Watch This If You Don't Like Coping Skills

Hey, I'm Sarah and I'm a therapist. And this video is for anyone out there who's ever had the experience of feeling like, "Ugh," or just negative about the idea of using a coping skill. I know I definitely have felt that in my life, or like I would try a coping skill and it would just be something random I found online and it wasn't effective and it almost felt like I don't know, like a tedious homework assignment. So I want to share 3 tips that can hopefully help you avoid that experience moving forward and maybe even make you feel more open to using coping skills when appropriate. Okay, so the first tip is to adjust expectations around coping skills. Unfortunately, I know a message I've received in my life is that coping skills are sort of like a cure-all. And I don't even know where I got that from, but I definitely remember at one point thinking like, "Okay, if I do some breathing or if I just journal, like, I'm just gonna feel how I want to feel all the time." And, you know, I, I don't know if rationally that makes sense, but it's just what I, I felt. And it can be helpful to put that sort of an expectation aside or anything like that and think of coping skills more as something that can decrease an overwhelming feeling slightly so it feels a little bit more approachable, or heavy feeling like that feels way too heavy, like we could use a skill to make it feel 5% lighter. I really hate this idea of using coping skills as a band-aid because like also we live in a complex world filled with lots of complex issues and we should never just say, "Well, if you just did this, prob— everything would be easier." So something to think about is instead of thinking of coping skills as something to be this cure-all, think of it more as a way to just decrease stress. Stress slightly so we can approach it a little bit better. Additionally, as a reminder, and I know even I need to remind myself of this sometimes, as a human, like, I naturally am going to feel a variety of emotions, even if some of those emotions are uncomfortable, and I can't expect myself not to, right? So next tip would be to look at all of the branches of stress management overall, not just traditional coping skills, especially if those skills aren't working for you by themselves. So when I say traditional coping skills, I am referring to things like mindfulness, breathing, going for a walk, journaling, sort of those things. And really just anything that you can actively do to decrease stress. And I also think that like there's things that we can consider coping skills that, I don't know, wouldn't necessarily be like a therapy coping skill but, but are like maybe like playing Tetris on your phone or something like that. But also keep in mind that there can be multiple branches of stress management. And if cope— traditional coping skills is just one branch. An example of some other branches might be taking a really big issue and focusing it on a much smaller scale, like taking something overwhelming and starting really small. What this could look like would be if someone feels really uncomfortable in big crowds, maybe going to a football game isn't like the goal we should be focusing on at first. Maybe we should be focusing on like going to a coffee shop and sitting down for 10 minutes at like 2 PM on a Wednesday or something like that. Or if a goal might be, you know, a classic one is like running a marathon. If that just feels like way too much or overwhelming, okay, Can you go for a walk around the block for like 2 minutes or something? Another example of a branch to look at would be boundary setting. And I feel like honestly, boundary setting, it could be a whole other video within itself 'cause it's just like so complex. And also there's so many like systems that are involved in boundary setting. But an example of why this might be helpful rather than a traditional coping skill is like, let's say I'm standing in front of a bonfire. I could do breathing or I could pull up a journal and do some journaling about how uncomfortable being that close to a fire is, but probably what's gonna be most effective for me is to just like step away from the fire. So boundary setting would be another one to potentially look at, you know, and frankly, I think another branch of stress management is just being able to look at things at sort of a macro level, look at all of the systems that are in place and really keep in mind the context of a situation. I think this can really help us feel a lot more self-compassion and take us out of this like black or white thinking within itself. So yeah, those are just some branches of stress management to look at. And as I said, if it feels like just the coping skills isn't working for you, maybe we should look at another realm of stress management and that could help troubleshoot a little bit and then bring in the coping skills when useful. All right, final tip is that before engaging in a coping skill, it might be helpful to check in on your internal state. And this is helpful for two reasons. The first one is that if we're doing coping skills on autopilot, they might not be as effective. Like, I can think of an example of one time when I was certainly in that like high-level stress kind of place, and I was just practicing a grounding technique, and I was like, okay, I see this is, this is, this is done, and it was just like not effective at all. So checking in internally to where am I at can get us off autopilot. In addition to that, it might be helpful to even categorize your current stress level and feel free to make your own categories. I personally like to keep it simple and this is sort of related to a whole therapy thing called polyvagal theory, but I like to think of it as like I have 3 states. The first one is grounded and calm and sort of present. The next level of like 3 states of stress would be high-energy stress, which might feel like anxiety or worry or fear or even anger or restlessness or impulsivity. And then the third level of stress is sort of this checked-out level that might feel heavy, depressed, or it could even just feel numb, disconnected, or dissociated in some way. So before engaging in a coping skill, it might be useful to just take a second, be like, "OK, am I in sort of green mode, which is like that calm space, yellow mode, which is that high-energy stress, or red mode, which is sort of like shut down or feeling heavy or depressed?" And from there, with that proper sort of like internal assessment of sorts, to be like fancy with it, um, I can sort of navigate what would be the best skill for me. And something you might want to even think about doing is like in a note, like a Post-it note, or if you use like a notes app on your phone, like make a list of like, okay, when I'm in green mode, this is what's helpful to keep me there. Yellow, this is what's helpful. Red, etc., etc. That can kind of take the randomness out of using coping skills and give you a better chance of finding something effective. Also, like, a single skill could look so different depending on what state that you're in, and that might sound confusing, but let me give an example. So Let's just take walking as a coping skill. If I'm feeling green and just like calm and chill mode, like that green mode I mentioned, probably the best kind of walk for me to keep me there is gonna be something really slow and mindful. But if I'm in the yellow mode, like that high-energy stress, what I'm probably gonna be needing is like a fast walk or even like a jog. And then if, if I'm in the red, maybe focusing on pace might not even be helpful, and I just want to focus on like getting out the door and going at whatever pace feels best for me in the moment. So as you can see, there are quite a few tips we can use that will make us feel more open about coping skills or just using them in a way that feels smart and effective. To summarize, the first tip would be to make sure we're having reasonable expectations. Coping skills are not a band-aid, and also like we're humans and we're going to feel things, and feeling things is part of what it means to just be alive in general, for better or for worse. Second tip would be to look sometimes outside of traditional coping skills and look at stress management overall, like potentially boundary setting, taking something big and making it smaller, looking at things within context, things like that. And then finally, before engaging in a skill, check in to see what sort of internal space you are at, and then use a skill based off of that rather than just like being on autopilot and trying something kind of randomly. Let me know in the comments your thoughts or if you have any questions, and I hope that this video was helpful for you. Thank you.