Coping Strategies in a COVID-19 Era

When the stay-at-home orders started in my state, I found myself suddenly balancing my face-to-face students, my Portage students, a newly unemployed husband, and three kids at different levels of schooling who all needed support for distance education. On top of that, I somehow thought it was a good idea to get a new puppy. So, add housetraining a dog to the mix, too! Some days, the stress from all of this seemed overwhelming. You may have had similar experiences, too, where you felt like you just couldn’t cope anymore.

When psychologists talk about stress, they focus both on the situations that we experience as challenging or threatening, and on our responses to those situations. So, beyond our potential concerns about contracting the virus (a challenge or threat), psychologists would also look at how we interpret that situation and respond to it. Do we see that stressor as one that can motivate us to conquer our challenges, or is the situation so overwhelming to us that it threatens the resources we have available to us? How we perceive the stressful situation can help us understand the ways we might try to cope with it.

Psychologists tell us that there are two broad categories of coping styles: problem-focused and emotion-focused. Problem-focused coping strategies are ones used when you can actually exert some control over the stressful situation, where you can make an effective change to minimize the stress. Emotion-focused coping takes a different approach. It works at managing the emotions that are resulting from a situation you can’t change. Both of these kinds of strategies can be helpful. 

Some very problem-focused strategies might include:

·       Seeking accurate information: It’s important to know what the extent of the situation actually is. It can be stress-relieving to find accurate information to understand the nature of the problem you’re facing.

·       Seeking help: You can seek help and support from your social network, or from more formal sources. Many counselors are currently conducting telehealth sessions. You may wish to look for one in your area who could help you deal with the stress.

·       Making decisions: My family and I made decisions about how we would address different aspects of the stay-at-home orders. Making those decisions empowered us to know how we were dealing with the situation and what we could expect as a result.

On the other hand, some emotion-focused strategies might be helpful as well:

·       Practicing optimism: We tend to think of people as either optimistic or pessimistic. But some psychological research suggests we can practice optimism and become more resilient as we face stressors.

·       Mindfulness exercises: Mindfulness means paying attention to ourselves in the present moment, and recognizing and accepting our emotions and thoughts rather than judging them as good or bad. It helps us to focus on where we’re at right now through concentrating on breathing and becoming aware of all five senses. Research shows that practicing mindfulness can reduce anxiety and depression. 

·       Healthy distractions: It can be very helpful to find ways to unplug from the situation to recharge and face it again another day. I saw many people walking in our neighborhood during the strongest stay-at-home orders. I spent hours and hours knitting over the past few months, and my children played more Minecraft than they normally would. Those activities helped us all. 

As you face continued challenges, COVID-19 related or not, consider how you will manage your stressors in order to balance those with healthy approaches to not just surviving, but thriving.