While on this new career path of mine, a major part of it is spreading awareness about mental health; a very personal part of my life. Every Monday I’d like to create an article to share on the topic; a ‘Mental Health Monday’ weekly post
Back in late April-early May of this 2019 year, a large blanket of love was sent my way from all of you, encouraging me to pursue this passion of spreading awareness. I’ll never forget that moment when all of you were there for me, reminding me that it’s OK to speak out. A month ago, I reached out again during a very dark episode of depression, and once again you were there for me, sending me love. I am SO grateful to all of you. One day I hope to discover a phrase that better describes the feeling in my heart than just ‘Thank you’. Perhaps one day it may be possible to send the emotion along with the words. So, just know that I have so much love and gratitude for all that you do for me, it fuels the passion I have to ‘pay it forward’ to those who need the same love during those dark moments of their life where they feel alone and struggle with similar battles of the mind.
Today, the first of many ‘Mental Health Monday’s’, I’d like to share about coping skills.
During the month of May, which is Mental Health Awareness month, I shared several articles I wrote about various types of mental illnesses that I struggle with, in an effort to pass along lessons I’ve learned living with Bipolar 1, ADHD, Anxiety, and Panic disorder. As mentioned in those articles, the best thing that anyone could do, who struggles with a mental illness, is to visit with a therapist regularly, and consult with a psychologist to learn if medication can help.
Living with a mental illness isn’t easy. It touches every part of your daily life, and it often feels like an endless problem in need of troubleshooting, with sometimes temporary ‘patches’ that you always hope will turn into a permanent solution. Speaking on behalf of my friends who share in the same dilemma, we hope that medication and therapy alone could prove to be a ‘magic cure’ like Excedrine often is for a killer migraine, “Phewf! That was just what I needed”…
There is much to be grateful for for medication. Modern science is amazing in what it’s provided for us as a means of pulling through this journey in life. For example, many years ago doctors could only provide for their patients a strong swig of alcohol to relax the patient, who had to be wide awake while undergoing a painful and radical surgery. “Here, bite down on this stick while these two men hold you down, we’ll go as fast as we can. Brace yourself!” .
Then came an innovative Doctor in the early 1800’s who discovered ether anethesia. He was met with a lot of opposition, a lot of fear from patients and other doctors, who listed several reasons why it wasn’t a safe solution. Too little, too much, it was too risky! There were no guarantees. The population needed time and soon it did become widely accepted, there has been many further advancements in the practice, and are we not grateful that we don’t have to bite down on sticks while two men hold us down as we are forced to watch and feel our legs, stomachs, etc get sliced into?!
I am so grateful for the talented people in the world who are tirelessly working on solutions for us to heal, comfort, and live our best life. These scientists have provided so many available solutions so we don’t have to suffer in agony. Surgery is unavoidable sometimes, and those who have a chronic mental illness – its symptoms are unavoidable – but medication can help.
In addition to medical treatment, there are coping skills. There are several styles of coping, namely: problem focused (instrumental) and emotion-focused.
Problem-focused coping strategies are methods/activities, to deal with the problem in order to reduce stress.
Emotion-focused are methods that can help people handle any feelings of distress that result from the issue at hand.
These skills help ground us to be more in the present moment. Coping skills are personal preferences that won’t work for everyone, and may not work long-term, but I am going to list common techniques that work for many, and my own that have, and continue to work for me.
Finding the right coping mechanism takes time and patience. When you find the right fit, it can make a tremendous impact on how you feel. If you haven’t had success in finding a reliable technique, perhaps those I list below could work for you.
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SUPPORT
Support can look like reaching out to a friend who is someone you can trust to listen and respond back with love and understanding. Just having someone to vent to can help alleviate a lot of stress! No need to ‘fix it’, just to have someone to help remind you that you’re not alone – and you’re loved, needed, and wanted.
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MEDITATION
Not everyone has the ability, or interest, to sit crossed legged on the ground with hands on their knees while chanting and clearing their mind. Meditation can look like:
- coloring
- diamond painting (a current favorite of mine)
- paint by numbers
- puzzles
- finding a peaceful-quiet place outside and letting the sunshine rest on your face
- gardening
- find a wall and lay down and put your legs up against the wall. Set your hands on your abdomen and close your eyes. Breathe slowly and concentrate on the slow rhythm and movement of your breaths and feel your tummy go up and down as you breathe…
Meditation is used to help ground your mind to a single focus.
I often get overwhelmed when I feel like 1,000 thoughts are colliding in my mind, my emotion builds up, and I feel bombarded by tasks, emotional needs from others, “I’m not good enough” thoughts and feelings, etc… Quieting my mind so I can ‘find myself’ again is needed often.
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AFFIRMATIONS
Sometimes the outside world can intrude our mind, writing a script that teaches us false beliefs. Bullying can do this, abuse, those who have served in the military and are struggling with PTSD can be vulnerable to adopting false beliefs about themselves, and many other possible triggers… I have used affirmations for several years to ‘retrain my brain’ to healthier thought patterns. My first introduction to affirmations was from the following authors, who I highly recommend their books to you:
Louise Hay
Deepak Chopra
Wayne Dyer
…There are so many other awesome authors, if you have any to recommend, please share yours in a comment below.
If you walk into Clark’s and my home we have quotes pinned all over our home as positive reminders.
Affirmations can look like (I have these set to pop up on my phone as daily reminders. The idea is that daily use of affirmations, read over a long period of time, will overwrite the negative beliefs to positive beliefs):
“People respect me because I respect who I am”
“I love myself, and I love that I am different than others”
“My body is strong and beautiful”
“I find it easy to say no and own my life”
“Plant a seed with faith and watch it grow with knowledge”
“I am strong and capable of positive change”
Affirmations have helped me work through my past eating disorder, my debilitating anxiety, they have helped me gain confidence and discover assertiveness. They have proven to be extremely useful and needed in my life.
