Experiences and Coping Mechanisms to Deal with Difficult Emotions among Women in Early Adulthood: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Difficult emotions are defined as the emotions that are considered to have negative connotations. Researches showed that there are some significant differences in the way difficult emotions are dealt with among genders. This study explored these emotions in women and also focused on finding out strategies that women use to effectively deal with these emotions. A qualitative exploratory research design was used in this study. The sampling technique used in this research study was convenient sampling. The participants included seven female early adults in their 20’s (Age range 21-29; M=25, SD=1.3). Semi-structured, in-depth interviews of almost 60 minutes long were conducted. The collected data was then analyzed through thematic analysis method. Codes, themes, super-themes and clusters were generated after conducting thematic analysis. The results of the study include 5 clusters i.e. “the difficult emotion of sadness”, “the difficult emotion of anger”, “the difficult emotion of fear”, “the difficult emotion of guilt” and “the difficult emotion of grief”. Along with this, after analysis 10 super themes were generated i.e. “causes of sadness”, “coping strategies for sadness”, “causes of anger”, “coping strategies for anger’, “causes of fear”, “coping strategies of fear”, “causes of guilt”, “coping strategies of guilt”, “causes of grief” and “coping strategies of grief”. Two of the themes among all the themes generated in the current study i.e. “challenging thoughts” and “using religious strategies” were found to be common coping strategies among women to deal with all the difficult emotions explored in the current study. Quantitative studies should be conducted and experimental studies should also be done to further provide pieces of evidence for the level of effectiveness of each coping technique, to get more objective results and how much of a long-term effect these strategies have on the individual. Similar studies should also be done with men.