Why You’re Not Using Your Coping Skills

You’re not lazy, forgetful, or apathetic. So why aren’t you using the coping skills you know will help manage your emotional and physical health?

The answer might be more complicated than you think. Here are a few common reasons you may not be using coping skills and methods to help you use them more often:

Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio

You don’t have the time.

This is one of the most common reasons why my clients don’t use their coping skills. We live in a world in which we are encouraged to always be “on,” and it’s easy to feel that we simply don’t have the time to use the very skills that will help us be engaged, healthy, and even more productive.

If you don’t have the time to use your coping skills, consider trying these interventions:

1. Identify how much time your coping skills will actually take. The time spent using coping skills will vary from person to person, depending on your unique needs. For example, some people benefit from a 5-minute meditation, whereas others need at least 20 minutes of meditation to get the most out of this practice. Try to identify how long your coping skills would actually take to experience a benefit, not how long you feel they would take. A 5-minute meditation should only take 5 minutes, and perhaps a minute or two to sit and prepare if needed. Do you realize that you’re looking at investing 7 minutes at the most? Or are you assuming you need to block off 30 minutes to an hour for a 7-minute time commitment? It’s important to determine how much time your coping skills will actually be if you are to determine if you have the time or not.
2. Tailor your skills to better meet your availability. Once you’ve assessed how long a coping skill will take to implement, you can adjust the skill or your environment to better meet your availability. For example, instead of going to the gym for a 45-minute workout, you might take a brisk walk for 10 minutes after work. Instead of meditating at home in the morning, you might do so during your lunch break at work. Instead of completing an entire yoga sequence, you may get into a few postures that meet your needs the most.

Your homeostasis is disrupted, and it feels uncomfortable.

You are constantly trying to maintain a state of equilibrium to cope with change and outside influences. This is an amazing survival technique! Your body makes constant changes to keep a constant temperature and pH balance so that you remain healthy. You stick to a routine to feel safe and comfortable.

However, maintaining homeostasis has its downside. If your body is used to feeling a certain way (say, anxious, stressed, depressed, or fatigued), it might try to stick with that feeling.

For example, let’s say that deep breathing helps your body to feel calm. If your body is not used to feeling calm, it may feel odd or as if something isn’t right. Therefore, you might avoid deep breathing because your body struggles to get used to this new positive experience and is attempting to maintain homeostasis. You might also struggle to change your schedule to accommodate a new coping skill because doing so disrupts your status quo.

What’s the best way to get around this obstacle? You can try to develop a new homeostasis. Try these methods to achieve one:

1. Acknowledge that you simply aren’t used to feeling this way. That’s OK. Whenever we disrupt our homeostasis, it can feel strange. Change itself is uncomfortable. If you are used to feeling anxious most of the time, then feeling calm might initially feel uncomfortable, but over time, it might begin to feel more ordinary.
2. Create and reinforce a new habit. One of the best ways to create a new homeostasis is to create a new habit; this new habit would be implementing a coping skill that you use consistently. The key to creating and reinforcing a habit is consistency, not perfection. For example, it’s better to meditate 4 days a week for 4 consecutive weeks than to meditate for 7 days a week for 1 week before stopping. Consistency is key. You can create a new homeostasis when you create a new habit.

You don’t believe that you deserve to feel better.

Coping skills can dramatically improve your health, mood, and overall quality of life. Yet if you have low self-worth, you may not use coping skills because coping does not align with how you feel about yourself.

For example, you won’t medicate if you believe that you deserve to feel anxious. You won’t spend time with friends if you believe you’re unlovable. You won’t exercise if you believe you’re weak. If you believe that you don’t deserve to feel better, you may try to address the low self-worth that is preventing you from using coping skills.

Try these methods to address low self-worth:

1. Identify your negative core beliefs. Our core beliefs are all-or-nothing statements about ourselves, others, or the world. These beliefs are often created in childhood and reinforced as we age. Common negative core beliefs are I’m not good enough, I’m worthless/defective/inadequate/unimportant, I’m unlovable/undeserving/bad, I’m a failure, I’m powerless/helpless/vulnerable, I’m responsible for everything or everyone, and I’m abandoned/alone/invisible. Identifying your negative core beliefs can help you to identify the beliefs that need to change to promote self-worth.
2. Behave in ways that challenge your negative core beliefs. How would you act if you believed that you deserved to feel better? Using your coping skills can be a way to promote your self-worth, as this action directly challenges your negative core beliefs. If you struggle to identify what actions to take, try imagining how someone you love would treat you and then engage in that same action.

It doesn’t matter your reasons for avoiding them; you need to use your coping skills. Try these methods to use your coping skills more often.