october: notice
The structure of our society has created a culture in which to survive we must cut ourselves off from the root of our discomfort. There is so much pain and anxiety and not enough cultural practices around expressing our emotions in a healthy way or resolving their larger causes. Intentional or not, our most accessible coping mechanisms are quick fixes so that our lives don’t interfere with our work. We’re merely allowed to cope with, through, for, and by the economy, not embracing our full breadth of humanness.
Leaving us detached from our intentions behind our coping mechanisms (and even the dis-ease that brought us to them), it’s a miracle any of our needs are met. Often outsourcing our comfort to material goods, we’re caught in a cycle where we have less control over our survival tactics than they have over us. There’s an app for that precise discomfort we feel in this rapidly dissolving world. And if there’s not an app, there’s a trend or a product or an experience to avoid the depths of all that is.
This can be most easily seen in terms of the “self-care” industrial complex. I am a huge supporter of self-care, but I’ve become wary of my own implementation of it when I’ve seen posts asking what forms of self-care do we have that require purchasing nothing at all? Many consumer-based coping mechanisms often leave me empty as soon as they’re over--as soon as I step out of the bubble bath, I am left cold and scrolling through the communal trauma of our time.
Practicing my self-care rituals helps me to endure the chaos of the world, but not always to confront it. There is often a great deal of avoidance in these behaviors we pass off as “coping.” It can be a very fine line, especially when we haven’t taken the time to analyze when we decide to engage in coping strategies, how long we use them, their lasting effects, and other ramifications of stepping out of the stream of suffering into some momentary reprieve.
It is much easier to divide our worldly existence between the times we suffer and the times we breathe easily, rather than accept a holistic view that work, politics, family, climate crisis, and all else co-exist with our moments of pleasure and ease. Our rest is linked to our work which is linked to our communities which is linked to other communities and the net extends and includes all that there is to this human life. I’ve been noticing that in our rapidly changing world, the deepest, most fulfilling moments are rather mundane in the grand scheme. They’re separate from the internet and pure in intention, allowing me to connect to the ancestral tug within me to be present in the moment.
There’s no doubt that we need to take note of how we’re doing and how best to take care of ourselves during this time of continued instability and grief. Journaling has helped me immensely in untangling these primordial habits of mine. By writing what I do each day and how I felt before, during, and after, I no longer have to think about what coping mechanism to use and when. Fatigued by the cyclical nature of the news and my bills, I’ve built a wealth of personal knowledge that has now become instinct for when to nap, when to meditate, when to go for a walk, when to zone out to Netflix, and when to call a friend.
At first, I didn’t really know how to write about all of these personal experiences, but the more I put pen to paper, the easier it became to be honest with myself and find patterns between scrolling through social media all day, feeling antsy at night, and what balm to use when I feel such discomfort. Of course I still often find myself in this pattern, but I can more easily extend compassion, heeding the anxiety that falls when the sun sets and react appropriately by moving my body, listening to music, or performing ritual acts of cleaning to stay grounded in what is tangible within my life. I now cope by controlling what I can and attune to my body as the grief, rage, or general discomfort begs me to listen to it.
I’ve taken the time to sit in the truths that no coping can cover. I’ve done a myriad of experiments to see what activities hurt more than they help and why or when. And if I can do it, so can you! Below is a practice I’ve adapted from my own journey that you can use to bring awareness to your coping mechanisms/rituals:
Write out all of your coping activities: doom-scrolling, yoga, drinking, walking, dancing, talking with friends, watching movies, smoking, etc… Write every little thing that comes to your mind. Get it all out in front of you, in one controlled space.
Pick your 3 most-used coping mechanisms to start with and just ask yourself how you feel before, during, and after you practice each of them? Do you see a larger pattern surrounding any of these activities? Do you know what inspires you to implement these coping mechanisms? And why do you think you keep repeating them if they don’t seem to help you feel better than before you used them?
Do not judge the answers you find, ascribe no meaning to what you’re uncovering about your routines. Simply explore your patterns as if they’re a new and exciting place. If feelings of unhappiness or upset arise, use them to investigate further, rather than shut down and beat yourself up. This practice is to help you find new coping mechanisms if you discover what you currently have available to you is no longer working. I’m sure at one point it worked marvelously, that’s why it’s in your repertoire at all!
If your coping mechanisms work or work most of the time, celebrate that and take note of the best times to use them for best results. Personally, I’ll give myself a day or two of eating out and binging Netflix if I feel myself getting tired with depression. But I end it with a nice, long bath and force myself to go on a walk after my set wallowing period has passed. This helps me acknowledge and respect my feelings of downtrodeddenness while also paving a path to more solid ground. Can you find your own paths in your current coping mechanisms?
If not, is there some new, tiny habit you can implement to change how you interact with such patterns? Early on in the pandemic, I started a small ritual of making myself tea every morning. Sometimes I speak intentions and affirmations into the boiling water, and other times I simply enjoy my tea, myself, and my morning. It’s just a little thing, but it makes me connect to my body, meet a need of mine first thing in the morning, and often slow me down from the typical pace of life.
If you can get through your entire list of coping mechanisms and discover which ones are working, why, and what to do when you feel like using an outdated one, then more power to you. And if you have the energy to investigate one coping mechanism, then that’s still one more aspect of your life that you’ve brought awareness to! Do with this practice what you can and use it in a way that works best for you.
I said it last week, but: “Coping is never perfect and it certainly isn’t a science.” Coping is an art, it is a healing modality, and the goal for this week is to just bring a little more awareness to your coping habits and patterns. Notice what you do and why so that you may be more intentional in your life and more effective in handling the ills of the world.