When helping people cope with their
stress, don’t be too obvious about it.
When a person we care about is
trying to cope with a stressful event in their life, we obviously want to help
them cope as much as possible.
Unfortunately our attempts to help may actually be no help at all. Researchers have found that people, who report
receiving help coping with a stressful event, only cope as well or even worse
than people who don’t report receiving any help. This may happen because receiving help draws
our attention to our problem, is a blow to our self-esteem or the “help” is
just not that good and makes the problem worse.
Researchers have also found, however, that people who just believe they have access to social support if they
should need it, cope better than those who don’t think they have sources of
social support. In other words, in times
of stress, if we think we have sources of social support we cope well. Yet if we actually receive help from those
sources of social support we don’t cope as well. These two findings seem contradictory, so a
group of researchers from New York University Harvard Medical
School
What was the research about?
The researchers recruited 68
couples in which one person was preparing to take the New York State Bar
Examination. The Bar Examination is a
2-day test that all aspiring lawyers must pass before they can practice law and
is generally a very stressful event. For
each of the 32 days leading up to the Bar Exam, both members of each couple
individually completed a short diary form.
In the diary form, the person about to take the Bar Exam (the examinee)
indicated their feelings of anxiety and depression, as well as whether they had
received social support from their partner that day. The partner indicated whether he or she had
given the examinee social support that day.
Results showed that during the time
of highest stress (the week before the exam), feelings of anxiety and
depression actually increased on days
when the examinee reported receiving social support from their partner. This was true whether or not the partner had
actually provided any social support that day.
On the other hand, anxiety and depression decreased on days when the partner provided social support but the
examinee did not report receiving social support. In other words, on days when the person under
stress was given social support but just didn’t realize it, they felt
better. How could a person receive
support and not realize it? One example
is when your partner does a household chore without even telling you. The stress associated with the chore is gone
but you don’t even realize your partner helped you out. These results show that receiving social
support does help people cope with
stress, but only when their attention is not drawn to the fact they are getting
help from another person.
Why should it matter to me?
It’s very common for people to want to help others
cope with a stressful event. If we
aren’t careful how we approach helping the other person, however, we may just
cause them more stress. If we help them
in a very obvious way this may just make the person feel worse by highlighting
their vulnerability to stress. Instead,
we should try to help them in ways that don’t draw their attention to their
stress. Realizing how to best help a
person cope is also important in times when we end up causing them more
stress. By understanding which type of
help is actually beneficial, we can avoid becoming confused or angry if a
person reacts negatively to receiving our “help”.
Source: Bolger, Niall; Zuckerman, Adam &
Kessler, Ronald C. (2000). Invisible Support and Adjustment
to Stress. Journal
of Personality & Social Psychology. 79, 953-961.
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