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Resources used: Hibberd, J. (2023) How to overcome trauma and find yourself again: seven steps to grow form pain. pp. x – 304. Octopus Books. Meléndez, J. C., Satorres, E., & Delhom, I. (2020). Personality and coping. What traits predict adaptive strategies?. Anales de psicologia, 36(1), 39. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.349591 Friedberg, A., & Malefakis, D. (2022). Resilience, trauma, and coping. Psychodynamic psychiatry, 50(2), 382-409. https://doi.org/10.1521/pdps.2022.50.2.382
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Resources used: Hibberd, J. (2023) How to overcome trauma and find yourself again: seven steps to grow form pain. pp. x – 304. Octopus Books. Meléndez, J. C., Satorres, E., & Delhom, I. (2020). Personality and coping. What traits predict adaptive strategies?. Anales de psicologia, 36(1), 39. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.349591 Friedberg, A., & Malefakis, D. (2022). Resilience, trauma, and coping. Psychodynamic psychiatry, 50(2), 382-409. https://doi.org/10.1521/pdps.2022.50.2.382
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The episode discusses coping with trauma, using the book "How to Overcome Trauma and Find Yourself Again" as a main resource. It explores active coping and avoiding coping strategies and how they can affect individuals' emotional well-being. Active coping involves directly engaging with trauma, seeking professional help, and processing emotions, while avoiding coping involves distraction, denial, or substance use. The episode also discusses the benefits of active coping, such as problem-solving, stress reduction, improved emotional well-being, better relationships, and personal growth. Certain personality traits, such as openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, are found to be associated with different coping strategies. The study suggests that traits like openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness are linked to adaptive coping strategies, while neuroticism is associated with maladaptive coping strategies. Overall, coping with trauma is a complex process influen Hello everyone, welcome to this week's episode. I'm Alexis, and this week we're going to be discussing coping with trauma. Our main resource this week is a book, How to Overcome Trauma and Find Yourself Again, Seven Steps to Grow from Pain by Dr. Jessamy Hibbard. Along with some other resources, we're going to be discussing coping with trauma, specifically active coping, personalities that could lead to other coping methods, and the other various methods that have been used to cope with trauma. I hope you enjoy this episode, and let's dive in. Before we get into this episode, our resources used were studies by Friedenberg and Malfakis, 2022, Resilience, Trauma, and Coping, from the Psychodynamic Psychiatry, and Melendez-Sotores, Until Home, 2020, Personality and Coping, as well as our book previously mentioned, How to Overcome Trauma and Find Yourself Again, Seven Steps to Grow from Pain by Dr. Jessamy Hibbard. Also, just to note, all citations will be included in the notes section. Thank you, everybody, for joining me today as we discover and explore trauma and coping strategies, especially around personality traits, and I am so excited. But to begin with, I would like to define trauma so we all have a common base. So trauma is defined as a disturbing emotional stress that leads to mental impairment or dysfunction. Such stress could be induced by sexual assault, warfare, or other threats to a person's life. Symptoms that can be seen include, but are not limited to, flashbacks or reoccurring thoughts, avoidance, hyperarousal, or insomnia that last for longer than a month, as stated by the DSM. Now, it's really important to cope with trauma to help with a person's overall emotional healing. Trauma can deeply affect emotional well-being, leading to feelings of fear, hopelessness, anger, or sadness, and coping allows individuals to process these emotions, as well as unresolved trauma can contribute to long-term mental health issues such as anxiety disorders, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Coping with trauma can also improve relationships that may be strained during these emotional times, as well as enhance a person's overall quality of life. Now that we've defined trauma, I would like to look at coping. When we talk about coping, we mean to efficiently address the problems or difficulties that may arise during traumatic events. Coping is when a person struggles with stress, but still manages it efficiently. We're looking at coping through a psychodynamic lens. It was first thought that in order to maintain emotional equilibrium, the ego used the unconscious psychological defense mechanisms to cope with anxiety, and this came from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. These defenses are part of the personality, although when used incorrectly, such as in terms of avoidance, it can turn to symptomology and pathology, and this is really where I got interested and more curious about coping and the personality. But first, let's dive in to coping. There are two general paths people are thought to take when coping with trauma, active coping and avoiding coping. Active coping is an approach that involves directly engaging with the trauma and its effects. Active coping strategies may include seeking professional help, such as therapy or counseling, participating in support groups, practicing relaxation techniques, and actively processing emotions related to trauma. Engaging in these activities helps individuals confront and address the impact of trauma on their lives and promote healing and resilience. Now, avoiding coping is almost the opposite. It involves efforts to avoid or suppress thoughts, feelings, or reminders associated with the trauma. Avoiding coping strategies may include distraction, so keeping busy with activities, or avoiding thinking