208. Let's talk about coping mechanisms

our bodies, ourselves, the state of the world. But what we don't talk about a lot is how to cope with so much going on. Sometimes we can get really wrapped up in our experiences and our emotions, and the only solution that we have is to begin to rely on some pretty unhealthy coping mechanisms, or we kind of go numb completely and we tune it all out, only to really see our emotional and our mental state get

worse and worse. But there is of course an alternative, and today I want to discuss our ways of coping and dealing with whatever it is you have going on in your life, and our ways of coping in a positive and healthy way. For me, I always see coping mechanisms as like the umbrella in a storm. They shelter us from the worst of the weather in our lives. As cheesy as that sounds, and you know, the storm

doesn't stop. We might still feel a few rain drops, but our coping mechanisms are the thing that shields us. There are so many proactive ways that we can, you know, seriously help ourselves out during tough times or even regular

times when things set us back or frustrate us. And it is so wild to me that in all of our years at school being taught calculous and long division and the history of civilizations that aren't even around anymore, all things that I'm sure are very important, But amongst all of that, we are never really taught how to

properly regulate our emotions and our nervous system. We are never taught effective psychological strategies for managing some of those universal things in our lives, for managing failure or loss or distress. And these are skills that I think everyone

could use. I don't think I know everyone could use these, and they are so often neglected or left out of our education or our general knowledge, and just personally, I believe that you shouldn't need a psychology degree or years of therapy to know how to make life work best for you. Today, we are going to break down these

psychology of coping mechanisms. We are going to talk about the different categories of coping skills and coping mechanisms that we come across, from emotion focus to problem focused, to adaptive versus maladaptive. You know, here's the thing, not all coping mechanisms are created equal. There are a whole lot of behaviors that may make us feel better in the moment, but which are super detrimental in the long term. Alcohol

is a great example of that. You know, Yes, it naturally lowers our levels of anxiety, and if that was the only thing that we were concerned with, well then that's great, But it can also create dependency and addiction. And the same goes for a lot of avoidant coping mechanisms. Ignoring the bad situation, just trying to minimize the emotional reaction that we are having rather than actively making our circumstances better or act trying to improve our mood and

improve what's going on around us. I also want to briefly discuss defense mechanisms. I feel like they come up a lot, but there is actually a huge difference between coping mechanisms and defense mechanisms, and finally, the ways that we can really tap into our subconscious to get to the bottom of what's bothering us and really find a way through. So that was a bit of a ramble. Enough of that, without further ado, Let's talk about the psychology behind our coping mechanisms and how we can make

the most out of them. So let's start super simple and from the beginning, what is coping? What are coping mechanisms. Coping is not just about getting over something and moving on, because by definition, coping is not a passive process. It is an active choice around integrating and recognizing and experience fully sitting with it and finding a way forward. It is not pushing it to the sidelines. It's not hoping

that it will go away. It is being the person who takes things by the reins and moves through them as hard as they may be, and coping behaviors. Coping mechanisms are the tools that we use in that kind of journey, in that battle. Coping behaviors are voluntary and conscious ways of managing stressful situations and events by responding to either our emotions about the problem or the problem itself. It is essentially any way that we choose to manage trauma,

to manage stress, pain, anything emotionally unpleasant. And the word conscious and voluntary is super important to focus on here because it is what distinguishes our coping mechanisms from our defense mechanisms. So, in contrast to the very active nature of coping mechanisms, defense mechanisms are unconscious and they occur beyond our level of awarenes it's very deep in the mind.

The idea behind them is that when something occurs that is anxiety inducing or upsetting, or that our conscious mind just simply can't deal with, can't process, our unconscious mind switches into gear and employs a number of backup strategies so that we don't feel the full force of an

emotion or a situation. So these defense mechanisms, they were first labeled by Freud, the grandfather of psychoanalytic psychology, but they were actually really articulated by his daughter, Anna, And Anna often gets left out of a lot of the conversations around the history of psychology and some of the main theories that have come up in the last one

hundred years, including this one. And she kind of took over the baton from her father and expanded a lot of his work into what we know it is today. So you've probably heard of a few defense mechanisms in your lifetime, even if you have like zero experience with therapy or psychology. Denial is a big one, being unable

