 This episode of the anxious truth is brought to you by me because I'm not just a podcaster I'm also an author. I've written several useful books and anxiety and anxiety recovery And I know you're gonna find them helpful. You can find them on my website at the anxious truth comm Hey everybody, welcome back to the anxious truth. This is episode number 181 Welcome back to the program. Welcome back to the show This episode is entitled what are coping skills and do we want them? Which I know probably sounds kind of weird because of course we want coping skills. Everybody wants coping skills, right? I get it But and this might be largely a semantic argument one word versus the other But let's really get into what coping skills are and let's find it if we really do want them or not So first of all, I am Drulence a lot of creator and host of the anxious truth And if this is your first time here, welcome, I am glad that you are here This is the podcast where we talk about all things anxiety anxiety disorders and recovery related If you have been here before and you are back to listen to another episode welcome back I'm very appreciative of your time and attention. So let's talk about coping skills This is a phrase we hear all the time in mental health circles Especially when it comes to anxiety like coping skills coping skills coping skills Everybody wants to teach you coping skills What are coping skills and do we actually want to use them? What is the question of the day? So here's the way I see it Coping skills and again, this might be semantics, but sometimes the semantics matter. So stick with me on this Coping skills Traditionally in what I see our skills techniques tips tricks Rituals that people will often try to teach you sometimes Therapists and counselors and doctors will teach you or try to give you that are designed to be used in periods of Anxiety related distress discomfort and fear So when you are afraid because you are having a panic attack or you're in the middle of an anxiety wave or in some way You are feeling fear or discomfort based on anxiety anxious thoughts sensations ideas Then many people will try to give you coping skills or will try to teach you coping skills that you can use in those moments What are those coping skills designed to do? Well in many instances? They are designed to do things like make an end. Some people will flat-out tell you Here's three things you could do to stop a panic attack I don't think anybody would argue that that falls under the realm of coping skills, right? Here's five ways to stop a panic attack. Here's four things you can do to prevent a panic attack Here's three things you can do during a panic attack. So admittedly I'm speaking Quite specifically here to the panic disorder crowd people who are dealing with panic disorder and our experience in recurring panic attacks And are afraid of them but in the coping skills Sort of universe you see that stuff all the time So the coping skills that you are being given or people are trying to teach you are very often designed to try to make it stop Or go away Here are ways that you can ground yourself here are things so here here that the coping skills that we most commonly hear Involve special ways to somehow ground yourself things to repeat to yourself. I am safe. I am safe. I got this I'm okay. I am strong. This too shall pass Count four blue things. Tell me all the things you can smell We all know the usual coping skills Get ice and hold it in your hand or pop a strong mint in your mouth or take a glass of cold water or splash water on your face Or snap a rubber band Literally somebody sent me a Dr. Oz reel the other day where Dr. Oz the famous TV doctor says Here's how a rubber band can cure your anxiety and my head almost exploded But okay, we all know the usual coping skills, right now Let me address something pretty quickly here that grounding thing Name four blue things. Tell me all the things you can see tell me four things you can smell has a place that is not completely who-who and They are often used in situations where people are really having a hard time Emotionally regulating and sometimes begin to lose touch with don't be afraid of this But they're having a hard time staying in touch with the here and now in reality, right? So often those tools are used in those extreme circumstances and they are useful So I am not completely dismissing the grounding exercises I understand the context in which they are most useful But they are also often handed out for people who are dealing with and generalized anxiety anxiety spikes or panic attacks As coping skills So most of the the coping skills in the traditional sense that you're going to be taught or given in the online mental health community Are generally designed or at least you're told that they should probably make this anxiety Less make it go away altogether Prevent it from happening short-circuit it or otherwise talk yourself out of it Those are the most usual coping type skills. Okay, is that a bad thing first thing? I want to say is anybody who's trying to teach you coping skills in that sense in the more traditional sense to help you through periods of distress Or discomfort or fear. I don't believe that any of those people have any malicious intent They're not trying to give you bad information They are trying to help you and that probably comes from a place of compassion and caring. I Absolutely will acknowledge that. I don't think anybody does that just because they feel like it. They genuinely want to help you However, is coping that way what we want to do If we are trying to learn that we do not have to fear our own bodies anxious Sensations anxiety symptoms that we don't have to fear our own mind anxious and fearful thoughts or intrusive or recurring thoughts Then do we need to