Brief Counseling: When Is Coping Healthy?

When Is Coping Healthy? Teaching coping mechanisms is an important task in grief counseling. These skills provide a healthy outline for patients to handle stress, depression and other secondary stressors. However, while volunteering in grief counseling, I noticed that some coping mechanisms seem to do more harm than good. Usually, counselors would suggest that individuals resort to coping mechanisms during difficult times. But do all coping mechanism provide proper relief for struggling individuals? Or can coping mechanisms be used in an unhealthy way?
Alcohol consumption has become a socially acceptable means for coping with everyday stresses. I personally began seeing its potentially detrimental effects when I began attending college. I

Caffeine has become a nationally used form of a pharmacologically active substance (PAS) (Pray et al., 1). PAS is defined by the World Health Organization as “any substance or combination of substances used as a pharmaceutical product” intended to alter the physiologically activity in the human body (“Definition of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients”). Due to the effects that caffeine has on the body, it is classified as a type of medical drug. However, caffeine may not be a healthy coping mechanism for individuals. The problem with any type of PAS is that a person’s body can become dependent and experience withdrawal symptoms. The FDA examined the usage of caffeine and found that “feelings of depression, irritability and severe headaches” are commonly seen forms of caffeine withdrawal. According to Dr. Sergi Ferre from the National Institute of Medicine, caffeine is also a psychostimulant that effects the central nervous system in similar ways that cocaine does (Pray et al., 90). Similar to cocaine, caffeine increases a person’s motor activity, instigates arousal, and reinforces physiological effects (Pray et al., 90). This can affect the blood flow of the coronary arteries in your body which is responsible for supplying blood to your

For example, one of my co-workers had explained to me that she started running 30 miles a day after her dad died. However, she mentioned to me that she proceeded to run after she had broken her ankle. I assumed this was the first time this had happened but, she mentioned two other scenarios where this had occurred. In this case, running may not be the best coping mechanism for her. By pushing herself too far on several occasions, she has undergone several ankle and knee surgeries to fix the damage that she has caused herself. Even other athletes such as football players are seeing physical implications from exercise. For example, due to the excessive amount of exercise that football players are highly suggested to do for competition, several football players have died from an enlarged heart. The excessive amount of exercising can cause harm to individuals despite being socially acceptable.
The fact that even “healthy” coping mechanisms can be used in detrimental ways begs the question; is there any way to define what healthy really is? As a society, we sometimes try to define what a healthy person is and does. However, even the healthiest individuals such as runners, may not be entirely healthy in all aspects. Like I mentioned above, some runners such as my co-worker can use a healthy coping mechanism in a harmful way. The difficulty here is if socially acceptable healthy coping mechanisms can be used in an unhealthy manner;