First, when he becomes depressed because Rita rejects him, he becomes depressed and even tries to commit suicide numerous times. He isolates himself, and thinks only about his own problems. Later, he reacts to what is happening and uses reaction formation to recreate his life and thereby change the outcome of each Groundhog Day. He goes through several stages, and uses defense mechanisms to cope with each stage as he makes it through to the next stage. One of the coping mechanisms Phil used was suicide as a way out of his problem. That did not work so he had to find another way to deal with his dilemma and his stress. He also uses manipulation as he tries to get to know Rita and make her fall in love with him. He manipulates her day after day to learn everything about her and become the "perfect" man for her. However, he finds that finally this does not work anyway, and he becomes the perfect man by altering his own personality and his own way of thinking. He has adapted to a bad situation and tried to make it better, which seems to be a problem-focused strategy. He has confronted the problem and adapted to it, and only then has his life gotten back to "normal."

Phil uses quite a bit of social support after he gets over his feelings of isolation. He engages his friends (Rita and Larry), and people he meets in the town. He really does not have very many friends, but he makes friends in the town during his long stay, and because of that, he suddenly develops a support group who all appreciate him and care about him. He has become a good person by being stuck in time, and the people around him helped him, whether he first recognizes that or not.

Throughout the film, Phil sometimes uses alcohol to deal with his stress, which is also a common sign of depression. He...

He does overeat and binge on sugar.
There were alternate ways that Phil could have dealt with the stress, especially at first. He becomes violent and a glutton because he knows that he will not have to "pay" for what he does. He could have focused his violence and self-centeredness on why this was happening to him in the first place, and perhaps come up with answers much sooner. He needed to become less self-adsorbed and more self-actualized to find out just how bad he really was and what he needed to change to become a better, more decent person. He needed to look inside himself and see what others saw. He was a hedonist, only out for his own pleasure, and it took him a long time to learn there really is not a lot of pleasure in his lifestyle. Another author notes, "As self-absorbed as hedonists are, they do not really know themselves and so cannot know what is actually good for them" (Kupfer 38). Thus, to really become who he was meant to be, he had look inside himself first, face his faults, and make himself a better person.