When Coping Skills Don’t Work
Photo by Doğukan Şahin on Unsplash
This article originally appeared on Medium.com 2/18/2021
With the craziness of the world over the past year or so, the topic of coping skills continues to come up and be an important piece of maintaining mental health. The challenge though, is what happens when coping skills don’t work?
This topic can get into some pretty murky water that I would like to use this post to dispel.
Coping skills can fail to work for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons can go from misunderstanding what is meant by coping skills to a general lack of effectiveness and misapplication of various practices.
Defining what we mean can be an important step in the right direction to know how to better use various practices. Also, due to significant overlap in the terms, it would be important for us to differentiate between coping skills and self-care.
We can think of…
Self-care used as preventative maintenance to maintain homeostasis — maintaining our well-being and mood.
While…
Coping skills are used to restore homeostasis — in the moment to overcome challenges and difficulty — to reduce the intensity of stress or distress (severe or prolonged stress).
I would also go as far as to say that coping skills practiced in the right way can actually be a form of self-care. Not that they are preventative but that they are an active form of caring for ‘our-self’.
So, when do coping skills count as self-care and when do they not? Well, this can get a bit tricky and brings us to the first place where coping skills can break down
I think at this point it’s helpful to understand the difference between…
Adaptive vs Maladaptive coping
Framed another way, thinking about adaptive vs maladaptive coping is to think of them as the difference between functional vs dysfunctional coping.
Adaptive coping — good for you, those around you, restores homeostasis and our sense of self and well-being.
Maladaptive coping — provides short-term soothing to feel better, does not restore homeostasis or our sense of self or well-being.
We can think of maladaptive coping as being the basis for the formation of addictions — when life leads an individual to feel distressed and they dysfunctionally rely on various processes to reduce the severity of that experience.
Whereas, with adaptive coping, an individual will rely on a practice that simultaneously reduces the severity of the experience while also promoting their well-being.
Maladaptive coping can easily be conceived when we think about children that act out to get attention. They are having an experience of needing to get certain needs met and have learned to rely on destructive behavior to fulfill those needs. As the saying goes, “negative attention is still attention.”
We can also look at how maladaptive coping can lead to a variety of addictions when we learn to self-soothe in dysfunctional ways — food, gambling, shopping, sex, love and relationships, drugs and other substances, and on and on. I mean, you name it, we can turn just about anything into an addiction if we are using our behavior dysfunctionally to get our needs met.
But, many of these things, in moderation can be good for ourselves (or at least not destructive). It all just depends on how we are participating in the process.
Going to a happy hour every once in a while with friends can help us relax and unwind is a great example. Going to a happy hour every day and drinking several drinks is probably a good indication that there are deeper issues that need to be addressed.
I guess what I’m saying with this is, when coping is adaptive I would count it as a form of self-care. Adaptive coping can be seen as a way to restore homeostasis, healing, and provide relief.
But, maladaptive coping…not so much, as it’s actively eroding our well-being. Or, at the very least, it weakens our sense of self. It may provide relief but without the healing or restoration of homeostasis.
But, anyway, I digress…I mean, the whole point of this thing is when coping skills fail. So, with that being said, behaviors used to cope dysfunctionally would lead us to a breakdown of coping. Given the right context, many things that can be used functionally can lead to dysfunction.
An interesting story about this idea…
I was on a forum recently for people discussing Stoicism. A woman had asked about challenges she was having with her boyfriend as he had been using various practices and meditations as a form of disengaging from his partner and avoiding relational challenges.
As a result, she was feeling overwhelmed and some degree of distress as a result of him disengaging and not being willing to participate in the process of being in a relationship. He was using this school of thought, which is meant to promote virtuous action and wisdom, as a means to disconnect and it was impacting his relationship.
Ultimately, coping skills are tools. Using tools in the right way can help us get the job done. Using the tools in the wrong way can create destruction. Nailing a screw into place is probably not the best way to achieve your ends.
This leads us to our first point when coping skills breakdown…
Know the difference between adaptive vs maladaptive coping.
Another place coping skills can break down…
Having a one size fits all approach to coping
A couple of months ago I was having a conversation with a woman regarding her difficulties coping with anxiety while also coping with other physical challenges she was experiencing.
She was having difficulty building her coping skills toolbox due to the nuances of her needs depending on her experience. Part of the challenge was coming from the fact that her needs while experiencing anxiety were different than her needs while experiencing other physical symptoms.
Building on the toolbox analogy…knowing when to use the screwdriver and when to use the hammer is important. Knowing that you will get different results based on the tool you use is important.
Consider the example of the woman needing engagement from her partner that was retreating from his relationship. He was actually using proper coping skills. He was just applying them in the wrong situation.
Meditation, deep breathing, and other similar practices can be helpful to improve our well-being and longevity. But, using those practices in a relational context is not necessarily appropriate. While the meditation may help relieve some of his internal distress, there are still relational needs that demand attention.
Helpful coping skills for regulating relational distress may come in different forms — such as active listening, communicating openly and clearly, knowing when to communicate and when to set boundaries to disengage from feeling distressed, and so on. Different situations will call on us to use different practices based on the situational context and the needs of those involved.
