What animals in the wild can teach us about coping with stress

Resources in this sense can include your own coping skills, personal characteristics such as having a cheerful disposition, life experiences that have given you the confidence that you have done something before and can do it again, and interpersonal qualities, such as social skills and being able to call on the help of others (professionals, adults or peers). For example, peers and friends may help each other.

Culture and context are all-important, but coping theory also emphasises that individuals are not lone operators and that they live within a community, family or tribe. We assess situations according to the reality in which we find ourselves. It is within communities that individuals not only utilise their personal resources and assets but may also be assisted by the resources available within that environment. Families and communities are important vehicles for shaping resilience, and we know they can be important sources of support and care and provide opportunities for shared ways of coping.

Proactive coping is a useful tool: it is about thinking ahead and making plans and preparations. It results in making investments and building up a stockpile of personal, social and economic resources.

When we cope day by day, from situation to situation, we are generally being reactive. Preparing and anticipating the future is being proactive. Many of our motivations to succeed, to be secure and safe, are about being proactive. We can prepare and anticipate events. We can be future-oriented. We can use our resources to achieve goals.

When we cope day by day, from situation to situation, we are generally being reactive. Preparing and anticipating the future is being proactive.

We often plan for events that are yet to happen: this is known as good risk management. Leaders are often proactive copers, as are employees. We plan for that meeting, that presentation, that function we are organising. The proactive coper takes initiative, links with others, takes the credit for success (while also acknowledging others who have contributed, especially in leadership situations), and does not blame themselves for failure. This approach to coping emphasises the amassing of resources as a protection against future occurrences.

Proactive coping is the process of anticipating potential stressors and acting in advance either to prevent them or to diminish their future impact. Essentially, it is about building personal and financial resources, screening the environment for danger and asking yourself, “What can I do?” This is really similar to the question “Do I have the strategies to cope?” Proactive coping is about actively trying to predict events and prepare for them, and as such it is more helpful than avoidant behaviour.

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Some people make a distinction between anticipatory coping, where you anticipate that critical events will occur and invest in risk management, and preventive coping, where you invest effort to build up “resistance” resources to minimise the severity of impact. Proactive coping, in contrast, is about building up resources to achieve challenging goals and personal growth—that is, it is about “goal striving”.

Proactive copers have vision, and for them coping is about goal management. It is self-initiating and about having a vision that gets transformed into action. This is what high achievers do. Successful leaders are proactive copers.

This is an edited extract from Coping in Good Times and Bad by Erica Frydenberg, published August 30 (MUP).

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