As part of my MSc reading, I’ve been delving into Coping Skills, so, what I’m signposting here are ways to calm and cope- essentially, ways to encourage ourselves to open up and create safe conditions that allow us to do so. Our coping skills are our ‘go to’ when faced with a difficult, stressful situation. Managing our stress, though, is difficult. Who of us can say they’ve never ever reached for an unhealthy solution, whether that be a massive bar of chocolate, ‘just one more’ beer, and so on.

Cramer (2015), explains that we use adaptive and maladaptive coping. Adaptive meaning that we seek to reduce the stress and deal with it. With maladaptive meaning we avoid, distract or pretend the problem doesn’t exist.

This is a great video about coping:

There are two main types: Problem Based and Emotion Based (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984).

Problem Based Coping

Problem Based Coping techniques are helpful when something needs to be changed, or removed completely and, furthermore, that we have the ability to carry through. These coping skills are sort of the everyday methods of minimising and reducing stress. For example, I realise I forgot to complete a piece of work by my deadline. I can either just turn up to work without it or go in early and tell my boss. I decide to tell my boss. I put a reminder on my calendar and put a note on the fridge for the next time. So, problem based coping skills could be, for example: setting a timer for a task, asking friends/colleagues to listen to your speech, using a journal or diary.

Emotion-Based Coping

Emotion-Based Coping techniques are all about managing our feelings and our thoughts in times of stress and overwhelm. These techniques can help us become less emotionally tied and affected by our difficult situations. By changing the way we see and experience our stressful times we can realise a less consuming impact. Using emotion based techniques help us when we are faced with something we can’t change. For example, we didn’t get the job, we suffered a bereavement and so on.

As adults we spend such a large part of our lives supporting others with their emotions, but we are pretty dreadful at dealing with our own. Yet, there is evidence that if we adopt more emotion based coping skills, we will be more resilient to stress and generally speaking, our well-being will be better (Juth et al, 2015).

Supportive strategies

Three ways of emotion based coping that help me are:

Grounding – I find the only way I can really clear my head is being outside. If you can’t go far and you have a garden just take your shoes off and walk on the grass. Breathe. Look up at the sky.

Make peace – This is hard to do and can’t come instantly. We’ve got to remember that, when we are stressed or hurt through the actions of others, we can’t change it. We can’t change what they have done. Sometimes the only person we are hurting is ourselves. So, while I might want to drop kick my nemesis through the nearest window, it won’t actually do me any good because the damage is done. So, in time, leave it behind.

Reframing – I find that talking through things with a trusted friend is helpful. When we experience stress we can, obviously, only see it from our perspective, especially when the feelings are new and raw. Having support from others, enabling us to see what is happening from another perspective is powerful.

This is a nice 10 minute meditation from Headspace to help reframe stressful situations:

Note of Caution

There is never a ’one size fits all’. Everything here helps or has worked for me in the past. These suggestions may not help you or even be something you’d try. Context is everything. There is no replacement for getting to know what is best for you.

References:

Cramer, R.J., Colbourn, S.L., Gemberling, T.M., Graham, J. and Stroud, C.H., 2015. Substance-related coping, HIV-related factors, and mental health among an HIV-positive sexual minority community sample. AIDS care, 27(9), pp.1063-1068.

Juth, V., Dickerson, S.S., Zoccola, P.M. and Lam, S., 2015. Understanding the utility of emotional approach coping: Evidence from a laboratory stressor and daily life. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 28(1), pp.50-70.

Lazarus, R.S. and Folkman, S., 1984. Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer publishing company.

About Helen:

Helen has more than twenty years experience in education, from classroom teacher through to senior leader. She is currently a SEND Lead and member of the SEND Strategic Team in an all-through mainstream school with particularly interests in SLCN, SpLD, neurodiversity and SEMH. She has completed the NASENCO qualification along with PG Certificate in SEN & Inclusion, and in September will being an MA in Dyslexia with AMBDA. Helen has recently conducted a research project into the deployment of Teaching Assistants and is currently building and curating an Inclusive Education Hub at www.encompass-ed.com which will provide a directory of information and training opportunities for all school staff.