Do You Use Any of These Coping Responses?

Coping Responses: Fight, Flight, Submit

There are many ways people cope with being controlled. Most of them fit into the three coping styles listed below.

1. Fighting: resisting control, getting back at the controller in different ways, trying to come out as a winner with the controller being the loser.

2. Escaping: avoiding or running away from control--keeping thoughts within yourself or actually leaving the scene.

3. Submitting: giving in or giving up and doing just as the controller demands--and then resenting yourself and disliking the controller.

Here is an example of each of the coping styles using the following illustration:

Your teacher gets angry at some of the students in your class for continually goofing off and suddenly announces there will be a big test tomorrow.

1. You argue with the teacher that it isn't fair to punish the whole class. (Fight)
2. You don't go to that class the next day. (Flight)
3. You go home and study and take the test even though you think it's totally unfair. (Submit)

Read the following list of coping behaviors and keep a mental note of any of the ones you have used or now use:

1. Lying
2. Bossing, bullying
3. Aggressive arguing
4. Blaming others
5. Cheating, tattling
6. Feeling resentful, angry, hostile
7. Being submissive
8. Striking back, retaliating
9. Resisting, rebelling
10. Confirming, afraid to try something new*

*Excerpt from Dr. Thomas Gordon's F.E.T. Young Adult Resource Book

The Effects of Parental Power On The Child

Despite all the serious limitations of power, it strangely enough remains the method of choice for most parents, no matter what their education, social class, or economic level.

P.E.T. instructors invariably find that parents in their classes are surprisingly aware of the harmful effects of power. All we have to do is ask parents to draw from their own experience and tell us how they were affected when their parents used power over them. It is a strange paradox that parents remember how power felt to tehm as children but "forget" when they use power with their own children. We ask those in each class to list what they did as children to cope with their parents' use of power. Each class develops a list of coping mechanisms not too dissimilar from the following:

1. Resistance, defiance, rebellion, negativism
2. Resentment, anger, hostility
3. Aggression, retaliation, striking back
4. Lying, hiding feelings
5. Blaming others, tattling, cheating
6. Dominating, bossing, bullying
7. Needing to win, hating to lose
8. Forming alliances, organizing against parents
9. Submission, obedience, compliance
10. Apple-polishing, courting favor
11. Conformity, lack of creativity, fear of trying something new, requiring prior assurance of success
12. Withdrawing, escaping, fantasizing, regression

Watch the blog this week for more in-depth descriptions of what these coping mechanisms look like, and what's going on behind them.