53: Just Cope!

Welcome to this bonus episode! For the next few weeks I’ll be putting out some bonus content, and today we will explore coping skills. It’s a phrase that’s become a buzzword in the psychology world right now, along with emotional regulation, feelings, and trauma. Let’s clarify these concepts that may have gotten watered down with a closer look.

 Show Highlights:

●      “Emotional regulation” defined and explained: what it is and what it is not

●      The definition, Part 1: “Emotional regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with a range of emotions and in a manner that is socially tolerable . . .” It is OK to have your feelings!

●      The definition, Part 2: “ . . . and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions, as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed.” Being emotionally regulated doesn’t mean you are a robot!

●      What it means to operate within your “window of tolerance,” the optimal zone of arousal (not in a sexual sense, but nervous system activation) for a person to function in everyday life

●      How your window of tolerance has red zones at the top and bottom of hyper- and hypo-arousal

●      The learning zone vs. the comfort zone

●      How coping skills help us bring ourselves back to the window of tolerance in the comfort zone

●      Why we should morally neutralize ALL coping skills

●      Examples of coping skills that help you stay out of the red zones and regulate well

●      Why self-compassion is THE most important coping skill

 Resources and Links:

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  0:05 Hello you sentient balls of stardust, welcome to struggle care, with your host, KC Davis And welcome to the bonus episode, I'm going to be putting out some bonus content for the next few weeks. And today I'm gonna talk about coping skills, coping skills is one of those words like emotional regulation, I've become really hot right now. Because I feel like there's a lot of talk in the psychology world about feelings and about trauma. And I just wanted to give you guys some information that I think will really clarify some of these concepts that I think have gotten a little watered down. So let's get into it. Let's start with the definition of emotional regulation. Because I've seen some people talk about emotional regulation in ways that I don't think is very helpful. And there's a example definition from the Cornell research study that says, emotional regulation is a term generally used to describe a person's ability to effectively manage and respond into an emotional experience. And I like that, but the best definition I've actually found, is in Wikipedia, and I like it because there are there's like five parts to it that I want to break down for you. It says emotional regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with a range of emotions, and a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions, as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. Now, that's really a mouthful, I want to break it down piece by piece. So first of all, I mean, can you hear me panting? I swear to God, I sound like I just ran. And I just walked in here and sat down, and I realized I should have like, taking some deep breaths anyways, okay, the ability to respond. Let's start there. What does that mean to respond? Well, in this case, we're going to be talking about our behavior and our decisions, respond to what will the ongoing demands of experience, cut, I love that. I mean, it's kind of a fancy way to say life. But yeah, like life has demands, like, we're going to feel feelings, and we still have to do life. Okay, so we have to be able to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions got, that's so good. Because I can't tell you how many times I've seen people talk about regulation, as if it's the same thing as calmness, like being calm is not I mean, it is part like it can be like regulation can be being calm. But that's not all it is, you can be angry and be regulated, you can be sad and be regulated. You could be jealous and be regulated, you could feel shame and be regulated. Like being regulated doesn't mean not having feelings, it doesn't mean having small feelings, it doesn't mean being calm, especially in the face of something that a reasonable person would not feel calm in. So it's the ability to respond with a range of emotions in a manner that is, and then there's two things one, socially tolerable, God, the word choice is so good. And it didn't even say socially acceptable, because this isn't about, you know, doing right. It's socially tolerable. Right. And the way that I would expand on that is that was, that means, basically, unawareness, of the social repercussions for yourself and others of whatever behavior or response you're about to have. When I say that, again, awareness of the social repercussions, so you're about