How to Use maladaptive in a Sentence

maladaptive

adjective
  • What looks to us like a maladaptive state might be the best of many bad options.
    — National Geographic, 4 Oct. 2016
  • Much of excessive drinking and drug use is a maladaptive way of lowering stress in the short term.
    — Brennan Barnard, Forbes, 4 July 2022
  • There is no one treatment available for maladaptive daydreaming.
    — Angelica Bottaro, Verywell Health, 7 Aug. 2025
  • If left unchecked, these maladaptive thought patterns can lead to debilitating levels of burnout and stress.
    — Mark Travers, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2024
  • Strive for more balance day-to-day so that sleep is not what’s sacrificed, leaving you even more tapped out and vulnerable to maladaptive habits.
    — Lisa Strauss, Washington Post, 28 July 2024
  • This is known as maladaptive daydreaming and it is accepted as a response to trauma, abuse or loneliness.
    — Vicky Spratt, refinery29.com, 12 Sep. 2021
  • No surprise, then, that chronic stress often leads to maladaptive coping mechanisms in modern life.
    — Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 2 Dec. 2021
  • Their hunger persists as maladaptive coping mechanisms cannot be satisfied.
    — Hazlitt, 27 Sep. 2023
  • However, when venting is done in a maladaptive or unhealthy way, people may actually feel worse.
    — Dr. Judith Joseph, Time, 8 Apr. 2025
  • This worked well for our evolutionary predecessors, but what was once adaptive is now often maladaptive.
    — Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Forbes, 14 Apr. 2022
  • Today this form of punishment can easily become abuse, and is a maladaptive habit that most black folk inherited.
    — Richael Faithful, The Root, 25 May 2017
  • Through that lens, vampire bats’ relentless congregating might seem maladaptive.
    — Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Mar. 2020
  • Like arsonists setting fire to a city, malicious actors might seek to inject such maladaptive brain activity in a bid to harm other users.
    — Kelly Clancy, Wired, 10 Jan. 2022
  • There’s a subset of people with extremely vivid imaginations who are known as maladaptive daydreamers.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 1 Aug. 2024
  • These maladaptive neurological changes can persist long after the alcohol use stops.
    — Jamie Smolen, chicagotribune.com, 23 Dec. 2017
  • Taking pleasure in negative emotions might seem morally suspect or maladaptive, a case of pointless narcissism.
    — Charlie Tyson, The Atlantic, 30 Jan. 2022
  • But in the case of the allergy patients, that memory apparently becomes maladaptive.
    — Quanta Magazine, 12 Nov. 2018
  • But as more city dwellers adopt pets, and cultural shifts have led dogs and people to spend more time inside, some behaviors that made dogs appealing to our ancestors have become maladaptive.
    — Brian Hare, The Atlantic, 14 Oct. 2024
  • The other interesting finding was a link between the use the maladaptive coping and the probability that a runner would finish the race.
    — Alex Hutchinson, Outside Online, 10 Apr. 2018
  • There seems to be a strong relationship between OCD and maladaptive daydreaming.
    — Giulia Poerio, CNN, 9 Jan. 2023
  • So, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder is a maladaptive memory.
    — Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 23 May 2024
  • Often seen as maladaptive, reflective thinking can drive deeper learning from past experiences and avoid future errors.
    — Dave Winsborough, Forbes, 2 Dec. 2024
  • Pond’s group, these 13 individually maladaptive changes might be adaptive when present all together.
    — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 29 Jan. 2022
  • Psychedelic therapy enabled me to see maladaptive patterns that had formed since childhood, and in combination with talk therapy, enabled me to change them.
    — Louis Metzger Iv, Forbes, 26 Apr. 2022
  • There were concerns that rankings could serve as maladaptive motivators for health institutions, encouraging them to expend resources to climb the ranks rather than to serve their patients.
    — Alexis Kayser, MSNBC Newsweek, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Studies suggest that maladaptive daydreaming first appears in youth and is more likely to affect individuals exposed to childhood trauma.
    — Mark Travers, Forbes, 10 Sep. 2021
  • Stuck in a heightened state of alarm, many individuals have developed a sort of happiness anxiety, which is the mind’s maladaptive way of protecting us from being hurt or let down in the future.
    — Amy Blankson, Forbes, 9 Sep. 2021
  • In Wanda's case, her anguish over Vision's death does not relent and her maladaptive coping has consequences not only for her own healing, but for everyone around her.
    — Alia E. Dastagir, USA TODAY, 5 Mar. 2021
  • Many immigrant families deal with generational trauma, and this may lead to maladaptive coping strategies, like disordered eating.
    — SELF, 19 Jan. 2023
  • The condition stems from a maladaptive inflammatory response to a systemic infection, which causes blood clots to form throughout the body, blood vessels in the skin to collapse, and tissue to die.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 28 Feb. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'maladaptive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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