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Active coping strategies improve resilience post-injury, but can be hard to access.

Brain injury hampers flow, impacting acquired skills and coping abilities.

Finding supportive human connections is crucial for adaptive coping post-brain injury.

Last time, I wrote about what the research says regarding coping after brain injury. This week, I want to analyze how well this research dovetails with a real-world example (mine).

The American Psychological Association defines coping as “the use of cognitive and behavioral strategies to manage the demands of a situation when these are appraised as taxing or exceeding one’s resources or to reduce the negative emotions and conflict caused by stress.”

As I noted last time, Cardile et al. wrote, “Research has shown that patients with ABI who use active coping strategies and are problem-oriented face the disease with greater resilience and a sense of self-efficacy and report fewer symptoms.” Sasse et al. in 2014 divided coping strategies into adaptive action/distraction versus maladaptive trivialization/resignation. Bryant et al. in 2000 identified avoidance as a maladaptive coping strategy.

By damaging affect, emotional control, and cognitions, brain injury drastically reduces one’s resources and access to active coping strategies.

I faced this reality after my brain injury. Yet according to the research, my resilient approach of facing my problems, seeking to understand them instead of trivializing and avoiding, and persistently looking for solutions aligned with better coping.

Pre-Injury Coping Strategy

My neurorehab stress management course determined that my top coping strategy prior to my brain injury was reading. Unfortunately, the injury destroyed it. Reading contains elements of distraction—escaping reality into another world—and action, e.g., accumulating knowledge about one’s injury and learning what others do to cope, heal, and reintegrate into society. Any........

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