Episode 254: Coping: are you helping or hurting yourself?

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Dr. Melissa Smith 0:00
When it comes to coping, are you helping yourself or hurting yourself? So you may assume, of course, I’m helping myself, but not so fast. Join me today as we look at what helps and what hurts when it comes to coping with stress.

Dr. Melissa Smith 0:15
Hi, I’m Dr Melissa Smith. Welcome to the Pursue What Matters podcast where we focus on what it takes to thrive in love and work, so we’re all trying to help ourselves, right? And that’s where coping skills come in. So if you’ve spent any time with the self help book and therapy listening to self development podcasts, you’ve probably heard about coping skills, but there is a lot of confusion out there about what are coping skills, what passes as helpful versus those things that many of us do to help ourselves cope, but they might not be helping us in the long run. So today, I want to really help you understand what it means to cope effectively, and really take a look at the behaviors that you might be doing that you think are helping you, but might not be helping you so much.

Dr. Melissa Smith 1:31
So let’s turn our attention to this concept of coping. So the first thing that we know is that life is hard, and we all need help to cope, right? We all have stressors that we face, and not only do we need to face our stressors, but it’s helpful that we can help ourselves in those moments, because when we face stressors, we have a nervous system activation, right? So our body, our mind, they all work together to really activate in response to a stressor. Sometimes that’s helpful, sometimes that’s not helpful. Sometimes we get our wires crossed and we have big responses where we don’t really need a big response. And so there is value in helping our physiology through these stress responses so that we are coping effectively and are in a good place to actually deal with the stressors at hand, rather than, you know, kind of making things worse or burning through a lot of stress hormones that carry some pretty significant effects when we are bathing in those chronically so let’s take a look at this. Let’s let’s look at what happens in the brain.

Dr. Melissa Smith 2:52
So of course, one of the things I talk about a lot is that stress is not the problem, right? Stress is merely a demand on one or more of our body’s many physiological systems, so it’s not good or bad, and the key factor for determining whether stress is positive or destructive, right? So helpful or hurtful is really looking at that pattern of stress. So one of the patterns that can often happen for many of us when we’re stuck in a chronic stress response cycle is that we are chronically activated. So at the slightest hint of a stressor, our our systems go into overdrive. We think about that as hyper arousal. We think about that sometimes as fight or flight. But our physiology creates a really outsized response, and we often don’t take the time to check and see whether that stressor that we’re facing really needs that big, outsized response. And so that’s part of what we want to pay attention to when we think about coping.

Dr. Melissa Smith 4:03
So one of the concepts that I’ve talked about before on the podcast when it comes to coping is looking at true comfort versus counterfeit comfort. So when we think about true comfort, those are activities that are designed to truly bring us comfort, to help us cope effectively with a stressor that we’re facing. So they move us towards compassion. They move us towards responding to our needs appropriately, and they are successful in meeting the need of bringing true comfort, right? And that’s really important when we’re facing stressors, because stressors bring a lot of uncertainty, they can bring a lot of fear. And so having true comfort can be really helpful. So one of the things that often happens is that we get caught in patterns of counterfeit comfort. So we still have good intent, right? We’re still trying to help ourselves.

Dr. Melissa Smith 5:00
But when we go to coping behaviors that are really focused on counterfeit comfort, they end up actually doing more harm than good. So these are often things where there is a lack of moderation.

Dr. Melissa Smith 5:17
So when we think about true comfort, these are often activities that are done in moderation, and they are designed to bring us back to this regulated state. But when we think about counterfeit comfort, these are behaviors that are often lacking in moderation. They also often have a component of numbing, so emotional numbing or avoidance. So some of them, some of the most common counterfeit comfort measures that we see are any sort of addictive process, too much of a good thing. So we think about binging on Netflix, binging on food, drinking until oblivion. So Right? They’re really they become kind of blunt objects designed to kind of shut down those emotions that can be kind of painful or upsetting. And so in the short term, we think, Wow, this is really helpful, but they don’t actually move us towards integrating the experience or coping effectively. And so they move us to numbing, which makes it more difficult for us to address the stressors at hand. And they also carry their own costs, right? Because of that, you know, we kind of get out of balance with things, or there’s this addictive potential, and so they fail to help us cope, and they fail to bring us comfort. And so it’s really important to pay attention to the things that you turn to to help you, quote, unquote, cope with life’s challenges. So are they done in moderation, or are they kind of out of balance? Do they do they actually help to comfort you, or do they just numb the pain? Do people in your life have concerns about what you do to comfort yourself? Whether that’s because it’s maybe not a very helpful behavior, or it’s out of balance, or it’s just like I said earlier, too much of a good thing.

