reactive coping
a stress-management strategy that involves efforts to deal with a past or present stressful situation (e.g., marital dissolution, losing one’s job) by compensating for or accepting the associated harm or loss. Reactive coping may also involve efforts to readjust goals, find benefit, or search for meaning. One of four types of coping proposed by German psychologists Ralf Schwarzer (1943– ) and Nina Knoll, reactive coping may be problem-focused, emotion-focused, or social-relation-focused. See also anticipatory coping; preventive coping; proactive coping.