99 remarkable coping skills & why you dont need them

Life is an unpredictable journey filled with ups and downs, challenges, and triumphs. Along this path, we all encounter moments when we feel overwhelmed, stressed, or emotionally drained. In our quest for solace and relief, we often seek coping mechanisms to navigate these difficult times. Luckily I prepared 99 remarkable coping skills for you to survive life’s tsunamis. However, what if I told you, that the key to resilience lies not in acquiring a vast arsenal of coping skills?

What are coping skills?

All life is pain said the Buddha. There’s literally no way, to avoid pain in life. But what we can do is to mitigate pain. It’s about finding effective solutions to the everyday challenges of a human life. That’s where coping skills come into play. Coping skills are abilities to ensure your physical, mental emotional, financial and spiritual well-being. The longer you enhance your coping skills, the more your life quality will increase. There is no such thing as having superior coping skills, but an unhappy and unfulfilled life.

What are 3 unhealthy coping skills?

In general, we can say that any agent or behavior that delays having to deal with a task, challenge, or a problem is an unhealthy way to cope with something. Frankly, I prefer the term “ineffective” coping skills, because it includes every other aspect of life as well, not only the physical, mental and emotional well-being.

3 unhealthy coping skills are

-> Procrastination
-> Smoking
-> Lying

What are Poor coping skills?

Poor coping skills are ineffective strategies to manage stress, adversity, or emotional difficulties. However, they never offer a sustainable solution. They are the con-artists of the coping skills. Those, that ego offers as quick aid in order to get rid of the problem or pain quickly without solving.

Poor coping skills are

Passive aggression: Indirectly expressing anger or frustration through subtle, hostile, or manipulative behaviors.

Perfectionism: Setting unrealistically high standards and feeling excessive pressure to meet them, leading to chronic stress and self-criticism.

Excessive need for confirmation: Constantly seeking reassurance from others to alleviate anxiety or insecurity.

Escapism: Using excessive distractions such as television watching, video gaming, or excessive social media use to avoid facing problems.

Co-dependency: Relying excessively on others for emotional well-being and neglecting personal boundaries and autonomy.

Catastrophizing: Exaggerating the significance or potential negative outcomes of a situation, leading to increased anxiety and stress.

Denial: Refusing to acknowledge or accept the reality of a situation or one’s emotions.

Avoidance: Ignoring or avoiding the source of stress or problem instead of addressing it directly.

Self-harm: Engaging in intentional self-injury or self-inflicted harm as a way to manage emotional pain.

Aggression: Expressing anger or frustration through aggressive or violent behavior towards oneself or others. How many coping skills are there?

Why you need something different than coping skills: the truth

Don’t get me wrong about coping skills: They are useful strategies to deal with life. However, I personally advocate for the biggest impact we can have with the tools available in our mind. There is a more fundamentally effective approach to deal with things.

Hello, do you like me?

It’s scientifically proven, that our body resonates better with positive self-talk, compared to negative self-talk. It’s this little voice that tells us, that we look like a rat in front of the mirror, or that whispers “there is no need to look into the mirror dear. You don’t have to judge your self.” We heal faster from disease, perform cognitively better, our physical strength is increased and we have more confidence. The list is endless. The great thing about this? It’s a permanent condition. Once, we figured out how to restructure the neural pathways of our brain, everything changes. It’s a micro revolution which starts to happen from the moment we start the journey.

In neuro linguistic programing it’s called reframing: The ability to fundamentally alter the frame through which you see the world and yourself. This starts with a genuine belief that the glass is half full and ends with a genuine belief that every conflict is an opportunity for growth. All day long, life sprinkles little situation on your radar where you have the chance to choose how you think, act or react upon it.

How does the result look like?

Instead of using coping skills to manage stress, adversity or emotional difficulties, you reframe every situation in life, that creates stress, adversity and emotional difficulties. Suddenly a situation is not stressful anymore, but you turned it into a challenge. With this new frame your brain automatically releases massively less stress hormones. Suddenly adversity turns into assignments and emotional difficulties into part of an agenda that prepares you for the life you have asked for.

At the end of the day you are the one that defines what is stressful, what is an adversity and what is an emotional difficulty. Tony Robbins has written a great article about reframing if you want to read more about it.