5 Coping Skills to Try This Week

A common goal when I meet with clients is to learn and practice new coping skills. Many people say they don’t have any to begin with. Coping skills are important because you can use them when you’re feeling distressed or having a hard time. 

Coping skills are interesting because they aren’t once size fits all. Often something that works really well for someone else, may not work for you. It’s important to try things to see what fits for you, and to build up your coping toolbox for times when you need them. Below are 5 coping skills you can try.

✨Temperature Skill-  this skill involves getting a burst of cold to help take you out of your head and into the present moment with your body. This works well when you’re struggling with intense anxiety, or anxious and negative thoughts. You can achieve this by taking a cold shower, splashing your face with cold water, holding an ice cube, or even stepping outside on a winter day. 

✨Box Breathing- we’ve all heard of deep breathing when we’re struggling. Box breathing involves inhaling for 4 seconds, holding for 4, exhaling for 4, and holding for 4 again. You can do this multiple times until you feel more relaxed and in control of your emotions. 

✨54321 Grounding- this one involves using your 5 senses. 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. This is another great one for getting you out of your head and into the present. 

✨Opposite Action- this coping skill is what it sounds like. Often when we are not doing well we turn to things that aren’t the most helpful. For instance, if we’re feeling down we might stay in bed all day, cancel plans and ignore phone calls. Usually that results in guilt, negative feelings about being unproductive, and just helps us to continue feeling down. Opposite action is taking what you have the urge to do, and doing the opposite. In that scenario it would be getting out of bed, following through with plans and talking to loved ones. This would make you feel more productive, supportive, and give you momentum to get out of that down space. 

✨Checking the Facts- this works great with anxious or negative thoughts. Asking yourself what evidence you have for those thoughts helps you to not believe everything you think and put things in perspective. If a thought has no facts behind it, we don’t need to take it seriously. 

Which ones have you tried, or would you try?