One more affirmation that I use on most days to keep me ‘sane’, and quite honestly, keep me alive, is to remind myself that I only need to do ONE THING to make my day successful.
A depression trademark is the word “Failure”… I have rewritten that word in my script to say “If all you do today, is just get out of bed, you’ve won the day”.
“I am not a failure, because I am still standing – I’m still alive today – and that makes me incredibly strong and brave.”
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LAUGHING
Sometimes we need to be reminded to not take life so seriously…
The source of humor could come through friends, family, or even a therapist. I love mine. She is so perfect for me. She has the skills and talent to just ‘wake me up’… for example, when I have fallen into the trap of paranoia – worrying what other people may be thinking about me, or talking about me, she has said (and i use her words as coping skills when I feel myself slipping back into the paranoid thinking), “Becky, you’re not that popular that people have time to sit around and talk about you!” She was so blunt, it was funny! So I tucked those words in my ‘coping toolset’ and refer to her ‘so true it’s funny’ statements. Sometimes we just have to laugh over the drama of life, and if you can find that one person who can say it just right, it’s wonderful!
Other sources of humor can be through movies, comedy skits on TV or YouTube, or sometimes books. Do you have any go-to sources for a good laugh? Add your suggestions in a comment below.
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EXERCISING – MOVE!
The last thing I feel like doing when I am depressed is exercise… but exercising doesn’t have to look like going to the gym and working out for an hour.
I know that when I get over-the-top overwhelmed where I’m on the verge of an emotional melt-down, I have built this ‘survival instinct’ to get outside and go for a walk. This has been a reliable go to coping skill for me.
I know that a couple years ago, during the Winter time, we were visiting family for Christmas and it was 5F degrees outside and I didn’t even feel it because I was so overwhelmed emotionally. The heat from my overwhelmed mind was enough to pull me through a good walk around the block a few times. I’m sure between the walking and the cold air, it was just what I needed to ground myself and clear my mind.
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DISTRACT THE MIND THROUGH MEDIA
Sometimes painting, drawing, writing, just doesn’t do it for me.
When you’re depressed, your ‘loves’ in life don’t interest you anymore. For me, as an artist, I LOVE to paint, draw, write, but on my very down days my drive to do what I love is just depleted – and that can make me even more depressed because ‘nothing’ interests me and everything I try to do – takes so – unbelievably – long! It often feels like I’m running on fumes, or a ‘techy’ way to say it is that my mind is running on old ‘dial-up’ internet connection instead of super-fast DSL / Fiber Optic.
What has helped carry me through these emotional days are TV shows, or a recent discovery, play Zelda on Nintendo Switch (I know, I’m such a nerd) These both serve as an alternative to my past coping ‘tool’ of sleep. When nothing seems to be working, I sleep. But my hope is that I don’t have to ‘go there’, because I tend to hibernate and lose a lot of hours in a day. So while watching TV or playing Zelda, it doesn’t eat up as much time as sleeping would have. The goal is to add as much ‘joy’ in your day as possible, in hopes that tomorrow will be a better day, with more mental energy to tackle goals and productive tasks on your ‘to-do’ list. Sometimes ‘escaping to another world’ is just what you need to escape the mental trauma going on in your own mind.
One more thing that I do to help me pull through a lot of sadness and emotional pain is this. What I’m doing right now. It is rewarding for me to share my story, what I’ve learned that has helped me. Hopefully by my speaking out, I might help lift someone who is also hurting, and my words could hopefully provide them with comfort.
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The risks of not identifying and adding coping skills, to have on the ready when problems show up:
Unhealthy habits:
- overeating
- oversleeping
- binge drinking
- drug use
Unhealthy social habits:
- isolating from friends and family for a long period of time, not answering calls, not replying to texts over a long period of time…
- hygiene issues
- build up of paranoia, further fear of getting out of the house to the extreme of not leaving the house at all
Numbing:
- emotional eating
- alcohol use
- drug use
- finding comfort or a sense of self-worth in others in a destructive or misuse of physical intimacy
Risk-taking, impulsive decision making:
- gambling
- unsafe sex
- experimenting with drugs
- theft
- recklessly driving
Self-harm:
- when the mind gets tied up in a tight knot of emotions to where you feel like you’re screaming out in pain, like your brain is on fire, some find relief in harming their bodies by cutting, scratching, or burning themselves. Think about this, who in their right mind (key phrase being ‘right mind’) would want to hurt themselves? They’d have to be in a pretty desperate state of mind to find relief in that way.
When life feels out of control, this is why those who struggle with a mental illness should, and need to, have a therapist who they can reach out to to help them build healthy coping skills and tools to refer to when in times of need. When all coping skills or attempts to use them don’t work – this is why God gave man talents and skills to help each other. There is no shame in reaching out to professionals, those who have dedicated their lives to help others, to help assist us on getting back on our feet.
Family and friends can’t always ‘fix it’. Sometimes they shouldn’t. Sometimes it takes an unbiased third-party to speak our language and ‘reach us’ inside our mind.
You’re not weak, you haven’t failed. You’re doing the best you can to stay on your boat that is weathering this storm, throwing big waves against you. Coping skills help provide you with an emergency repair kit. Build your kit and you will survive this storm, and live another day. You may even be able to assist others in building their kit to survive their own storms. What a wonderful feeling it is, to help others.
I hope what I’ve shared today may meet the eyes of someone who needs a friendly reminder of what could help make their day(s) a little easier to live. If you have any skills that have been a proven success in your life, please share in a comment below, as it may be helpful for those who are looking for ways to help them in times of need.
Thank you, friends! Sending many :::hugs::: your way.
