Related: "Communal Coping"
Leaning in the academic direction, there are many ideas that overlap in spirit with those commonly discussed in this blog. Some with more established traditions, and therefore more fans and researchers that hold tightly on to the notion that one way is the best way to examine things.
I believe firmly in theoretical plurality, which is the notion that multiple theories for how something happens in our social world is a good thing. Informed hunches about the world are great, but that's all they are: Best guesses about how the world operates backed up with evidence (studies) to validate a perspective.
Coping. Coping is such a popular psychological term that it invaded our everyday discourse ("dude, you're not coping well," "help me cope with this exam I have tomorrow"), only overshadowed by its partner in theory "stress." In other words, what do we cope with? Stress? Maybe life, our jobs, or people if we are implying that they are stress-inducing.
Afifi, Hustchinson, & Krouse (2006) proposed a theoretical model of communal coping in 2006 that I wanted to discuss here as an exercise. Tamara Afifi is one of the top scholars in interpersonal communication, both in her research and in her mentorship of graduate students. I've had limited interactions with her, but at conferences she always seemed pleasant and has had good conversations with my grad students and colleagues. Maybe unnecessary backstory, but she's one of those people in the field, and it's my blog.
As a part of this paper, Afifi and colleagues state that:
According to Lyons et al. (1998), communal coping involves "the pooling of resources and efforts of several individuals (e.g., couples, families, or communities) to confront adversity" (p. 580) From this perspective, a stressor is appraised and acted upon as "our problem and our responsiblity" rather than as something to be managed alone." (This form of) coping is constructed jointly among people who are coping with simliar stressful life circumstances.
So this is an important understanding...coping is traditionally thought of as an individual and isolated process of stressor appraisal, avaialble resources, and then adaptational outcomes and implementation of coping strategies. A great example of this is High School or University counseling services and the "you" centric delivery of "Managing Stress" workshops. They are important, but they are also extremely focused on talking directely to the student's sense of stress and ways to manage (cope with) it.
Reactions:
The proces of communal coping, and coping in general, seems to all rely on a few assumptions a) Stress Appraisal, b) evaluation of resources as avaible, appropriate, and utilizable, c) and that adapatation and coping is the target outcome.
I could write an essay on all three, but my biggest issue with people that suggest that coping and resilience are the same thing is that they clearly are not. Resilience theory, at least viewed as a process, is contextualized (i.e., viewed and framed) as a way to explain how we respond to stressors in life in proactive, active, and reactive ways. To perhaps oversimplify it, coping doesn't appear to really take form until a stressor is actualy appraised. Which means two things:
If the stressor isn't registered, or isn't registered collectively (in the case of communal coping) it does't exist. Therefore coping doesn't happen, because there is nothing to cope with.
If the coping process doesn't start until a stressor is identfied (in the minds of the individuals, couple, or family) there is no need to proactively engage in actions that would enable succesful stress management.
Therefore, coping is mostly a reactive process. This limits our potential as people to successfully handle life's challenges. "Oh no the money is gone, what now? Let's react!" "Oh no the hurricane destoyed the city! Let's react!" As researchers we are segmenting the range of human communicative contributions to the entire process down to just the moment most poeple wake up and pay attention: When the shit hits the fan.
Why do we do this? Well for one as people we are excessively distrubed when our patterns of daily autopilot change, and when things we take for granted get taken from us. All the sudden the world looks different, we're emoitionally activated, and we are propelled to resolve the mess.
Proactive efforts (i.e., preemtion, prevention, preparation) is boring. It only becomes relevant and motivating after something terrible has happened. Let's ramp up in awfulness: Failed your first semester of college: Second semester prepare better for tests and complete all homeworks; Marriage becomes stale and passionless: Hopefully "reset" with lessons learned, resolves to live relational life that way. Levvies broke, catastrophic loss of life, culture, and city infrastructure: Allocate more money to build better systems and protective features that add value to the community and city.
Next questions:
So is the "bad thing happening" to you important to engaging in resileince? Or can it happen to us? Does that impact if the resilience-promoting efforts stick?
What role does wisdom play in resilience? How do we get that wisdom?
How does communication function within a resilience framework that includes proactive, active, and reactive components accounted for?
Should relience research going forward have to account for these features to be considered "resilience" or are they talking about coping?
Therefore to me:
Coping process = instinctual, base processing; can be shared with others, primarily reactive
Resilience = Ongoing process of life stressor managment; motivated by standards, belief, and wisdom; Needs to be studied contextually and is innately proactive, active, and reactive in nature.
References:
Afifi, T., Hutchinson, S. & Krouse, S. (2006). Toward a theoretical model of communal coping in postdivorce families and other naturally occuring groups. Communication Theory, 16, 378-409.
Lyons, R. F., Mickleson, K., Sullivan, J. L. & Coyne, J. C. (1998). Coping as a communal process. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15, 579-607.
Picture credit: http://www.lionsclubs.org/cs-assets/_files/images/page-images/disaster-relief-700x394.jpg
