The Eighth Characteristic of the Coping Behaviors
It is not my intention to write an endless list of characteristics of the Coping Behaviors. However, it cannot be overstressed how important to the clinician it is to know them. Just as we would want to dissuade any patient from behaviors that are obviously harmful, so we also need to know those behaviors that are harmful over time even if less obvious and less intuitive. Knowledge of them lends credence to the clinician.
After all, lots of the Coping Behaviors carry societal approval in many cultures. In the United States many people who opt to work eighty-to-one-hundred-hour work weeks are often looked upon with approval and even admiration. My favorite example of a Coping Behavior, smoking cigarettes is seen in many cultures as an ordinary behavior, even citing some presumed benefits. “It helps me keep the weight off.”
There is no end of the rationalizations for the professed benefits of or justifications for the Coping Behaviors.
In this past week I encountered a salesperson in an upscale establishment. My wife and I were purchasing a set of glasses. He came and answered our questions. We proceeded to the counter and made our payment.
He reeked of cigarettes revealing not an occasional pleasure, but an addiction. I wondered what discomforts his addiction caused in the lives of other people. My wife and I were eager to get distant from him. I felt sympathy for his colleague who was in close contact with him all day.
Sensing he would not appreciate any “kind” or “helpful” words from me, I kept silent. I could feel the resentment that lay just below his surface ready to spring forth and defend his Coping Behavior. But then, I had no contract with him. He had not placed himself in front of me and said, “Help me.”
Had I met him because he had come to my office seeking help, it would not have taken me long to ask him, “What is it about the planet earth that you dislike so much that you wish to cut short your time on it?” In other words, I could say to him, “Why are you killing yourself?” And then we would have been off on a search for his key Injunctive Messages.” We would find a lot of our answers on the Survival pages of the charts, beginning with the DON’T EXIST and the DON’T BE WELL Injunctive Messages.
We could then extend our search to the others looking for the ways in which this self-destructive behavior was aiding him in coping with messages denying him the right to intimacy or identity. My first impulse on meeting him was to get away from him as quickly as I politely could.
Walls are built for a purpose even if one dies of loneliness behind them. His scent was a wall. Remember, Coping Behaviors are not based on common sense nor were they created from a brain with a fully fleshed out prefrontal cortex. They are a source of immediate comfort to the person.
I became aware of another characteristic of the Coping Behaviors which will be the eighth: They are ancient solutions looking for current problems. Allow me to explain.
The Coping Behaviors came into being for just what their title implies: a way to cope with (not resolve) the toxic influence of an Injunctive Message (a believable falsehood) in a person’s life. The Coping Behaviors are solutions that people came up from either from their own ingenuity or from imitating behaviors modeled by others.
There are two demonstrative and observable behaviors that Dr. Meyer Friedman came to call “Type A Behavior.” They are Free Floating Hostility and Time Urgency. Neither of them is a useful behavior in a current moment. There are more effective strategies for resolving difficulties or responding to a stressor. The Coping Behaviors represent a habit established in the antiquity of a person’s life.
But for someone who has these two habits ingrained through repeated use, there are lots of circumstances that seem to call for them and feel appropriate to the person using them.
Imagine the person sitting in a huge traffic jam honking his horn and making angry gestures, perhaps banging on the steering wheel, seething. It’s strange if you think about it. Those behaviors do not resolve the situation. But they might divert the person’s attention away from unwanted feelings such as fear or helplessness.
As odd or as inappropriate as these behaviors seem to others, the user will defend them if challenged. “I got upset because of the idiots who built our highways.” “I had an important meeting to attend.” “I wasn’t going to sit there and do nothing.” It doesn’t occur to them that there might have been an alternate and even better way to respond.
Their responses were waiting for the event, not the other way around. That is why the phrase “Free Floating Hostility” is significant. The hostility is already there just waiting for an opportunity to pounce. It is on hand. The stimulating event doesn’t create the Coping Behavior. It justifies the use of it. After all, it is well rehearsed and available on demand.
Instantly.
As I wrote in my previous article about the Seventh Characteristic, everyone uses the Coping Behaviors in some moments and often appropriately, but which ones pass “The hammer test?” This question is based on the old saying, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Think about the addicted smoker. If something upsetting or unexpected takes place that creates anxiety in the person, the first response is often to grab a cigarette. Why?
Because it is an established source of comfort and reassurance despite its deadly risks over time. People often carry them in a shirt pocket to have available at a moment’s notice.
Instantly.
We “carry” our most familiar Coping Behaviors close to the surface, ready to use in a moment, especially when taken off our guard. They seem like a natural and even helpful response to situations. That makes them difficult to confront. Most often their deficits are not obvious in the immediate moment but need to be considered in their effect over time.
It is a significant accomplishment for someone to recognize the use of a Coping Behavior in a current moment. “Oh, sorry, there I go again.” “I think my voice just became a little loud and demanding.” “I think I just tried to read your mind. Perhaps you would like to tell me what you need.”