to accept reality that is actually a defense mechanism. Another one is repression, or what we would call motivated forgetting pushing an unpleasant experience very way down subconsciously when we

aren't prepared to deal with it. Let me think of a few others of my favorite projection attributing our unwonted thoughts and feelings to another person Like you might not like them very much, but deep down in the hidden parts of your mind, you know that that's not an appropriate thing to feel or admit, so you end up believing that they don't like you as a way to

protect yourself and your unacceptable desires. That's projection. Regression is another one, regret, you know, reverting back to a less mature version of yourself to deal with the situation that is really distressing. So those are defense mechanisms. The reason that we want to prioritize coping mechanisms and why they always come at on top of here, is because they are something that we can control, whereas our defense mechanisms are something that we can't. They are, you know, stemming

from our subconscious, which means that they are automatic. They're often controlled by impulse, by ego, by trauma, and so not entirely beneficial in these circumstances, even if we feel like they're protecting us, even if they are still managing or reducing our stress. Defense mechanisms kind of take us out from behind the wheel and put us in the passenger steat. Coping mechanisms make us the driver. So coping mechanisms is where it's at, and you probably know quite

a few. These are things typically like meditation, exercise, nature walks, practicing, gratitude, journaling, processing your emotions with a friend, humor, making light of a situation, planning, rationalizing a problem, but then also things like numbing yourself isolating yourself, binge eating, binge drinking, risk taking. All of these behaviors, the good and the bad, they have an important component. Their performance serves some secondary mental purpose.

For example, you might take major risks to achieve a high that makes the bad feelings feel less sharp. You journal not just because you like the look of the words on the page, but because there is some emotional clarity achieved through this practice, some kind of peace that you are able to voluntarily bring to yourself without waiting

for the situation to change. So our pattern of coping mechanisms, that huge list that we just spoke about, they often become quite entrenched and they form a habit, meaning that when something really stressful happens in our lives, we tend to respond to those situations in the same way every single time because we kind of know what works, we know what makes us feel better. Of course, there's a catch.

We think we know what makes us feel better. Sometimes these coping mechanisms that we're using, whether that is exercising, journaling, binge drinking, it's what we learn from our parents. Other times it's just an emotional reflex. We responded to a really awful situation once in some kind of way. We responded by talking it out with a friend, or we responded by going off and speeding around in our car,

and it kind of worked. So we learned the association between the behavior, the coping mechanism, and feeling better, and so now that's what we rely on. It's kind of like the analogy I always give is going back to the same mechanic for your car, even if you might be able to get a better price or service elsewhere, because it's just like what you trust and what you know,

and it kind of gets the job done. Even if you know that you know there might be a better mechanic who could give you a better price, or who could fix your car faster, a better coping mechanism, you become kind of entrapped in what you know and what

you've always relied on. For example, I have a really good friend who every time she's frustrated, every time she has to work late, every time she is annoyed at her family, she will switch off her phone and she will go for a run, and it really helps her. It's super effective, but it doesn't work in every circumstance, right, like if you're on a plane or if you're injured.

That's why we need a toolkit of coping mechanisms. We can't just rely on one and the only one that you know, we come back to every time that makes us feel better. For me, you know, I really like to sit and intellectualize my problems. I don't think that's a surprise. I literally have a psychology your podcast where

I break down every single thought I ever have. But sometimes, you know, for me, a feeling can't be rationalized, It just needs to be felt, which is why we need a toolkit, which is why we need multiple coping mechanisms. So regardless of what habits have formed, these all kind of create a coping style. And there are four different ways that we cope, four different categories that all of these behaviors fall into. So the first one is problem

focused coping. So this addresses the problem causing the distress by planning out a solution or waiting till it's an appropriate time to act, looking at the problem and kind of realizing that if the problem goes away, if we can find way to work around it, our stress, our distress, our grief will go away as well. That's problem focused the first category. Then we have emotion focused coping. This basically aims to cope by just reducing the negative emotions

associated with the problem. You might not actually do anything about the problem, it's just kind of treating how you feel about it. So reframing the situation is something positive acceptance, turning to humor, turning to spirituality, or of course suppressing it. Then we have meaning focused coping, which kind of falls into emotion focused coping. So under emotion focus coping there

