Assignment 1 (Coping Techniques)
Assignment 1 (Coping Techniques)
Assignment 1 (Coping Techniques)
PREPARED BY:
GROUP :
BA2323B
PREPARED FOR :
SUBMISSION DATE :
7 DECEMBER 2020
Anxiety is a normal part of life. However, people sometimes experience prolonged periods of
anxiety that can affect their social, work, or personal lives. People can try various methods to help
them cope. In some cases, anxiety can become a disorder. Anxiety disorders occur when the feelings
of anxiety and worry are both persistent and highly disruptive. People with anxiety disorders usually
require treatment. There are plenty of reasons why someone may feel anxious, including work-related
stress, financial troubles, health problems and trauma. Some health conditions may increase anxiety.
For examples, someone with chronic pain might experience regular anxiety. In some cases,
underlying health problems might cause symptoms similar to those of anxiety. For example, some
conditions cause heart palpitations or sweating. Quick coping techniques help to have a few coping
techniques for dealing with anxiety or worry.
SELF-TALK
One of the coping techniques that we can use is self-talk. Positive self-talk is a cognitive
psychological techniques used to stop negative cognition that can cause anxiety, depression, and
pessimism, and that can interfere with functioning and performance. Positive self-talk has frequently
been used by athletes as a cognitive strategy to assists in maintaining focus, enhancing motivation,
and coping with negative thoughts emotions, and events. Research have found positive self-talk to be
an effective performance enhancement strategy in a variety of sports and athletic tasks including dart-
throwing, leg extension endurance, tennis, soccer and cycling.
Self-talk preparation before enter a situation when know you may feel anxious or you know
brings on your anxiety, try to stop the negative thoughts flowing through your mind. Instead stop, take
a deep breath and try to switch mind to positive thought. Start self-talking to yourself trying out some
of the positive statement such as “it is not going to be that bad”, “if I do get bad feeling, I know they
won’t last long and I can cope with them” and the last one “ I feel that I am getting better and going
into this situation will help increase confident.
Self-talk coping one you are in the situation where you know you may feel anxious then the
positive self-talk needs to continue. If start to let the negative thoughts creep in it may increase
anxiety which could result in you running out of the situation. Instead try to concentrate on what is
going on. You need to able to cope with the situation by telling yourself positive statements such as “I
know I am going to be okay”. “I can cope with this anxiety. I have been able to cope with it many
times before.
Next, self-talk praise when you come away from the situation that lead to your anxiety, the
positive self-talk need to continue and need to praise yourself for coping with the anxiety. For
example, “I can be pleased with the small steps that I am talking”, “I managed to cope with the
situation so I know that the next time it will be easier”, “I can be pleased with the small steps that I am
talking”.
Then, our brains “chat” with us throughout the day, sending us a variety of “self-talk”
messages with content that is positive, neutral, and negative. Positive and neutral messages can
include self-affirming statements like, “you got this,” or, “that was smart,” reminders to send an
important email and more. These positive and neutral brain messages do no harm and thus don’t
require us to pay them much attention. However, brain messages can also be negative, such as calling
ourselves mean names (e.g. “idiot”, “loser”), thinking no one likes us or expecting something terrible
will happen. While these negative brain messages are normal and happen to all of us from time to
time, when we are anxious they are likely to happen more often and do more harm. This is why it is
important to start to pay attention to these messages and learn to evaluate them. When we are anxious,
we tend to see the world as a threatening and dangerous place. This reaction makes sense, because
imagining the worst can help you to prepare for real danger, enabling you to protect yourself. For
example, if you are home alone and you hear a strange scratching sound at the window, you might
think it’s a burglar. If you believe that it’s a burglar, you will become very anxious and prepare
yourself to either run out of the house, fight off an attack, or run to the phone and call for help.
Although this anxious response is helpful if there actually is a burglar at the window, it is not
so helpful if your thought was wrong: for example, it might be a tree branch scratching the window.
In this case, your thoughts were wrong because there was no real danger. The problem with thinking
and acting as if there is danger when there is no real danger is that you feel unnecessarily anxious.
