Within the depth-psychology corpus, the concept of a coping system denotes no single mechanism but rather an integrated, multi-layered configuration through which persons engage threatening circumstances in pursuit of what Pargament terms ‘significance.’ Pargament’s extensive treatment anchors the theoretical centre of the literature: coping is understood as embedded within an orienting system — an amalgam of personality, spiritual resources, cultural context, and prior experience — that is translated into specific appraisal processes and behavioural responses. His work insists that no universally efficacious coping method exists; effectiveness is always indexed to the particulars of person, situation, and social context. The clinical literature, represented by Najavits, reframes the coping system in pragmatic terms as a repertoire of learnable safe-coping skills deployed against the joint liabilities of PTSD and substance dependence, where destructive coping habits must be consciously replaced by structured alternatives. The recovery literature — ACA and Dayton — approaches the coping system through the lens of developmental trauma, arguing that survival strategies formed in dysfunctional-family contexts (control, denial, hypervigilance) calcify into maladaptive adult patterns that demand conscious dismantling. Schore’s neurobiological perspective situates affective defensive organizations in early orbital-frontal development. Across all these sources the central tension is between coping as an adaptive achievement and coping as a compulsive re-enactment — between a system that serves genuine significance and one that merely preserves the illusion of safety.
Good coping is instead defined by what works well for particular people in particular situations and by the degree to which the coping process is well integrated.
Pargament establishes that the coping system has no universal standard of efficacy; its adequacy is contextually relative and measured by internal coherence.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
To understand how a person will deal with a difficult situation then, we must know not only something about the situation, but about the individual’s system of significance and system of resources and burdens.
Coping, on Pargament’s account, is structurally determined by the interplay of significance, resources, and burdens rather than by situational demands alone.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
A knowledge of personality or other aspects of the orienting system is not sufficient to understand the encounter of a person with a particula
Pargament demonstrates empirically that the orienting system must be translated through specific coping methods before it can predict psychological outcomes.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
Resources come in many shapes and sizes: material … physical … psychological … social … and spiritual … These are the tools people carry along with them in the coping process.
Pargament taxonomises the resource base of the coping system across material, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
Any evaluation of the impact of coping on outcomes should be sensitive to the particulars of the individual, the situation, and the social context. No single method of coping in and of itself is likely to hold the key to success.
Pargament critiques universalist outcomes-based evaluation of coping, insisting on contextual sensitivity as the methodological standard.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
An evaluation of coping should also consider the ends of significance the individual is striving toward … Problems in coping can arise, however, when there is a loss of balance in the various goals that contribute to an individual’s pattern of significance.
Coping system dysfunction is located not in method alone but in a loss of balance among the objects of significance that structure the system’s teleology.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Distinct emotional reactions, he proposes, can be traced to several factors, such as the particular goal that is endangered or lost and attributions of cause and responsibility for the situation.
Appraisal processes linking endangered goals to specific emotions constitute a foundational cognitive-affective layer within the coping system.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Orienting system … components of, 99-100; in coping process, 99-104; translation into methods of coping, 104-106.
The index entry consolidates the structural architecture of Pargament’s model, locating the orienting system as the generative matrix of specific coping methods.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Control was the survival trait which kept us safe or alive in our dysfunctional homes … As adults we continue to control ourselves and our relationships in an unhealthy manner.
The ACA literature reconceptualises the coping system as a set of survival-conditioned control behaviours that, once functional, become chronically maladaptive in adult life.
, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting
Most adult children develop basic survival skills in childhood that do not work well for adult life … adult children appear resilient or complex but operate from a basic feeling of being defective.
Clinically informed counselling literature identifies childhood survival skills as the substrate of an adult coping system that is structurally misaligned with present reality.
, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting
Replace destructive activities … Praise yourself … Observe repeating patterns … Self-nurture … the most powerful method of growth.
Najavits operationalises coping system reform as a structured inventory of concrete safe-coping skills designed to replace destructive behavioural patterns in PTSD and substance abuse.
, Seeking Safety: A Treatment Manual for PTSD and Substance Abuse, 2002supporting
By rehearsing, over and over, how they can cope more safely, they can strive toward greater self
Najavits frames coping system change as an iterative rehearsal process in which patients systematically identify and practise safer alternatives to existing responses.
, Seeking Safety: A Treatment Manual for PTSD and Substance Abuse, 2002supporting
Coping, we have seen, has several basic qualities: It involves an encounter between an individual and a situation; it is multidimensional; it is multilayered and contextual; it involves possibilities and choices; and it is diverse.
Pargament’s foundational definition establishes that the coping system is irreducibly multidimensional and contextual, resisting reduction to any single deterministic schema.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Personal, social, and technological strategies no longer provide effective solutions to critical problems, yet we continue to look for some kind of significance in life. This is the borderline beyond which religious solutions become particularly compelling.
The exhaustion of secular coping resources marks a threshold condition at which the religious dimension of the coping system becomes differentially activated.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
To ask an adult child to surrender control is like asking someone to leap from an airplane without a parachute … Living in isolation, shut off from society and friends, is a manner for maintaining control without having to admit what one is doing.
The ACA framework depicts control as the central organising mechanism of the traumatised coping system, experienced subjectively as existential necessity rather than optional strategy.
, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting
New combinations of coupled sympathetic and parasympathetic components allow for blendings of psychobiological states and the emergent expression of more complex emotions and more complex and permanent defensive organizations.
Schore grounds the structural basis of coping in the neurobiological maturation of defensive organisations arising from coupled autonomic states in early development.
, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994supporting
What happens when home is scary, when the family we are growing up in becomes a source of ongoing stress? … all sorts of what we call survival responses swing into action.
Dayton situates the origin of the coping system in the child’s neurobiological survival responses to a chronically threatening caregiving environment.
, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007supporting
Trauma was defined as the maximal arousal of the sympathetic nervous system by pain or the threat of pain … resistance and denial set in.
The ACA literature draws on Selye’s stress model to explain how traumatic arousal generates the resistance and denial components of the adult coping system.
, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting
To the extent that religion becomes a larger and more integrated part of the orienting system, it takes on a greater role in coping.
Religious integration within the orienting system is proportional to religion’s functional weight within the overall coping system.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
In a desperate effort to connect and belong, we force ourselves to fit these distorted images and become false selves to keep from feeling isolated and alone.
False-self formation in response to the alcoholic family system is identified as a primitive coping strategy that sacrifices identity to preserve relational connection.
, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012aside
For each situation, ask, ‘How could you cope best with this situation?’ … Guide them to use the list of Safe Coping Skills for ideas if needed.
The Life Choices Game is presented as a psychoeducational device for activating positive coping repertoires under simulated situational pressure.
, Seeking Safety: A Treatment Manual for PTSD and Substance Abuse, 2002aside
I have a much harder time coping with everyday life than most other people. I feel like I was born different and I’ll always have a horrible life.
The clinical vignette illustrates how complex trauma produces a subjective sense of global coping deficit that is taken as a fixed identity rather than a treatable condition.
, Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders (Adults) aside