find ways to handle deal or cope with them? Questionable from where I said I don't know if approaching this as a coping problem is necessarily a good way to frame it so if we are Primarily concerned with finding coping skills that are designed to make it stop less in it or somehow Talk us out of it so that we can extract ourselves from that discomfort and fear as quickly and painlessly as possible Then we are essentially saying that yeah This is a thing that must be stopped should try could be prevented if we can do it And if you do get into the thick of that we can try and get you out of it as quick as we can But really and truly if we're trying to learn that what you're going through is just a misdirected threat response Then do we want the message that we need to extract ourselves from this as quickly as possible? And here are 17 different tricks you can use to do that So coping skills generally designed to get you out of that fearful distress Situation which I totally get I want you out of that distress fearful situation too. I would prefer if you learn Experientially that you can handle it You don't have to make it stop really quickly You're capable of processing your way through that and navigating it through to its natural end and Therefore you will be less afraid of it the next time and the next time in the next time So I want you out of that uncomfortable Distressed fearful situation too, but I would like that to be a little bit more lasting and durable and have Larger implications in your life other than When I panic I must do these rituals to get me through it So what are coping skills? Well, we went through them What are they designed to do generally speaking coping skills that I we usually in a traditional sense in the mental Health community are designed to extract you from that situation or get you out of it And as quick and as painless away as possible or to make it go away or to make it feel less scary But in reality, what are we learning if we think that we must use these rituals to cope or handle or Somehow get us through this episode again So the quest second question what are coping skills and do we want them? Well, do we want coping skills? I can tell you that in my own recovery coping skills were not helping me at all not at all and I did have a therapist for a short amount of time And you guys know that I'm constantly beating the drum of finding a therapist that specializes anxiety disorders I love my therapist. She is awesome. Sure. She still is But she was not an anxiety specialist. She was not she was very helpful to me But I knew that going in that she wasn't a specialist She was kind of into the coping stuff But we had such a great relationship and she was so Understanding so caring and listened so closely to me that we quickly like no, well, I'm not doing that I'm not doing the count the blue things thing. I gotta have a better way and she was so open to that So interestingly my therapist personally started to go down the traditional coping skills route So that I did not want to do that because I didn't think it was gonna have any lasting benefit for me I tried all of those things already and she she was less. She listened and she said, okay How do you want to do it? I told her what I was doing and she was so supportive of me So in the end like the people who are trying to teach you coping skills are trying to help But is that really helping you? so if you have been dealing with panic disorder or Goraphobia or OCD or whatever the particular situation is for a protracted amount of time and you have been continually trying to use traditional coping skills and all you're really Managing to do is sort of, you know Crawl your way out of one episode after another then it probably is worth thinking about this Do we really want coping skills? Is it really doing anything for you in the end? So I would assert that coping skills in the traditional sense I could just I'm hearing the comments in my head now I know this is not going to go over well But I'm hoping that you're getting what I'm trying to tell you in the traditional sense All those coping skills are could be more counterproductive than helpful in the long term So what would we want instead of those things because we don't want things that reinforce the idea that we must Escape from our anxiety and our discomfort you need special rituals to get you through being afraid and without those rituals What would happen? What would happen if you didn't do your coping skills? You'll explode you'll die. Are you coping skills somehow saving you from the fate that you are worried about? Like we run the risk of saying that oh the only reason why I make it through my panic attacks is because of my rubber band Which is not true Like it's not true in any way whether you had a rubber band or not whether you count blue things or not That panic attack will always end You might not believe me and you might want to argue that no if I don't count blue things my panic attack will last forever That is patently not true So in the end do we want things that teach us that we must do this to make it end or to get through it Or do we actually want to say no no no no I can let it Start we reach its natural peak without resistance and then dissipate because as anybody who has done that will tell you The first few times you do that you don't snap the rubber band. You don't pop the mince. You don't call your safe person You don't run home. You don't start repeating mantras obsessively and compulsively When you don't do that and you come through the other side of that fear and it starts to naturally come back down on the other side It is a charge like you would not believe it's such a good feeling So the number of people every day that I get to hear say oh my god. I did it and it feels amazing There