By April Michael
We’ve all been suggested generic ways of calming our anxiety - like bubble baths or yoga - which don’t work as well as personal tried-and-true coping skills.
As a mental health patient, and now as a mental health counselor, talking and learning about coping skills is an ever-present reality. As a patient I was given many suggestions to deal with my anxiety, probably the same ones you’ve heard over and over. Things like taking a bath, taking a walk, calling a friend, watching a movie, etc. The generic list goes on and on. In theory, these suggestions always sound great to me. But in reality, at the genesis of my anxiety attack, I am hard pressed to want to talk to anyone, let alone muster the energy to get out of my head and go on a walk. As a counselor, I realize that I can make these generic suggestions to my clients as a starting place, but the reality is that each person has to come up with their own particular coping skills.
The realization about what my very particular coping skill is came about recently as I was watching Netflix. I was watching my guilty pleasure genre -specifically a documentary. I have always loved these types of shows, though some may deem it an odd or at least unlikely coping skill. But sitting there the other day, completely immersed and present in the moment, it dawned on me. I love these types of shows for two reasons: they are very detail oriented, and they deal with other places and people in time. Therefore, they enable me to get out of my head and focus on another set of circumstances, which are happily not my own. For this same reason, I’ve found that I am soothed by reading small town newspapers online and hearing about life in other places. Any story from the outrageous to the mundane has a way of calming me down.
This may sound quite simple, and perhaps a little too specific for you to use for yourself. But this idea is simply my personal adaptation of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills. These specific skills come from the DBT concept of using distraction techniques for distress tolerance. The concept is called Wise Mind ACCEPTS. The acronym is as follows: Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Pushing Away, Thoughts, Sensations. My coping skill touches on nearly all of these attributes. It is a specific activity, it helps me to compare and therefore put my situation into perspective, it distracts me with other emotions, it pushes away my distressing situation for something else, and it distracts me with other thoughts. The attributes it does not touch on are Contributing (doing something for someone else), and Sensations (using physical objects such as ice in your hand or a hot bath).
As a patient, I was always skeptical of DBT and never thought it could be used in reality. But as I continue to live my life with bipolar disorder, I continue to learn what works in reality, rather than just in theory. This is something you will never find in a book or be able to learn from a therapist. It is found only through being present in your own daily life. Being present and practicing mindfulness is another core concept of DBT. While the ACCEPTS acronym is used for distraction, mindfulness can still be applied here. While you are distracting, you are encouraged to be present and fully immerse yourself in that distraction.
So as you go out into the world today, I encourage you to be mindful and to find out what your very particular coping skill is. Please feel free to share it in the comments as well – you never know what could help someone else.