Psychology of Adjustment Quiz

The Psychology of Adjustment

• Adjustment refers to any event or non-event that results in changed relationships, routines, assumptions, identity, and roles (Schlossberg, 1994).
• Feldman defines adjustment as "efforts people make to meet the demands and challenges placed on them by the world."
• In scientific terms, adjustment is the behavioural process by which humans/animals maintain equilibrium among their needs or between their needs and the obstacles in their environments.
• Adjustment is the before, after, and during a transition.

Types of Transitions

• Anticipated transitions: Predictable transitions such as marriage or graduation.
• Unanticipated transitions: Sudden events like death or getting fired.
• Non-events: Transitions we expect but do not happen, such as not getting a driver's license.

Quality of Life

• The WHO definition of Quality of Life is an individual's perception of their life position in the context of their culture and value systems.

Domains of Quality of Life

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Feelings of hopelessness
• Anhedonia
• Difficulty concentrating
• Sleeping problems
• Reckless behaviour

Coping with Transitions: The 4 Ss

• Situation: Trigger, timing, role change, duration, concurrent stress, responsibility
• Self: Personal/demographic factors (age, sex, gender, culture), psychological factors (optimism, spiritual outlook, resilience)
• Support: Social networks (intimate, family, friends, institutions, communities)
• Strategies: To cope

Domains of Wellbeing (Physical, Psychological, Independence, Social, Environment)

• Physical: Pain, energy, fatigue, sexual activity, rest
• Psychological: Emotions, thinking/learning, memory, self-esteem, body image
• Independence: Mobility, daily living activities, dependence on substances, communication capacity, work capacity
• Social Relationships: Personal relationships, social support, activities
• Environment: Freedom, safety, home environment, work satisfaction, financial resources, health and social care, opportunities, and physical environment (pollution, noise, traffic, climate)

Spirituality

• Personal beliefs have a role in coping and resilience.
• Religion

Personal Growth

• Involves mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual growth allowing productive and satisfying life within societal norms.
• Achieved by: raising self-awareness, understanding others, raising personal aspirations, acquiring positive attitudes, developing higher psychological values, and developing individuality.

Stages of Transition (Williams, 1999)

• First shock, reaction based on whether event is good or bad.
• Provisional adjustment (up to 3-4 months).
• Inner contradictions: conflict between old and new views of the world.
• Inner crisis: stress, anxiety, or contradictions affecting deeply held beliefs.

The Cycle of Adjustment

• Individuals differ in resilience to transitions.
• Transitions often reach a crisis about 6 months after the event.
• Circumstances may lead to several different outcomes, including situational and intrapersonal learning and unlearning.
• Behaviour and cognitive restructuring occur in phases.

Extended Crisis

• Happens when individuals can't adapt to trauma or change.
• Can last months or years, manifesting in physical or mental difficulties.

Breaking out of Crisis (Cognitive Restructuring)

• The mind reconstructs to adapt to a new reality of life.
• Cognitive dissonance (feeling discomfort from conflicting beliefs) can block the process of breaking out of the crisis but can be addressed by releasing repressed emotions.
• Cognitive restructuring occurs after the breaking out period, creating newfound meaning, confidence, and optimism.

Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

• Personality develops through 8 stages (infancy to adulthood).
• Each stage is linked with a psychosocial crisis.
• Successfully navigating these crises leads to acquiring virtues.

Application to Transition

• Ego qualities acquired in earlier stages can support navigating transitions.
• There can be challenges to the ego during transition.
• Features include explorations, instability, self-focus, possibilities, and feeling-in-between.

Stress and Coping

• Stress comprises any circumstances that threaten wellbeing.
• The Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping considers stress as exposure to overwhelming stimuli exceeding coping ability.
• Biological factors influence stress reactions, including genetics.
• Psychological factors include personality, cognition, and emotions.
• Social factors like support networks, culture, and relationships play a role in how stress is perceived and dealt with.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Consists of three stages: Alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
• Describes the body's physiological response to stress.

