The Adaptive Potential of Coping Through Emotional Approach

Abstract

Abstract The words of this woman participating in our research on adjustment to breast cancer capture the focus of this chapter: an exploration of the adaptive potential of acknowledging, understanding, and expressing one’s emotions under stressful conditions. Although some theorists have emphasized the destructive capacity of intense emotions, newer functionalist perspectives highlight their adaptive utility. We begin by attempting to reconcile findings in the empirical stress and coping literature suggesting that emotion-oriented coping is maladaptive with contrasting theoretical and empirical evidence from other domains indicating that processing and expressing emotion can be useful.