about the event, denial, minimizing the significance of the trauma or its impact, or substance use, which is self-medicating. While these strategies may temporarily relieve the person from distress, they often do not address the underlying issues and collated long-term negative consequences. These negative emotions are not beneficial to humans as they activate our sympathetic nervous system, which limits our visual focus to danger and traps us in a traumatic event or stressor, almost like repeating a cycle over and over again. Now, ideally, individuals who have experienced trauma benefit the most from active coping strategies that promote healing and adaptation, such as seeking support, processing emotions, and developing healthy coping mechanisms. Active coping includes all of these and refers to a proactive approach for individuals to help manage stress, challenges, or traumatic experiences. It involves directly engaging with problems or stressors rather than avoiding it or ignoring it. Some key characteristics of active coping include problem-solving, which involves identifying the problem or stressor and taking steps to address it. This may include brainstorming solutions, setting goals, and making plans to overcome obstacles. Another characteristic is emotional regulation, which has individuals practice active coping strategies to regulate their emotions. Individuals acknowledge their feelings related to the stressor and work on managing them constructively. Another characteristic of active coping is seeking social support. Active copers are more likely to reach out for help and seek social support from friends, family, and professionals, since social connections can provide valuable resources and emotional comfort during challenging times. Another characteristic is adaptability. Active coping encourages flexibility and adaptability, which helps individuals adjust their approach based on the outcomes and feedback received during the coping process. The last characteristic, key characteristic, is a sense of self-control. Engaging in active coping helps individuals regain a sense of control over their circumstances instead of feeling helpless. They take charge on their actions and decisions. Now there are a handful of benefits for active coping. A few that I mentioned via the characteristics, but to go through a few would be effective problem-solving. By directly addressing the stressor, individuals can identify solutions and implement effective strategies to better manage or resolve their issues. Active coping also helps reduce stress levels. When individuals take action to manage challenges, they often experience a sense of relief and empowerment. It also improves their overall emotional well-being and promotes emotional resilience by actively engaging with their emotions and stressors. Individuals can process feelings easier and more efficiently and prevent emotional suppression or avoidance. Another benefit is enhanced adaption to change. Active copers are better equipped to do adaptive change and negative transitions and they are more likely to embrace new opportunities and face uncertainties with a positive mindset. Another benefit is better relationships. Seeking social support and engaging can strengthen interpersonal relationships to help build a support network and share experiences with others that can create deeper connections and mutual understanding. Promotion of personal growth is another benefit as well. Active copers create personal growth and development by overcoming challenges through proactive strategies and this can help boost self-confidence, resilience, and create a sense of accomplishment. Active coping is definitely a constructive approach to managing stress and challenges and this helps promote self problem-solving, emotional regulation, social connection, and personal growth. By actively engaging with difficulties rather than avoiding them, individuals can cultivate resilience and optimize their ability to cope with life's ups and downs. Now after going over the definition of trauma and coping strategies and a deeper look at active coping, my original question comes back. Are certain personality traits related to coping strategies? Melendez et al. 2020 took the big five personality traits into a study and looked at their correlation to particular coping strategies. The coping strategies recorded included problem-solving, social support seeking, negative self-focused coping, over-emotional expression, religious coping, and positive appraisal. These were then sorted against neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeability, and conscientiousness. The key findings from this study relating to personality and coping revealed that certain personality traits are associated with distinct coping strategies. Openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, positively predicted problem-solving focused coping strategies. In contrast, neuroticism positively predicted emotion focused coping strategies. Agreeableness and conscientiousness also negatively predicted some emotion focused strategies. Now when it came to adaptive versus maladaptive coping, certain traits like neuroticism were more associated with maladaptive coping strategies which are characterized by focus on emotion regulation without addressing the stressor itself. In contrast, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness predicted adaptive coping strategies which focused on problem-solving and positive appraisal. Overall, the study investigated the connection between personality traits and coping strategies among a group of older adults. The results show that traits like openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness were linked to adaptive coping strategies. Conversely, neuroticism emerged as a maladaptive trait. These findings suggested that personality, that specific personality traits can influence how older adults cope with challenges throughout life. Given all this information through trauma