Coping Traps

Imagine this…

You are lying in bed trying to fall asleep. You have a big presentation tomorrow and want to make sure you are well rested. But for some reason tonight, you just can't fall asleep. It's 2am. 

Do any of these behaviors sound familiar?

• You start to get down on myself; a critical voice starts to list off all the things I need to do or I'm not doing quite right

• You worry about disappointing others and what they will think of me

• You try to push away worries and concerns from my mind

• You find myself mindlessly scrolling on my phone to avoid feeling this way

• You try to control the situation by planning, problem solving, trying to fix things

Coping Traps - What are they?

We are all given an array of coping tools, inherited from our biology and further shaped by our parent, peers, environment, and other life experiences.  

Some of these coping tools are helpful, many are not. Most of coping is automatic. Knowing how you react to adversity is the secret ingredient to improving your mental health.

The Top 4 Coping Traps

• The Inner Critic: This is the Judge inside every human, whispering unsweet nothings all the livelong day (and night!). The voice that says, “You’re not doing it quite right,” “You’re hopeless, you’ll never be able to do that,” and  “This shouldn’t be so hard, why can’t you just get it together?” It gets deployed under threat to try to protect us, but is often just a major energy sap.

• Avoidance: Oh, avoidance, how do we love thee? Let me count the big three ways: Numb out (binge on TV, food, alcohol, social media, smartphones, work); Opt out (escape; procrastinate; go under your rock); Shut out (thoughts, feelings, memories).

• Rumination (Hamster Wheel Thinking): The mind finds it safer to hide in past- or future-focused verbal chatter than to stay with raw, present-moment feelings. While spinning on something over and over can at times be productive, rumination can maintain anxiety and depression by keeping the mind stuck in repetitive negative cycles. .

• Emotion-Driven Behavior: Emotions come with action urges. When emotions are controlling us, we are prone to act on the urge, be it to yell when we’re angry, flee when scared, withdraw or shut down when sad, seek out excessive reassurance when anxious, or drink or eat when stressed. Emotion-driven behavior often has short-term gains that come at long-term expenses.

How do I not fall in coping traps?

First: Get to know more about your own automatic coping traps.  

Check out the 'Identifying your Traps' tool below in the 'Tools' section. 

Bonus: Carving out a few moments per day to build your mindfulness muscles will give you greater space to observe when we are falling into an automatic coping trap. Check out the guided mindfulness tools below in the 'Tools' section. 

Tools

Identification and Tracking:

You now know the top 4 coping traps: the Inner Critic, Avoidance, Rumination, and Emotion-Driven Behavior. 

Remember, these coping traps are ways of handling stress and discomfort. Each trap typically comes with a specific set of Thoughts, Emotions and Behaviors.

Identifying Your Traps

Use this tool to get to know how looking at your thoughts, feelings and emotions will help you identify your own traps.

Throughout the next week, see if you can simply label when this trap is showing up:

 ("Ah ha, there's the Critic," "Ah, there's Avoidance," “I just got on the Hamster Wheel,” or “I see, Emotion is driving here; I’ve left the driver’s seat”). 

You don't need to rush to change these things; just simply notice for now.

Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness can be just a breath, just a pause: but it is key in giving us that millisecond space to observe when we are falling into a coping trap.

You can find a treasure trove of mindfulness practices below.

Try "Flip" to practice acknowledging and coping with distress in the body.

Try "Manage," a quick exercise using the breath to calm difficult emotions.

Try "Fade," to help you practice calming your nervous system nu using your muscles, your breath, and your mind.

Try "Names," a mindfulness exercise that helps you to observe and label your internal processes without reacting.

With practice, you will become better at identifying when you are falling into an automatic coping trap. 

Instead of being pushed around by reactivity, you will begin to simply notice those reactive patterns, step outside of them, and place yourself firmly in the driver’s seat to make choices that align with what truly matters to you.