Dr. Melissa Smith 7:19
So these are these are some factors to pay attention to, right? When you think about coping. And you know, comfort is not always exactly what we’re looking for, right? So when we think about coping with the stressor, we want skills that help us to be better positioned to address our challenges, right? One of the things I often talk about is the fact that you know, my job as a psychologist and as a leadership coach is to help people live in their reality, right? Like reality always wins, and so you know, if our coping skills disconnect us from reality, then they ultimately are not going to help us to cope effectively. And one of the best examples of this is anxiety. So when we think so, when we think about anxiety, right? Most of us really don’t like that feeling. It is really unpleasant. And so if we’re just seeking comfort right then, then it makes a lot of sense that we’re going to avoid whatever it is that’s making us anxious. But here’s the tricky thing about anxiety. When we avoid it, we actually set anxiety up to grow exponentially.

Dr. Melissa Smith 8:42
So when we avoid anxiety, we guarantee that the next time we face something that’s fearful, we’re going to have much more anxiety than we do this time. And so when it comes to coping, we’re not only seeking comfort, right? Because if we were just seeking comfort when it comes to anxiety, we would get the heck out of there, and we would avoid whatever it is that’s making us anxious. But when it comes to coping, in addition to comfort, which can be very helpful, is we are we want to be in a position where we can face our stressors effectively, right? And so if we flee the scene, we’re not addressing our coper we’re not dressing addressing our stressors effectively, and so often when it comes to anxiety, we actually need to face whatever we’re scared of head on. This is often known as exposure therapy. It is the core evidence based treatment for anxiety disorders, it’s not comfortable at all, but it is very, very effective. And so that’s really going with this idea that when we face our stressors, the anxiety goes down over time, because anticipation is really killer when it comes to anxiety, often. We have most anxiety in anticipation for something, but when we face it and realize, okay, it’s not going to kill me, it’s not the end of the world, it’s okay. It’s maybe uncomfortable, but it’s okay, the anxiety drops off a cliff and we become more capable, and so that’s something to keep in mind when you’re coping with anxiety.

Dr. Melissa Smith 10:21
So if you or a loved one have a lot of anxiety, and your approach is to avoid whatever it is that’s kicking up anxiety, you are setting yourself up for a lot of trouble. You must face your anxiety. You must face the stressor head on. And so, you know, when we think about coping, and are we helping ourselves or hurting ourselves, one of the things that I see a lot, both professionally and just you know, personally, is people, and this happens a lot with parents, but parents who protect their children, who are anxious, right? They kind of become helicopter parents, or they’re like, you don’t need to go to this, you don’t need to face this because, right? It’s upsetting to see your child anxious, and it really seems like okay, if they can just stay with me, they’re going to be better off. And I’m telling you, parents, you cannot do that. You are disabling your children if you’re doing that. So we want you as parents to have all the love and comfort in the world while you are communicating the message that you believe in your child and you believe that he or she can face the challenges that they have.

Dr. Melissa Smith 11:37
Doesn’t mean they’re going to be comfortable. Doesn’t mean they’re going to like it, but this is what they have to do to live in the world, right? They have to go to school. They have to talk to people. They have to face challenges. They maybe need to talk to the teacher about the grade that they’re upset about. And so parents very often, are well intended in, you know, trying to protect their children from some of these anxiety provoking experiences. And it’s exactly backwards. It’s exactly wrong. You cannot be doing that for your children. And so this is where we give them a lot of love and encouragement, and we send them out the door. We encourage them to take that challenge on and to face the stressors, and then we are there on the other side with lots of love and lots of encouragement. Because, of course, those situations can be challenging for them, but this is an example where we think we’re helping, but we’re actually hurting. And of course, you know that’s not just parents who can fall into that trap. We fall into that trap all the time, both with ourselves, with those we work with, right?

Dr. Melissa Smith 12:43
Sometimes we’re like, oh, gosh, I see this person is stressed. I think I’m not going to give them this assignment, even though, right, like this assignment might be personally compelling for them. It might be something that really helps to get them out of their shell. It might help them to get to know other team members. And so when you find yourself wanting to protect yourself or protect someone else emotionally, that should be a red flag to you that whatever you’re doing right, it’s well intended, but it might not be helpful. So this is where we really want to check our assumptions, and we want to check our intentions. And so specifically, when it comes to anxiety, we need skills to help us move through and approach our stressors rather than avoid. So that’s really what we’re thinking about, approach versus avoid.

Dr. Melissa Smith 13:33
The other thing that I want to talk about when it comes to coping and asking this question of, are you helping, or are you hurting? So when it comes to facing stressors, something that almost all of us do right is we take a top down approach. Okay, so what does that mean? What do I mean when I say a top down approach? Well, that is really I want you to think about your brain and your body, and that top is your brain, right, and down is your body. And so for most of us, when we approach stressors, we do this by using our thinking brain so that top down approach.

