Ahmed Shaami
There are various ways to deal with stress, some of which focus on stress itself while others focus on its root cause. The mentality is that if you remove the cause of the stress, the stress will get eliminated itself. The entire process of reducing stress is called problem-focused coping. The problem-focused stress is a coping mechanism that primarily concentrates on changing or making a modification to the root cause of stress and discomfort.
By reducing the stress causing agent through the problem-focused coping, it becomes to reduce the stress itself. This method hands you the facts and allows you to approach the problem head-on. You can get straight to the point bypassing all the emotions.
Following are the ways to use this coping strategy:
Face the situation:
For reducing stress, the first thing you can do is to face the situation because of which discomfort is arising. It will help you to see the truth and come up with a solution in mind. Some of the bold facts will mold your mind to fix what is going wrong. Once you face the truth and get an idea how your problem can get fixed, you will experience freedom from the problems that are increasing your stress.
Have belief in yourself:
While using the problem-focused coping strategy you may face criticism from the people around you. This will very easily damage your self-esteem. Therefore, be strong while using the direct approach and look at the reason of your stress in the eye. No matter who says what, continue your efforts to get rid of the discomforting issues. Have faith in yourself and do whatever it takes to lesson your burden of stress.
Take action:
By tolerating the things as they are can make a situation worse. But by problem-focused coping strategy, you take deliberate action to remove the problems. Once you remove the root cause of a troubled situation, you actually save yourself from further discomfort. Once the reason of problem gets fixed, it does not emerge again.
Times to use problem-focused coping strategy:
This strategy cannot work all the time; there are certain times to use the strong-willed method:
During an abusive situation:
This is the strategy that can be used more appropriately during an abusive situation. These are the situations that require you to remove the stressor from your life. It is because abusive situations rarely work themselves out so it’s important that you get rid of them immediately.
For improving health:
Sometimes you to have to get away from people because they are stressors themselves and cause a bad impact on your health. This is the kind of situation you need to get them out of your life.
Complicated situation:
Also, during the times of chaos reasoning out problems that are causing stress might be a waste of time. This is when you are required to use a simple approach and get rid of what is causing the uproar.
