Here is an explanation of a variety of coping skills. The thing about coping skills is that different people have different styles. I have included a variety of styles. You can pick many of them or just a couple. Either way, I wish you well on your journey of managing stress and finding more comfort.

PART 1, THE HOW OF COPING SKILLS

How you cope is just as important as what technique you use. Here are some guidelines to follow that will make coping skills work better for you.

Don’t hate stress and anxiety: Big unwanted emotions are triggered by the intense hatred of smaller ones. For example, the fear of anxiety adds to existing anxiety, causing a self-feeding and out-of-control spiral. Learn to be tolerant of emotions, your mind, and your body. That will do more for your overall coping than applying any amazing skill without tolerance.

At first use coping skills when you are feeling slightly distressed: If you never practice until it gets really bad, then you are like a weight-lifter trying to lift a 300-pound weight when they should be starting at 50, working their way up. It usually causes problems to overly pressure anyone (yourself, an adult, or a child) to use coping skills. When distress runs high, the phrase, “Just use your coping skills!” can seem uncaring. With practice and exercise, managing intense emotions will become easier. Just don’t start too high and then get discouraged.

Be happy with step-by-step progress and ride the ups and downs. If you are improving, but then start backsliding into more symptoms, consider it a temporary downswing. It’s not a sign that all your progress has forever evaporated, or that you have lost all your skills. Adopt this perspective, and depressive/anxious episodes won’t last as long.

If you can’t focus on coping skills, or on something else, then congratulate yourself when you catch your drifting focus. With a congratulatory tone, notice where your mind went while distracted, and move your attention back to what you want to focus on. If your brain feels punished every time it is caught for being distracted, then it will hide its own distraction from your awareness – which causes even more distraction. Also, it’s fine to put off a coping skill until you feel more able to use it. One coping skill might work better for you than someone else, or vice-versa.

Look at discomfort differently: Anxiety can cause an increased heart rate, tension, or shortness of breath, but those same exact sensations might be considered normal when you’re exercising. If you have consulted with a physician and ruled out other problems, then remind yourself that these symptoms are uncomfortable but safe. Curiosity, compassion, and non-judgment help with managing anxious sensations. Use those perspectives while asking yourself, “Where is the sensation in my body? how intense is it? what color would I give it?”

The energy of coping: You don’t “cope really hard” and you don’t need to cope perfectly. Think about how much energy you use when you turn on a light switch. You don’t stress about it. You don’t try to will the switch into submission with intense brain power. You just flip the switch with the gentlest anticipation that the room will brighten. That’s it. You don’t need the energy of a troubled gambler who throws his rent money on the table – hoping to recover a squandered paycheck.

The energy of hope: People can be afraid to hope, because their super high hopes always crash down. The energy of true hope doesn’t have to be super high though – as if you are certain that this time, you can finally jump into a pit of tigers safely. True hope is a simple expectation that good things can happen, but not a strained, desperate need for something that blinds us to life’s dangers. True hope doesn’t often demand specific and outcomes. It is open to revamping strategies when old ones fail – rather than repeatedly riding the same rollercoaster of high hopes and despair. It is a warm candle – not an inferno, and you don’t despair if it gets blown out. You just light it again.

PART 2 (SPECIFIC COPING SKILLS)

Try a few of these out. Some skills may work great, and you might not want to try others. Either way, practice some of them, and you should find helpful strategies.

• Get away from obvious or repeated danger. If you regularly find yourself surrounded by violence or in threatening situations, or if you are constantly being put down, then you may need to find better circumstances before applying coping skills. Safety is required to be calm and rational. Also, if you can change your situation, then change it for the better.

• Stress can affect how you judge reality. Look for truth in what you can observe with your 5 senses. Look up “5 senses grounding” on the internet and practice some exercises. If you can't describe a fear or frustration with your 5 senses, there’s a chance it’s just anxiety or depression. We can’t describe most people’s intentions with our 5 senses, but our mind still comes up with its own ideas. We might interpret a look on someone’s face as hatred, when they are just tired. We may interpret someone’s forgetfulness as uncaring when it was just forgetfulness. We judge incorrectly and get offended unnecessarily. Bad things really do happen, but so many bad things happen only in our minds. Ask yourself, “Can I really see this person’s attitude? Can I touch, smell, see, hear, or taste it? No. I see an expression on a face that could mean anything, but I don’t read minds.”

• Don’t take your own thoughts and emotions too seriously. The loudest thoughts and feelings aren’t always the truest: If you feel bad and think you are an awful person, that doesn’t mean you are. Some people have thoughts that flood their minds, which go against sincere values, morals, or beliefs. Those kinds of thoughts do not define anyone. It is the thoughts we truly want and look forward to which define our minds.

• Confront perceived threats in a relaxed-muscle body: Our muscles tense up when our kids misbehave, when someone does something annoying, or when our boss wants to talk to us. To manage our emotions, we can remember to relax our muscles before interacting, or when we know we might be easily irritated. When our muscles relax, our mind feels calmer.

• Body Scan: Scan your body for tension, pain, pressure, temperature, comfort, and any other sensation. Start with your feet and go to your head slowly. Do this non-judgmentally and be aware of your emotional state. How does your emotional state affect your body? Look up body scans on YouTube or a meditation app for guidance. The intuition gained from non-judgmental body scanning is one of the most important skills to manage emotions.