is meaning focused and social coping. So meaning focused is when you and I might use cognitive strategies or some kind of part of our belief system to make it seem like this situation has some kind of higher meaning

to it. So if you hear people say, you know, everything happens for a reason, or rejection is just redirection in response to something really awful or unfortunate happening, that is them applying a meaning focused coping style, and it's their way of pushing through the situation by once again applying some kind of higher belief or higher reasoning to why they're going through that it makes it like a

little bit easier to swallow. And finally we have social coping, also known as support seeking where you know, we reduce our stress by seeking out the support of friends or family or seeking out others around us to make us feel better. So the best coping style, not that it's a competition, but it kind of is the best of them all, the one that gets the gold start every single time, is actually a combination. It is a coping style that incorporates all dimensions of those four different categories.

It's problem focused, emotion focus, meaning focused, and we can always pull out social coping if we need it, And it's kind of like a healthy diet. You know, you can't just eat one food group. You can't just really rely on social coping or meaning focused coping and expect to have the proper nutrition or the proper skills. So there's been some really interesting studies recently that have actually suggested that, you know, having a combination of all of

these different types of coping is best. But also problem focused coping strategies need to make up the majority. And the reason why is because problem focused coping mechanisms are what gives us a sense of control over the problem. They are what show us that we have agency, that we can change the outcome of a situation. Whereas meaning focused coping, social coping, emotional coping, they all kind of say, you know, bad things just happen to us and we have to find a way to deal with them, rather

than we have some level of control over our circumstances. So, of course there are certain things that we just you know, death is one of them, failure is another. They do just happen, and sometimes we do have to be reactive to that and find a way to pull through. But the reason problem focuscroping is so important is because the rest of those things that occur, you know, all these

other circumstances that might happen, failure actually being one of them. Right, you fail a test, you fail your driving test, I don't know, you fail an exam, you go through a breakup, whatever it is. There is only so much that dealing with the emotion can help you before you have to think about how you can move on and what kind of strategies you can put in place before that happens. The stress is always going to remain in some form,

and it might return. Because the other thing that links emotions, social and meaning based coping is that they are reactive versus proactive. So what does that mean exactly well. Coping, like I said, isn't just about making ourselves feel better in response to an event. That is part of it. You know, you really can't do anything if you're paralyzed by fear, regret, pain, stress, so you have to kind

of move past that first. But the next level up from that is also doing a favor for our future selves and doing what we can to prevent that situation from happening again, whatever it may be. That is why problem focused coping is known as proactive, because it is

also protective. So, for example, if you keep getting into fights with your partner and it's extremely distressing, and the only way that you can push through it is by you know, going and having like a huge ran about it to your friends, you know, involving social coping, and then you move on. You are kind of bound to keep having that fight, You are bound to keep going

through that cycle. But if you respect by yeah, firstly of course seeking support, but then also going to counseling or setting boundaries for yourself or taking a step back when you are arguing and realizing it's not working, you're also developing and evolving rather than just making yourself feel better. And I think that's something that I've realized the older that I've gotten. It's not just about, you know, it's not just about always giving myself the benefit of the doubt.

It's not just about always soothing hard things. It's also about doing things that are going to make my life better in the long term. Like my future self is just as important in that situation as my current feelings. And I think that that is a perfect kind of segue into talking about another very important distinction, the crucial

difference between adaptive coping mechanisms versus maladaptive coping mechanisms. Why is it that sometimes we choose coping mechanisms that are actually self destructive, that actually hurt us more like you know, going and speaking to a friend every time we get into a fight, rather than actually trying to improve our relationship.

