When we experience a stressor or a problem, sometimes we deal with the situations we find ourselves in through avoidance.  Becoming busy is one example of this: we squash our emotions, resolve to carry on, and/or distance ourselves from the stressor/problem. Often the consequences of this come back to bite us, sometimes in burnout, sometimes in emotional explosions, or becoming disengaged.

Psychologists often divide coping strategies into ‘avoidant’ and ‘approach’ styles.

Avoidant coping strategies are often termed ‘maladaptive’.  It is normal for us to engage in these behaviours and strategies because they are often occurring around things we construe as threats.  ‘Maladaptive’ coping can involve denial or distancing and escape.  Whilst denying something that seems uncontrollable and difficult can be an effective short-term strategy for dealing with it, it does not help resolve things in the long term.  According to Hofmann and Hay (2018) distancing can be a way of dealing with negative emotions and thoughts, whilst escape is a response to a problem.  Escape develops an exit strategy as a way of dealing with a threat: however, in the long-term escape can itself become harmful as it can lead to other negative behaviours (e.g. isolation, unhealthy addictive behaviours, (my strategy of choice) comfort eating etc.).  Lisa Doodson (2019), discussing how stepfamilies cope with stressors, suggests the following can be examples of avoidant coping in parenting:

• Mental disengagement: becoming involved in other activities to avoid a problem
• Behavioural disengagement: giving up on solving a problem
• Venting: focusing on the stress and dumping emotions related to it (but not necessarily in a problem-solving way).

By contrast, approach styles to coping engage with the problem/stressor and take (or attempt to take) positive steps to resolve it.  Doodson (2019) suggests that this might look like:

• Seeking out social support: getting advice, support and sharing the load
• Active coping/planning: working out solutions to aspects of a problem and then enacting these solutions to minimise the problem and feel some agency
• Reframing/Acceptance: working out what aspects of a problem you can’t change and then working out how you might accept this or let things go.

Coaching can be useful here as it can help to recognise how and where maladaptive coping is happening and can support turning avoidant behaviours into approach behaviours.

Here are some ways in which avoidant behaviours can be reframed to approach a problem or stressor:

• I think venting can be positive: the environment and the recipient of the vent must be right. It’s important who you vent to: if you go to the source of the problem you might end up focusing on the problem and how the person is perceived to cause the problem rather than working towards a solution.  I have seen venting work positively in a coaching space because a) the person you are talking to is non-judgmental b) coaching offers containment – it’s a space to put the vent without those emotions needing to leak outside of the coaching c) it gives a framework to look at the problem/stressor and the emotions in solutions-focused way.  I think these same elements would also apply to counselling here.
• Creating self-awareness: this might involve reflecting on feelings and thoughts in relation to a particular situation and thinking about what has gone well in terms of coping and what could be better.
• Clarifying: as well as becoming more aware of ourselves, reframing an avoidant approach can also involve looking at what is happening with the particular problem/stressor: what aspects are most difficult and why? What would it mean to approach this differently?
• Solution orientation: when we look into problems deeply we can start to spiral, with problems creating more problems and more negativity. When we look at solutions, we start to engage our imaginative capacities and most importantly we start to hope and see possibilities (we could take a small step here, we could do/think this differently).

If you feel you are stuck in avoidant coping and you would like some help to shift into an approach style of coping, please reach out to us at info@careforyoucoaching.co.uk.  We support you to support your families.