• Breathing Exercises- The area of your stomach should be expanding when you breathe in. Anxious breathing involves a lot of chest movement, shallow breathing, or breath-holding. Try to deepen and slow down your breath and focus on the sensation of air going into and out of your lungs. If you want extra direction, then look up breathing meditations on YouTube.

• Stretching: Focus on the sensation of muscle stretching.

• Beam of light imagery exercise: Starting with your head or feet, imagine that a beam of light is slowly passing through your body, relaxing muscles as it goes up to your head and down to your feet.

• Think about what you enjoy rather than what you hate - Stress is all about what you don’t like. Think about something else.

• Notice gentle forms of happiness: Happiness is not made of a bunch of thrills. True joy is usually composed of lots of small kinds of happiness that add up. If something doesn’t feel amazing, it can still feel good in a quiet sort of way. Some people act like happiness needs to be a giant gold nugget, so in their search for it, they avoid all the small flecks of gold that add up to a greater value.

• Don’t be too busy to care for yourself – Over-serving others and being self-neglectful can be caused by fear, poor self-image, or even past trauma. Having needs makes you human rather than defective or weak. Put on your oxygen mask first so you can be conscious while attending to other people or responsibilities. Don’t constantly rush. If slowing down always makes you feel horribly guilty, unproductive, or worthless, then the feeling is caused by your brain's stress response rather than wisdom.

• Eat healthy – Make a small change to become healthier. Then make another. It is often unhealthy to make extreme changes. If you experience anxiety and body shaming around food, consult a therapist.

• Get out of tunnel Vision - We usually aren't aware of mild tunnel vision, but it can cause stress. To improve this, practice peripheral focusing: Start off by relaxing your gaze on something in front of you. Then, without moving your eyes much, simply notice several things that are on the peripherals (outside edges) of your vision. This triggers your non-tunnel-vision system to activate a relaxation response. Compulsive scrolling on a phone often puts people into a mild sort of tunnel vision, which tells their body and mind to tense up.

• Notice your safety: You may need to change your definition of safe to be, “anything that isn’t imminently or credibly going to attack me.” Most things on the planet are not attacking, and most things you observe with your senses are safe. Don’t ignore wisdom or obvious threats, but use your 5 senses to ground yourself in present reality: notice the safety of smells, sounds, sensations, tastes, etc.

• Yoga, Tai Chi, Chi Gong – There are many ancient practices that carry the body and mind into a state of peace, which have been developed and proven over millennia. You don’t need to believe in an eastern religion to benefit from the calming influence of specific movements, stretching, mindfulness, and breathing exercises.

• Lean into an emotion: This is different than avoiding or trying to escape an emotion. Avoidance of emotions can make them more chaotic. Instead, be curious about and explore a feeling.

• Mindfulness –Mindfulness is not about clearing your mind. It is about learning to fight less with your mind. It’s learning to observe things, events, sensations, and even your thoughts with a curious attitude rather than a critical one. It is not about destroying anxiety but coming to a sense of peace despite the anxiety. Mindfulness breaks the out-of-control spiral caused by the hatred and fear of emotions.

• Scenery, Coloring, Painting: Work on coloring books, paint on a canvass, or view nature

• Play - Do something with friends. Play with your kids. Go outside.

• Exercise – If your health permits, intense exercise can reduce the fight-flight response quickly. Throw a ball as hard as you can across a field, or push on a firm wall as hard as you can. Run as fast as you can for a few seconds. If intensity isn’t a good idea, then even walking around for half an hour a few times a week is helpful for anxiety, depression, and ADHD.

• Half Smile – Turn the corners of your mouth up. It doesn’t have to be very much. Also make sure you are smiling a little with your eyes – kind of how you’d look at a cute puppy. You have nerves in the corner of your mouth and eyes that can send signals to your brain that you are okay.

• Posture – Fear and stress are reinforced by a posture of head/eyes down, and shoulders slumped. Instead, show a posture of confidence.

• Imagine how you would act and feel if you knew everything would work out perfectly by the end of the day. How might you talk to people? How might your posture be different? How would your eye-contact change? Act that way.

• Fantasy / Distraction: This can be useful if it isn’t your only coping strategy. Kids are often fantasizing about things they can’t really do, like flying or having superpowers. Adults can sometimes learn to be a bit more like children.

• Limit scrolling, news, gaming, doom scrolling, and social media: Screen time engages the reward centers of our brain while increasing stress hormone levels. The combination of stress and reward can cause a kind of stress addiction. When you reduce screen time, you may initially feel bored or upset as your brain’s chemistry readjusts, but you will start feeling better soon.

• Temperature – Hold an ice cube and rub it on your face or arms. Take a warm bath.

• Yawn - This triggers a relaxation response.

• Adjust Perfectionism: Learn from the great philosopher, “Mediocrates,” whose famous quote is, “Meh, good enough.” A bicycle that meets your needs may cost $300, while the Olympic kind costs over a million. Just like an Olympian would fear riding a “good enough” bike in a big race, anxiety and perfectionism make the words, “good enough” feel like, “totally awful.” It can be challenging to improve perfectionism, so be patient with yourself while developing a healthier balance one step at a time.

• Some ideas and meditations can be found on the internet. For example, on YouTube or a relaxation app, look up “Progressive muscle relaxation” “Mindful breathing,” “guided imagery”, “relaxation hypnosis,”, “body scan meditation”

• If nothing works, then allow yourself to have an uncomfortable emotion, or do something meaningful while carrying your anxiety around with you. A big spike in anxiety will come down on its own. Anxiety is not dangerous. Don’t ‘cope’ so hard that you give yourself more anxiety.

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