Therefore, one effective strategy to manage your anxiety is to replace anxious, negative thinking with
helpful thinking. For example, coping statements. Try coming up with statements that remind you
how you can cope with a situation. For example, “If I get anxious, I will try some calm breathing” ; “I
just need to do my best” ; or “My anxiety won’t last forever”. Lastly, picture below show us a Levels
of Self-Talk :
GOAL SETTING
The next coping techniques is goal setting .Setting a goal to reduce stress is important in our life.
This is because setting the right goals, have a plan how to reach that goals, and following through on
what is required to reach or maintain those goals may help ourself feel greater happiness and
fulfillment while reducing stress levels. Moreover, you must know what kind of goal you want to set
and what benefit that you will get from that. For instance, in case you're feeling stressed to the point
of being overwhelmed, it's a smart thought to center your goals more toward limiting and managing
stress. However, if you are feeling general stress it is a good idea to set some stress management goals
while also focusing on goals that advance satisfaction and importance in life.
There are some tips how to maintaining goals or adopting healthy habits. For example, is set the
right goals, take a small concrete step, reward yourself along the way and consider slip-ups to be part
of the process. Other than that, goals are part of our life and provide a sense of direction, motivation, a
clear focus, and clarify importance. By setting goals, you are furnishing yourself with an objective to
focus on. SMART goals are used to help you manage the goal setting. The meaning of SMART is
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. SMART goals set you up for success by
making goals specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. The SMART method helps
push you further, gives you a sense of direction, and helps you organize and reach your goals.
Besides, according to Dr.Edwin Locke, a pioneer in the goal-setting research established that to be
motivating, goals should have the following five characteristics. The five principles of goal setting
firstly is clarity. For example, I want to win this tournament. Next, challenge like though difficult to
get win, it’s doable. Other than that, commitment. For instance, I will be training every day even if it’s
for fifteen minutes. Moreover, get a feedback from friends or coach about your performance. Lastly is
task complexity. According to the theory, task performance can be optimized by first considering task
complexity when setting a timeline. A person must be allowed enough time to meet a goal expectation.
If utilized incorrectly, goal setting has the potential to cause rather than solve problems. For
example, if goals are used with a threat of negative consequences, stress and anxiety can be increased
(Locke, 1996). Additionally, when there is a conflict between two or more goals, performance with
respect to each goal may be undermined (Locke, Smith, Erez, Chah, & Shaffer, 1994). However, there
are some ways and skills required for successful goal setting and achievement. Such as planning.
Through proper planning, we can maintain focus and be able to avoid distractions that prevent us from
achieving our goals. Next, self-motivation. For example, motivation to achieve a goal encourages us
to develop new techniques and skills in order to succeed (Locke, 2001). Time management is one of
the useful skills, if we do not properly consider the timescale required to attain a goal, we will
inevitably fail. Furthermore, everyone needs regulate and control their own emotions in order to
promote their own personal and social goals. So self-regulation is important for an individual.
The other ways that you can do to achieve goals and keep away from stress is avoid procrastinating.
To achieve the goal that we want, we have to know how to overcome procrastination. This is because
it will be an obstacle for us to achieve the goals. One strategy for taking action and avoiding
procrastination is to use the 15-minute rule. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and decide to doing the only
one task you've been putting off for the longest.
Another one strategy to achieve the goals that you want is managing your time. In order to do this,
you need to divide and manage time wisely so you will not waste your time on useless things. In
addition, you can implement the quadrant time management system. This system splits your time up
into four separate quadrants. Focus as much as your efforts as possible on Quadrant 2, while doing
everything in your power to avoid Quadrant 4. Check your day daily to see how much time you spend
on each of these quadrants.
Finally yet importantly, is accept the failure. You will get stress if you cannot accept failure. Learn
to welcome failure when it comes knocking on your door. Accept it, understand it, learn from it, and
then move past it. Leverage your failures as learning experiences so that you can start fresh and do it
again. When you have the spirit to rise from failure. Then you will have a bright opportunity to
succeed and achieve the goals you set. Accept the failure and believe in yourself is the most important
thing when you want to setting a goal.
