Working Through Stress & Difficult Emotions
03/10/11: One of the more common requests I get for presentations and workshops is "stress management". This typically involves some basic psychoeducation and ideas for techniques people can use to deal with it. Over time I have developed an integrative model that is applicable to a wide range of stressful situations. The following is a brief overview.
The Model
The above model represents a way we deal with stressful situations and events, and difficult emotions like anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, loneliness, etc. The rest of this article will go step-by-step in show how this process works, where we often go wrong, and how we can become masters of dealing with these things.
Experiencing Stage
At the beginning of our model, there is an event or situation that causes some kind of stressful or emotional reaction. These things can be immediate such as a car accident, or longer and more enduring like concerns about the future. Either way, there is a stimulus and some kind of feeling response.
The emotions or stress endure and can increase in intensity depending on what it is, and some kind of thought process like an "anxiety loop" often accompany this. At a certain point we make a decision (sometimes unconsciously) that we need to restore order to our psyche, and that takes us to the next stage.
Coping Stage
The coping stage begins when we make some kind of intervention on the stress/emotion we are experiencing. There are countless ways people cope with this stuff, but for our model let's break them into two categories: active (those that are healthy and work to address the emotion or situation directly with minimal harm to the self) and avoidant (those that are less healthy, do not actively address the emotion or situation, and may cause some harm to the self). Examples of active coping can include problem solving, exercise, talking with someone, or meditation, and examples of avoidant coping include pure avoidance, distraction, eating, or substance use among others.
After we enact some kind of coping process (again, whether conscious and intentional or not), there is usually some resolving of the stress or emotional state. So essentially those avoidant coping strategies are things we gravitate toward because they work, sometimes even quicker than the active strategies. The key here is that we use the avoidant strategies selectively, and developed a suite of ways that we actively manage stress and our feelings. I'll write more extensively on this in the future. So after the coping stage, we move to the final step.
Reflecting Stage
In this stage we get a chance to look back on what unfolded. If we do this, we have the opportunity to understand what happened, and learn and grow from the situation. The best part of this is being able to evaluate how we did with coping. If we do not reflect, we take away our chance for more intentional learning, and will likely just repeat the cycle again and again. That works great if we are doing a great job with coping in a healthy way, but that is not such a good thing if we are doing things that are not as good for us.
Conclusion
Counseling can help you work on mastering this model and developing a great suite of coping strategies, but this is also something that anyone can use as a personal map of their experience of working through something. Most of my clients find that visualizing the model while they are actively involved in an experience can help them choose active coping strategies, and others like to print out the model and actually write out what happened at each step as part of their reflection. If you find another creative use for the model, get in touch and let me know how it is helpful for you. Also, click the following link for a PDF Handout version (link: Working Through Stress & Difficult Emotions).
The Model
The above model represents a way we deal with stressful situations and events, and difficult emotions like anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, loneliness, etc. The rest of this article will go step-by-step in show how this process works, where we often go wrong, and how we can become masters of dealing with these things.
Experiencing Stage
At the beginning of our model, there is an event or situation that causes some kind of stressful or emotional reaction. These things can be immediate such as a car accident, or longer and more enduring like concerns about the future. Either way, there is a stimulus and some kind of feeling response.
The emotions or stress endure and can increase in intensity depending on what it is, and some kind of thought process like an "anxiety loop" often accompany this. At a certain point we make a decision (sometimes unconsciously) that we need to restore order to our psyche, and that takes us to the next stage.
Coping Stage
The coping stage begins when we make some kind of intervention on the stress/emotion we are experiencing. There are countless ways people cope with this stuff, but for our model let's break them into two categories: active (those that are healthy and work to address the emotion or situation directly with minimal harm to the self) and avoidant (those that are less healthy, do not actively address the emotion or situation, and may cause some harm to the self). Examples of active coping can include problem solving, exercise, talking with someone, or meditation, and examples of avoidant coping include pure avoidance, distraction, eating, or substance use among others.
After we enact some kind of coping process (again, whether conscious and intentional or not), there is usually some resolving of the stress or emotional state. So essentially those avoidant coping strategies are things we gravitate toward because they work, sometimes even quicker than the active strategies. The key here is that we use the avoidant strategies selectively, and developed a suite of ways that we actively manage stress and our feelings. I'll write more extensively on this in the future. So after the coping stage, we move to the final step.
Reflecting Stage
In this stage we get a chance to look back on what unfolded. If we do this, we have the opportunity to understand what happened, and learn and grow from the situation. The best part of this is being able to evaluate how we did with coping. If we do not reflect, we take away our chance for more intentional learning, and will likely just repeat the cycle again and again. That works great if we are doing a great job with coping in a healthy way, but that is not such a good thing if we are doing things that are not as good for us.
Conclusion
Counseling can help you work on mastering this model and developing a great suite of coping strategies, but this is also something that anyone can use as a personal map of their experience of working through something. Most of my clients find that visualizing the model while they are actively involved in an experience can help them choose active coping strategies, and others like to print out the model and actually write out what happened at each step as part of their reflection. If you find another creative use for the model, get in touch and let me know how it is helpful for you. Also, click the following link for a PDF Handout version (link: Working Through Stress & Difficult Emotions).