to react, you're about to respond. And you want to be able to respond in a way where you are taking into account basically like the social fallout of how you're about to respond. So that can be something as simple as hurting someone's feelings. It could be burning a really important bridge, it could be committing a crime, right? Now, you can, I mean, you could hurt someone feeling on purpose, it doesn't necessarily mean every time that you hurt someone's feelings, you're being dysregulated. But what we often see is we get emotionally dysregulated. And we end up making behaviors and decisions that are not socially tolerable, right. So that second part is not only do we want to respond in a manner that socially tolerable, but we also want to respond in a manner that is sufficiently flexible to permit two things, spontaneous reactions, as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions. Whoo. So let's talk about it. What that means. First of all, it says spontaneous reactions. This isn't about being a robot. This isn't about not having strong feelings or not having real feelings or being measured and nothing bothers you, and you are unbothered. It's not about that at all. It's the ability to balance the needs of honoring an authentic emotional experience, which is what you really feel what you really want to do, and the effects that such behavior will have on yourself and others. So the ability to feel your real feelings and to navigate them in such a way that you can feel your You'll feelings, basically experience what you really feel, do what you really want to do, and balance that with what you really want for yourself after this moment has passed, right? Because I don't want to lean into what I really feel hurt feelings, burn bridges commit crimes, right? And then now I've created a situation I don't really want for myself, whether that's a broken relationship or jail time. And then when you talk about also the ability to delay spontaneous reactions. I love that. Because sometimes I'm having a big reaction to something and I need the ability to put it on the backburner. As a therapist. Part of that is, you know, if somebody says something to me in a session, that hurts my feelings, I have to be able to put that on the backburner and deal with it later, if something horrific happens to me or in my life, but I still need to take care of my kids, I have to be able to delay those spontaneous reactions when I need to, I'll never forget going through a miscarriage. And but I still had to take care of my 18 month old and it was like, okay, like, yes, I want to honor my spontaneous reactions to this. But I do need the ability to delay those spontaneous reactions, or I will fall apart and not be able to take care of my kid. And then what do we mean by reactions, so I came up with like, five things. When we talk about spontaneous reactions, our feelings, obviously, our thoughts, our emotion related behavior. So this would be things like facial expressions, these are things we're not really choosing to do. They're just happening, maybe, you know, facial expressions, pacing, yelling, and then emotion related physiological responses. So heart racing, sweating. And then lastly, decision based behavioral responses. So the decision to walk out and slam the door, the decision to, you know, punch somebody in the face the decision to say something hurtful, those are the sort of what the reactions are. And again, we don't want to go so far on one way, that we're not having any authentic reactions, which buttoned up all the time. But we don't want to be so far on the other end, that we think every single spontaneous reaction to an emotional experience doesn't have to be mitigated or thoughtful or restrained in any way. Because again, that's how we end up with social repercussions that don't line up for the goals we have for our lives. When we talk about emotional regulation, let's kind of take it to the top. It's the ability for you to authentically experience the emotional experiences of life while still dealing with the demands of life in a way that balances, being able to honor what you authentically feel and experience and the effects that your reaction might have on the environment around you, and ultimately you and the people you care about, and to be able to move through your thoughts, feelings, emotion related behaviors, physiological responses, and decision based behavior responses in a way that does that. Well, now everybody has an ability to regulate, some of us have maybe what's called a wide window of tolerance, some have a small window of tolerance. And what the window of tolerance is, it's a concept originally developed by Dr. Dan Siegel. And it describes the optimal zone of arousal for a person to function in everyday life. So when we say arousal, we usually hear that in a sexual instance, but it refers to really any nervous system activation.

