Physically venting is one of the healthiest things we can do in our technologically focused world because we’re all so bottled up and on the brink of exploding or shutting down. Venting is actually part of a bigger category – coping. While venting is specifically geared to getting out emotion, coping is the broader umbrella of getting through difficult times or experiences. Even if we didn’t live in an incredibly unhealthy world, we would need to find ways to cope with the struggles of life from physical to emotional pain. As spoiled as we are (and partly because we are so spoiled and not as tough as previous generations) the need for finding healthy coping skills is all the more important. Unfortunately we tend to rely on terrible coping skills like drinking and smoking pot instead of looking for healthier options as people are drawn to saying: “I’m fine if I can’t feel.”
So why is our culture so unhealthy? Besides reducing activities that cause natural physical exertion (one of the reasons we need to physically vent as discussed last week), we’ve also devalued the importance of community and family while promoting independence. I was recently at a street market and a kids’ author was promoting how her books taught independence and self acceptance. Um, why are you projecting what you think you need onto kids? Not only does independence promote a culture of divorce and doing whatever’s best for me, kids need to be encouraged to have community. Kids should be taught to be kind and how to get along with others. By ourselves, we’re only so smart and strong. With the right people, we are so much more. Kids need to be taught how to live in community because it’s only through community that we find true self acceptance. I’ve met people who would say they had “self acceptance” but they were selfish jerks. We’re meant to have a balance of what I think and what others think. If I focus on me – narcissist. If I focus on others – overly people pleasing. I need a balance. People thrive when they want to benefit the community and not just satisfy their own self desires.
We’re so foolish as a culture we’ve made it acceptable for people to give up and look to others to carry their weight. We let people make excuses not to work and/or be contributing members of society when that actually increases how emotionally broken they feel. If we aren’t contributing to our community, how can we feel value? We’re just a user, and our brains aren’t happy in that position. We need to feel value and that only happens when we do something of value. I’ve heard people say they struggle to feel like they have value, so I’ll ask, “Should you feel value or is that a sign you need to step up?” The truth is you’re either lying to yourself and you do have value, and you’re not appreciating all you do or you’re feeling exactly what you should feel – no value. Being human doesn’t inherently mean you should feel value. You only have value if you’re doing something helpful. I once met a severely handicapped child who couldn’t speak more than sounds and he needed straps to hold him up in a chair, but he had the most incredible smile and he made everyone around him feel good because he was so joyful. In turn, his own joy was fueled by seeing others be happy around him. Despite his extreme limitations, he had incredible value because he was a gift to those around him. Sometimes all you need in order to feel value is a friendly smile because we can feel value helping others feel valued.
We’re so foolish as a culture we’re replacing nature with asphalt. Who needs trees and stars when you can see pictures of them, right? Not only are we removing nature from our lives, we’re cramming people in together. Who gets stuck in traffic or hits stop light after stop light and feels better about life? Who doesn’t like being herded like cattle through busy walk ways? Maybe it’s because I grew up in a smaller country town, but I struggle not to feel claustrophobic when I’m crammed in with people. It’s like quality of life doesn’t matter anymore because more people means more tax dollars… or maybe I’m cynical. Either way, we’re left needing to find ways to cope.
What shocks me is we’ve created a culture full of basic things guaranteed to cause struggle and then we’re surprised when addiction and suicide are growing problems. It doesn’t make sense unless unhealthy is the goal. Instead of promoting proper coping tools, movies and TV promote drinking like it’s the answer to feeling down (even though it’s proven over and over to make things worse) and then our culture itself promotes other terrible coping tools like smoking pot, shopping, scrolling, binging Netflix, gambling, hooking up, over working, and over eatintg. It’s no wonder we’re such an unhealthy world – we have lots of reasons to be stressed and the most common tools for dealing with it suck.
When it comes to coping mechanisms there really are three basic categories:
- Bad Coping Mechanisms: These are things that cause us to bury feelings and not address what needs addressing. Examples include yelling at others, punching a wall, biting nails, self harm in any form, drinking, smoking, spending money, over indulging, gossip, drama, slander, sex outside of a proper relationship, and being married yet sharing your heart with someone else that we find attractive.
- Good But Can Become Bad Mechanisms: These are things that can be healthy coping tools, but can become dangerous since they can lead to addiction. Examples include listening to, angry or sad music, video games, self pleasure, sleeping, eating a treat, exercise, and watching TV.
- Good Coping Mechanisms: These are things that help us deal with our mental messes. This includes playing sports, crafting, listening to uplifting music, playing music, learning something new, finishing a project, achieving a new accomplishments, connecting with friends, making new friends, volunteering, helping someone like an elderly person with something they can’t do themselves, getting out for a change of scenery, creating something to look forward to (e.g. look at where you can travel, booking a time to see friends, buying a ticket to see a play or concert), going to an uplifting church, watching comedy, hugs and physical touch in general, sex with our partner, having a security blanket, and anything that helps you feel stronger and/or safer.
Please Note: Good coping mechanisms are best done in conjunction with healthy venting to get out the emotions.
The benefit of seeing these lists is they can help guide us to choosing the right things to be on our coping list. We have power to choose what we do to cope… sometimes. One of the problems with coping tools is once we get an idea in our head for coping, it’s pretty much forever going to be in there somewhere. When bad things happen, what essentially happens is our brain goes to our coping options A, B, C, or D, and these can be good or bad. For instance, when I was 18 my grandpa died and I went into a spiral of asking, “What’s the point of life?” I never had a plan for killing myself, but I was in the “I wish I could die” mindset. Because I’ve had that once, I now have killing myself on my coping list and there’s no erasing it. For me, when bad things happen a simplified list is I have coping options A, B, C, and D is kill myself. Because I’ve never had alcohol or pot, neither of those is on my list – thankfully. Video games also aren’t on my list because when I was younger I played a few games like Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, and ESPN Hockey, but they were never a coping option; they were just something fun I did for 10 to thirty minutes (the max people should play a game). Instead, on my list I have “Die!” and no matter what I do, this will be on my list the rest of my life. It doesn’t mean I’m suicidal, at risk of being, or even a bad person. It just means when bad things happen I can expect that option to cross my mind. The problem is if “Die!” moves up from option D to option B. As a grownup, we all have bad coping options on our list, but it’s up to us to try to make sure we have healthier ones higher up in order to prevent the bad ones from being chosen. For instance, anyone who has drinking as option A needs to work at pushing that down the list by replacing it with healthier ones. Bad options tend to feel easier to think of, but we can train ourselves to look at healthier ones. The problem is the easier something is to do in the moment, the less benefit it’ll have later while the harder thing to do in the moment will have much better results in the future unless we’ve been trained to do the harder ones.
Bonus: Coping is always easier when we’re not alone, which is one of the benefits of community.
This week may you consider what you want on your coping list.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, Learning to love dumb people (like me)