“I’m learning the ropes
I’m learning to cope
I’m learning that more of us got hella demons than got any hope.” -Xiuhtezcatl

I’ve been in and out of therapy for over a decade, but I didn’t really understand what it means to put my mental health first until a few years ago. I was going in circles in so many ways, and I needed more intervention than therapy alone. I needed to get out of my abusive relationship with my ex, get on psychiatric medication, and throw myself into fully participating in getting better. It was more than just holding myself together enough to “function.” I had to be willing to learn, study, and practice new skills.

Before I understood how much my mental illnesses were impacting me, I didn’t know what it meant to cope. I fought the idea that coping was helpful. I figured if most people could cope with the way things are, then they must be ignoring all the evil in the world. I thought that if I stayed stuck in a depressed mindset, I was refusing to live in the denial everyone else was in. I didn’t know yet how to step back and check the facts of a situation. I couldn’t accept the notion that feelings are not facts.

Much to my surprise, I learned that human emotions influence our perception of facts. I was seeing the world as profoundly dismal because my brain was in a profoundly depressed state. As I improved my own life circumstances and mental health, my outlook became less melancholic. It didn’t change the evils in the world – they didn’t go away or alter the facts.

Coping isn’t about painting negative circumstances in flowery terms. That’s toxic positivity. A lot of people confuse the two. That’s why it’s so unhelpful to tell a depressed or grumpy person to “just cheer up!” or “just look on the bright side!” It’s not that simple, and it can even have the opposite effect. Rather, coping is about building internal fortitude and capacity to grapple with circumstances.

When I got started on learning about coping, I had a vague expectation that coping would make things easier to deal with. That’s not really how it works. I often struggle to utilize the coping skills I’ve gathered, because coping is hard. Sometimes, the best thing I can do is validate my feelings and offer myself compassion.

How is it possible to validate my feelings and simultaneously realize that feelings are not facts? These two things may seem to contradict each other, but they are both helpful ways to keep from getting pulled under by strong emotional currents. For example, one way to give myself support is to say “this makes me frustrated and upset because it is difficult. I can come back to it when I’m not feeling so worked up about it.”

I’m a very literal person, and when the instructors and therapists in my programs would refer to a “coping toolkit,” I found it hard to carry all the options for coping inside of my head. Especially when I feel upset, my mind feels scattered, and I struggle to remember what will be helpful to do. So I created a literal coping toolkit out of a pretty recipe holder. It contains dozens of flash cards – some of them I made, and some were printed onto cardstock for me by one of my therapists. I use them to remember why I’m taking care of myself, and for reminders of coping strategies I’ve gathered.

Learning to cope has not been easy, and coping itself is still not easy. But it has been tremendously helpful to learn coping skills that are healthy, instead of relying on maladaptive coping mechanisms. I needed to learn how to show up for myself, for taking care of my mind and body.