It feels very instinctual, it feels very meaningful, perhaps in the moment, But why is it that we find ourselves in these cycles of not actually wanting to perhaps improve our circumstances or not even knowing how to do it. So we're going to talk about that after this short break. Stay with us. When something really awful happens, or even something frustrating or overwhelming. Sometimes all we want to do is distract ourselves and ignore it entirely. We want to

completely disengage. That is an example of a maladaptive coping mechanism. Like I said before, right at the very beginning, not all ways of coping or created equally. Some actually end up doing more harm than good avoidance. As an example, even if in the moment they serve the primary purpose of making us feel it tied better, sometimes they actually make this situation worse, or they make our emotional response

to a situation worse in the long term. So that is where the distinction between an adaptive versus maladaptive coping mechanism comes into play. Adaptive coping mechanisms are positive. They help us evolve, They help us grow from a situation, even if it's baby steps. They are what we want. Maladaptive coping mechanisms they're quite shallow and they work in the short term, but they do so by hiding the

problem from us. They hide the situation from us by getting us to just focus on dealing with what we're feeling. They also often have negative consequences. Actually, that's a huge factor. They always do. That's what makes the maladaptive, and like I said, they're emotion based, not problem based. Let me

give you some examples of what I mean here. So I spoke about this before, but binge drinking is a huge one, and definitely a huge noteworthy one because amongst twenty year olds, twenty something year olds, most people in this decade, alcohol is just so widely accepted and excessive drinking is so tolerated that sometimes we don't even realize that we are using alcohol or some other substance to

numb our pain as like dramatic as that sounds. Alcohol is naturally a depressant, which means that it slows down how messages travel through our body, including anxious messages, and so initially when something really terrible happens, having like half a bottle of wine is going to make you feel more relaxed. It's going to make you feel better. It's a lot harder to focus on our worries when you know we're a bit tipsy or we're drunk, and in

that way the negative feelings are eliminated. In my own experience, the times I have, you know, drunk the most to be a bit vulnerable with you guys, have been when I've been in the most emotional pain at the end of a relationship, when I first moved to a new city, in a new no one and I was really, really lonely.

And any kind of substance that numbs us or artificially induces you know a lot of happy feelings that kind of mask the real problem is a form of maladaptive coping, because it is keeping you attached to the idea that if you feel better, you are moving forward. So, speaking of alcohol consumption, let's also talk about food as well. Emotional eating is another maladaptive coping mechanism. So I did

do an entire episode on this last year. It's episode one hundred and thirty five if you want to listen to it, and it really goes into this a lot more, but sometimes not always, but sometimes we eat as a way of regulating our emotions rather than from a place of actual hunger. Like food is a form and a source of comfort. Food is warm, food is filling, and it also elicits feelings of control, feelings of fullness where emotional fullness perhaps is possible underneath it all though the

emotions remain the same. It is once again a band aid, another huge one. An honorable mention, I don't know, A dishonorable mention maybe, but a huge one for our twenties is isolating ourselves and withdrawing. Often we don't even realize that we're doing this. We think that we are helping ourselves.

We think that we are helping those around us. We think that we are giving ourselves space to process, but we are actually reducing the social resources that we have available to us, those social touch points that help so much. You know what if we actually, unconsciously as well, like with withdrawal, are punishing ourselves because we don't feel like it should be somebody else's problem, or we don't feel

like we deserve empathy or we deserve support. There was this paper published in two thousand and one that I read when I was researching this episode, and it spoke about how isolation is often a self induced coping mechanism to deal with excessive worry and to avoid human interaction. We herm it. Obviously, that is not always the case, right. Sometimes the fact that we don't have social support is

what causes us to use other maladaptive coping mechanisms. But sometimes as well, withdrawing from a social support system or from friends and family and who are available is a way of coping that we don't realize we're doing. And it's kind of no surprise to me that this mechanism, it often does co occur with things like depression or social anxiety, where there is already a tendency within these

conditions towards withdrawal escapism. That is another maladaptive coping mechanism, finding comfort in a reality or a fantasy that is detached from your own, like binge watching endless hours of TV, or escapism through daydreaming, putting up this wall between you and reality, you and the situation that you're dealing with

through a form of really emotionally consuming destruction. And this really links to the last example I'll give today, because you know, the list could definitely go on, but this is the example they gave at the beginning, which is avoidance outright ignoring the problem. Now, this might sound a lot like denial, which we know as a defense mechanism, because it's you know, it's similar, right, it's pretending the problem doesn't exist. But actually, with avoidance, it's a conscious

choice to look away. You kind of know that the situation is happening. You know that if you were to seriously deal with it, it would be really painful or tricky or stressful. Denial is not even realizing that there is a problem. You know, you're choosing to postpone or choosing to avoid or evade a problem. With avoidance denial, you're

just completely politifully unaware that it's even happening. So, if coping mechanisms are voluntary, and we know these behaviors keep leading us back to the same or even a darker place, why do we do it? Why do we use poor forms of coping? There is not one answer for you. My answer is that it's complicated, but I will offer you a few explanations. The first and most simple explanation is that maladaptive coping mechanisms are sometimes just more accessible.