that's what we're looking for right there. That's what we're looking for when they actually drop the traditional coping skills And say I'm just gonna let this come in and hit me full force Because I need to learn that even when I do I am capable of moving through this and coming out the other side Afraid shaken feeling not so great But still okay, and then the next time I'll be a little less shaken and a little less afraid Like that's what we're after and none of that necessarily involves coping skills So we hear words like willfully tolerate the anxiety in the panic accept it float through it I use the term surrender all the time like surrender is a pretty brutal term But I like it because it's super descriptive. It's accurate Like instead of saying I must use all my coping skills to get through my next panic attack I'm an anxiety wave if instead I said I'm just gonna surrender to and I'm gonna let it do whatever it wants to do Well, then it will do whatever it wants to do which is to naturally rise peak and fall When we don't add to it. That's what it does That is the natural function of the anxiety cycle it rises it hits peak and then it comes back down again As long as I don't send more danger signals that will make it rise again As long as I can show my fear center my lizard brain my amygdala that the danger has passed or better better The repeated experience is that there isn't really any danger the better that's gonna end up for me Those attacks or episodes become shorter Lesser duration farther between that would that's that's what starts to happen over time If instead I send the signal that I must run for my rubber band or my cold water or my mints or my Essential oils to sniff or I must call my mom or I must be with my husband or whatever it happens to be If I send those signals all the time then essentially I'm saying well The only way I could possibly get through this is if I call my safe person Or if I go home before I stop the car and put the lavender oil under my nose, whatever it happens to be So if you use your usual coping skills, I have to count the blue things or I'm not going to get through this You haven't learned that lesson you haven't experienced the peak and you you still think that somehow you must do that Or it will do some sort of damage or you you won't get out of it But then you're just afraid of the next one like okay I guess I just had to wait for the next attack and all I know is that it'll come And I'll just use my lavender oil or my rubber band or whatever my mantra is to just get me through it again So coping skills generally designed to extract you from the anxiety and make it stop or lessen it And I think the lesson there is that you must take special evasive action in the face of anxiety and panic and discomfort But do we want that I would say the answer is no So I know it's sounding like I I'm not trying to do a whole another podcast episode Dumping on lavender oil and your favorite, you know, like whatever crystals. I mean if you like those things There's nothing wrong with that But think about coping skills. What do they represent? What are they teaching you? What do they say and do is that what you want? Is that actually what we want for long lasting durable recovery? Now don't get me wrong On a minute by minute day to day hour to hour basis. You may find coping Way more attractive than surrendering floating through and willfully tolerating Anxiety and panic that's true in the moment In the moment that lavender oil or that mint that cold water calling your mom and feeling like somebody is saving you Does feel better. I am not in any way going to deny that you do get more immediate relief When you try to use those traditional coping air quotes coping skills It's harder to not use them But the lesson is more valuable and leads to more productive recovery. So There you go What are coping skills and do we want them? Well, I think we know what they are now and I think the answer is do we really want them? Well in the moment we do but really on the long term we kind of don't We kind of don't we want to be careful about how we use them We want to be careful about using coping skills as crutches or necessities or rituals that you think save you every time They do not because you have never needed saving and you can do this even without those traditional coping skills So there you go. There is our coping skills episode. I've been meaning to do this one for a little while Hopefully it has been helpful If you have questions or comments always want to hear them I have a feeling this one is going to spark a lot of discussion. I am ready for it So bring it but uh, I'm kidding. The discussion is always really good. I so appreciate this community I can let me begin to tell you because 99.5 percent 99.9 percent of the time the discussion is fruitful. It's supportive It's mature. It's it's Caring and compassionate you guys help each other out and we share ideas and we move forward together And I love that so bring what you got. I am happy to hear it I'm going to play you out of this episode with afterglow by my friend ben drake as always You can find ben on his website at ben drake music dot com tell me said hi If you're watching on youtube hit the subscribe button like the video if you're listening to the episode on itunes or spotify Leave us a five star rating and take a minute to write a review If you don't know anything about my books and all that stuff go to the anxious truth dot com check it out And thank you as always for coming by and giving me your time and attention. I hope this has been helpful I will see you next week and remember This is the way You got the feeling that you're gonna win Yeah, you're doing fine now in the city and you're living fast No looking back at wedding on the past You know, you're never