It’s easy to identify things that upset you; what’s hard is deciding what to do about your feelings and the situations that give rise to them. Confronting very challenging transitions often makes us feel helpless and therefore hopeless. We may feel that we have little control over our Situation and that our options are few. But in fact there are more Strategies and options than we realize. You already have a repertoire of coping Strategies that have helped you in the past. But when the going gets tough, you may well need to expand them further.
To help you TAKE STOCK of your coping repertoire, I will present two ways of organizing coping strategies drawn from the work of experts who study coping and from the wisdom and experience of friends, students, and people I have interviewed and counseled.
Sociologists Leonard Pearlin and Carmi Schooler interviewed 2,300 people between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five living in the Chicago area in order to identify the major coping strategies people used as they faced life’s strains and joys.1 They distinguished three types of coping strategies: those that change the situation, those that change its meaning, and those that help you relax. I added a fourth; knowing when to do nothing or take deliberate inaction.
Having a variety of coping strategies in mind can help you expand and diversify your coping repertoire; it helps you identify those you already use and suggests new ones to try. Pearlin tells us that there is no single magic-bullet coping strategy. The effective coper is someone who can use many Strategies flexibly, depending on the Situation.
Geraldine, a graduate student, demonstrated the usefulness of Pearlin and Schooler’s work. She said, “When confronted with learning difficulties, I used strategies to change the situation by seeking tutoring help. I also negotiated with teachers to allow me to do things in my own way. For example, I was terrified of giving an oral report in class. My teacher said I could do it at home into a tape recorder and then bring the tape to class.
“Second, I tried to change the meaning by redefining my disability and seeing it as a way to help others by becoming an advocate for others challenged as I had been. I often say, ‘Who cares if I don’t know east from west, read slowly, and write backwards?’
“Third, I try to relax by playing lots of racquetball, often screaming to let off steam. I am part of an extremely strong and caring support group, and I’m proficient at networking to find individuals who can assist me.”
When faced with a challenge we can ask ourselves, Can I change the Situation? If not, can I change the meaning of the Situation? And can I employ some Strategies to help me relax? Asking these three questions serves as your guide for how to proceed. Remember, however, that there are times when it is best to sit and wait. For example, Warren the caregiver, briefly described in chapter 1, was urged by many health care workers to take action by placing his mother and sister in institutional settings. He resisted. “I am glad I did nothing about that. For me, it is right to be a caregiver and keep them at home.”
Psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman organize coping effectiveness in a slightly different way. These psychologists focus on the individual’s “cognitive appraisal.” Very simply, this means that every time an individual faces a challenge, the individual appraises it: Is it benign? Is it a threat? Is it positive?2 Clearly, Geraldine saw her learning disability as a threat to her competency and self-esteem. As you evaluate your transition, you will also engage in a second kind of appraisal: Do I have the resources to cope with the challenge? When you are totally overwhelmed, as Warren was with caring for his mother and sister, you often cannot think what to do. If you use Lazarus and Folkman’s method, you can ask yourself, What can I do about the challenge? If there is hope, they suggest using “problem-focused” strategies. If hope is absent, then they suggest using “emotion-focused strategies.” There is clearly an overlap between these two models of coping.
Geraldine used both. She was constantly problem solving. For example, she became a reading specialist so she could first help herself and now can help many others by serving as an advocate for learning-disabled children. Geraldine used “emotion-focused” strategies by making positive comparisons. She wrote, “When I received my Graduate Record Examination scores I was devastated by the mundane results. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of stupidity. Then I thought about some of the bizarre things that have happened and I said to myself: ‘Damn, but look how far you have come!’ ”
Geraldine is a master of diverse coping strategies, and that mastery has paid off handsomely in helping her achieve despite her disability. You can expand your own repertoire by using some of the strategies described here. I have organized these strategies to conform to Pearlin and Schooler’s model: Strategies to change the situation, to change the meaning of the transition, or to reduce ones stress.
All of us confront situations that we want to change. The concept of options includes elements of desire and hope that there is an alternative route. Seeing, creating, and using options are crucial to passing through life’s transitions successfully. One factor that can transform a transition into a crisis is the inability to see any options for escaping from a bad situation.
We can search for external options, which are opportunities that exist in a tangible sense: a job, a school, a person who will help you. For example, Ann lived in a small town and worked for the telephone company. The option of attending college was unavailable until the phone company and a university offered extension classes in her town for telephone employees. Ann explained her use of options this way. She had the dream of attending college, but because she lived in a rural community she had no access to a college. As soon as extension courses were available to her, she enrolled. She exercised choice when there was an external opportunity to do so.
