Discursive, Communal, and Individual Coping Strategies: How U.S. Adults Co-constructed Coping During Preliminary COVID-19 Stressors.

This interpretive research study explores U.S. adults' lived experiences during the beginning months of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Participants (N= 44), recruited from a convenience sample of U.S. adults, engaged in in-depth semi-structured interviews or focus groups. Through an iterative analysis of participants' experiences and the theoretical model of communal coping (TMCC), the authors identified three convergent stressors (i.e., isolation, uncertainty, conflict) and several coping strategies related to participants' stressor appraisal (i.e., individual or joint) and action orientation (i.e., individual or joint). Based on these findings, this study offers the novel theoretical concept of Discursive coping and proposes a model for how this perspective might be integrated with current theorizing about individual and communal coping. Implications for communal coping and discursive theory are discussed as well as practical recommendations for public health messaging.

Collective Emotion During Collective Trauma: A Metaphor Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This study provides insight into lived experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Participant metaphors of the pandemic were collected by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews (N = 44). Participants were asked to compare the pandemic with an animal and with a color, and to provide contextual sensemaking about their metaphors. A metaphor analysis revealed four convergent mental models of participants' pandemic experiences (i.e., uncertainty, danger, grotesque, and misery) as well as four primary emotions associated with those mental models (i.e., grief, disgust, anger, and fear). Through metaphor, participants were able to articulate deeply felt, implicit emotions about their pandemic experiences that were otherwise obscured and undiscussable. Theoretical and practical implications of these collective mental models and associated collective emotions related to the unprecedented collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.