Understanding Coping
This is an educational article describing what a coping mechanism is and how to determine if yours is healthy or unhealthy. It also contains a huge list of behavioral adaptation examples.
The need to cope is a normal part of life. It’s born out of self preservation and therefore is a powerful act of self love. Coping skills are needed for stressful, sad, and angry times, but they’re surprisingly also needed for happy and exciting times.
Many of my clients start out coming to me because they’ve recognized they want to change how they cope. If you’re interested in doing this too, you might like to register for my free, self-paced workshop, Self Healing the Root.
Here’s what we’ll go over in this blog post to deepen your understanding of coping.
The information you’ll read here is in my own words based on observing my clients’ experience with coping and my own.
Coping Mechanism Definition
A coping mechanism is a behavioral adaptation you take on to deal with big emotions and stressful situations.
A “healthy” coping mechanism is usually one that is a constructive way of dealing with big emotions that adds to your long-term health and wellbeing.
An “unhealthy” coping mechanism is when a behavior you’re using to deal with big emotions and stress that may increase long-term harm even if it temporarily alleviates pain and suffering in the present moment.
To go a little deeper, if you’ve experienced one or many traumatic events, a coping mechanism can become part of a trauma response.
Trauma Response Definition
A trauma response includes nervous system reactions (flight, fight, freeze, and fawn) combined with behavioral adaptations (a.k.a. coping mechanisms) that are meant to keep you safe.
These components are part of your larger survival system. It’s quite miraculous and complex.
Behavioral Adaptation Examples
Here is a comprehensive list of behavioral adaptations. You might be surprised to see items on this list that you always thought were part of your personality. In fact, these behavioral adaptations are likely masking your true personality. (And working to heal them can change the way you identify and see yourself.)
Overachieving or becoming a workaholic
Over thinking
Spending a lot of time doing things for peace of mind as the driving factor
Freaking out over things you later realize aren’t that bad
OCD-like behaviors
Rumination
Regular compulsions
Perfectionism
Procrastination
Avoidance
Hyperactivity
Fidgeting
Busyness
Fierce independence
Normal outbursts or explosive behavior
Being controlling
Described as “the bully”
Yelling or snapping
Use of condescension
Defensiveness
Judging
Slamming doors or other objects
Lashing out toward others (name calling, degrading, harsh criticism, back-handed compliments, etc.)
Harming yourself
Self sabotage
Cutting yourself
Risky behavior
Indecisiveness
Not acting (and oftentimes decisions are made for you out of inaction)
Avoiding eye contact
Dissociating
Isolating
Numbing behaviors
Overusing alcohol or drugs
Overusing other self medications like screen time or food, for example
Shutting down
Sleeping a lot
People pleasing
Lack of boundaries
Lack of identity
Codependency
Appeasing
Harsh self critique
Making choices based on what others
You immediately start laughing (or humoring in some way) when someone is rude or harmful to you
You act against your own needs or don’t consider your own needs before acting
To see how this comprehensive list of behavioral adaptations corresponds to your nervous system reactions, you can register for my free Self Healing the Root workshop. There, I’ll take you through an exercise to pinpoint your exact behavioral adaptations as prompted by your nervous system. This is a great exercise to do before you can start trying to change or heal your behavioral adaptations.
Judging How You Cope
This might feel uncomfortable, but I’m about to tell you that:
Whether or not a coping mechanism is unhealthy or healthy is subjective. It’s not black and white.
Some people have the privilege of being taught healthy coping skills as children as they had or have emotionally mature parents who modeled the skills. These parents were able to regulate their emotions and provide safety. So a healthy coping mechanism can be recognized as one that adds to your long-term mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health and wellbeing, personally and relationally.
A vast majority of us at this time in our human history, however, weren’t taught or modeled “healthy coping.” Therefore, we do what is necessary to get through a situation the best way we can figure how.
Judging that survival drive as good or bad is the last thing we want to do because it’s all on a spectrum, right? If a coping mechanism allowed you stay alive even though it may have some negative impacts, did it do it’s job? Yes.
Can you learn new coping skills that are healthier than the old ones? Yes.
Here’s the caveat though: “healthy” coping mechanisms may have some healthier benefits, but any coping mechanism can end up becoming overused and create negative impact in your life.
For example, exercising to blow off steam is typically considered a healthy coping mechanism. But if you exercise for hours everyday, your body can become overly stressed and respond exactly as if you were in a more “negative” situation. In the case of over exercising, you’re likely using it to avoid something else. So at what point does it become unhealthy?
Which brings us to, your motivation for why you’re doing something also plays into whether or not you can judge a coping mechanism as healthy or unhealthy. Or better yet, you can judge whether or not the benefits outweigh the drawbacks rather than judging a coping mechanism as healthy or unhealthy.
I always say a coping mechanism needs to be healed when it’s harming you more than it’s helping you.
How do you know when they’re harming more than they’re helping?
A good guide to gauge this can be asking yourself, “Is this behavior disconnecting me from deep, meaningful purpose or is it connecting me to it?”
At some point, you also must ask yourself, “If I know I no longer need this coping mechanism but am not working to let it go and change my behavior, why am I self sabotaging?”
When that tipping point is, is completely unique to you and your situation. You must decide for yourself.
Changing How You Cope
The good news is that you can learn new coping skills. Over time, you can also ingrain those new coping skills through behavioral changes that you consciously choose. If you keep choosing new behaviors, eventually (and in many cases several years or more), they become your normal response because you’ve built a habit.
When you’re ready to make changes, appreciating what your “unhealthy” coping mechanisms did for you is an important part of the healing process. You can appreciate how it helped you and still know that it’s causing harm so you need to change it.
With big changes like this may even come grief. This is an opportunity to start practicing new coping skills to process and manage your grief.
You will be holding space for seemingly conflicting emotions: you’re letting something go, which can bring sadness, while at the same time, you’re feeling gratitude for how it provided, and at the same time you’re happy because you know you’re choosing a deeper level of love for yourself by letting it go.
What a beautiful transformation this can be. Are you ready to start yours?
Questions or Comments?
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions in the comments, or you can schedule a free consultation.
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Hey there!
I’m Brandi Fleck, TICC. I’m a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and trauma recovery coach. All genders, sexualities, and races are welcome here. I primarily serve clients via one-on-one coaching and self-paced trauma education.
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