In addition, there are less tangible options that depend on your perceptions. For example, when Ivan Charner and I studied clerical workers, we asked, “Generally, in change situations how do you perceive options?” Ninety-four percent said that they saw more than one option. However, when we asked, “For the transition you selected as one that really changed your life this past year, how many options did you perceive?” over 34 percent said they saw only one. These responses provided an important insight. People in the midst of a transition often freeze and can see only one option.3
Jim, a stockbroker, lived a double life: life in the outdoors, roughing it; and the life he lived in business suits and fancy offices. He had seen no way to reconcile these two lifestyles. Finally, he broke out of his it-can’t-be-done mode. He convinced his company to let him open an office in Montana. He goes to work in boots, lives an out door life, and keeps in touch with clients by e-mail, fax, and phone. He could have spent his whole life not living out the dream. Instead he created options.
This all sounds easy, but we know that the process of generating and perceiving options can be difficult. How can we make it happen? The triggering process is often not a conscious one. A business executive named Mort was prompted unexpectedly into creating options for himself. After retiring from the business he founded, Mort found that his colleagues no longer sought his company for lunch. Miserable and depressed, he could see no way to overcome this negative side of retirement. Then Mort received a phone call from an executive with another company asking him to address participants in a pre-retirement seminar. This turned the tide. As he prepared the speech, Mort began to see new possibilities for his own life, helping employees and companies with the transition from work to retirement. He wrote a book on the subject that created a new life and career for himself, in which he lectured on the topic all over the country.
These examples provide a lesson: There is no single magic way to get the ball rolling. For some people in transition, options suddenly become evident because they read something in a book or newspaper; they talk to a friend; or they have a confrontation. The critical ingredients are to remain committed to the importance of the search and to “hang in there” for as long as it takes.
You probably have some typical ways of trying to alter things. Maybe it’s through negotiating or taking direct action. But there are other strategies, too, including seeking advice, asserting yourself, brainstorming to develop an alternative plan, or even taking legal action when needed. Have you used all of these?
You can sometimes turn a no-win situation into a winning one by negotiating: sit down, talk things through, and see the other person’s point of view and assumptions. We are always negotiating, but some people are better at it than others, and some people learn how to improve their negotiating skills through training. People can learn and apply such skills in many areas, including labor-management relations, supervisor-supervisee relations, couple relationships, and parent-child relationships.
Gerard I. Nierenberg, president of the Negotiation Institute, defined the potential of negotiation:
Nothing could be simpler in definition or broader in scope than negotiation. Every desire that demands satisfaction—and every need to be met—is at least potentially an occasion for people to initiate the negotiating process. Whenever people exchange ideas with the intention of changing relationships, whenever they confer for agreement, they are negotiating.4
Stephanie’s story illustrates the importance of negotiating in changing a situation. She wrote:
My transitions relate to my eye problems. I had severe and pervasive eye hemorrhages. My already poor vision was almost lost entirely for two months. I was helped to cope by several things. First, when I realized that I was becoming legally blind, I went to a career counselor. As a result of that, I began taking courses so I could shift to a type of work that made fewer demands on my eyesight.
Second, when this latest incident occurred, I called my boss and began negotiating a way to change my work assignment. I explained my needs and recognized his. To meet his needs, I tried to figure out the parts of the job I could do without top vision.
There are times when people are in a situation they define as negative, but instead of wallowing in it, they take some action to solve the problem and try to find a solution. They stick to it, never giving in to those tempting feelings of helplessness. That’s optimistic action.
Some families with chronically ill children use this strategy frequently. They constantly seek out new information on the illness and try to keep their home situation and their child’s life as normal as possible. Taking action keeps the family mobilized.
As pointed out in chapter 4, it is better for ones mental health to be resilient and exhibit characteristics of hardiness. But what if you are not resilient? Can you learn to be? On the American Psychological Association’s (APA) website, Psychology Matters,5 there is a report of Dr. Salvatore R. Maddi and Deborah M. Khoshaba’s training program. They train people how to turn stressors into opportunities by “situational reconstruction,” so that they begin to imagine “alternative ways of thinking about the stressor.”6 The team developed workbooks that take the participant step by step through a process of looking at adversity, dealing with it, and even growing from it by staying involved, not giving up, remaining calm, and making a plan.