BREATH CONTROL
The last coping techniques is breath control. Breath control means breathing gently using the
least effort. By doing this, it will help when you are short of breath or feeling anxious. To get used to
breathing control, it helps to practice when you are sitting, relaxed and not out of breath. Respiratory
control is about the best use of your main respiratory muscle which is your diaphragm. The focus
breath control is to reduce tension and use the shoulder and neck muscles to get into the best position
for you to breathe easily. Your diaphragm contracts when you breathe. This pulls the lungs down,
stretching and expanding them. It relaxes back ,into a dome position ,when you breathe out, reducing
the amount of air in your lungs.
You may want to try several different relaxation techniques to see which one works best for you.
And if your favorite approach fails to engage you, or you want some variety, you'll have alternatives.
Get into a comfortable position, with your arms supported on arm rests or your lap. Let your shoulders
and body be relaxed and loose. First, put one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach.
Second, close your eyes to help you relax and focus on your breathing. Third, slowly breathe in
through your nose, with your mouth closed. If you’re relaxed, the air will reach low in your lungs.
Your stomach will move out against your hand. If your breathing is controlled, the hand on your chest
will hardly move. Fourth, breathe out through your nose. Your stomach will fall gently. Imagine all
the tension in your body leaving as you let the air out. Last , try to use as little effort as possible and
make your breaths slow, relaxed and smooth. With every breath out, try to feel more relaxed.
Gradually try to breathe more slowly.When fully in control of your breathing, your out breath should
take longer than your in breath. There should be a natural pause at the end of your out breath.
Breath control is quite effective and helpful to cope with the stress and anxiety. Breath control
can provides the body with relaxation response that can make the body feels calm and at ease. The
first step to bring relaxation to the body and mind is by learn to breathe deeply. Deep breathing is also
known as diaphragmatic breathing, abdominal breathing, belly breathing and paced respiration. It will
cause the air to coming in through the nose, fills in the lungs and makes the lower belly rises when
breathing deeply. Some people tend to hold in their stomach to make it looks flat but this action can
interferes with dep breathing which is slowly makes shallow “chest breathing” seems normal and it
will increases the possibility to face the tension and anxiety. This happen because shallow breathing
put a limit to the diaphragm’s range of motion which is cause the lowest part of lungs unable get
enough oxygenated air. This is the reason that makes people feel short of breath and anxious at the
moment. Besides that, there are several benefits of deep breathing to the body. One of the reasons is
deep abdominal breathing encourages full oxygen exchange that is the beneficial trade of incoming
oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. As the result, it will slows the heartbeat and lower or stabilize
the blood pressure.
Other than that, breath focus is a common feature of several techniques that can evoke the
relaxation response. Breath focus helps in concentrate on slow and deep breathing. It will also blocks
the mind from any distracting thoughts and distractions. Breath focus is really helpful for people who
tend to hold in their stomach. Here are the steps to practise the breath focus. The first step is find a
quiet and comfortable place to sit or lie down. Second step is try to take a deep breath by breathe in
slowly through the nose, to allow the chest and lower belly to rise as the air fills in the lung. Third
step is let the abdomen expand fully. Last step is breathe out slowly through mouth or through nose if
that feels more comfortable.
CONCLUSION
Everyone in this world have their own problems that lead them to stress and anxiety. Stress is
a common thing that every person have to face whether because of work life, financial problem and
others. We feel stressful almost every day in our busy daily life. Undeniably, stress is a regular part of
being human and we cannot escape from it. We may feel down and anxious too sometimes when
something unfortunate and unexpected happened. It is fine if you feel stress for a short period of time
however if you feel stress for more than a couple of weeks, that means that you are in the danger zone.
As a matter of fact, too much stress will lead to bigger problem such as depression that can affect your
life. You need to manage the stress before it get severe and out of control. Fortunately, there are many
coping techniques than can help you to deal with stress and anxiety. These techniques are already
proven that it can assist the person to cope with the stress. You just need to choose any techniques that
is most effective for you in dealing with the stress. You can do trial and error for each techniques in
order to choose the best coping technique for stress. You need to remember that it takes time and
practice to cope with stress or anxiety. Eventually, the stress or anxiety will be gone without your
realization.
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