Dr. Melissa Smith 14:18
And you know, we’ve got good intentions, but we try to talk ourselves out of feeling stressed or afraid. We tell ourselves to calm down, or we tell others to calm down. Word of advice, don’t ever tell someone to calm down. Who’s anxious. You’re only going to fire them up more. But this approach, right, this top-down approach, fails to calm our nervous system and often leads us to feeling worse about the situation, because not only are we super anxious, but we have failed to be able to do what our thinking brain is telling us to do, which is to calm down or to say it’s not that big of a deal, and so we end up feeling worse as a result of that top down approach.

Dr. Melissa Smith 15:06
Okay, so one of the reasons that this approach does not work when it comes to coping is because our thinking, brain and our nervous system speak different languages. Okay, now it’s really important to keep in mind. So the thinking brain speaks the language of words, it speaks the language of reason, right? That makes sense, because the brain is where we reason, and these are great skills, right? So there’s nothing wrong with those, but it’s not very helpful when we’re dealing with the nervous system, which is what’s happening when we’re dealing with stressors, right? So the nervous system speaks another language. It is non verbal, and it speaks the language of safety and sensations. So when it comes to the nervous system, the only language that matters is, am I safe? It is a nonverbal language, and it is paying attention to sensations in the body. It’s paying attention to stimuli received from the body through the senses to determine, am I safe or am I unsafe. And so it does not understand the verbal language of the brain that’s focused on reason and words and logic.

Dr. Melissa Smith 16:25
So when it comes to facing stressors and coping right in a battle between the thinking brain and the nervous system, the nervous system will always win, like it’s not even close, and this is because it is designed to keep you alive. So the nervous system always wins in any contest with the brain, because it’s one purpose is to keep you alive. It’s survival, right? That’s what we think about when we think about our fight or flight. So survival is the only priority of the nervous system and all other priorities pale in comparison, right? So while the functions of the thinking brain are marvelous, right? They’re so great, they always take a back seat to the messaging of the nervous system.

Dr. Melissa Smith 17:16
So this is why, when we take a top down approach to helping ourselves cope with stressors. We’re really undermining ourselves. We’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot because we’re trying to use the language of logic and reason, and that does not translate to the nervous system, and the nervous system is really the language that we need to be speaking. And so what does this mean, practically, right? This means that it is very, very difficult, I would say, probably impossible, to talk yourself out of a stress response, right? Because the nervous system is driving the car at that point instead, right? Instead of trying to talk ourselves out of our stress response, we need to show our nervous systems that we are indeed safe. And how do we do that? How do we show our nervous systems that we’re safe? And that is through the non verbal language of the somatic experience.

Dr. Melissa Smith 18:18
So somatic experience is just a fancy term for the body, right? It’s think about your five senses. It is that the physical sensations, what we feel and experience in the body, and all of that is all of that composes the somatic experience. And so as we engage the vagus nerve, which is kind of the master nerve of the nervous system as part of nervous system regulation, we move out of the extremes of fight or flight and are able to soothe right, calm down, relax in the body at the physiological level, and then that’s the cool thing, is that then we’re able to bring our thinking brain back online and engage that thinking brain for effective problem solving, because the brain is really important.

Dr. Melissa Smith 19:16
But when it comes to coping with stress, the nervous system, the physical experience will always trump the thinking experience. So we want to start we when we’re when it comes to coping. We want to take a bottom up approach, which means we calm our body first, our nervous system. We don’t even try to go to the brain. And it’s not until we have more regulation and calm within our physical bodies that we then are able to move to the thinking brain and enlist all of those awesome skills like reasoning, reflection, problem solving, and then that can be really helpful and very effective at that.

Dr. Melissa Smith 20:00
That point. So in order to strengthen stress coping and resilience, we need both our brains and our nervous systems to work together in balance. So Right? We want both systems integrated, because, of course, they’re essential to thriving in life. And so when it comes to coping, right, we want to take a bottom up approach. So that means starting with the body and then moving up into the brain to cope. And so you know, for anyone who has faced challenges or traumatic experiences, especially in childhood, which is many of us, to some degree, when we face current day stressors, our nervous system takes over with the language of fear and safety, right?

Dr. Melissa Smith 20:52
And so the the body can activate in response, right? So in the present tense in response to past experiences, and it can do that super quickly, and can really confuse our brains, right? Like, because it’s like, what happened? Like, I was fine just a minute ago. And so this is why a bottom up approach is best for coping with stressors and regulating our nervous system, and that’s because it uses the language of the nervous system via the five senses to move to safety and communicate to the body and the brain that you are safe and can engage your thinking brain as a resource in life. So when it comes to coping, we want to take a bottom up approach rather than a top down approach.