The APA initiated a program to help children, teenagers, and adults adapt well to adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, and other significant sources of stress. In the fall of 2003, the APA launched “Resilience for Kids & Teens,” a school-based campaign that focuses on teaching the skills of resilience for problems ranging from adapting to a new classroom to bullying by classmates or even abuse at home. The campaign included the distribution of a special issue of Time for Kids magazine to more than two million fourth-through sixth-graders and their teachers to help children learn the skills of resilience, using “kid-friendly” language.” The APA has also partnered with the Discovery Health Channel for a national multimedia campaign designed to help Americans work through personal tragedies by learning strategies for resilience.
Many people feel that they must shoulder a difficult situation themselves; it’s somehow dishonorable to lean on others. But in fact, seeking advice is a very useful coping strategy. Sometimes, just talking with someone close can help you think through your situation; at other times, expert advice may be needed.
Renee, a factory worker, received a note from her husband saying that he had packed up and left. She couldn’t believe that she had been abandoned; she had little money and three children to support. She felt utterly empty, “as if someone had taken my insides and torn them out of me.” As she sat in front of me with tears in her eyes, recalling that moment, I asked, “How did you survive?” “My situation was unbelievable,” she answered. “It was out of my control, stressful, horrible. But I had two things going for me. First, I had the support of three kids who comforted me at the beginning and pushed me to take a secretarial course so I could get a better job. Second, I became good at finding resources, like the lawyer who helped me for no money. My ability to seek advice helped me find the counselor who told me to join a support group and to keep a diary of everything that was said.” Knowing how to seek advice and uncover resources is critical for coping with a situation that needs changing.
The skill of asserting yourself effectively can help you through daily hassles as well as major transitions. For example, Joan, a shy young woman, felt “put upon” because Amy, her roommate, expected Joan to type her papers. Grateful for Amy’s friendship and afraid of losing it, Joan did the typing but with great resentment.
After a course on assertiveness training at a local recreation center, Joan learned how to empathize with Amy: “I understand your need to have papers typed.” But she also learned how to say no: “However, typing your papers makes me feel resentful, something I don’t think is good for our relationship. Why don’t you hire a typist?”
This strategy is so much better than screaming, “You always impose on me and I’m sick of it!” Learning to say no without feeling guilty can add an important skill to your coping repertoire and your mental health.
When faced with a challenging situation, many people feel trapped and stymied because they lack new ways of problem solving. Sometimes it helps to brainstorm, alone or with someone else. You simply let your ideas flow, generating all the suggestions or solutions you can think of, without censoring them or judging whether they make sense or could really work. After you note as many suggestions as you can generate, then you sit down and think carefully through the pros and cons of each one. The important thing is to turn off your critical judgment at first, so your ideas can develop.
I was very surprised a few years ago when James and Deb, casual friends of my husband, invited us to brunch. I was even more surprised when the purpose became clear. Before we ate, they showed us their apartment, tastefully decorated. At brunch James announced that he had been very depressed about his dead-end job; in fact, he felt on the verge of suicide.
We both listened sympathetically as he and his wife described their desperation, the continual appointments with new psychiatrists, and the medications that never seemed to help. Finally, they explained, they had decided to invite people over to explore new directions he might take in his career.
We suggested a number of options, including volunteer work. Every one met with responses like “That’s a good idea, but it’s not practical” or “That really doesn’t interest me.” We were stymied; they had asked for our help and our empathic listening, yet they had not really wanted either.
Finally I commented on how frustrating our inability to help must feel to them. Then I pointed out how creative they had been in decorating their bedroom. The bed, for example, had been placed in the center of the room, not against the wall. They agreed that it was an offbeat arrangement and said that they had tried many others before hitting on this.
Something clicked in my head. I suggested that since they had solved a decorating problem by being willing to explore many options, the same approach might work in thinking about James’s career. Somehow this hit home. They acknowledged their resistance, and we began to brainstorm together in earnest, developing a long list of career options for James to consider—some wild and improbable, some very conventional. I recently learned that he is in a completely new line of work and loves it.
I am not suggesting that there are always unlimited opportunities to be or do anything you choose. Remember when women couldn’t be astronauts; when blacks couldn’t be college presidents, except at black institutions; when homosexuals couldn’t hold high government positions; and when people over sixty-five couldn’t hold jobs in most organizations? Although at times certain options really are closed, there are usually many ways to manage and create opportunities if we just let ourselves imagine them.
Brian’s story puts it all in perspective. In one disastrous moment, a car accident transformed Brian, an athletic young man, into a paraplegic. At first he wanted to give up and die. “What’s the use of living?” he asked himself. Then he became angry, at himself for falling asleep at the wheel, and at “God” for letting this happen to him. Eventually, he began to fight to stay alive and to find meaning in his life. But it didn’t happen overnight.
It took a year of hard work before Brian was able to leave the hospital and move home. It took another year to become accustomed to a whole new routine—doing hours of physical exercise each day, learning how to manipulate a wheelchair and how to drive a car. During that year he broke up with his lover and moved out on his own.
In addition to concentrating on managing his body and his day-to-day living, Brian needed to figure out what to do with his life. He had been a carpenter working for a building contractor; clearly he could no longer do that. What other options did he have? At first he felt he had none—that his life was over. He realized that he could live his life as a loser and a victim or he could, as he wrote his mother, “face my future with hope, courage, and curiosity.” What changes could he initiate that would make his life meaningful?
The answer came on a ten-hour plane trip to the National Conference for the Disabled, when Brian discovered that planes have no space for wheelchairs to fit into toilets. As a result, he had a very humiliating experience on that flight. But that experience convinced him that architects must understand the problems of the disabled. He decided then to explore becoming an architect, interior designer, or draftsman so he could help others like himself. He used brainstorming with friends and his family about how to make this happen. Eventually, he enrolled in a doctoral counseling program, deciding he would rather help people directly, but his activism helped promote legislation that we now have—making all public places accessible for everyone.
Brian had survived a horrible accident; he had broken up a longstanding relationship; and he developed a plan for a new, useful career. Although his body is not whole, he is a whole person. He created, uncovered, and discovered sides to himself that he never knew he had and options that he had never imagined. This is not meant to romanticize tragedy but merely to point out the endlessly possible ways to live a life.
There are times when you simply can’t change a situation: you didn’t receive tenure, your plant closed, your best friend moved away, you have suffered a debilitating accident. As one woman wrote:
“We recently retired. I wanted part-time work but nobody was knocking on my door. My husband was depressed about money. He wanted to sell our large house and move to a less expensive community. One day my daughter said she understood my being upset because of what it represented. Our move was triggered by negatives—with decreased incomes we could no longer afford our house, we did not need so much space, we were questioning what we would do in retirement. We were in a period of feeling loss and less, not more and hope.
“When my daughter responded that ‘it was because of what it represented’ I began crying. She held me, said nothing. I felt better. Someone knew, someone heard. I was then able to reframe—I still had a living husband I loved, friends, and some possibilities. By reframing—changing the meaning of the transition—I could see the challenges and possibilities.”
There are many Strategies to consider using when you seem to be up against a brick wall.
One of the basic tenets of this book is that transitions alter your life and require a period of adjustment—often several years. Remember the story about Melissa and Frank’s move into a condominium? They sold the family home and moved into a condo before their son had left home and before they had originally expected to do it.
Some of the difficulty arose because the timing was bad for their son. But even with better planning and timing, the move would have been disruptive because the beginning of any transition is quite stressful. They needed to understand that their reactions were quite normal, that we all feel confused any time our routines and assumptions are changed.
Remember Lisa, who moved to take a great new job and join her lover? A year after the move she was depressed and still couldn’t get her feelings together, despite all the pluses. Lisa’s case raises a critical point. When a major disruption occurs, the transition process requires a great deal of adaptation, even when the benefits far outweigh the deficits. In other words, even though the move was positive, Lisa had still changed her daily and monthly routines, her worker role, and some of her assumptions about herself. Transitions are usually much easier for people who have ample coping resources than they are for people with very limited resources. But people in both situations can be helped by knowing about the transition process. Of course, the process and its pain are still there, but understanding can cut down on some of the upset.
I am reminded of a widow who had abruptly moved to an area where she knew no one and where driving was a necessity, although she had no license. She later said she wished someone had told her that there would be an end to the agony of bereavement. It wouldn’t have eased the pain or the mourning over her husband’s death, but it would have been comforting to know that someday she would move past the despair she felt. She realized too late that her hasty decision to move was not helpful.
In other words, knowledge of the transition process can ease one’s pain and provide a perspective that today is not forever. It helps to incorporate the information from chapters 1 and 2 about transitions and the transition process.
The late sociologist Bernice Neugarten described the importance of rehearsing for transitions—trying to visualize exactly how you would behave if an expected transition occurred. For example, men often rehearse for retirement and women for widowhood.7
Rehearsing includes thinking about, even discussing, one’s projected transition. It involves questions such as, for example, where will you live when you retire? What will you wear when you get up in the morning? How will you structure your day? Such rehearsals help people cope with the events when they really happen. It is harder to deal with transitions when they are “off-time”—for example, when retirement comes early because of an unexpected plant closing, or when a young spouse is accidentally killed—partly because people don’t rehearse for such situations. An increasing number of people who retire to the Sun Belt rehearse the move by living in their new locale for a winter before relocating there permanently.
Transitions are sometimes easier to accept when they are accompanied by rituals. Weddings, christenings, and farewell parties are all rituals that ease our transitions. But many important transitions do not have established rituals, and people may have to create their own. The importance of rituals can be seen in the story of Janet, who at age eighteen announced to her parents that instead of staying at home and attending the local junior college, she had decided to go to work and move into her own apartment.
Her shocked parents felt rejected. They had given her a good home. Why was she leaving it? And how would they cope with this unexpected transition? There was no accepted ritual to help them deal with having an eighteen-year-old move out of the house.
Coincidentally, Janet’s parents heard the late anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff discuss the importance of ritual in helping people deal with “marginal periods”—when they are shifting from one phase of life to another. She described the many significant events and non-events that we fail to ritualize. She even used the case of eighteen-year-olds moving out.
Janet’s parents took Myerhoff’s presentation seriously and decided to ritualize Janet’s departure by giving a celebration dinner and inviting their closest family friends. They chose gifts and wrote poems to commemorate her past and celebrate her future. They even promised to pay for phone installation in Janet’s apartment, which would connect Janet to her past—but they expected her to pay the monthly phone charges. This helped them all handle the transition.
Myerhoff taught people how to develop rituals that “punctuate and clarify” critical times in their lives. The divorce ritual in the film Rites of Renewal does just that.8 The minister called together the divorcing couple, asking them to pledge their care, concern, and love for their children even though their love for each other had vanished. He also included the couples parents and friends in the ceremony. Many cry while watching this film. It probably reminds us of times when we have experienced such wrenching splits.
People tend to judge the severity of their situations by comparing them with the situations of others. Blanche, a woman in a nursing home who had Lou Gehrig’s disease (an illness that eventually obliterates all muscle function), could barely talk or swallow. She had lost all movement of her arms and legs. But one day she said to me, “Bad as this is, at least I don’t have to be tube fed.”
Psychologist Shelley Taylor studied the reactions women had to their breast cancer. Most of the women “chose to compare themselves to other patients who were . . . more seriously ill. When patients did not know an actual person who was worse off, they invented an imaginary one. For example, patients who had one lump removed pitied women who had undergone full mastectomies. . . . Even women who were very seriously ill found relief in the knowledge that they were not dying or were not in pain.” The point “is that they make . . . comparisons.”9
One way to change the meaning of a difficult transition is to define the aspect of your life in which you are stressed as less important to you than other aspects of your life. A person frustrated in a job area may decide that love, family, and community service are what really matter and that work is just a way to earn a living. If the stress is in the family area, then work may become a top priority.
Some of the men my colleagues and I interviewed whose jobs had been eliminated were devastated because their work was critical to their sense of selfhood. They were unable to devalue the job and play up some other aspects of their lives. But one of the men, a grass cutter, said that his job was not that important to him. In fact, he said, if he didn’t work, his wife would go back to being a cook and he would care for the children—an activity he had always enjoyed.
Redefining priorities often happens spontaneously as a way of coping. It’s harder to do it deliberately, but it can be done if you step back mentally from the stressful situation and try to see which other areas of your life also matter a lot to you. One way to size up their importance is to ask yourself how you’d feel if they, too, were severely disrupted.
Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman found that as individuals size up and label their current situation as irrelevant, positive, or stressful, they also assess their ability and resources to cope with the situation. But these labels can be changed. Relabeling occurs when you redefine either the situation or your ability to cope with it.
Earlier, I described the celebration ritual for Janet, the young woman who moved into her own apartment—a transition her parents had initially viewed as very stressful. After listening to an anthropologist’s speech, Janet’s parents relabeled the transition as positive; instead of regarding Janet’s departure as a rejection, they started to see it as part of growing up.
I interviewed Daniel, the CEO of a large company. He spoke with real authority. I remember thinking in a stereotypical way, “He’s a real man.” After a short time he shifted the conversation to his parents, to how they shortchanged him, how they verbally abused him, and how they forced him to follow a business rather than an artistic path. It was sad to hear this fifty-year-old man still so upset by his parents that he could not forgive them. The title of chapter 1 in psychologist Robert Enright’s book Forgiveness Is a Choice says it all: “Forgiveness: A Path to Freedom.” Daniel was consumed with his parents; he was not free. To forgive, according to Enright, is not to forget. It is to acknowledge that we are angry, maybe resentful, for the hurt we feel resulting from another persons actions toward us. Acknowledging to ourselves our right to be angry frees us to forgive but not necessarily forget.
