Coping skills are an important aspect of regulating your emotions. Even though you may not have heard the term “coping skills” before, you may be familiar with the word “cope”. To cope is to deal effectively with something (a situation, a feeling, an emotion, a person) difficult. A coping skill is a tool or strategy used to cope with those difficult feelings we experience on a day to day basis.
As a child, you may not have explicitly learned how to practice coping skills, but you probably figured out how to cope through trial and error. Maybe you learned that sucking your thumb helped calm you down during a stressful situation or that snuggling your stuffed animal made you feel a little better. As you grew older, you might have listened to your favorite (or your saddest or angriest) music driving home from a difficult day at school. You might have started running and felt your problems feel a little lighter with every stride you made. Maybe you took up some habits that you felt conflicted about, like smoking a cigarette when you felt stressed out.
Even though we aren’t always taught how to cope with difficult feelings, we tend to figure out strategies that can help mitigate the feelings for a little while. So why is it important to define those coping skills?
We first want to reflect on the types of coping skills that we use. Although many people cope in ways that aren’t healthy for their bodies or brains, we can encourage ourselves and the younger members of our families to practice coping skills that enhance our health. Importantly, coping skills will not make you feel 100% better or totally eliminate feelings of discomfort, but they will help you manage stressful or upsetting feelings.
We also need to practice coping skills and learn which skills work best for us and which skills no longer serve us. Your favorite coping skills might be situation-specific; for example, maybe you choose to talk to a close friend when you’ve had a stressful day, but prefer to take a yoga class on days when you feel sad. Coping skills are not one-size-fits-all. A coping skill that works well for your partner or child may not work for you, and you may have to test out several to find one that speaks to you. I used to think that journaling and writing down my feelings did not work for me, but recently decided to start journaling on my phone in my “Notes” app. To my surprise, capturing my feelings in writing really helped me process my emotions.
Lastly, practicing coping skills really does mean that you need to practice. It can be difficult to know what coping skills work for you if you do not test them out when you are not experiencing difficult emotions. After you’ve tested out some coping skills, it can be helpful to write out a coping skill “menu” or “toolbox”, or a list of coping skills that work well for you.
If you need some inspiration, here’s a few categories of coping skills that you can draw from:
- Mindfulness (eg. Breathing techniques and meditation)
- Distraction (Reading, playing a video game, listening to music)
- Opposite action (watching a funny movie, affirmations)
- Emotional awareness (journaling, identifying your feelings, talking to a therapist)
- Self-soothing (engage one of your senses by taking a bath or shower, petting your cat/dog/bunny, or going for a walk)
