Coping Skills 101
These are the cognitive and behavioral efforts people use to manage specific external or internal demands that are appraised as taxing
What are coping skills?
This mental health strategy involves deliberately shifting your attention away from a distressing emotion, thought, or situation to a neutral or positive activity
What are distraction strategies?
Distraction strategies are most helpful when your emotional distress reaches this state, making logical thinking impossible
What is overwhelming (or crisis/hyperarousal)?
Engaging in this type of physical movement—like a brisk walk or yoga—is a great healthy distraction that releases endorphins
What is exercise?
While healthy distractions are used to temporarily pause distress, unhealthy distractions are used to permanently do "this" to emotions
What is numb (or suppress/avoid) them?
This specific type of coping focuses on altering or eliminating the actual stressor causing the distress.
What is problem-focused coping?
Distraction strategies act as a temporary "this" button for your brain, giving your nervous system time to calm down before addressing a problem
What is a pause (or reset) button?
You should use a distraction strategy when you have absolutely "this" over the current stressful situation
What is no control?
Utilizing these five things to ground yourself (e.g., counting 5 things you can see and 4 things you can touch) is a classic healthy distraction
What are the senses?
Binge-watching a show for an hour to calm down is healthy, but doing it for 12 hours straight while skipping work falls into this category
What is unhealthy distraction (or avoidance)?
This type of coping aims to regulate the emotional response to the stressor rather than changing the situation itself.
What is emotion-focused coping?
Distraction belongs to this broader category of coping, used when a situation cannot be immediately changed or processed
What is avoidant or emotion-regulation coping?
This is the ideal window of time to use a distraction: right before an urge to engage in "this" type of behavior peaks
What is unhealthy (or self-destructive) behavior?
This 8-letter creative hobby involves using needles and yarn, serving as a highly effective, repetitive healthy distraction
What is knitting (or crocheting)?
Healthy distractions leave you feeling refreshed or calm, whereas unhealthy ones often leave you feeling "this" emotion afterward
What is guilty (or anxious/regretful)?