5. Other people as models. Related to that value of other people as sources of help is their value as models of alternative coping methods. Again, as most of us who have weathered a crisis have discovered, it’s a big advantage if you know someone who has weathered a similar crisis, and who constitutes a model of successful coping skills that you can try to imitate. Ideally, those models are friends or other people with whom you can talk, and from whom you can learn directly how they solved a problem similar to yours. But the model can also be someone whom you don’t know personally, and about
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