appear harmful and may even provide a sense of relief, but over time, they can prove to be detrimental. Unhealthy coping mechanisms occur when behaviours intended to protect an individual end up causing more harm in the long run, despite offering short-term stress relief or comfort.
Types of Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms for Anxiety
Unhealthy coping mechanisms can be categorized into two main groups: unhealthy problem-focused coping mechanisms and unhealthy emotion-focused coping mechanisms. Both types involve attempts to address the underlying source of stress in ways that are ultimately ineffective or harmful.
Problem-Focused
Problem-focused coping requires focusing on and actively attempting to change the root cause of a problem. Unhealthy problem-focused coping mechanisms involve maladaptive strategies to address the source of stress, which can result in further negative consequences.
Examples of unhealthy problem-focused coping mechanisms include:
Avoidance: Ignoring or denying the source of stress, leading to increased anxiety and emotional difficulties.
Aggression: Responding to stress with anger or hostility, damaging relationships and exacerbating anxiety and stress levels.
Substance use: Turning to drugs or alcohol to cope with stress and anxiety, potentially leading to substance addiction.
Overworking: Engaging in work excessively to avoid or distract from stress, resulting in burnout and other poor health effects.
Perfectionism: Setting unattainably high standards for oneself to manage stress, leading to increased anxiety and self-criticism.
Emotion-Focused
Unhealthy emotion-focused coping mechanisms are strategies individuals use to manage the emotional impact of stress and anxiety without addressing the root cause of the issue. These coping strategies can prove to be ineffective or even harmful in the long run.
Examples of unhealthy emotion-focused coping mechanisms include:
Dissociation: This coping mechanism involves disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, or surroundings to evade emotional distress. Dissociation has been correlated with heightened levels of anxiety, depression, and symptoms of PTSD.
Suppression: Suppressing or concealing emotions in response to stress can lead to heightened anxiety and difficulties in emotional regulation.
Denial: Refusing to acknowledge or accept the reality of a stressful situation can result in heightened anxiety and difficulties in emotional regulation. Denial coping has been associated with increased psychological distress and poorer mental health outcomes.
Rumination: Fixating on unpleasant thoughts or emotions without taking proactive steps to address them can lead to heightened levels of anxiety and depression. Rumination coping has been connected to an elevated risk of mental health issues and decreased psychological well-being.
Now that we know about these two main groups, let’s take a look at what these coping mechanisms look like as behavioural patterns in our everyday lives.
Examples of Unhealthy Behavioural Patterns to Be Aware of
1. Isolation
Feeling overwhelmed or constantly irritated by others may lead you to isolate yourself as a means of reducing anxiety and stress. However, maintaining meaningful connections is crucial for a healthy life. Prolonged social withdrawal and lack of physical activity can have detrimental effects on both your mental and physical well-being.
2. Overdependence on Others
While having a support system is beneficial, relying excessively on family or friends for self-worth and validation can undermine your self-esteem. When your happiness hinges entirely on the presence of others, coping with challenges independently becomes much more challenging.
3. Catastrophizing and Hasty Conclusions
Considering potential outcomes to problems can aid in problem-solving. However, constantly jumping to conclusions and fixating on worst-case scenarios to avoid discomfort can lead to catastrophizing. This cognitive distortion hinders your ability to weigh both positive and negative aspects of a situation, impeding your capacity to make well-informed decisions.
4. Doomscrolling
Social media has become a common source of anxiety relief, yet it can worsen this rather than relieve it. Doomscrolling, the habit of endlessly scrolling through social media despite feeling overwhelmed by the news and comments that hook you into scrolling further, can have damaging effects on your mental well-being.
5. Avoiding Problems
Engaging in avoidance behaviours such as procrastination, dwelling on the past, oversleeping, toxic positivity, or overworking is a common way to cope with stress by simply ignoring it. However, suppressing emotions and problems only allows them to fester beneath the surface. While emotions and challenges may seem scary, avoiding them will only delay the stress and make it more difficult to address in the future.
6. Retail ‘Therapy’
Retail ‘therapy’, also known as impulse shopping, can offer a temporary boost of dopamine. However, if it becomes a habitual stress-relief strategy, it could lead to a different kind of stress. In extreme cases, impulse shopping can result in severe financial and relationship issues that can significantly impact your life.
7. Substance Use
Relying on substances to alleviate worry, stress, or tension can be a slippery slope. While blowing off steam can be beneficial, when a substance becomes the sole means of coping with circumstances or emotions, it can lead to serious physical and mental health complications.
8. Excessive Worry
It helps to be prepared for both pleasant and unpleasant outcomes in life, however it’s when worry and fear deter you from fully living your life that can become detrimental. If worry transitions from being constructive to catastrophizing and making unsupported assumptions, it will add stress and discomfort to your life rather than alleviate it.
Support is Available
Recognizing unhealthy behavioural patterns and coping mechanisms can be a challenging task. Oftentimes, in our efforts to simply make it through the day, we accidentally worsen our stress rather than relieve it.
It’s important to be mindful of the ways in which we manage stress and to seek healthier alternatives when necessary. By acknowledging and addressing these patterns, we can work towards a more balanced and fulfilling life.
Stay tuned for part 2 of our 2-part guide series, where we discuss healthy behavioural patterns for relieving anxiety and improving your overall well-being.
At Hopewoods, our mission is to assist individuals in identifying and overcoming unhealthy behavioural patterns and coping mechanisms. We provide the necessary tools and support to help individuals work towards healing their anxiety. If you have any questions regarding unhealthy behavioural patterns or coping mechanisms for anxiety, or you have any questions regarding any of our services, contact us today or book a free 30-minute consultation.
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