10 Most Widespread Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms: A Listing

These methods typically impede emotional processing, worsen our stress, and hinder efficient problem-solving. Unhealthy coping mechanisms can result in a cycle of destructive feelings, decreased shallowness, in poor health well being, and even bodily hurt (Suls & Fletcher, 1985; Zuckerman, 1999).

Components influencing our coping decisions

Our alternative of coping mechanisms is influenced by elements equivalent to character traits, cultural norms, and, most significantly, our previous experiences.

Usually, the roots of our unhealthy coping mechanisms might be present in our childhood, and they’re additionally formed by our early attachment kinds.

We could, for instance, have lacked good coping function fashions, our feelings could have been delegitimized or ridiculed, or we could have grown up in an unstable and even violent surroundings, the place we have been uncovered to many threatening stressors.

A few of us could resort to unhealthy coping on account of a lack of know-how of more healthy alternate options (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Moreover, social assist and entry to assets play essential roles in shaping our particular person coping methods (Thoits, 1995).

Typically, unhealthy coping mechanisms can simply develop into unhealthy habits – computerized, default responses to our stressors, and in these circumstances we may have to hunt skilled assist to develop extra generative methods to reinforce our emotional resilience.

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms: A Listing

Unhealthy coping mechanisms, outlined as maladaptive methods, used to deal with antagonistic feelings or hectic conditions, have been the topic of in depth psychological analysis (Smith et al., 2017).

Whereas these mechanisms typically present short-term reduction, they often result in long-term psychological, emotional, and even bodily hurt (Jones & Oliver, 2015). In the long term, unhealthy coping perpetuates destructive outcomes.

The commonest maladaptive coping strategies embody the next (Thompson et al., 2010; Enns et al., 2018; Wadsworth, 2015; Tapu, 2016):

1. Substance abuse

Substance abuse, together with alcohol, drug, and ache killer consumption, is a quite common unhealthy coping mechanism (Dawson et al., 2018).

The momentary reduction provided by substances could result in habit, exacerbating our psychological well being points (Hawke et al., 2019).

As with most unhealthy coping mechanisms, extended and extreme substance abuse often turns into essentially the most urgent problem in our life and turns into the best menace to our wellbeing.

2. Avoidance and denial

Avoidance and denial contain ignoring or suppressing distressing feelings or conditions (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).

Such mechanisms hinder our emotional processing and contribute to heightened stress and nervousness (Carver & Scheier, 2016).

If we keep away from tackling our issues or deny that they even exist, we can’t resolve them. This coping mechanism results in stagnation and paralysis and hinders our emotional progress (Smith et al., 2017).

3. Self-harm

Self-harm, equivalent to reducing or burning oneself, is a very distressing and a counterproductive coping technique (Klonsky et al., 2018).

This habits can supply a fleeting sense of management and reduction however typically leads to elevated emotional turmoil and may result in harmful bodily accidents (Zetterqvist, 2015).

4. Damaging self-talk

Participating in destructive self-talk, throughout which we criticize or put ourselves down excessively, is linked to decreased shallowness and heightened despair (Brakemeier et al., 2014).

The reinforcement of pessimistic ideas and destructive assumptions about ourselves can perpetuate and amplify our misery (Beck, 2019).

Damaging self-talk is a quite common coping mechanism, and, once more, it’s a mechanism that begins out as a protecting technique designed to avoid wasting us from hazard that subsequently morphs right into a maladaptive one which holds us again in quite a few areas of our life.

David Burns and different CBT-practitioners have offered extra detailed descriptions of the assorted cognitive distortions that often decide our destructive self-talk (Burns, 1999).

The commonest cognitive distortions contain all-or-nothing pondering, overgeneralization, psychological filtering, disqualifying positives, leaping to conclusions within the type of mind-reading and fortune-telling, magnification and minimization, emotional reasoning, ought to statements, labeling and mislabeling, and personalization (Burns, 1999).

5. Emotional consuming or binge consuming

We can also interact in emotional consuming or binge consuming to numb our feelings and to deal with overwhelming stressors in our lives.

Like different maladaptive coping methods, this one, too, leads to a basic vicious circle, in that our unhealthy response to issues quickly turns into the primary problem in our life.

These of us partaking in binge consuming develop into trapped in a cycle of guilt, disgrace, and self-hatred which is the direct consequence of this coping mechanism.

6. Isolation

One other unhealthy coping mechanism is withdrawing from social interactions. Isolating ourselves from our friends, too, is a detrimental alternative of coping mechanism as a result of avoidance- or fear-driven isolation can result in psychological well being and wellbeing points.

Once we lower ties with different folks, we deprive ourselves of energizing human interactions and nourishing relationships, and thus considerably slender our alternatives for therapeutic and rising.

7. Procrastination

Procrastination means avoiding essential duties or delaying their completion. Apparently, we regularly procrastinate on exactly the duties which might be most essential to us as a result of we can’t bear the considered doing them in a not quite perfect approach and even failing at them.

Once more, procrastination could present momentary reduction as a result of once we procrastinate, we stay within the sphere of chance the place we are able to bask in fantasies of good or near-perfect outcomes.

Nonetheless, procrastination will increase our stress in the long term, for it massively decreases our sense of self-efficacy and can be associated to emotions of guilt and disgrace.

8. Overworking

Many people additionally interact in overworking to deal with emotions of disconnection, vacancy, lack of function, and alienation. We can also self-medicate with work to keep away from addressing issues in different areas of our lives, equivalent to our household, partnerships, or friendship circles.

But the issue with overworking is that it’s more likely to worsen the challenges we don’t deal with. And the extra time we spend at work, the emptier our lives develop into in different domains.

It turns into more and more tough to cease and face that vacancy. What’s extra, overworking additionally will increase our danger of burnout and results in a lower in general life satisfaction. It could possibly additionally result in numerous stress-related well being issues.

9. Aggression

Aggression, too, generally is a maladaptive coping mechanism, which might take the type of expressing anger, frustration, and irritation in dangerous and upsetting methods and inappropriate contexts.

Aggression results in strained relationships and can in the end hurt and push the people who find themselves closest to us away.

In case you need assistance with this unhealthy coping mechanism, head on over to this Anger Administration Information for constructive steering.

10. Extreme display screen time

Lastly, we can also bask in extreme display screen time to numb disagreeable emotions and ideas, or to keep away from advanced duties or challenges.

What counts as extreme and unhealthy display screen time is tough to generalize, although. Many people have to make use of screens for work, and screens will also be platforms for significant social interactions, or present us with stimulating concepts, or else assist us calm down.

Most of us shall be responsible of losing a while day by day on social media or gaming platforms, or else we could have a Netflix binge-watching behavior.

Display screen time as a coping mechanism turns into problematic once we are hooked on gaming or spend a lot time on-line that we can’t deal with our day by day duties and neglect our real-life relationships and self-care.

To conclude, in all ten circumstances, we are able to observe the identical underlying mechanism at work: The habits or ideas that have been initially designed to assist us cope develop into addictive or ordinary, and shortly flip into our most urgent major drawback. In different phrases: our methods to answer our emotional crises find yourself changing into the disaster.

You may additionally get pleasure from this quick explanatory video on barely totally different alternatives of unhealthy coping mechanisms.