Why are coping skills so important, and how do we build them?
In this week’s episode, Lucy Wood is joined by Rob Kelly – creator of The Thrive Programme – to talk about coping skills. Feeling able to cope with life’s ups and downs is arguably the most important thing in your life. Since the absence of feeling able to cope is the main driver of anxieties, worries, fears, stress, depression, poor self-esteem and so on. During this episode, Lucy and Rob explain what coping skills are, how you learned them (or didn’t learn them), how anyone can build them, and why everyone should build them. Your experience of any situation is determined by one thing: how powerful you feel. When you feel powerful, in control and able to cope, you don’t create anxious or stressful thoughts, you don’t lose sleep or overthink it – quite the opposite – you know you can do it so you’re feeling calm and relaxed about it. When you feel powerless – you doubt your ability to cope – and this lack of belief in your capabilities fuels anxious, fearful, worrisome, stressful thoughts, feelings, sensations and behaviours. And it’s these uncomfortable feelings that further strengthen your belief. So the absence of feeling powerful in your ability to cope is the root cause of any anxiety, fears, avoidance behaviours you might see on the surface. This is great news, because it’s just a belief. So how do you build coping skills? 1. Understand that it isn’t the situation that is ‘making you’ scared or anxious, but the beliefs you hold about it / your capabilities. It’s not the spider that is ‘making you’ terrified - it can’t – it doesn’t have that power over how you feel. Only you do. Your limiting belief about your ability to stay calm when you see a spider is the cause of how you think, feel and react in that situation. So taking responsibility for how you think and make yourself feel is the first step. 2. With that understanding, gently find ways to get outside your zone. Make a list of situations you would rather avoid because you don’t like feeling those uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, sensations. Gradually start facing them. Expect to feel uncomfortable – that’s the point! You are learning to tolerate uncomfortable thoughts and feelings without running away. Every time you face something (obviously we’re talking about discomfort here, not danger…) rather than run away, you build coping skills. 3. Process it well Make sure you tell yourself well done. You faced something hard. You got yourself through. You put effort into tolerating those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and the more you do it, the easier it will feel. The more you learn to cope in each and every situation, the stronger your belief and skillset and the easier your life will be.
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