Coping Mechanisms, Or How to Stay Afloat When Your Boat is Upside Down

Emotional upheaval sucks.

Whether a death, a break up, a move, an accident, or just some strong emotional event or change, coping with yourself and daily life afterwards can be a seriously hard endeavor. 

One of the things that I learned while working in a behavioral health unit at a hospital is that using negative coping methods after experiencing large life events can get you in a lot of trouble. (We all know what negative coping methods look like, but just in case you are playing dumb, drinking large amounts of alcohol after bad days is a negative coping method.)

So, now that my boat seems to have flipped upside down far out to sea, I've been looking into coping methods so that I don't just tread water near the site of the accident but get back to shore and start rebuilding. 

Here are a bunch of ones I have learned and some of which I am currently doing:

• Exercising regularly
• Eating regularly 
• Sleeping - which is sometimes really hard
• Praying - After all, I am an Episcopal seminarian
• Writing - pain seems to make me into a poet, and writing out how you honestly feel is cathartic 
• Replacement therapy - which is usually used for those addicted to nicotine, but in my case involves holding a rock instead of my phone
• Art therapy - working on art projects 
• Treating yourself with kindness and gentleness
• Setting straight what you can control in your life
• Baking - I usually do a lot of this one. And speaking of which, the pickles from the last post worked, but they do not quite taste as I was expecting them to taste. I think I am going to make another batch with a different recipe.

While looking up some new ways to keep swimming instead of treading water, I found the University of Minnesota's 101 Strategies For Coping With Stress page. 

Swimming in deep waters is not a new sport. Humans have been dealing with being thrown in the deep end for ages. While swimming in deep water really only means you can't touch the ground, it don't mean you can't enjoy the waters. It just takes a little more effort. 

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...