Promotion of Identity and Coping Strategies: A Model of Stress Management

Abstract:

Stress is described as cause for a lot of diseases and affecting the positive well-being. Furthermore, it is obvious and hidden –chronic stress – that remains unnoticed until there are some physical reactions, eg. sleep disorders, etc. The dynamic of the life today poses a lot of requirements: self-improvement, being competitive all the time. Economic and social changes, migration flows, abundant information and news, strive after being popular and so on, increase the stress levels. Again the general context leads to procrastination of identity commitments in the different life domains. Only one of the examples in this line is the implemented recently concept of “emerging adulthood”– the extended period from 18- 19 to 29 years. What describes the life today are is the plenty of choices that impose the need of more time for roles exploration and decision-making and the related stress. This provoked our interest to study the relations between identity and coping strategies and propose a model for stress management as both identity and coping determine the positive self-perception and well-being. Article summarizes the results from a study with 350 Bulgarians, administered self-assessment instruments, describing identity statuses and coping strategies relations, underlying the implemented training and proposed model of stress management. The main idea is that stress is positive, so the focus has to be on its recognition and management. We suggest the idea that the successful reactive coping strategies can become a domain of the psychosocial identity in the form of proactive coping.