Coping Patterns of Lower Value

• Isolating
• Learned helplessness
• Snapping at others
• Blaming
• Indulging
• Rebellion
• Prolonged defensive coping (denial, etc)

Coping Strategies

• Emotion-focused coping: manages emotional reactions to the problem.
• Problem-focused coping: takes direct steps to confront or minimize a stressor.

Personality Types

• Type A: ambitious, hard-driving, perfectionistic, high-stress.
• Type B: low-stress, easy-going, adaptable.
• Type C: Highly conscientious, perfectionistic, struggle to reveal emotions.
• Type D: Tendency to get distressed (worried, sad, low confidence).

Social Cognition

• Social cognition encompasses processes that impact how we process, interpret, and respond to social signals.
• Schemas (mental frameworks) are cognitive shortcuts impacting perception and behavior.
• The fundamental attribution error is overemphasizing personality traits over situational factors.
• Actor-observer bias: attributing own actions to situation, others’ to personality.
• Types of schemas: person, social, self, and event schemas.
• Stereotypes are oversimplified beliefs about groups.

Core Schemas

• Benefit by providing shortcuts to everyday life, but can be problematic.
• Generated from early experiences.
• Influence attention and information processing; confirming information is favoured.
• Related to coping styles.
• Coping styles can strengthen schemas.
• Coping style can reinforce schemas, creating a cycle making change difficult.
• Coping styles are: child, dysfunctional, and dysfunctional parent modes.

Desire, Love & Attachment

• Desires are motivated by biological and evolutionary factors (survival, reproduction).
• Desire is intense but short-lived, primarily physical.
• Love is a more complex emotion involving pleasure, devotion, and intimacy.
• Attachment is a deep, enduring emotional bond, driven by comfort and security.

Attachment Styles

• Attachment styles influence interaction and emotional intimacy.
• Styles include secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.

Relationship Growth

• Self-disclosure is revealing personal information, deepening relationships.
• Trust is believing the other person is honest, fostering disclosure.
• Interdependence recognizes the importance of the emotional bond.
• Empathy involves resonating with others' emotions, requiring mirror neurons and the hormone Oxytocin.
• Secure v Avoidant attachment styles.

Knapp's Relational Model

• Describes coming together (initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, bonding) and coming apart(differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding, terminating) in relationships.

Careers and Work

• Holland’s Trait Measurement matched personality type with work environments.

The Adjustment-Challenge Dilemma

• Adjusting to work while challenging its issues is a psychological dilemma.
• Aspects of work (e.g. implications for unfair practices, high job demands), interpersonal relations, and dealing with discrimination are targets of critique.
• Methods of personal response can be proactive or avoidance strategies.

Modes of Response

• Self-focus: Avoidance/denial (least effective), altering, ignoring.
• Self-focus: Supported responses (seeking help, confrontation/negotiation, threatening).
• Initiator focus: Advocacy seeking (reporting), seeking help.
• Social coping: bringing a friend, discussing, seeking counselling.

Adjustment Disorders

• Defined as an emotional or behavioral response to a stressor, significant distress or impairment in various areas.
• Responses are disproportionate to stressor severity or intensity.
• Typically resolving within six months, not lasting for the duration typical associated with PTSD.

Psychological and Biological Understanding

• Psychological vulnerabilities include weak ego strength.
• Learned helplessness is a factor in decreased ability to adjust; a feeling of lack of control.
• Early adverse events and experiences can develop maladaptive coping schemas.
• Biological factors impacting stress include brain and genetic influences.
• Humanistic perspectives recognize the pursuit of self-actualization.
• Psychodynamic perspectives address the role of unconscious conflict unresolved from childhood.
• cognitive-behavioural perspectives examine dysfunctional thinking and ineffective coping styles.

Gender and Sexuality

• Gender and sexuality frameworks consider the dynamic intersections affecting perspectives and relations, and emphasizing societal structures and power relations within contexts.