Emotion-Focused Coping: Stress Factors And Coping

Stress Factors and Coping: In the film, Jimmy uses emotion-focused and problem-focused coping to deal with his life-changing and challenging situational stressors. Jimmy’s getting cancer is a life-changing event is one of the highest rated sources of stress on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Spielman, 2017). Jimmy’s cancer causes him to try to exhibit problem-focused coping to reconcile with his daughter, Claudia. As Spielman (2017) states, “In problem-focused coping, one attempts to manage or alter the problem that is causing one to experience stress.” Jimmy is tired of having a bad relationship with Claudia and wants to address this issue head-on. Jimmy’s attempt as reconciliation, however, is met with resistance from Claudia, which

The catalyst for Jimmy’s problems was his molesting of his daughter, Claudia. Jimmy would have greatly benefitted from cognitive therapy. As Spielman (2017) states, cognitive therapy is when a therapist applies “awareness of cognitive process [to] hel[p] patients eliminate thought patterns that lead to distress.” If Jim had decided to participate in cognitive therapy when he first realized he had urges to molest Claudia, he possibly would have understood why he felt the way he did and work with his therapist to make his inappropriate desires go away. Jimmy could also have engaged in cognitive-behavioral therapy after he molested Claudia for the first time. If Jimmy told a therapist that he molested Claudia, there is a good chance that the therapist would report Jimmy to the police because he poses a danger to others. Even if Jimmy was to be imprisoned, the state could still work something out that where he could attend cognitive-behavioral therapy. As Spielman (2017) states, “cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) helps clients examine how their thoughts affect their behavior.” If Jimmy attended cognitive-behavioral therapy, he possibly could have been able to control his inappropriate thoughts and stop himself from molesting his daughter again. Likewise, Jimmy could have attended cognitive therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy when dealing with his desire to cheat on his wife and his cheating on his wife, respectively. Even after Jimmy molested his daughter, he could still have attended family therapy with Claudia and his wife. As Spielman (2017) states, “each member of the family influences and is influenced by the others. The goal of [family therapy] is to enhance the growth of each family member as well as that of the family as a whole.” Jimmy would have been able to see how his inappropriate sexual conduct has affected his Claudia and his, wife,