Coping

Coping is a beautiful thing. If you are anything like my teenage clients you might be saying, "what's... Cop (like a policeman) -ing". And then I saying "Co-ping" like collaborate. No, what am I saying, I don't say collaborate at all. Once we get past the pronunciation of coping, we dive into the wonderful world of making it through.

One major key point to recognize here, at least in my opinion, is that coping may get us through but we may not be out of the gate. Dependent on the situation, coping may be a means of maintaining functionality but we must be careful not to use it as denial. I've had plenty of teenagers tell me, "yeah I got so mad at my brother... He made me feel this (tiny space between fingers) big in front of my friends". I then say, "How did you respond to that?" (Assuming the goal is anger management). Enter client response, "I just played video games by myself for a couple of hours and then I was fine."

Fantastic, you didn't push your brother down the stairs and were able to control yourself. You coped by removing yourself from the situation and you made it through. But we are not done yet. We have merely pushed the feeling deep down to where it is unrecognized or due to being distracted by shooting zombies. In my book, coping gets you from A to B on an A to C journey. Once we have made it through to function appropriately in whatever setting we are in we need to face the emotion that we needed to distract ourselves from momentarily. In this case, our friend here felt maybe a little bit embarrassed, betrayed, and hurt my his brother. In order to face the root of the problem we need to communicate the issue at hand. Looks like its time for a little brotherly heart to heart. If this means mediation by mom or dad so be it. To take it a step further we need to communicate how we feel rather than pointing the action the other person took to give you that feeling response. Rather than "I can't believe you said all that stuff in front of my friends!" We need to share, "I felt embarrassed when I heard you say (specific statement) in front of my friends, and somewhat betrayed because you are my brother and I thought we were here to protect each other."

"You statements" cause defensiveness.
"I statements" communicate feelings.

But until you are calm enough, whether that be coming down from anger, anxiety, sadness, or fearfulness, cope in any healthy way you can. That doesn't mean go finish a 5th of vodka or sleep for 16 hours. Everything in moderation.

Just a hint, breathing works wonders ;)