Expecting ourselves to be able to use the same coping skills across a spectrum of diverse experiences is not realistic. Having one coping skill to rely on for life’s challenges will leave many people high and dry. Plus, using the same coping skills in the wrong context can lead to us reinforcing an improper use of various skills.
This leads us to our second point when coping skills breakdown…
Have a variety of coping skills at your disposal.
Explore various coping strategies and build a toolbox of practices that can be flexible and adapt to life’s ever-changing experiences.
Another place coping skills break down…
Waiting until the wrong time to become proficient in the use of coping skills.
I feel this one is pretty straightforward. When we wait until we are in distress to practice various coping skills, we are more likely to fail. This can potentially reinforce that a particular skill doesn’t work, or that we don’t get it, or a whole host of other distortions.
If we were to wait to gain proficiency with a particular skill until the stakes are high, we are likely going to be unsuccessful. We need to focus on building the behavior and competency when we are not actively distressed.
When we are stressed, part of our prefrontal cortex starts shutting down (if you want to know more about this process, I wrote about how the stress response impacts our brain in this post).
This means that our ability to problem solve and think creatively starts to decline. Therefore, hoping we can problem-solve to apply the use of an unfamiliar practice is unrealistic.
We must seek to understand and gain competency with new coping skills in an environment in which we are relaxed and can be fully engaged in the learning process. That way, when we are expected to use new tools and practices, we can have a higher chance of success.
The fact of the matter is that if we wait until we are distressed to learn new practices, we are setting ourselves up for failure.
This leads us to the third point where coping skills can break down…
Practice the use of new skills in an environment suitable to learning to gain competency.
Another place coping skills can break down…
Using coping skills to remedy broken systems
This point can get really tricky and can be very difficult to navigate. Suffice it to say, this is critical in understanding the appropriateness of various coping skills.
Let’s go with an extreme example on this one. Consider all the folks that have literally ‘been left out in the cold’ in Texas with the recent failure of their power grid.
All the coping skills in the world are likely not going to help. Many people are still going to be left in the cold suffering regardless of how many coping skills they know how to use. And, the more marginalized individuals will suffer the most. Older adults with less agency and autonomy, people in communities with less access to resources, those with less access to a supportive community, you name it.
Expanding on this analogy and applying it to socio-political and economic systems can lead us to see how there are a lot of challenges that can’t be remedied with coping skills. Many people in vulnerable populations have been hit the hardest with COVID.
Understanding the impact of systemic barriers is necessary for our social well-being. Many deficits in these areas serve to illustrate why having a network of programs to support people in need is necessary.
I know, I know…now we’re starting to get into some treacherous territory. The challenge here is that until many people are in need, or in the position of directly experiencing social and systemic barriers, it can be difficult to sway people’s opinions on many of these matters.
And, the really difficult piece here…there really aren’t many coping skills that can help remedy these challenges. I mean, people freezing without power in Texas can do all the deep breathing and meditating in the world that they want but it won’t do much to remedy their situation.
I mean, unless the people stranded in the freezing cold have been trained by Wim Hof, the Iceman, to learn how to internally regulate their body temperature then they’re going to be freezing. And, that is a whole other post, topic, and can of worms.
In some sense, successfully navigating through these types of systemic breakdowns presuppose access to resources, social networks and communities, and other connections that many people in vulnerable and marginalized communities may not have access to.
So, what then?
That’s a great question…and, it’s one without a great answer. In some sense, this can be a huge challenge for many individuals. It requires lots of preventative effort that many individuals may not have the ability or access to resources to functionally create.
This actually leads us to a couple of interesting places…
This is why it’s so important for us to develop compassion for other living beings. Having concern for the misfortune of others is critical for us to connect with one another and be willing to help out and contribute.
We need to actually be willing to help out, give back, and contribute to the well-being of others. Knowing that others are in need is one thing but doing something about it to help others out is critical.
Advocating for investment in social systems and structures that help support social well-being is critical to the well-being of society and therefore us since we are a part of said society.
None of us can outrun old age, sickness, or death. It is only a matter of time until we all meet with unfortunate circumstances. Coming together as a community, giving back, and providing support help strengthen social bonds for all of us. This will inevitably be beneficial not just for those around us but also for the strengthening of our own social connections and support.
To sum up this last point…
Be generous with your time and energy — give back, contribute, reach out to those in need, and be proactive about building community.
Plus, research shows that generosity leads to happiness which can “improve individual well-being and can facilitate societal success.” This makes generosity a particularly effective coping skill.
As the saying goes, ”we live in a society…” Whether we like it or not, we will impact, and be impacted by others.
In conclusion…
To build successful coping skills and practices:
Know the difference between adaptive vs maladaptive coping.
Have a variety of coping skills at your disposal.
Practice the use of new skills in an environment suitable to learning to gain competency.
Be generous with your time and energy — give back, contribute, reach out to those in need, and be proactive about building community.
I hope some of this is useful or helpful for you. Let me know if there’s anything that stands out to you.
