How are you coping? This is a common enough question, though the answers we give are usually in terms of how well we are coping, rather than what means we are using to cope. But, what do we mean by coping? Coping has been defined by Lazarus & Folkman (1984) as the process of managing external or internal demands that are perceived as taxing or exceeding a person’s resources. The development of health psychology has brought about a framework for investigating coping, which has tended to focus on three different aspects: the mechanisms involved in coping, the experience of coping, and different strategies for going about coping. The model of coping put forward by Lazarus and Folkman suggested that the stress experience is moderated by two basic appraisals; the first of these is an appraisal of the level of threat, and the second is an appraisal of the person’s own resources for dealing with it (see Figure 19.1).
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