Dr. Melissa Smith 21:43
Okay, so that’s another thing to pay attention to in looking at okay, is your coping helping you or hurting you? And so let’s make sure that we’re starting with a bottom up approach, because that will result in coping that actually helps us. So as we take a bottom up approach that speaks the language of the nervous system, think about safety and the five senses. The first step right when it comes to coping is using the five senses to help regulate in the face of stressors, right? And this is at a very basic level. This is slowing the heart rate. This is deepening the breath, right? All of these physical cues that communicate to the body and to the brain that you’re safe, that you’re okay. Because think about the first thing that happens in a stress response, in a fight or flight response, heart rate increases right?

Dr. Melissa Smith 22:43
The breathing gets very shallow. It’s difficult to pay attention to all the stimuli. There’s a lot going on, and so when it comes to coping with those stressors, we want to slow things down, and we do that through nice deep, even breaths. We talk about that as diaphragmatic breathing. We want to really slow that pace of breathing, get nice big, deep breaths, because, again, that’s communicating both to the body and to the brain that we’re safe and okay to face what we’re what we’ve got ahead of us, and then so this results in nervous system regulation, all right? And once we are more regulated, then we can relate to others in loving connection. We can get support, we can get a hug. We can have someone say, Oh, I’m so sorry, and here I’m here for you. So as social beings, we find safety and comfort in the presence of others. And so once we’re regulated, that safe connection and relating to others can be very helpful, and can help us to even further calm in the face of stressors. And then once we have these two factors in place, right regulate and relating, then we’re able to move on to the third R, which I’ve talked about before, which is reason. So this is when our executive functioning really can come back online and

Dr. Melissa Smith 24:21
we can engage our cortex into problem solving, perspective, taking

Dr. Melissa Smith 24:29
reflection, and really look at the situation with a bit more perspective. Because maybe we’ll say, Wow, I’m really lucky that I’m okay, because that was a really dangerous situation. And sometimes we’ll look at it and say, Oh, I think I, you know, I think I kind of blew that out of proportion. And I’m glad that I see it clearly now, because now I can take it on. But when our body moves into that strong nervous system response, it’s really hard to maintain perspective. And so that’s why we really want to engage regulation with a bottom up approach.

Dr. Melissa Smith 25:06
Then we want to have good relating, where we can get perspective, we can get support, we can get comfort, we can get love. And then we want to bring on reasoning. And so, you know, we want that brain online and helpful. And so when you lead with reason, right? So when you take a top down approach rather than a bottom up approach, this actually leads to more dysregulation, which is not what we want. So when you’re activated in a state of dysregulation, your thoughts actually serve to further activate you, because they’re trying to make sense of the situation. And so this is your system trying to protect you, right? It’s really well intended, but not very helpful. So it’s decided that whatever is happening on the outside is unsafe, and so the entire system, from thoughts to physiology, really are aimed at increasing activation, because this is how the system responds to perceived threats, and further activation means further fight or flight response. And so of course, when the threats are real, the system works beautifully to protect us. The problem is that many of us are living with chronic, unmanaged stress, and so find ourselves in a chronic state of dysregulation, even when no actual threat exists in our environment. And this is the real problem. This is why coping skills are important. This is why taking a bottom up approach is so helpful. So instead of leading with reason or a bottom or, sorry, a top down approach, we really want to move to the body. We kind of want to sidestep that brain for a little bit. We want to move to the body with regulation skills. This helps us to sidestep the stressful stories of the mind, which are outsized, often inaccurate and designed to keep you stuck and feeling unsafe. So as you regulate in the body, we want to seek comfort and connection by relating to others in gentleness and compassion, and then we can bring that thinking mind back online.

Dr. Melissa Smith 27:19
So I hope that this has been helpful for you to really kind of reflect on how you cope, and to really ask some questions about whether specific behaviors that are intended to help you cope with stressors, to really assess whether they are helping you or hurting you right. So we kind of talked about approach and avoidance when it comes to anxiety, we talked about that top down, bottom up approach, and the importance of really starting with the body for nervous system regulation before moving to the brain to make sense of the stressors We face. So you can head on over to my website to check out the show notes with the resources for this episode at www.drmelissasmith.com/254-copinghelp 

Dr. Melissa Smith 28:22
I would love to connect with you. Please consider subscribing to the podcast on Apple or Spotify so that you don’t miss an episode. And of course, I’d love to connect with you on Instagram @dr.melissasmith where I always have more great resources every single day. In the meantime, I’m Dr Melissa Smith, remember love and work, work and love. That’s all there is until next time. Take good care.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai