Activity 3: Strategies for Coping
The past week has been rough. I started both my babysitting and interning jobs this past week, so I was busier than I’ve been used to. I'm guessing that less time to process my emotions led them to overwhelm me.
I now know how to regulate my mental health pretty well: eating well, exercising, writing, watching my favorite YouTube video of all time:
But, still, sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m in the best mental health I’ve ever been in. A year ago, I was at home working on it, and that time paid off. And yet, the difference between me now and me a year ago is that I went through a break-up that shifted my worldview. It isn’t easy for me to trust people like it was before.
Anyways, even though the breakup happened last summer, when I’m at my lowest, it seems to come back, feeling like it just happened. This past week, it’s felt really, really fresh.
Lyubomirsky (if this is your first time reading, the author of The How of Happiness, which motivated this blog) created this chart demonstrating the research on how trauma can actually lead a person to thrive through posttraumatic growth:
“Not only can you survive, not only can you recover, but you can flourish.”
But how do you get to "thriving"?
Her specific coping strategies are:
Finding meaning through expressive writing:
Write about one of your most distressing or painful experiences for 15-30 minutes, each day for 3-5 days.
This process helps you find meaning and understanding in the event, and unburdens you of the thoughts and emotions you're keeping inside.
Construing benefit in trauma through writing or conversing:
1. Acknowledge that the event has caused you pain and suffering.
2. Consider how much you have grown as a result.
3. Think about how the event has positively affected your relationships.
Coping via thought disputation: ABCDE
Write down the adversity.
Identify negative beliefs triggered by it.
Record its consequences (how you are feeling and acting).
Dispute the negative belief (think of other possible reasons for the problem).
Be energized by considering the more optimistic explanations for the problem.
I want to do all three strategies, but for right now I’ll focus on the last one.
Adversity: Feeling betrayed by how the break-up went down, displacing these resulting negative emotions of betrayal in other areas of my life
Beliefs: You can’t trust anyone in this cold harsh world, nobody really respects you, it’s all pretend, people just use you for what they need in the moment, basically Fake Love by Drake:
Consequences: I find myself questioning stable friendships. I feel the need to check for any signs that someone might not actually care for me so I'm not blindsided again.
Dispute: People are doing the best they can with the skills they have. My ex, at least at the time, didn’t possess the skills for ending things respectfully and honestly, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else in my life is at that same skill level for treating people well when it’s difficult. People grow and learn. I am so easily trusting that it was probably a good thing for me to feel this electric shock: that, for some people, it is so hard for them to own up to things, they keep someone in the dark. I know she didn't want to intentionally hurt me. (Okay, I'm feeling a little more energized.)
She, hopefully, has grown and learned too.