Adaptive and Maladaptive Coping Behavior: Where You Stand?

Trigger Warning:

This article contains references to violence, and other potentially distressing events. These details are used to illustrate coping strategies and resilience and it may be triggering for some readers. Please take care of yourself and take breaks or stop reading if needed.

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In 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban for speaking out in support of girls’ education. Rather than respond with fear or hatred, she doubled down on her advocacy. By the age of 17, Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, emerging as a global symbol of resilience, courage, and peace.

In contrast, a 2015 report from the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) revealed a high prevalence of depression and PTSD among the survivors of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a result, the term ‘hibakusha’ directly translates to “survivor of the atomic bomb, either at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.”

These stories highlight a powerful truth: the same traumatic experience can lead to very different and often changing, responses. At different times, one person may find meaning, support others, or transform their pain into purpose. At other times, that same person may withdraw, turn to substances, or act out in anger.

These aren’t signs of weaknesses, both responses are coping mechanisms that are the body and mind’s way of trying to protect us. They are part of the human survival response.

In clinical terms, some of these are labeled adaptive and others, maladaptive coping behaviors. For the purpose of understanding the differences, we will use these terms here while recognizing it’s much more nuanced. We will do our best to help deepen that understanding.

In this article, we will take a deep dive into adaptive and maladaptive mechanisms as we try to understand our responses to challenges. This article will also help you understand your coping mechanisms and when possible, explore ways to evaluate and strengthen those that support long-term resilience with the understanding that some responses are automatic reactions that we may need to work on, which can take time to shift.

What Are Coping behaviors And Why Do They Matter

Coping behaviors are strategies. They are sometimes deliberate and mindful, sometimes automatic methods and approaches adopted to manage difficult or threatening situations. Not to be confused with defense mechanisms, which are typically unconscious strategies to tolerate stress or manage distress. Real-life responses often include elements of both coping and defense.

Coping behaviors play a huge role in maintaining our mental and physical well-being. It’s a way your mind defends itself against stressors or reduces the impact of stressful events.

The work of American psychologist Richard Lazarus and his associates laid the foundation of coping mechanisms. They defined coping mechanisms as an interaction between an individual and their surroundings.

According to this study by Jason Hreha, there are two broad types of coping behaviors, namely:

• Problem-focused coping involves actively addressing the source of stress. Examples of this strategy include problem-solving skills, seeking advice, time management, and making changes etc.

• Emotion-focused coping involves managing the emotional impact of the stressful situation. Some emotion-focused coping actions include denial, avoidance, reframing the issue mentally, etc.

Coping behaviors matters because it influences not just how we feel in the moment, but also our long-term well-being. Both adaptive and maladaptive strategies can be effective in reducing distress in the short term, which is why we often continue to turn to them.

The difference lies in the long-term impact. Adaptive strategies tend to build resilience and improve healthy functioning over time, while maladaptive ones such as avoidance, substance use, or self-blame may increase stress or create new challenges when relied on repeatedly.

Defining Adaptive Coping: Characteristics and Benefits

According to this reference module in neuroscience and biobehavioral psychology, adaptive coping can be defined as a cognitive and behavioral effort channelled towards mitigating a stressful situation.

Adaptive coping mechanisms typically involve thinking of a sustainable and efficient way to reduce stressors rather than looking for a quick fix. It is a strategy that seeks to reduce the impact of emotional stressors on one’s overall well-being.

Meta-analytic research examined the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and personal resilience. The findings revealed a strong positive correlation between the use of adaptive coping strategies and higher levels of resilience.

Some of the key characteristics of adaptive coping include: 

• Emotional regulation: Helps you healthily manage emotional distress. This may be accomplished through deep breathing, journaling, or speaking with a safe, trusted friend.
• Long-term benefits: Helps you develop resilience, promotes growth, and builds healthy coping mechanisms.
• Socially constructive: Encourages healthy communication and relationships with others, such as community engagement or by seeking help when needed.
• Flexible and Adaptable: This involves changing or adopting new strategies (active coping strategies) as your need requires. For example, knowing when to act, rest, and ask for help or support.
• Problem-focused: Tackles the source of the stress, which involves planning for stress. For example, setting boundaries, distancing or removing yourself from a toxic relationship.
• Realistic and Proactive: Accepting what cannot be changed and taking practical, healthy steps where change is possible.

In summary, adaptive coping is not just one of the stress relief methods; it builds long-term emotional health. By adopting thoughtful, sustainable strategies like cognitive reappraisal, individuals become better equipped to navigate life’s challenges and foster greater resilience over time.

Understanding Maladaptive Coping: How it Sabotages Well-being

Maladaptive coping describes ways of responding to stress or pain. These can be actions or responses that may feel helpful in the moment yet, but in the long-term they create additional stress, pain or other life challenges.

