Reactionary Coping Skills
Let’s say you get an e-mail from your boss that they want to meet with you. Your mind immediately takes this as a stressor that you have done something wrong. Your anxiety spikes, fear sets in, your heart rate goes up, your palms start to sweat. This could be how you continue to feel until the meeting or you could engage in healthy reactionary coping skills. Perhaps you start taking deep breaths and attune to your body. You realize your heart rate is up and your palms are sweaty and you name the emotional experiences of anxiety and fear setting in. This naming doesn’t make these emotions go away, but it helps you gain more control of them versus them having control over you. You create enough space that you remember when you’ve felt this way before you called your friend and processed with them and you felt better. So, you pick up the phone, call your friend, and chat it out.
Reactionary coping skills are skills that we turn to when we are faced with a stressor. Think of a time when you experienced a flashback from your PTSD or uncontrollable fluctuation of emotions from your depression or anxiety. How we respond falls into our reactionary coping skills.
Some healthy reactionary coping skills are:
Deep breathing
Mindfulness
Body awareness
Grounding
Attunement to the 5 senses
Splashing cold water on your face
Getting fresh air
Talking to a trusted friend or family member
Naming your emotions
Reactionary coping skills are meant to give us some space between the onset of the stressor and our response to the stressor. They are meant to provide you with a greater sense of control, especially when the stressor can cause things to feel like they are spiraling out of your control. Some of them you might already be implementing and others may take some practice. They work best when you practice them at least a couple of times a day, for just a few minutes, so that your body is used to implementing them. This will make it easier when you do find yourself in the midst of a stressor as you won’t have to try and get your body to do something it is not used to.
If you are unsure what some of these reactionary coping skills are, stay tuned as I’ll be doing some blog posts elaborating on some of them.