They are easier for relieving the immediate discomfort, whereas adaptive coping mechanisms sometimes require you know, it's a hard reality, They require a bit of an investment. They kind of take longer to help. If you've just gotten broken up with or you've just lost out on a really you know, amazing opportunity, you've just had a fight, you've gotten your hopes up and you've been let down. You know, a couple glasses of wine and trying not to think about

it is going to immediately make you feel better. But you know, meditating, for example, probably isn't going to make you feel better if it's your first time ever doing it. You know, meditation is amazing. I do actually really promote it. But the thing is that is that it's a practice, right, It's a skill that builds over time. Whereas anyone over the age of eighteen in Australia or you know, twenty twenty one elsewhere can go and use alcohol, or abuse

alcohol or rely on alcohol, and it's a much quicker fix. Secondly, sometimes maladaptive coping mechanisms do act as a form of self sabotage. So if you have poor self esteem, a lot of self doubt, imposter syndrome maybe as well, when bad things happen, it's hard to not see those as coming down to something wrong with you or some character fault.

You see yourself as a failure, or as a loser, or as not deserving of love, And why would someone like that deserve to be taken care of, or deserve to not be in pain, or deserve to invest in healthy coping mechanisms. If at the end of the day they are a bad person or they are a lost cause. It all comes down to, I think sometimes self esteem and what we believe that we should be providing with ourselves. It's interesting because in this case, you know, firstly, those

false beliefs are entirely untrue, let's get that clear. But secondly, those beliefs are subconscious, but the actions derived from those feelings are conscious. So it's like this weird mix of defense and coping mechanisms, if that makes sense. Our motivations are subconscious, but our behavior is conscious, and it is in response to a feeling that we just can't quite identify. Right,

We are numbing ourselves. We are withdrawing as a conscious way of dealing with our emotions because perhaps underneath it all, we don't feel like we deserve to offer ourselves something better, and we are self sabotaging. Generational trauma and learning comes into this conversation in a major way. Coping strategies begin in early childhood, and they begin through not just our own psychological and physical responses to stress and testing what works,

but also by what we see our parents doing. When we see our parents engaging in dysfunctional strategies like avoidance, like numbing themselves with alcohol or food or some other substance or activity. Not only do we observe and mimic that, but it can also create a childhood environment in which we are not taught to accept and hold hard emotions or to work through them. We are not taught to be soft and tender and to turn to others for support, but to instead find a way to just feel better

in the moment and eventually move on. So this is a form of emotional and validation. And when you are told that your emotions, especially as a child, were not reasonable, they weren't rational, they weren't valid, you're too sensitive. That becomes part of our habits and part of the suppression,

part of the maladaptive coping that we perform. I feel like this is quite obvious, but we see that a lot with men, people who are raised as boys and raised as men, whereby there is such a societal influence around them at all times to be quiet when it comes to their emotional problems. And so it's through that social conditioning that they learn how to use maladaptive coping mechanisms to help themselves, and we all know that doesn't work right. It ends up in angry outbursts, it ends

up in sabotaging relationships, it ends up in dysfunction. But a lot of the times it's not even like we had a choice. Nobody has set an example. The other main problem with a lot of these techniques, if we can call them that they are techniques for managing emotions, is that they actually leave a lot of residual grief, They leave a lot of residual suffering, residual sadness, residual stress, because we haven't been proactive about the situation, or we

haven't actually fully processed and moved through the emotion. So it goes on to kind of hide and influence our behavior in other areas. You know, say you've gone through a really rough period at work. You do what you can to feel better, You cope, you suppress, you drink, you do whatever it is, and you move on. The thing is, you actually haven't found a way to make your work life better for you, if there even is a way. You haven't found a way to put in strategies.