Rather than resolving the underlying issue, these behaviors may unintentionally maintain or intensify, often worsen the situation and lead to negative consequences.

This study on trauma coping strategies and psychological distress found that individuals who relied on maladaptive coping experienced increased levels of distress over time.

The research compared individuals who used approach-based (adaptive) coping with those who, at the time, avoided confronting their trauma. It concluded that the more people attempted to avoid their stressful experiences, the greater their psychological distress became.

Maladaptive coping strategies often involve impulsive behaviors such as substance use and aggression. They also involve managing stress by avoidance through self-distraction, social detachment, under-eating or over-eating.

These strategies can sabotage your long-term well-being by:

• Causing addiction;
• Straining your relationship with your loved ones;
• Contributing to the development or worsening of mental health conditions related to substance use;
• Contributing to feelings of loneliness and depression;
• Inability to forgive oneself and excessive self-criticism.

In a nutshell, maladaptive coping strategies are ways of responding to stress that can feel necessary in the moment but tend to worsen distress over time. They can undermine health and even contribute to feelings of overwhelm, anxiety, and depression.

Key Differences Between Adaptive And Maladaptive Coping

This 2025 study on adaptive vs maladaptive coping in young girls and young adults from Lebanon revealed that adaptive coping strategies positively correlate with psychological well-being.

On the flip side, maladaptive ones are associated with higher levels of mental health challenges. This is a major difference between adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies.

The table below gives us a more in-depth contrast between healthy vs unhealthy coping mechanisms:

ADAPTIVE COPING	MALADAPTIVECOPING
The ultimate goal of adaptive coping is self-mastery, long-term growth and development	The ultimate result of maladaptive coping is short-term relief, which often causes more harm to overall, long-term well-being
Adaptive coping supports mental health, promotes resilience and quality sleep over time	Could lead to an increased risk for anxiety, depression, chronic illnesses and unhealthy habits
Individuals often become well integrated into society, engaged in the community, and often offer help to those in need	Individuals can become socially isolated, withdrawn, and/or involved in more conflict.=
Often improves self-concept and self-awareness	Maladaptive coping may harm self-worth, especially long-term

Common Examples of Each Coping Style

Remember those nuances we talked about earlier? Coping mechanisms can vary from person to person and even the same strategy can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on how, when, and why it’s used.

It’s certainly not black and white because we often overuse or misuse a coping method that can turn an otherwise “healthy” approach into one that causes harm, usually over time.

With this in mind, in the context of healthy use, let’s look at some examples of adaptive coping styles:

• Problem-focused coping;
• Emotion-focused coping;
• Meaning-focused coping;
• Behavioral coping;
• Social coping;
• Exercise for stress relief;
• Meditation for stress relief;

On the other hand, coping styles, when used too often or in the wrong context, can become maladaptive, leading to harmful or unhelpful impacts over time. This is especially true if they are relied on as a primary strategy.

Some examples of a maladaptive coping style include: 

• Emotion-suppressing coping;

• Avoidance-based coping;
• Distraction coping technique;
• Aggressive coping;
• Self-destructive coping;

Sometimes, we may not realise that we’ve adopted a maladaptive coping style. What feels like strength or resilience, such as pushing through without help, ignoring pain or suppressing emotions, might be helpful in the short term but may become a harmful (maladaptive) pattern.

This is why it is important to identify your dominant coping patterns to help you deal better with life’s challenges.

How To Identify Your Dominant Coping Patterns

Sometimes we cannot predict our response to traumatic or challenging events. Being able to trace patterns that highlight your body’s and emotional response to events can be highly beneficial.

Note: For those with significant or unresolved trauma, even healthy coping exercises can sometimes bring up intense emotions or body sensations. This isn’t a weakness, please treat yourself with curiosity and not judgment and with that in mind. If you notice distress, pause, ground yourself, and return when you feel safer. Support from a trusted person or professional can help make these practices more manageable.

Some options to identify your coping pattern include:

• Use self-assessment tools, like the Brief COPE, which helps identify patterns. Remember that answering some reflective questions can sometimes activate uncomfortable emotions so pacing and self-compassion are important.
• Reflect on past stressful events: To identify emotional and behavioral patterns. Again if you have trauma history, try beginning with shorter windows of time with grounding strategies in place.
• Journal your responses: Including thoughts and feelings can be helpful. However, this can often intensify distress, especially in people with high or recent trauma. If that is your case, guided prompts or short responses may be more helpful for a while. If activated, please seek support from a safe person or a vetted mental health professional.
• Understand the two coping styles: Ask yourself which one you often turn to in stressful moments, without self-criticism.
• Ask for feedback from trusted, safe people: They may notice patterns like rumination or avoidance that you don’t see in yourself.

These techniques can help you to develop greater self-awareness rather than self-judgment. Often, once you can identify what you are doing and why, you can begin to replace the habits creating stress or distress with healthier, long-term strategies.

The Psychology Behind Why We Choose Certain Coping Mechanisms

Our coping behaviors are not just stress management techniques; they are influenced by aspects of our personality and shaped by situational factors, learned habits, and available resources.

Our personality and our choices are shaped by a mixture of our past experiences, current environment, neurological pathways, temperaments and even unconscious drives.

To understand why we choose certain coping mechanisms, we need a deeper understanding of the human psyche and brain.

Defence Mechanism and the Unconscious Mind 

Freudian psychology, also known as psychodynamic theory, highlights the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior. This theory explains coping through the lens of defense mechanisms. To Freud, defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies the ego employs to reduce anxiety and maintain psychological equilibrium.

In the clinical world, many maladaptive behaviors can be traced back to defense mechanisms which serve to protect the psyche from perceived psychic injury.

For example:

• Repression: This is a maladaptive behavior where one pushes distressing thoughts or memories out of awareness.
• Projection: This is a form of venting emotions where an individual attributes unwanted feelings to others as a way of avoiding internal conflict.
• Displacement: This happens when we redirect our emotional responses to other, perceived, safer, targets.

Defense mechanisms may work short term, but they often distort reality and delay true resolution. Understanding defense mechanisms through Freudian psychology may help us see that many maladaptive coping behaviors aren’t signs of weakness but unconscious attempts to protect the mind from emotional pain.

Conditioning and Learned behavior

As humans, we tend to resort to coping as a habit through learned conditioning.

If a child learns that crying leads to punishment or neglect, they may learn emotional suppression as a safer coping behavior. When people learn that avoiding conflict brings relief, avoidance behavior is reinforced.

Over time, these learned strategies become a habit that can be easily triggered by stress. If the learned habit was an adaptive behavior, it could lead to better self-regulations and handling of stress. But when the brain chooses what worked before, even if it is maladaptive, the individual often begins a loop of unhealthy learned coping mechanisms.

Neurobiology

One of the reasons why we choose certain coping mechanisms is also attributed to a neurological basis.

The amygdala is involved in threat detection. It activates the fight or flight response, survival response. The prefrontal cortex of the brain is also responsible for executive functions like emotional responses and planning solutions. The hippocampus provides memory and context, which helps us learn from the past.

With people who have experienced chronic stress or trauma, the amygdala becomes overstimulated, often causing reactivity. Also, the prefrontal cortex may have decreased engagement which affects regulation and decision-making. This leads to impulsive behaviors, fear-based, maladaptive coping behaviors like panic, withdrawal and even outbursts. The nervous system becomes dysregulated. 

In other words, chronic stress and trauma can rewire the brain and reinforce these neurological patterns, especially when maladaptive coping behaviors are repeatedly used.

Socio-Cultural Influence on Coping Behaviors

Human beings are social animals, which means that our society affects us as much as we affect it. Therefore, our coping mechanisms are also influenced by our society. Cultural beliefs, gender norms, religious or spiritual teachings, and social norms each influence how we respond to life’s challenges.

For example, in many cultures around the world, expressing vulnerability is seen as a sign of weakness, especially for men. According to this cross-cultural analysis carried out in 2025, cultures are broadly divided into individualist and collectivist, and both have a profound influence on coping mechanisms.

In collectivist cultures, like Asia and Africa, people tend to emphasise interdependence. Coping strategies in these societies often focus on seeking societal support and relying on family.

In contrast many Western cultures promote individualism, which focuses on self-reliance and independence. Coping strategies in such a culture may involve problem-solving or isolation as coping or simply figuring things out alone.

Other psychological reasons why we choose certain coping patterns include past trauma and emotional memory, attachment theory, interpersonal coping, cognitive appraisal and even belief systems.

The bottom line is that coping mechanisms do not exist in a vacuum and are certainly not black and white. By learning the deeper psychological reasons why we do what we do, we can begin our healing journey and make healthy coping choices.

How to Shift from Maladaptive to Adaptive Coping

Recognising that you are stuck in a maladaptive coping style is the first step. This is not a weakness.

It’s important to distinguish genuine strengths from maladaptive behaviors that merely masquerade as strength, and may actually be maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Whenever you notice that you are coping in a way that feels unhelpful or misaligned, you can explore shifting by:

• Taking responsibility for your reactions, without criticism/judgment;
• Starting with one coping skill at a time;
• Celebrating daily wins to boost motivation;
• Practising self-regulation skills like mindfulness, meditation for stress, and yoga;
• Healthily repeating and reinforcing healthy, aligned adaptive behaviors to help them become more consistent.