By not forgiving his parents, Daniel was stuck in a childlike reaction. His inner life and outer appearance were out of sync. To become fully mature, Daniel needed to go through a process of forgiveness. According to Enright, you first need to acknowledge your anger and commit to forgive as a way to “release [yourself] from emotional prison.”10
Some people use “selective ignoring” to help them cope. When faced with a troublesome situation, they may play down the bad parts and play up the good. Many partnerships flounder because one partner notices every bad habit of the other. After two divorces, one man reported that counseling had helped him realize that he had focused on all the negative habits of his former wives. He began to see that focusing on the positives and not looking for perfection makes for a much better relationship. This strategy, however, is easier said than done. It can be learned and added to your repertoire—as the story of Beth, the single mother of two teenagers, illustrates.
Beth knows she is a “direct-action” person. If something goes wrong, she negotiates and asserts herself. If she needs help, she’ll call everyone she knows to find the appropriate resource. Her coping style has helped her through many difficult times, but it has sometimes backfired.
When Sherry, her sixteen-year-old daughter, started driving, Beth was always on her case. If Sherry came home one minute late, Beth would be at the door, almost pouncing on her. This inevitably provoked a fight and failed to encourage Sherry’s promptness. Then Beth learned about “selective ignoring.” She decided to try it out.
Clearly, Beth cannot and should not ignore a lateness of two hours. But ten minutes is another story. By deliberately not “noticing” everything, Beth is giving a message of confidence to Sherry. But more important, Beth has added another Strategy to her coping repertoire.
Beth reported that all was going well until Rick, her fourteen-year-old son, perceived that his mother was being more lenient with Sherry. Then Rick started nagging Beth, accusing her of being too easy on his sister. Beth concluded her story with a laugh, saying, “You never can win!”
We have grown up thinking that good mental health and facing reality go hand in hand. Lately, though, a surge of research has been pointing out that some types of denial can be beneficial.
Psychiatrist George Vaillant distinguishes between immature and mature denial. In immature denial, for instance, people redefine external reality in a false way by saying, when someone needs an operation, that surgery has no risks. In mature denial, people make a “conscious or semi-conscious decision to postpone paying attention” to a problem or reality. They are “postponing but not avoiding forever” dealing head-on with the problem.11
For some people, going into surgery armed with all the facts can lead to unnecessary anxiety. They might be more comfortable finding out what they need to know about the surgeons competence but not every detail—every risk and consequence—before the operation. Later, they will be in a better position to handle the information.
When my colleagues and I interviewed people about how they cope, most of them did not spontaneously mention using humor as a strategy. But when we specifically asked about their use of humor, many could remember a time when it had worked. I asked members of a group, “Have you ever used humor as a way to cope?” One person said, “Always! It helps to be able to see the silly, negative, stupid things I have done to contribute to a bad situation.” Or to verbalize extremes. These extremes often lurk in your mind as fears, and turning them into humor depowers them. Humor helps you interpret a situation in a new way and treat embarrassing or dangerous emotions in a less emotionally charged way. A number of strategies can be used to “improve your laugh life.” You can think of situations, books, and movies that make you laugh out loud. You can look at the humor in what you are doing—try to laugh at yourself.
Many of us find it important to reflect about ourselves, our world, and our place in it. We meditate, pray, read, and visit churches, temples, mosques—even psychics. Several recent articles have reported on stockbrokers, government officials, and others who visit psychics for a reading on a regular basis. One woman wrote, “I think for many people God and their faith is an important part of their lives and can influence how they behave and perceive things. From my perspective, life doesn’t end at death but goes on forever.”
On a recent cross-country plane trip I was sitting beside a woman who was reading her Bible. She told me her story. Her husband was in the Navy; she has moved at least fifteen times since they married. I asked how she felt about moving, and she said she loves it. “It’s really a challenge—it keeps me stretched.” “How do you deal with all the changes?” I asked. She explained that until about six years ago she had lived her married life always trying to please everyone. If her husband yelled at her—and he often did—she wouldn’t yell back. Even in the grocery line, she would try to please the cashier. She hated being so insecure.
Then she had “a conversation with Jesus” that changed her life. She began to worry less about her own insecurity and began to approach people differently. Christ told her that her marriage was stagnant and that much of the problem was her own inability to be herself and be direct. She participated more in church and began to speak up more at home.
