Coping

In psychology, coping refers to the things that someone does which enable them to handle a stressful event.

In coping with disease, there tend to be two main coping strategies that people use, either problem focused or emotion focused coping.

People using problem focused strategies try to deal with the cause of their problem. They do this by finding out information of the disease, learning new skills to manage their disease and rearranging their lives around the disease.

Emotion focused strategies are when the person modifies the way they think. Denial is one method, so is distancing oneself from the problem. A person altering the way (s)he thinks about the problem by perhaps altering his/her goals and values.

People may use a mixture of these different types of coping, and coping mechanisms will usually change over time. All these methods can be useful, but it seems that those using problem focused coping strategies will adjust better to life.