You haven't found a way to talk out your emotions or to process them, and so a lot of the time. And I remember this happening with me when I worked as like a in a corporate job. I would get really, really stressed. I would just push it all down. I would keep busy, and I would notice that in the weeks and the days that followed, those bad feelings that I hadn't actually processed led into my relationships. I would start fights with my boyfriend, I would ignore my friends,

and the disruption of that event and experience would remain. Again, it is not our fault. That is something I really want to impress on you all. You've just kind of picked up on the examples set for you by family, by peers, by society that you know, really should have a one oh one class on, like how do you actually cope with hard things in life? We have never had the opportunity or perhaps even in the time to see what else is out there, to see how we

could cope better. Because also sometimes like the feelings are just so intense, we just do what we have to do. You know, our lives are so busy that sometimes it's impossible to pull ourselves away and you know, take a break or go on a nature walk or to journal out our feelings. Sometimes we just have to respond to

what is happening. So one final explanation for an over reliance or maladaptive coping mechanisms, especially the emotion focused kind, comes down to a concept in psychology called learned helplessness. If you've been handed a few sets of just really bad cards, you've just had some really bad luck recently, Firstly,

you're probably feeling exhausted. But secondly, if your efforts to keep picking yourself back up and doing better and picking yourself back up and problem solving and picking yourself up and having a good attitude, if that just isn't working, you've probably adopted an idea that you just don't have the control that you would like, You don't get a say in what's happening to you, and so you have

adopted a position of learned helplessness. Sometimes we start to be quite global with that judgment, right, and we believe that the reason all these bad things keep happening is because we just have bad luck or bad karma, or it's a bad period, and so we just endure it and we do what we can emotionally, and that means sometimes falling into bad habits with how we cope. So how do we break this pattern and move away from

avoidant or maladaptive coping to approach orientated coping. How do we kind of stop, you know, sometimes making things worse for ourselves, even though our intentions are merely just to feel a little bit more at peace, a little bit less stressed. Let's talk about it. So, there is this very well known Carl Jung quote that I love, and it says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. And what I always interpret this quote is saying is that

our maladaptive coping skills have an origin. Until we work out what that is, we are basically destined to always see life in our circumstances as against us and to find ourselves in a bit of a toxic cycle. That might be a harsh truth, that might be something that you don't really want to hear. I probably didn't want

to hear it when I first did. But one of the only things we can control in this world is how we reac act to what happens to us, and how we as much as we can positively integrate that into our story and find a way to learn and grow from it, like it just kind of sucks sometimes because a lot of the time we didn't do the damage in the first place, the stress or the pain, it wasn't caused by us, but we do get to reclaim our power in response to it and coming back

to our adaptive, positive ways of coping. So, firstly, if you've become really reliant on maladaptive coping, you have to understand why that might be. Is it past trauma, is it stress overload? Is it because you don't know any other way to cope? Is it the immediate relief? Is it the temporary control? Is it history? Getting clear and where it begins helps you find an alternative and practice

those positive alternatives. It's really annoying and frustrating that adaptive coping mechanisms take a while to really take hold, but it's one of those things that really I think deserves an investment. I saw this really interesting. I don't know if it was on like Twitter or I don't know, but somebody said this the other day. I read it somewhere that was like, you can ruin your life in

a second. What is something that you can do in that same amount of time that would drastically improve your life, and it is positive croping. If you've had a stressful day and you want like to have just a huge rant to your friend, or you want to have half a bottle of wine, try something else first. Try something more energetic or nourishing for you, nourishing for your soul, nourishing for your mental health. Try something that your mind and your nervous system will thank you for later. Maybe

some somatic healing. Have a dance around your house, get the nervous energy out some movement, Take ten minutes and do a brain dump. One of my favorite things to do is called progressive relaxation, where you work from your toes to your forehead, really tensing and then releasing your muscles and notice, pay attention. Do you feel the stress

lesson in your body? Do you feel less overwhelmed? Adopting more positive coping strategies is as much about relearning what your body and your mind responds to as it is unlearning previously counterproductive ways of dismissing or suppressing your hard emotions.

