I’ve tried to live a peaceful existence. I utilize my strengths to do so, yet at times, I have chosen toxic strategies.
Coping mechanisms can, individually, be both helpful and unhelpful. It’s up to the user to distinguish. If I’ve protected my peace by seeing the good in a situation and not fussing about what’s not so great, that has kept me on a positive path, attached to a positive existence. If I use that same skill of seeing the good to completely ignore someone’s behavior that hurts me and let it continue, that is unhelpful. Here are a few tools that could be negative unless you use them for good.
Walking Away
I have let someone’s behavior hurt me for longer than I should have in the name of protecting my peace when I should have shifted to a more helpful coping skill: using my words or simply walking away and distancing myself from them. I’ve learned that actions can be just as clear as words and although I love the written word, distancing myself is a skill I have wielded for the good to myself, and with experimentation, mostly in recent years, I’ve learned this is helpful. I wish I had the strength in the past to leave negative exchanges/friendships/associations sooner rather than later but here we are. I used to think I was keeping the peace by maintaining relationships where I was always bending over backward. I was using the coping mechanism “keeping the peace” and it never addressed the problem. This was harmful to me and made me feel unworthy, rejected and never good enough. Essentially, I was a person who felt it was entirely my responsibility to keep the person liking me enough to not leave me. And really, I still don’t want to rock the boat but now I feel confident, not guilt or shame about walking away or putting distance between me and any persons abhorrent behavior. Just like Cardi B says, “If you see me and I don’t speak, that means I don’t f*** with you.” It’s not worth my mental health to do so.
Seeing the Silver Lining
It’s incredibly easy for me to see a multitude of sides to a situation, so much so, that I feel I easily fit on a debate team where an idea I don’t believe in is tossed my way to defend. This is a skill I wield to tackle every dichotomy of life. It truly has been my greatest tool in building resilience. I can find a silver lining to literally anything and it never ceases to amaze me. I may have a dip here and there but I will dig out of that hole by the silvery hairs in the rope that’s there to save me. How else is a person supposed to trudge through the natural opposition this life presumes? It’s both treacherous and beautiful at any given moment so why focus on the extreme negative? Seeing the silver lining doesn’t mean you don’t see the thunderous cloud. You can calmly do what you can to prepare for that cloud while all the while keeping the silver lining on the horizon of your mind.
This skill might be seen as delusion but tell me how delusion is not helpful when trying to move forward? If you are realistic, then you are not able to delude yourself enough to completely ignore the atrocities of this world but what you can do is take care of yourself and take care of your mind because it’s all that you are left with in the end anyway.
It’s like when Victor Frankl was in the concentration camps after losing his parents, brother and wife and he still found a way to maintain his accepting attitude. He found a reason to live by wanting to perpetuate that exact skill with logotherapy, a therapy he developed that focuses on finding meaning in this life as motivation to continue.
It’s like when Nelson Mandela organized people while in prison to enhance prison conditions. He found a way to lead wherever he was. Talk about being in the present moment.
It’s like when important people in your life die and you have the will to go on living FOR them. You can feel and see that they have passed the torch to you or the baton in a race and it is up to you to continue living life to the fullest, and doubly so, for the person that is gone.
So the silver lining, at least for me, has been a life-changing coping mechanism.
Suppress then Express
Suppression sounds bad but it can be a positive coping skill too. If you have to survive this life, we have to know how to suppress feelings every once in awhile. Have you ever screamed in your car? If so, suppression has been there for you. It’s simply waiting for a more appropriate time to express your feeling. Of course, you can’t wait too long but if you can find a way to harness a feeling, you will become a pro at “suppress then express.” Think of it like taming a horse.
Get Busy
This is actually a good tactic to suppress something for awhile but of course if you NEVER slow down, this coping mechanism can become the thing that keeps you in a toxic place. Like the title of the book reflects, The Body Keeps the Score, and you do have to get all negative feelings out of it! So get busy to get it out but then stop and feel it. If you have to feel it little by little, that is sufficient too. You don’t have to let a tsunami hit you, just allow wave by wave. Let it slowly wash it all away.
Conclusion
Think about why we even call them coping mechanisms. It’s because there are THINGS to cope WITH. Life is rough. We need some serious mechanisms to manage it and safely maneuver through it in the most helpful way possible. People on the internet will tell you all day how to do life one way or the other and neither is ever right. Experts will all say “it depends” when it comes to practically anything. Life has too many details to try to fit a square peg into a round hole. In order to be in charge of your own well-being, you must have the tools and use the correct one when it are called for. I think of video games, if you have 3 tools in your toolbox there are times when fire is what you need to conquer an enemy but in another situation you need the feather to have the ability to fly over him. Life is a video game. Don’t just carry your sword and shield. You must choose your tools wisely.
onthecontrarykelly 