Four Coping Skills to Deal with Stressful Situations
As a therapist who specializes in divorce and partner loss, I work with people that are experiencing situations that can bring about some really intense emotions that can include anger, anxiety, intense sadness or depression.
By the end of this post, you’ll know four of the skills I’ve found to be helpful for experiencing the emotions that come with stressful situations in a healthy way.
The Antidote Breath
The Antidote Breath
When we feel anxious, it’s really easy to forget to breathe. Our body, mind and emotions are all connected.
Slowing down to take a breath can be a powerful way to use this connection to help calm your thoughts. The Antidote Breath was created by Y-CBT and is particularly helpful for anxiety, including panic attacks.
One of the reasons I love this coping skill is that it is very simple to learn. Its simplicity makes it easier to remember in the middle of intense anxiety and situations you may not be thinking as clearly.
To use The Antidote Breath use these two steps:
Breathe in and count to three
Breathe out and count to six
If the three and six cadence is uncomfortable, it can be adjusted. The key is to breathe out twice as long as you breathe in (for example: count to two while breathing in and four while breathing out).
Breathing continuously in through the nose and audibly out through the mouth helps this skill be even more effective.
Grounding
Grounding
When people feel anxious, their mind tends to be focused on either something from the past or worried about something coming up in the future. Being able to anchor into what is happening now can help with distracting your mind from the anxiety trigger and provide a reminder that in that moment, you are safe.
The main idea behind Grounding is to connect with what is happening now by diving into the five senses. It’s traditionally taught as finding five things to see, four things to feel, three to hear, two things to smell and one thing to taste.
I teach it a little bit differently, because it may not be possible to find that many things with every sense. Instead, I teach clients to go through each sense and try to notice something you normally wouldn’t with each one. If there isn’t something (taste can be a really good example of that) you don’t need to force it.
Examples of this include seeing the patterns in the grain of wood, feeling your feet on the floor, or hearing a clock ticking.
You can also use grounding by introducing something interesting and focusing on that. An example might be looking at the details of a painting, handling something with an interesting texture, or listening to music.
The “traditional” method of grounding mentioned above is known as the 5-4-3-2-1 method and was created by Alexander Lowen. If you’re interested in more information on grounding, I recommend this article on Forbes Health.
Observe: Just Notice
Observe: Just Notice
Observe: Just Notice is a Mindfulness technique from DBT. Like grounding, it helps with moving out of your head and into your body instead.
What I love about Observe: Just Notice is that it provides a way to feel what you feel instead of pushing the feeling down. I’ll be writing more about this in the future, but our emotions have important jobs to do and feeling our emotions without allowing them to completely take over usually works much better than avoiding them.
To use Observe: Just Notice, pay attention to what an emotion feels like in the body. Whenever we feel angry, happy, sad or anxious it shows up physically in our bodies.
Start by practicing with smaller feelings. Notice it, including where you feel it and what it feels like. Even if it is not a pleasant feeling, allow the feeling to be there. Notice if it changes. It may become more intense, stay the same, decrease or go away completely. Regardless, notice what happens without judging it or attempting to force it to go away.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Progressive Muscle Relaxation is a great skill for dealing with the tension that we hold in our muscles when we’re stressed.
To use Progressive Muscle Relaxation, move through the body, breathing slowing. Gently tighten the muscle while breathing in, then relax the muscle when breathing out.
There are different methods for approaching this, but I tend to move through the body in the following order:
The face and jaw
The shoulders and neck
The arms
The chest and stomach
The upper part of the legs
The calves or lower legs
The feet
The entire body
The cadence for this skill is breathe in, gently tighten the muscle, breathe out and allow it to relax. It can be done as many times for each muscle as you’d like, but I usually do 3-4 times per muscle group.
This is especially helpful for anxiety and can be a great skill to use before trying to sleep.
Guided Progressive Muscle Relaxation is highly recommended. While it’s a bit different than how I teach, this video from Johns Hopkins Rheumatology does a great job of guiding through this skill.
Coping Skills are Wonderful and They aren’t Always Enough
My hope is that you found these skills both interesting and useful.
For some people, learning a few coping skills may be all that they need. For others, coping skills by themselves may not be enough. In those situations, talking to a licensed therapist is an important step.
If you found these helpful and think therapy may be right for you, please contact me to book a fifteen minute consultation. I’d be happy to learn about your situation and see if I may be a good fit to help.
