We all have different ways or approaches to deal with stress, and that’s quite normal. Few may take therapies, exercise, and mindfulness activities to release their stress or negative negative. Others may use self-strategies or techniques that work best for them. Therefore, firstly, you must figure out how to adopt maladaptive behaviors and discover the healthy way to deal with stressors. In this blog, we will learn how to use the maladaptive techniques not to get into any trouble and how to replace them with adaptive coping strategies.
What Is Maladaptive Behavior & Why Does It Matter?
To understand what is maladaptive behavior, we will examine this psychological term and the disorders related to it. It is defined as using certain actions or behaviors to deal wth stressors in an unhealthy way. These actions can give them temporary relief. But they are not meant to be productive strategies. This behavior can lead a person into a mortifying situation. Therefore, one should be careful to adopt productive coping mechanisms targeting strategies rather than maladaptive behavior. A person may avoid responsibilities and use drugs to avoid stress, but this can cause self-harm if it’s not stopped at the right time.
The Root Cause Of Maladaptive Behavior:
Let’s properly understand the maladaptive behavior definition. This behavior interferes with a person’s ability to work. It is an ineffective way to deal with stressful circumstances. To understand this complex behavior and its origin. Discover how maladaptive behavior can be influenced by environmental, biological factors.
Read More: Attention Seeking Behavior & The Emotional Struggles Behind It?
Life Stressors:
Life is unpredictable, and so are we. The loss of a job, loved ones, and divorce can be devastating for one’s life. This rates a maladaptive anxiety in a person. Also, bad experiences generate negative thoughts. It compels a person to adopt maladaptive thinking patterns that lead them to negative consequences in their life.
Learned Behavior:
We learn from our elders. Therefore, children may develop maladaptive thoughts by observing their parents. Parents should be role models for their children. Otherwise, poor stress management can lead them to a harmful or problematic thinking pattern.
Childhood Trauma:
Childhood plays an important role that shaping our adulthood. The neglect of emotions can deliver maladaptive symptoms in a person, such as emotion regulation, social anxiety, etc. In addition to this, PTSD, bipolar disorder these both mental health conditions that can be caused due to childhood trauma.
Low Self-Esteem:
A person with low self-esteem engages in negative self-talk. This can generate self-harm or negative energy. Low self-esteem can contribute to depression and lead a person into psychosis symptoms. They both relate to maladaptive behaviors that can impact a person’s life in multiple ways.
Mental Health Conditions:
Several mental health conditions, such as ADHD and OCD, can lead a person to adaptive behavior. This can develop maladaptive symptoms in a person. They may start avoiding their responsibilities or important tasks. You can spot these maladaptive symptoms in a person dealing with unhelpful strategies to cope with their anxiety.
Adaptive Vs Maladaptive: What’s The Difference?
Adaptive behaviors are effective in helping an individual deal with the challenges that promote emotional growth. Besides this, maladaptive behaviors prevent a person from personal growth and lead them to destructive behavior that can ruin their relationship.
Moreover, you can differentiate the behavior with the following examples.
- In adaptive behaviors, people seek help for guidance, while people with maladaptive behavior avoid responsibilities to avoid the anxiety associated with them.
- People with adaptive behavior self-harm due to certain activities, while in maladaptive behavior, people seek therapy for their emotional well-being.
- Adaptive behavior comes to you to do mindfulness practices; on the other hand, maladaptive behaviors disturb the peace of your mind and compel you to rely on drugs that help in temporarily escaping from problems.
- People with adaptive behavior tend to use critical thinking to resolve their problems. On the other hand, people with maladaptive behavior blame others for their faults to get rid of regret and guilt.
Read More: What Is Passive Aggressive Behaviour?
How Maladaptive Behavior Can Impact Your Mental & Physical Health:
Your mental health plays a significant role in your well-being. If we go deeper to understand what is maladaptive behavior in psychology? Recognizing this answer, it is the easiest way for a person to cope with a distressing situation. This can give them temporary relief from a stressful situation. However, a healthy mindset can make your life bloom. According to research, a positive and healthy mindset in psychology can reduce the heart attacks and depression symptoms. Besides this, poor mental health can be linked with chronic stress, such as heart attacks, chronic illness, cancer, etc. It can lead you towards poor sleep, such as insomnia, that can disturb your daily life functioning activities.
Furthermore, severe anxiety can cause physical diseases such as psoriasis. This is a skin disease that can be caused by stress and depression. However, you can try out relaxing techniques or do exercises. Also, a good, balanced diet can help maintain good mental or physical health.
Evidence-Based Treatments for Maladaptive Behavior:
The maladaptive behavior is used to prosthesis the situation. It can lead a person towards temporary relief. Learn not to adopt maladaptive coping skills, and try to adopt healthy coping skills.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:
This is effective approach that changed your negative thinking patterns. It shaped your thoughts that can make positive impact on your mind. Besides this, you can take psychotherapy to distorted your dysfunctional beliefs.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy:
This helps an client to control their intense emotions so they cam live more fulfilling life. Besides this, client use maladaptive emotions or detrimental behavioural pattern that are harmful for their long term relationships. This can lead you in long run consequences. Therefore, this valuable DBT approach help in managing your emotions for distress tolerance.
Trauma-Informed Therapy:
This is a highly recommended therapy for maladaptive behavior. It is helpful in identifying the client root causes of a certain problem. This way, they can address a person’s personal experiences to understand their childhood trauma that has shaped their adulthood. Furthermore, you can take telepsychiatry, you can discuss your feelings without the fear of judgment from your comfort place.
Group Therapy:
Group therapy also works wonders. It helps you when you get to know other people experiences. It helps you in understanding other people’s perspectives and their approaches towards healing.
Medication:
You can take medication if therapy doesn’t work for you. The clients are being suggested mood stabilizers that can help in reducing anxiety. Besides this, they can take psychiatric medication management. It depends on a person’s underlying condition.
Read More: Defining Emotional Intelligence
Choosing Healing Over Habit:
No one wants to experience pain, but we might take it normal as stress comes naturally. People might use maladaptive behavior as a protective shield. But it can trap them in pain or fear. This can distress them and emotionally or physically drain their energy. Therefore, change is important and possible when you take the first step towards your well-being. Moreover, you can spot common types of maladaptive behavior, such as self-doubt, self-criticism, etc. You can take a brave step by choosing healthy options that can benefit you in the long run. Choose Inland Empire Behavioral Group to build healthy relationships. We will help you in gaining control that improves your quality of life.