and coping, trauma is still very complex and coping with trauma is multifaceted and intricate. Coping with trauma is a process influenced by many factors that collectively contribute to its complexity. First, the nature and severity of the trauma vary widely. Many experiences ranging from interpersonal violence to abuse to natural disasters or sudden loss. Each traumatic event carries its own unique emotional psychological weight influencing how individuals respond and cope. Additionally, individual differences play a crucial role in shaping coping responses. Factors such as personality traits, like I mentioned, prior life experiences, cultural backgrounds, and available support systems all impact how individuals navigate and process trauma. The emotional intensity associated with trauma adds another layer of complexity. Trauma triggers powerful and often overwhelming emotions like fear, anger, sadness, or numbness, making it challenging to manage and process these feelings effectively. Trauma can manifest physically with symptoms such as disturbances, fatigue, and muscle tension, adding the complexity of coping strategies, which must address both psychological and physiological symptoms. Coping with trauma also involves navigating disruptions to cognitive processes. Traumatic experiences can affect memory, concentration, and decision-making, complicating how individuals make sense of their experience and coping with intrusive thoughts or distorted thinking patterns. Interpersonal dynamics are also impacted as trauma can strain relationships and social interactions. Coping may involve renegotiating relationships, seeking support, or addressing communication challenges with loved ones. The path of coping with trauma is not linear and involves distinct stages including shock or denial, emotional processing, adjustment, and integration. Individuals may cycle through these stages multiple times before achieving a sense of resolution. Additionally, cultural and societal factors shape how individuals cope with trauma. Cultural beliefs, societal attitudes, and access to support services all influence coping strategies and recovery outcomes. Given the complexity of trauma, effective coping requires a comprehensive and personalized approach. As all this is very important, I really appreciated how in all of my resources it mentioned this nonlinear path with coping with trauma. Even in my book, How to Cope with Trauma, or How to Overcome Trauma and Find Yourself Again, Seven Steps to Grow from Pain, it reviews the seven steps as well as these stages that were mentioned which include shock or denial, emotional processing, adjustment, and integration. The book even discussed a few stories that you can see these stages take in place even at different times with different examples and people. One story I'd like to share that really integrates this episode between coping with trauma and these stages was about a woman who was married to her husband and had two kids, was pregnant and was expecting another child when she found out that her husband was cheating on her. And instead of like spiraling into like a sea of helplessness, she really focused on her work and who she wanted her kids to see her as. And she sought out professional help through personal therapists as well as a family therapist, but in the end really just realized that this relationship was not going to benefit her anymore. And in the story you can really see how she went through shock or denial of this experience and fell into some maladaptive coping strategies such as avoidance. And really this avoidance took place in focusing a lot of her time into work and her kids. But as she stepped into the emotional processing by seeking out help, especially through a therapist, you can see her process these emotions and talk through them and confront them which is an active coping strategy. And this also allowed her to consider different solutions. The adjustment phase, searching for new housing, finding a new job that could provide for her and her kids without her having to worry, as well as integrating these steps into her daily life and what this would look like without her husband. Now each traumatic experience is different, which was previously mentioned for its complexity, but it is important to remember that each person's traumatic experience or trauma can still be seen through these stages. I also noticed in the book that a lot of these stories, when the person was going through the first few stages of shock or denial, they found themselves either going towards maladaptive coping strategies or, you know, just avoiding things right off the start. Not everybody is like this, but I feel like there is always a sense of denial that this is truly happening to you. And given this, adaptive coping strategies can be seen via confronting problems or even seeking out professional help to help confront these problems. Not all trauma has to be handled alone and honestly, in both these studies and in the book, seeking out social support is an adaptive strategy that can help people through these difficult times. As we all know, trauma is extremely complex, but it is also very important to understand and many things influence trauma, as well as trauma coping. And I think it's very important to recognize the different factors that can go into coping and that is what this episode was about. It kind of highlighted some of the complexities, as well as the personality traits that are more, that correlate more with the adaptive coping strategies. And active coping can be accomplished on your own via self-help or through a guidance of a clinician, but really we can look at these personality traits and see how they can correlate into active coping or maladaptive coping. This is the end of our episode, so I would just like to thank everybody for tuning in today. I hope you have a great week and I can't wait to discuss our next topic. Thank you.
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