Coping Skills

1. Coping skills help you tolerate and deal with difficult situations, thoughts, or feelings.
2. When you encounter an unfavorable event, it’s not uncommon to experience stress and depression, often leading to physical & emotional responses that are hard to manage.
3. Without proper coping mechanisms, you may feel stuck, overwhelmed, or even hopeless.
4. Positive coping builds resilience and results in an improved mood & better physical health.

Our therapists at Heal Talk Therapy know the importance of learning effective coping skills to help you thrive and build resilience. Let us teach you how to strengthen your coping skills and improve your life.

Healthy Coping Starts with Self-Care

Many believe self-care is a luxury rather than a priority. This cannot be further from the truth. Get in the routine of practicing self-care to promote your mental and physical health. Self-care practices can reduce negative feelings, improve your life, and enhance the benefits of therapy.

In times of stress, it’s easy to get wrapped up in many different emotions. When this happens, you may attempt to cope with your distress in unhealthy ways. Some people turn to drugs or alcohol, become aggressive, eat too much or too little, become avoidant, or even sleep more. Each of these coping mechanisms can lead to unhealthy physical and mental changes, so it’s important to replace these behaviors with healthier alternatives.

For example, learning “assertive” communication is a coping skill that can help you navigate stressful interactions with others, get your needs met, and build self-esteem.

When faced with a stressful situation, your body undergoes many physiological changes in response to a perceived threat. Stress hormones change the physical state of your body by altering how your body functions. This constant state of stress has unhealthy side effects, such as chronic headaches, digestive issues, memory changes, and insomnia. Being aware of how you react to stress is essential to finding coping mechanisms that work best for you.

People often resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms in an attempt to manage complicated emotions and feelings they may struggle to articulate. Those mechanisms can be destructive and result in further physical and emotional harm. By developing healthy coping mechanisms, a person can learn to cope in a more positive way.

For example, understanding the types of boundaries you set can help you determine the need to strengthen this skillset. Having boundaries that are too rigid or weak, will leave you feeling more stressed and less able to cope. Ensuring you set healthy boundaries is a very powerful coping skill that leads to a healthier you.

If you want to strengthen your coping skills, one of the best ways to do so is by seeking therapy. Your therapist can help you identify unhealthy ways of coping. They can also teach you more effective ways to deal with difficult circumstances and improve resilience.

What works best for you may be entirely different than what works for someone else. That’s why we will focus on your unique needs to explore more effective coping methods.

Establishing Healthy Boundaries to Cope

A very effective coping skill to learn is how to establish and maintain healthy boundaries. Boundaries let other people know the limits and rules we set for ourselves in our relationships. Defining boundaries is a very important step in your healing journey.