Help Center
Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman are American psychologists who contributed seminal research on stress and coping.
Their transactional model of stress and coping has been heavily researched and describes how our cognitive processes are involved in the assessment of a potential stressor.
The individual experiences a situation. Interprets that through the primary appraisal. If they perceive no threat, they experience no stress - “No sweat.”
If they do perceive the situation as a potential threat, they go through a secondary appraisal of their resources to cope with it or address it.
If they perceive insufficient resources, they experience negative stress or distress.
If they perceive sufficient resources, they experience positive stress and engage problem-focused, emotion-focused, or meaning-focused coping.
These appraisals are often happening automatically, outside of our awareness. We can develop default habits of perceiving threats where there are none, or perceiving insufficient resources when we actually have sufficient resources.
Those are opportunities in the coaching engagement to support clients as they become aware of how they’re perceiving their situation and resources to reappraise to healthy coping when helpful or fitting.
Tobin and colleagues (1989) built on Lazarus and Folkman's work with the coping hierarchy describing the differences between approach and avoidance processes in coping.
People either engage or disengage. This highlights the problem-focused and emotion-focused methods in either response.
We would coach to promote engagement as a positive social support. We provide the social support that allows the client to express what they’re feeling and experiencing. We support them as they expand their thinking around it and identify opportunities for how they might address it.
Approaching things that are safe enough to approach is a growth-promoting process. It’s through engaging that we’re able to build our confidence in our abilities, belief in ourselves, skills, and mastery. Approach strategies are associated with positive outcomes.
Avoidance tends to contribute to perceiving the issue as bigger than it is, keeping us stuck, disconnecting us from our resources, and hurting our confidence. Avoidance strategies are associated with negative outcomes.