  When a person is operating within this zone or this window, they can effectively manage and cope with their emotions, right. So that arousal, here's that nervous system activation or that stress, and anytime we're experiencing distressing emotions, they're stressed they're there's nervous system activation there. And trauma does affect your window of tolerance, your early childhood abilities, experiences affect this. And this idea is that when you're in your window of tolerance, you still have ups and downs. So being in your window of tolerance does not mean being calm, it just means you're able to emotionally regulate Well, you might feel stress or pressure, but it doesn't really bother you that much. But you have your little ups and downs throughout the day. Now outside of that window of tolerance is sort of this what I call this red zone, both on the high end and the low end, the high end would be like a hyper arousal This is extremely anxious, out of control way overwhelmed. This is your body and brain going into fight or flight where your reactions just take over. And on the low end of it, you have what's called hypo arousal. So this is zoned out numb frozen. This is that freeze response. Again, it's not something you choose that reaction just takes over. So if you think of your little window, and then you think of kind of these red zones on the top and bottom, but there are other zones in there, too. There's this yellow zone. It's like this buffer zone in between your comfort zone inside that window and just total fight flight or freeze. And that stress zone is sometimes also referred to as the Learning Zone. It's where there's enough stress for you to be enough activated to be learning something New think about your muscles, right? Like you have your window of tolerance for your muscles, you could walk or you could rest, but everything's pretty, you know, easy. And then you have like that learning zone, this is where you maybe you go to work out or you go to run, and it pushes your miles, it challenges your muscles, right, and it that's good and your muscles might feel sore. And it might be really difficult. But in the end, it's making those muscles stronger. But we also know that you can push muscles so far that they don't get stronger, it actually makes them weaker, right? It's pushed too far, well, your nervous system and your emotions, they're the same. There's this comfort level, that's fine little ups, little downs. There's this learning level, we're being challenged, we're being stressed. But it's not something that overwhelms our coping skills. And then of course, you can be pushed so far that you're in fight or flight and you can't learn anything in those states. So tolerable stress Learning Zone uncomfortable, but your skills for coping are not too overwhelmed. This is actually a really good thing. And you'll hear sometimes there's an old phrase that a therapist used to say no comfort in the Learning Zone. And no learning in the comfort zone or no comfort in the growth zone, no growth in the comfort zone. And we know this right? Like sometimes, if you are asked to do something scary what a good example is if you take somebody that has agoraphobia, and they're wanting to work on their agoraphobia, well, staying inside the house doesn't make their agoraphobia better. In fact, it can make it worse if they're just never leaving. But at the same time, if you were to say, okay, that person needs to get in their car and drive down the block. Okay, well, that might be too much that might actually make the agoraphobia worse. So that's why therapists will look to find that yellow stress zone. So they might say, Hey, can you take Can you just open the door today, just open the door and look outside. And so the person will open the door and they'll look outside, and they will feel stress. But they'll work with their therapist for coping skills that they can use while they're feeling that stress, to begin to acclimate to grow that window of tolerance until eventually, they can open the door and it feels in their comfort zone. And the key here is not just exposure, its exposure and coping skills. So we don't just say, open the door until it doesn't bother you. Now you need coping skills as well. But let's talk about coping skills. What are coping skills, coping skills are how we attempt to bring ourselves back to that window of tolerance to that comfort zone. And there's a lot of moralizing that we do about coping skills. We talked about coping skills, we talked about defense mechanisms, we talked about maladaptive coping skills we talked about. So for a long time, we've been doing this and now we get to where we feel like some ways of coping are healthy. Some ways of coping are unhealthy, some are wrong, some are good, some are bad, some are whatever I want us to backup and maybe just morally neutralize all coping skills. At the end of the day, a coping skill is just how we are attempting to bring ourselves back into that window of tolerance and safety. Anything you do to downshift and activate a nervous system and decrease distressing emotions is a coping skill. So that means self compassion, counting to three when you're angry, calling a friend event icing your vagus nerve, taking a walk calling a therapist venting, journaling. But it also means drinking smoking, watching TV for hours scrolling tick tock maladaptive daydreaming, checking out not talking to isolating for days, I think it's really helpful to not think of things as inherently good or bad when it comes to coping. And instead, think of those all of those skills as having a cost benefit ratio. And one good example of this is if you think about a person who is autistic, and they're masking during the day, and so masking is a way that autistic person presents themselves as if they are neurotypical. And it's exhausting for them. But it's something that they do to get through a situation that involves painful or distressing nervous system experiences with the least amount of pain possible. And there are times when an autistic person masking is what gets them through the day. It's what protects them. And there are times when masking costs too much. And it causes other painful situations to collaterally crop up in your life, that overwhelm your ability to deal and now you're trying to find coping skills to deal with the fallout of the coping skill that gets you through the day. And all of that is morally neutral. It's just about your personal cost benefit. It's about you deserve this wide window of tolerance that allows you to experience what the world has to offer in a way that allows you to behave in a way that creates things that align with the goals for your life. You can live a joyful life