Something that really helped me was coping statements as well, and the list I Love the Most was created by these two psychologists back in twenty fifteen and I love them because these statements have really helped me reshape the narrative in my head, or the narrative that I used to have that anything I did wouldn't help my circumstances.

You know that learned helplessness mindset, and the statements include things like, I'm going to face this challenge and handle it as best as I can, even if the outcome doesn't change. It might not work out one hundred percent, but you know, I'm going to give it my best and see what happens. I've been in this situation before, and I've survived. I am strong enough to handle this whatever it is that it happens. Things often aren't as bad as they first seem. Those are your coping statements.

Hopefully you see why these would be helpful, right. It's not just about thinking positive thoughts or whatever like that toxic positivity mindset, but being able to just acknowledge that, yes, this circumstance is sucky, this is shitty, this is annoying. I can't change that situation, but I am capable. I am the common denominator. My actions are a big factor in pushing through and changing next week's circumstances or changing how I respond. That kind of brings me to my

next tip. Know yourself and know your stresses. If there is a situation you know you struggle with and you will really have to rely on your coping mechanisms, perhaps more than normal, make yourself a list of what works. Make yourself a dictionary of coping, and include in that list one thing from every bucket that we spoke about before. An emotion focused way of coping, social focused, meaning focused, and problem focused. It's like having four lines of defense.

So for me, you know, I know that going on a plane is something that's really stressful. For others, it might be exam season, it might be seeing your family. For me, it is going on a plane. And I have in my notes at all times a list of like ten plus things I know will help me before, during, and after a flight. I also have, you know, five statements that help me rationalize my feelings, five affirmations. I

have my anxiety meditation downloaded. You know, the more productive adaptive, positive coping skills you have in your artillery, the better it's going to be, because it's the security of having multiple things you can fall back on. I think at the end of the day, I'm going to say it again, and you're probably like, Okay, I get it. But you know, coping isn't just about eliminating bad feelings, because we know that feelings are not evil, they're not bad, they are

just our body trying to communicate with us. Coping is also not about always having an answer or a solution. It's about rezili alliance. And the four biggest factors and contributors to resilience are wellness and taking care of yourself in the good times and the bad. Healthy thinking, being realistic about your problems, not you know, catastrophizing or doomsdaying. Finding meaning and purpose, knowing that there is a deeper

part of you that these hard times can't touch. And finally, connection sharing, being vulnerable, having an open heart even when it is really difficult to reach out. That makes us. You know, that kind of makes up part of our social focused coping skills. But I think if you want to be resilient, focus on what you can do when times are good, but also find a way to lean back on your positive relationships so that it doesn't feel like you're only doing so during a crisis, and so

that you avoid withdrawal and isolation. Because I think that always just makes things a hundred times worse. Coping mechanisms, at the end of the day, they are the umbrella in the storm. Right, it's still going to be raining, but you're carrying something with you that you can pull out to protect yourself. You are changing how you react to a bad day at work, how you react to a fight with your partner, how you react to a bad mental health day, a bad mental health month. And

it's not about ignoring it. It's not about letting it consume you. It's about having this relationship with your emotions whereby you're like you were just a little ghost in my house, And yeah, I wish I could get rid of you, but maybe I won't. So let's find a way to move forward and integrate what I'm experiencing. So thank you so much for listening. If you have made it this far, I really enjoyed this episode. I feel

like I needed a reminder on coping mechanisms. It might seem so basic, right, it might seem so boring, But for so many of us, when was the last time like you really sat down and thought about what skills you had to make hard things in your life a little bit easier. When were we ever taught that. It's just mind blowing to me that I went to school for so many years and nobody ever did a class

on this, nobody ever explained these things to me. So hopefully this is the education that you needed when it came to this topic. As always, if there is somebody who needs to hear this episode, please feel free to share a link, send them a screenshot, whatever you would like. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now. It will take a couple seconds and it really does help the show to grow when you leave

nice reviews. I read them all, so chances are if you have already, I've read it and I've saved it into my little smile file and I really appreciate it. And if you do have an episode's suggestion, I say this at the end of every episode, hit me up on Instagram at that Psychology podcast. I would love to hear from you. And until next time, stay safe, stay kind, be gentle with yourself, please, and we will talk soon.