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Spiritual Approaches to Coping and Mindfulness

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Coping and the Challenge of Resilience

Abstract

In the post-transactional coping era founded by Richards Lazarus, religious coping and meaning making have emerged as responses to trauma. At times of trauma and major life stresses that are less amenable to problem solving, ‘implicit religiousness’ is often incorporated into a religious meaning-making model where spirituality plays a part. There are many ‘faces’ of religious coping as researchers consider the challenges of later life when the majority of adults claim that they incorporate religion and spirituality into their coping repertoire. Mindfulness has also emerged as a strong contributor to an individual’s capacity to deal with stress and thus has become a personal coping resource within many people’s contemporary pattern of coping.

It is helpful to spend time with people that I love; tribal connections are valuable. … People make me feel better about life. (Celine, surgeon)

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Frydenberg, E. (2017). Spiritual Approaches to Coping and Mindfulness. In: Coping and the Challenge of Resilience. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56924-0_10

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