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Coping in Good Times and Bad: Developing Fortitude
'I wanted to bring together what we know about how we cope and, through that, provide a template for a good life.' No one thinks about how well they're coping with life's daily stresses, until they're not. Coping in Good Times and Bad brings together what we know about coping so we can create a life of health, joy, satisfaction, resilience, and wellbeing. 'Coping' and 'resilience' have become very commonly used words, especially in our COVID-impacted world, but what we need is a template for a good life. Decades of research, teaching, and professional practice have provided psychologist Erica Frydenberg with intimate insight into how and why we cope well and not so well, and practical ways of developing and refining our coping strategies. Integrating coping with key proven ideas in contemporary psychology, such as emotional intelligence, mindset, mindfulness, and grit, she goes beyond focusing on particular kinds of crisis (trauma, relationship breakdown, anxiety), and addresses the need for a framework that strengthens us through life, in good times and bad.
216 pages, Paperback
Published August 30, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 11, 2023
The blurb made this seem like it would be mainly original contributions by Erica Frydenburg. In fact, it was more a compilation of major works on coping and resilience.
In the last chapter she said she would summarise her points but then seemed to add a hodgepodge of paragraphs that hadn't fit in anywhere else. I didn't leave the book with a strong grasp of the key point or most important ideas. There were so many ideas that by the end I had lost the forest for the trees.
She was not particularly critical of anything. For example, despite being a newly published book, her description of mindfulness was entirely uncritical, with no mention of the major studies which have shown that at least for some children/people, mindfulness exacerbates mental problems.
Editing issues also, with some near-identical sentences included one after another... Suffered from academic writing, at one point she says she interviewed thousands of people about their coping strategies which she narrowed down to 72 types. Then 19 types. Then four types. Okay... So four then?
I did appreciate that the data and studies were largely Australian or relevant to Australians specifically.
It was fairly easy to read overall.
In the last chapter she said she would summarise her points but then seemed to add a hodgepodge of paragraphs that hadn't fit in anywhere else. I didn't leave the book with a strong grasp of the key point or most important ideas. There were so many ideas that by the end I had lost the forest for the trees.
She was not particularly critical of anything. For example, despite being a newly published book, her description of mindfulness was entirely uncritical, with no mention of the major studies which have shown that at least for some children/people, mindfulness exacerbates mental problems.
Editing issues also, with some near-identical sentences included one after another... Suffered from academic writing, at one point she says she interviewed thousands of people about their coping strategies which she narrowed down to 72 types. Then 19 types. Then four types. Okay... So four then?
I did appreciate that the data and studies were largely Australian or relevant to Australians specifically.
It was fairly easy to read overall.
Displaying 1 of 1 review