What are Coping Skills and Why Do I Have Them?
What are Coping Skills and Why Do I Have Them?
Have you ever heard the term “coping skills” and wondered what that means? Coping skills are pretty popular these days as a buzzword on social media and health websites. There are lots of great tips out there on how to use coping skills, but it’s harder to find information out there about what coping skills are and why we develop them in the first place.
Coping skills are strategies or tools that you can use to manage stressful or distressing situations. Coping skills let you decrease your level of stress and handle difficult emotions in a way that maintains your sense of internal order.
Most of us have coping skills in one way or another - getting through life is hard, and we all need ways to support our journey.
Coping skills or strategies are a way to manage stress both in the moment and long-term. Stress can cause all kinds of negative problems, like irritability, heart problems, and sleep disturbances.
Coping skills offer options for getting through moments of distress until you can find a safe place to process what’s going on. It’s not always feasible to feel and process everything you need to in the moment, especially when emotions are heightened. Coping strategies let you get through the moment until you’re able to find a safe place, like a therapy session, to unpack the situation.
Coping skills come in two basic forms, problem-based and emotion-based. Some people also conceptualize coping skills as being short term, to get you through the moment, or long-term, to help maintain balance in your life.
As the name suggests, problem-based coping skills come up when there’s a problem or situation that you need to deal with. Problem-based coping skills can also be useful for long-term coping. For example, if you find yourself chronically tired, a problem-based coping skill would be to develop a nighttime routine that works for you. It may take time to implement, but establishing the habit of getting a good night’s sleep can help prevent future stresses from overwhelming you. Emotion-based coping skills allow you to take care of your feelings when things are out of your control or when you’re overwhelmed in the moment.
Someone who grows up in an emotionally abusive home would probably rely more on emotion-based coping strategies. Since the person being abused has no control over the abuse, emotion based coping skills can help them deal with the abuse until they can escape it. However, problem-based coping skills may be helpful to them when they are at an age where they can leave the abusive home.
Here are some common coping strategies that people use to deal with tough situations:
Negative self talk
Catastrophizing or other cognitive distortions
Worrying
Escaping through books, media, and imagination
Self-soothing with alcohol, drugs, food, sex, etc.
Compulsive behaviors like shopping or gambling
Numbing out with alcohol or drugs
Getting too much or too little sleep
Self-harm
Reckless behaviors, like driving too fast
While all of these coping skills can provide relief in the moment, these are not all supportive habits in the long term. Sometimes, the coping skills we use to protect ourselves get out of control. This can happen when folks rely on things like substances to cope, for example.
Lots of times, people refer to certain coping skills as ‘healthy’ or “unhealthy”, although more helpful terms might be supportive or unsupportive.
Many of us developed coping strategies to get through hard times, like trauma or mental illness. Those coping skills allowed you to survive. It’s okay if you had to use coping skills that aren’t supportive long-term. Whatever coping skills you’ve had to use in the past, they’ve allowed you to keep going to where you are today. There’s nothing to be ashamed of!
Although the coping strategies you’ve used up until now might not be ideal for you currently, you are don’t have to view them as unhealthy. You can instead decide that you’re looking for coping strategies that are supportive of where you are right now, instead of relying on ones that have gotten you to this point so far. You can even go so far as to thank your old coping skills for helping you stay alive until now. If you’re looking to find some new coping skills that are more supportive of where you are now, you have options.
It can be helpful to have a list of coping skills ready to go for a time when you’re feeling distressed or overwhelmed. When you’re in the moment, it can be hard to think clearly, especially when you’re upset. Having a list handy helps take away the need to come up with ways to support yourself, so you can just jump right in to using your coping strategies.
Here are some coping strategies that you may find more supportive long-term:
Progressive muscle relaxation
Breathwork
Meditation or mindfulness practice
Taking a bath
Spending time outside
Cooking or baking
Being creative
Gardening
Gentle physical movement
Playing with a pet
Listening to music
Drinking a warm beverage
Reading
Setting boundaries
Going to therapy