Here is the current list to date of the eight characteristics of the Coping Behaviors:
They bring comfort to the person using them.
They are discomforting to persons in proximity.
Over time they will cause damage to the individual: physically, spiritually and/or relationally.
Their habitual use conflicts with the dictates of common sense.
They were created at a time in life before the person possessed a fully developed prefrontal cortex.
Over time they become ego syntonic, that is they come to feel like a natural attribute of the person and not an adaptive behavior.
They often produce momentary satisfaction but never healing because they contain no warmth or invitation to emotional vulnerability.
(This seventh characteristic is printed in red because the wording here is somewhat different from the article about it.)
They are ancient solutions looking for current problems.
These are not unconscious behaviors. They can be identified and easily if reluctantly recognized. Educating people to their presence is not a criticism of the person. There is no stigma of immorality or cause for shame.
People will often feel shame or dismay when “caught in the act” but that is also an ancient feeling. Remember the Coping Behaviors came from the relief created by the Defiant Decisions. Those were acts of originality often harnessing a person’s courage to fight back. We show admiration for the Defiant Decisions because they were the person’s best attempt at a healthy response to the Injunctive Message.
These behaviors are either outside the person’s awareness or their negative impact is under-appreciated. “I know I can be a little controlling but sometimes that is just what it takes” (Look for the DON’T TRUST IM). “I know my work hours might be long but that is how I show my family I really care about them” (Look for the DON’T INVEST IM).
Dr. Friedman’s two books on Type A Behavior are explicit in describing the exact characteristics of the pattern. They are clearly written as is my book about the same behavior pattern. It is not uncommon for someone to make the comment, “Well I read the book, and I don’t think it relates to me.” Meanwhile his partner is sitting beside him rolling her eyes and silently mouthing the words, “Oh, my God!”
When we were in the very beginning stages of what has happily turned out to be a fifty year marriage my wife was often like a mirror that could speak. Through her I learned the impact of some of my behaviors I had no clue about. “When we go to the dinner party tonight, it would be good if others are also able to tell their stories even though yours are very good.” “Not everyone in this restaurant wants to hear everything you have to say.”
She did this in good humor and I remember trying not to be too thin skinned. She had the courage to inform me of behaviors that were impacting her and other people in less than a positive way. She was my window into understanding how competitive I was in social situations (Look for the DON’T BE IMPORTANT Injunctive Message.)”
Bob Anderson was the genial general manager of the ITAA for number of years in the late 1970’ and early 80’s. I served as editor of the TAJ during his tenure. There were budgetary issues. The TAJ was the largest expense for the organization and was often the target of proposals to reduce it and the size of the Journal.
At one August conference I went before the board and defeated each proposal and left that meeting with my budget completely intact. Later in the hallway I encountered Bob Anderson and was surprised when he shared with me his irritation, “I didn’t like what you did in there today. You had no reason to be so overbearing. The board was happy to cooperate with you. You didn’t need to do that (Look for the DON’T [ever] MAKE IT Injunctive Message).”
I was stunned. I presumed he was walking up to congratulate me. I thought I had brought a knife to a gunfight and the survival of the Journal was on the line. What Bob was telling me is that I brought a bazooka not to a knife fight, but a picnic. He didn’t appreciate me being a bully. Who knew? Certainly not me.
In summary, we all use the behaviors that comprise the Coping Behaviors at different times. In and of themselves they are not “bad” behaviors. Often, they are appropriate. As a camp counselor during eight summers, I learned to broadcast my voice over long distances to get the attention of errant campers. That was not a Coping Behavior. It was a behavior necessary to the situation. But when I used the same voice in a restaurant talking to my wife (and everyone else) it became a Coping Behavior.
We are seeking to identify patterns of the overuse of normal behaviors, where the “hammer” is always the first tool chosen often to the exclusion of better and perhaps unknown choices. That is diagnostic of the presence of an Injunctive Message because the person just automatically turned to an “ancient solution” to rectify a current problem.
That person just brought a bazooka to a picnic and doesn’t know it. And that person will continue to use that pattern until such time when a trusted person holds up a mirror and shows him the destructive nature of the behavior. And that trusted person can then say to this man or woman, “I can explain where that behavior came from, I can help you know the Injunctive Message, and I can help you resolve it.”
Eric Berne said that the opposite of being in script was to have autonomy. Is there any greater autonomy to be gained than being able to choose how we behave in life and have compassion for ourselves and others in the process?”
Dr. John R. McNeel
February 23, 2025
ADDENDUM:
From C. S Lewis: In summing up his day.
I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what. A man does when he is taken oS his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rates in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats*: it only prevents them from hiding.”
From Mere Christianity, pgs. 164-165
*Bold emphasis added
A courageous self-observation of his own Coping Behaviors.