Finally she told her husband that while she did not expect him to change, she did expect him to accept her change. Since he did not seem able to do that, she decided to leave him. He was so astounded by this that he, too, joined the church, and their marriage was renewed. He no longer loses his temper, she said; he is now a better administrator in the Navy and a much better husband and father. She feels that she can handle anything now because of her relationship with God and Jesus Christ. That feeling gave her the strength to make a radical change in her view of herself and in her subsequent behavior.
Another woman, whose faith helped her cope, explained her situation this way: “I was dealing with parents, in-laws, two adult children, a demanding husband, and my own desire to work. The pressures became great when my mother became critically ill and I had to travel frequently across the country, sometimes staying with her for weeks at a time. I managed by remembering how I had coped when my father-in-law was ill. I remembered that the way I did it was to take each day at a time, relying on faith. My religious beliefs are strong and very important to me. I realized that the life course is one in which there is an expectation of death, that I, too, will die. I just kept thinking how fulfilled my mother’s life had been, how happy I was that I was well and could help her.”
We have looked at strategies that help you change your situation or change its meaning. But how do you deal with stress when it seems impossible to change or redefine the situation that is the source of your stress? As you become more conscious of the effects of stress, you will learn to use strategies that help you relax so you can take the stress in stride. I will describe a number of strategies that people use, but you may have to experiment to find the ones that work best for you. Reading, for example, can be relaxing for one person but agitating for another. And to further complicate things, what relaxes you at one time in your life or during one transition can stress you at another time.
In response to a questionnaire asking people how they cope with stressful situations, one respondent said, “I went into therapy, made new friends, attended a health spa for aerobics and massages, took a program in progressive relaxation and self-hypnosis, joined a singles group for support, and started doing fun things like dancing.” The list of possible strategies is extremely varied: playing; reading; using relaxation skills; meditating; imaging; using biofeedback; expressing emotions (through praying, crying, laughing, singing, chanting); relaxing through massage and visiting spas; and engaging in physical exercise such as jogging, swimming, aerobics, and dancing.
We normally think of playing as the province of children and gods and forget how crucial it is for adults. Dan Leviton, a former professor at the University of Maryland and director of the Adult Health and Development Activity program for older adults, reported that fun and play are among the best buffers to stress. He had designed a simple but effective program to teach people how to play.
Each older person in the program is teamed with an undergraduate. Together they participate in enjoyable activities such as singing, dancing, and listening to lectures. My colleagues and I interviewed some of the older adults in his program. One man reported that he had been at the end of his rope. First his wife had died, then his only son. Somehow he had heard of the program, dragged himself over to the university, and to his amazement started having fun and feeling again that he could find enjoyment and pleasure in his life. As he said, “The program literally saved my life.”
People sometimes get so caught up in the strain of a transition that they forget to build fun and pleasure into their lives, or they feel they don’t have time for fun. It may be impossible to go on your dream vacation, but there are many simpler, more accessible pleasures that are fun and that can help you to relax. One woman goes hat shopping when she needs a fun break. Another takes luxurious bubble baths. A neighbor gets some friends together for a round of poker. A cousin hits the road to explore the local antique shops. If you think about it, you can come up with your own roster of small pleasures that are fun to do and that can fit into your most stressful period.
Transitions often generate powerful emotional reactions: anxiety, joy, anger, frustration, sadness, and more. Yet, there’s a strong streak of “stiff-upper-lip” philosophy in our culture that makes it hard for some people to deal with such feelings. They try to stifle them but often find later that they surface in surprisingly inappropriate ways. The problem is particularly severe for some men, who—despite an onslaught of articles telling them it’s okay to experience emotions and even to cry—still feel it’s unmanly to reveal that they’re upset.
It is useful to label our emotional reactions that accompany our transitions. Clearly, we use a range of emotions as we face the ups and downs of life. We often have multiple reactions, but labeling them can help diffuse them. Psychologist Richard Lazarus categorizes emotions as:
Whatever the emotion you are experiencing, it can be helpful to talk to a spouse, close friend, or therapist as a way to let off some emotional “steam” constructively.
Counseling, therapy, and the support of people close to you can help you manage stress, change the meaning of the situation, or change the situation. A few examples show how counseling and support help people manage a stressful period.
It was wonderful to see my college roommate, Joan, after thirty-five years. We started talking and joking as if we had never been apart. She quickly caught me up on the good things in her life. She was still married to Bill, whom she had met in college, and they had three fine children. He had done well as an accountant, and she was working as a social worker.
Then she talked at length about the unexpected depression she had just conquered. It had started after a very stressful year, when her mother died, her best friend moved to California, and she stuck by two good friends as they succumbed slowly to cancer. Then her eldest daughter had had a big wedding, which Joan orchestrated.
Joan began to feel depressed after the wedding, and soon depression seemed to consume her. Instead of focusing on all her separations and losses, Joan became obsessed with her husbands close friendship with Sylvia, a friend of hers. She began feeling that her husband paid more attention to Sylvia, even to their dog, than to her. All in all, it was a horrible period; she feared she was going crazy.
I asked Joan what helped her cope. Her immediate answer was, “Friends and a therapist.” Her friends assured her that Bill would never stray and that Sylvia flirted with all their husbands. She loved hearing Bill defended and Sylvia criticized.
Her therapist helped her realize that she needed more time to mourn the many changes in her life. She appreciated the therapist’s giving her “permission” to be depressed. Together, the comments of friends and her therapist reassured her that she might be overreacting, but she wasn’t crazy.
We can see how interrelated counseling and support are. In fact, counseling is sometimes a temporary support for people in transition.
Many techniques such as biofeedback, imaging, and relaxation tapes are designed to help people control their physical reactions to stressful situations. For example, migraine headaches can sometimes be eased through biofeedback. Some claim that imaging—a technique for visualizing clearly in your mind a desired effect—can assist in fighting cancer, and others claim it can produce weight loss.
Relaxation tapes are often used before surgery. One man who had been afraid to admit his fear of surgery was grateful when a friend brought him a tape player and some music cassettes. The friend also slipped in a relaxation tape, which he found very soothing.
Reading can both distract and instruct. Self-help books, novels, plays, and advice columns can all help at different times. When asked to describe a positive transition in his life, one man answered, “I realized I was gay.” In describing how he coped with this transition, he explained, “I pretty much handled it by myself. I couldn’t turn to my family or friends because I thought they would reject me. I read a lot of material in libraries and in bookstores about homosexuality. I realized through reading that I was like a lot of other people and not simply alone.”
Jogging, swimming, aerobics, walking, tennis, dancing, and other forms of physical activity have many purposes. They are fun; they drain off excess energy; and they redirect ones concentration away from whatever is worrisome.
The manager of a condominium who was caught in a cross fire of complaints from residents and management reported, “I was going out of my mind.” Then she started jogging. Both her figure and her mental health improved. She now jogs regularly and feels “100 percent better.”
There is no one magic way to cope, but there are many possible Strategies to consider and try. In addition to using Strategies that change your situation or your way of looking at it, you might try to relax and take your stress in stride. Table 5.1 will enable you to TAKE STOCK of which ones you now use.
In the next chapter, as you TAKE CHARGE, you will identify which new ones you might like to try. Remember, it’s not the commitment to a particular strategy that makes the difference; it’s the commitment to mobilizing your resources, to trying new things, and “hanging in there, baby!” In the next chapter, we’ll look more specifically at how to choose the strategies that are best suited to your particular situation.
Possible Coping Strategies |
Now Using |
• Taking action to change or modify the transition |
|
Negotiating |
 |
Taking optimistic action |
|
Seeking advice |
|
Asserting yourself |
|
Brainstorming a new plan |
|
Taking legal action (if needed) |
|
• Changing the meaning of the transition |
|
Applying knowledge of the transition process |
|
Rehearsing |
|
Developing rituals |
|
Making positive comparisons |
|
Rearranging priorities |
|
Relabeling or reframing |
|
Selectively ignoring |
|
Using denial |
|
Using humor |
|
Having faith |
|
• Managing Reactions to Stress |
|
Playing |
|
Using relaxation skills |
|
Expressing emotions |
|
Doing physical activity |
|
Participating in counseling, therapy, or support groups |
|
Reading |
|
• Doing nothing |
|
• Other Strategies |
|
Source: Based on work from L. I. Pearlin and C. Schooler, “The Structure of Coping,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 19 (1978): 2–21. Reprinted with permission. |
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As one woman who was widowed wrote: “I discovered that I used many coping strategies. Giving in to my sad feelings helped me get through them. I jogged every day, which helped me reduce the stress. I talked to myself, reassuring myself that things would get better and that I could handle the situation. I also talked to trusted others and learned it was more helpful to be listened to than rescued. The emotional pain made the world look gray and bleak, but I felt that the pain lifted, and with it, my spirit, when I was able to have a sense of humor. Although not changing anything, it did provide temporary relief. The process took time; there were many setbacks. I discovered that there is no ‘best’ coping strategy that works in all situations, but no matter how difficult the situation, I will eventually find a way to cope with it.”