It is very important to mention that this shift is not easy; it will most likely be uncomfortable and certainly will not happen overnight. However, it is doable especially with healthy support and practicing encouraging self-talk instead of self-criticism.

It is going to take a while to unlearn maladaptive behaviors. Shifting from maladaptive coping to adaptive coping isn’t about perfection; it’s about progress. With awareness, intentional practice and healthy support, you can gradually rewire your stress response and build a more resilient, aligned version of yourself.

Coping Strategies Backed By Science That Promote Resilience

Scientific research has shown that certain coping strategies consistently support emotional resilience, mental well-being, and long-term psychological health. These techniques not only help individuals bounce back from stress but also build the capacity to handle future challenges more effectively.

Some of these strategies include:

• Cognitive reappraisal:Experimental studies on emotional regulation have shown that reappraisal is more effective and healthier than suppression, leading to better emotional outcomes.
• Problem-focused coping: Studies have discovered that getting to the root cause of your problem can be one aspect of support that can ease stress.
• Self-compassion: Self-compassion is the act of being kind to yourself. It often involves not labeling things as black and white, nor good or bad, especially yourself. Research conducted on the role of self-compassion in development has found that this trait is linked to increased feelings of happiness, optimism, connectedness, and decreased levels of anxiety, depression, and perceived failure.

Again, depending on your nervous system capacity and trauma history, other techniques which may be helpful include journaling, mindfulness meditation, seeking safe social support, positive self-talk, gratitude practice, etc.

By safely and gradually incorporating them into your daily life, you may not only strengthen your ability to manage current challenges but also prepare yourself to face future ones with greater self-awareness, compassion, confidence, health, and clarity.

Self-Assessment Questions: Where Do You Stand? 

Understanding your coping style starts with honest, self-aware questions that assist you in connecting with your inner self and uncovering your reactions and responses.

Again, do this safely and slowly especially depending on your personal history, stress, and trauma. By examining your emotional awareness, typical stress responses, and reliance on support systems, you can begin to identify patterns in how you cope. Remember, be kind to yourself. Try not to judge yourself and try approaching yourself instead, with curiosity.

Ask questions like: 

• Do I tend to talk to someone healthily or keep it to myself?
• Do I healthily engage in problem-solving, or do I avoid the issue?
• Do I turn to distractions like alcohol, food, or screen time?
• How can I respond and not react if this same, non threatening event happens again?
• Do I need professional support or more support via friends and family?

Evaluating your current habits also helps you recognise if you’re relying on short-term relief rather than long-term resilience. This self-awareness is essential for growth because it allows you to pinpoint areas where you might be stuck and opens the door to healthier, more aligned strategies.

When to Seek Help: Therapy And Support For Coping Challenges

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we may find ourselves overwhelmed and unable to cope with life’s challenges on our own. This is a clear sign that it’s okay and often, very necessary to seek help. This is not a weakness.

If your usual adaptive coping strategies no longer align or, despite your best efforts, your emotional state remains unchanged, your productivity is declining, or your mental health is impacted, it’s important to recognise these as red flags that your system needs safe help and support. Surviving by relying on maladaptive coping behaviors is also a strong indicator that additional support may be needed.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 in the U.S., or use the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Chat via 988lifeline.org. And please know you are not alone!

Help can come from a variety of sources, depending on your needs and preferences. Mental health professionals such as counselors, professional coaches or different therapists can provide practical tools and structured support.

For some individuals, spiritual leaders or support groups offer a sense of connection or guidance. In more severe cases, a psychiatrist may be required to assess and manage underlying mental health conditions.

Seeking help is never a sign of weakness. It is a courageous step towards growth.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do adaptive coping behaviors enhance mental health?

Coping behaviors enhance mental health by reducing stress, building neurological resilience, and improving emotional balance.

What are common examples of maladaptive coping strategies?

As we discussed, any coping strategy can be maladaptive, depending on the time, circumstance, use and a multitude of factors. That said, commonly labeled examples of maladaptive coping strategies include substance use, avoidance, aggression, and emotional suppression.

How can I identify my coping mechanisms effectively?

You can begin identifying your coping mechanisms by using self-assessment tools, (and if safe to do so) engaging in reflection, journaling, and seeking feedback.

How can I transition from maladaptive to adaptive coping?

The most realistic way to transition from maladaptive to coping strategies is first to recognise unhelpful patterns without judgement and with self-compassion. Then consciously replace them with healthier strategies like, seeking support and practicing emotional and nervous system regulation.

How does culture influence coping strategies in individuals?

Culture influences coping strategies by shaping how individuals perceive stress, express emotions, choose coping methods, and more. Some people choose community support, spiritual practices or individual problem-solving based on shared beliefs, values and social norms.

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