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I guess I think that the exercise of "coping mechanisms" is a "sign or symptom" of underlying pathology, just as a fever suggests bacterial infection.

I mean, you got your "psychopathology of everyday life" over here, and then you have more pronounced clusters of behavior. Among these, in no particular order,would be inability to stay focused in a conversation, depressed behavior, evasion in counseling, failure to complete tasks agreed to, sleeplessness, abuse of alcohol, remarkable neatness, blah blah.

Sometimes, as in alcohol abuse, the thing to do is to address the "symptom" directly. Aside from anything else, doing so can improve the quality of life and get the client "Well" enough to pursue other matters.

Other times, and I'm thinking here of evasiveness in counseling, the behavior is just data to be pondered as indicative of and a response to something else.

Even then, I guess a frequently encountered course is,

Client evades.
Counselor begins to comment on the evasion.
Client displays denial (as in anger, minimizing, etc.).
Counselor persists.
Client gets anxious.
[lots of backing and filling and general dithering]
Client begins to look at what feelings are cloaked by anxiety.
Good stuff begins to happen ....

Isn't a it a kind of "rule of thumb" definition of neurosis that a neurosis is what you get when coping mechanisms make problems that interfere with coping?

What makes it fun is when the coping mechanism works okay for the person with the, sort of, primary problem but makes life miserable for others.

I once said to the chief deputy, only half-joking, "You don't suffer from stress; you're a carrier." Of course what was going on was that his position gave him space to "act out" (in the strict sense, not in the modern sense of "misbehave") so that others experienced the stress he was not able to confront in himself.

Blah blah. I need more coffee and to quit displacing my anxiety about the day ahead...