CORRELATION OF CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONALITY'S COPING BEHAVIOR WITH MANIFESTATIONS OF SYMPTOMS OF ITS TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The article is focused on the study of the peculiarities of coping behavior of individuals with traumatic experience acquired as a result of experiencing psycho-traumatic situations of various severity and intensity in the conditions of a full-scale war. Theoretical (analysis and generalization of existing research on the problems of traumatic stress and coping), empirical (diagnostic methods) and mathematical statistics methods were applied to achieve the goal and tasks.  Modern views on the concepts of trauma, psychotrauma and coping behavior (overcoming behavior) are considered. The peculiarities of individual behavior in a traumatic situation are analyzed. A significant number of links between the characteristics of coping behavior and the severity of the respondents' traumatic experience are determined. The relationship between personality coping styles with the acquired traumatic experience and its manifestations such as intrusion, avoidance, and excitability has been established. Individuals with a dominant task-oriented, “problem-solving” (problem-oriented strategy) coping style have been found to be less likely to experience subjective anxiety as a result of an acute event and show less avoidance. Conversely, individuals who rely more on emotion-oriented coping show higher symptoms of intrusion, avoidance, and excitability. The use of avoidance and distraction strategies, which are aimed at temporarily reducing the strength of stress, is ineffective and does not give the expected result when intrusion and excitability dominate as symptoms of a traumatic experience. It has been proven that coping styles are focused on solving tasks, perform a protective role and are associated with a decrease of anxiety in stressful situations, and coping styles focused on emotions are associated with greater reactions to anxiety, activating symptoms of intrusion, avoidance and excitability. Thus, problem-oriented strategies are a constructive and effective method of overcoming stress factors, while emotionally oriented coping strategies can be an ineffective coping mechanism and contribute to greater personal traumatization in stressful situations.

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