  there are some coping skills that are so overwhelmingly good at turning the off switch of painful emotions, like doing cocaine, like isolating for days and not talking to somebody and the issue is is not that they're bad or wrong. It's that they solve the problem in the moment so Well, but they do not help you learn any internal emotional skills that would help you widen your window of tolerance in the long run, which would allow you to deal with a greater and greater breadth of emotional experience. In fact, it can do the opposite, it can shrink your window of tolerance, some of those coping skills that are so good at just turning off the pain, end up creating this collateral painful experiences in your life, that bring lots of pain that you still don't know how to deal with. But you didn't have the skills to deal with the pain when it was at two. And now the cocaine has created situations that are at a 10. And you still don't have any more skills except turn it off with cocaine and with the cocaine, right like that is the crux of addiction. The best coping skills are the ones that provide the immediate help of downshifting in the moment, but allow you to work to widen your window of tolerance in the long run, right. So you know, doing cocaine, when you're sad is not going to open your window of tolerance in the long run. So we want to fight you deserve different coping skills. That's what I'm getting at. So other coping skills may not be as good at getting rid of the painful emotions immediately. But they do it enough that you know, you're safe, they keep you in the discomfort of learning. And it might take longer to recenter. But in doing so you begin to widen your window of tolerance. So what kinds of coping skills are out there? Well, I mean, I just listed some and and in some ways, literally any, almost anything can be a coping skill. It's just things that you do to stay out of those red zones and regulate well. And obviously, it's an infinite amount, not going to go into them here, because I could talk forever. But in general, when we blow our top, and we get to that fight or flight, what you need at that moment, is soothing skills, things that help you ground in the present moment. And when we bought them out, we freeze or dissociate, what we need is gentle stimulation and orientation to time and place. And it's not one or the other, it's common for people to kind of go into fight or flight. And then their response to that is to shut down afterwards. So it's not linear, you know, you might go up the top and then bottom out, some people just bottom out. And remember that these places are really places have a resting, it's not just I'm stressed out. And then lastly, I want to make it clear that going into fight flight or freeze on is not always avoidable. It's not always just because you didn't have good enough coping skills, there are certain things in this world that are going to trip your nervous system into this extreme state, it does not mean that you're not healthy enough or mature enough. Or if you just had better coping skills, there are just certain things that are traumatic, there's no amount of coping skills that can prevent you from going to that place. When that happens. The coping skills are about learning how to get out of that place and back to safety. And ideally, yes, we want coping skills that can help us kind of circle the wagons back around before we get there. And we want a good wide window of tolerance so that we can enjoy everything the world has to offer, and not be in as much pain. But there's no you could never therapy yourself to get a wide enough window of tolerance, where like nothing bad could ever happen to you. You still might go into fight or flight, you're still going to have traumatic things, you're still going to shut down, you're still gonna do this, you're still going to do that. But I think what can be helpful is morally neutralizing some of those coping skills, and instead just looking at them not as Are you doing good. Are you doing bad? But what of those coping skills are really working for you? And which ones aren't working for you? And what could you add to your arsenal that might work a little better. And so I hope that gives you some things to think about today. And I wish I could, you know give you a plan on a platter of the exact coping skills that you need. But the truth is, is that the most powerful coping skill to start with is self compassion. And it starts with giving yourself those messages, that you're not wrong or bad, that you're just human and you're allowed to be human and you're allowed to make mistakes. And you're allowed to have whatever window of tolerance you have, and you're allowed to want more for your life and to take a gentle path to get there.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai