Stress Coping Strategies

1. Your new puppy literally ate your homework and the flash drive/cd on which it was saved (sorry, you did not save the file on your hard drive either).

Effective Emotion-Focused Coping Strategy: Since your puppy literally ate your homework, the flash drive which it was saved on, and you didn’t save it to your hard drive you can deny the existence of the problem or accept it. The effective emotion-focused strategy would be to accept the fact that your dog ate your homework. Before talking to your teacher talk it through with a parent or friend until you’re at peace with the situation so you can discuss the problem in a more direct approach. Learning to accept the situation can help make you less vulnerable to experiencing all the sensations and thoughts of stress. By letting yourself calm down and discuss the situation before talking with your teacher will only help you to be more accepting of the teacher’s reaction to the dog eating your homework.

Problem-Focused Coping Strategy:

A problem-focused coping strategy for your dog eating your homework would be to talk to your teacher directly, because your teacher has a direct impact on the situation. By talking to your teacher will directly tackle the situation that caused the stress. Explain to your teacher what happened and ask for an extension to the homework that is due. You need to learn from your mistakes by not leaving your homework out where your pet has access to it. Apply your mistakes to your future decision making so it doesn’t happen again.

2. Tuition and rent are both due at the end of the month; you only have enough money to pay one of the bills.

Effective Emotion-Focused Coping Strategy:

The problem is you only have enough money for tuition or rent that is both due at the end of the month. What needs to take place is try to engage in seeking positive social support. Discuss with friends or other tenants that you know in your place of residency and at school what they would do. By receiving feedback from your friends at school and other tenants might help ease your stress of which one to pay. Your friends and tenants can way out your pros and cons that you might not be able to think about due to the stress of the situation. This can help ease your mind and think more clearly.

Problem-Focused Coping Strategy:

What you need to do is engage in a problem solving strategy. What could happen is you could avoid the tuition office and your landlord for many days, but if you avoid them every day this strategy will become unsuccessful and may even cause extra stress. First decide to either go to your landlord or your tuition office to discuss your options. After discussing your options go home and problem solve your strategy so you don’t run into this predicament again. Form a strategy, then organize your bills, allocate resources, monitor your progress, and evaluate your results. This will help you better prepare your finances next time rent and tuition is due at the same time. Be positive, look at each obstacle you encounter as a learning experience.

3. Your car broke down on your way to a job interview.

Effective Emotion-Focused Coping Strategy:

Take an objective view of your stressor. Is my car breaking down really that horrible that I won’t be able to make it to my interview? You must think positively even though at this time everything looks terrible. An option would be to call some friends or family members of yours and explain the circumstances and see if he/she can come help you. My guess is one of your friends or family members will help calm you down by talking to you, and reassuring you that everything will be okay. After discussing your situation with others will only help you to stay calm and focused. By discussing your problems out you will begin to see that this is not that horrible and things will work themselves out.

Problem-Focused Coping Strategy:

You can call the