Coping Skills: More Than Just “Deep Breaths”

As therapists, an important part of what we provide to our clients is coaching and education on coping skills. This term is used a lot to describe a growing set of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional tools that allow for mood management and overall improvement in quality of life by building new habits and responses to one’s environment.

When people hear the term coping skills, they may envision someone taking slow deep breaths or going for a walk outside. These are fantastic examples that regularly help many people. However, some individuals—even those seeking therapeutic services—may perceive coping skills as a waste of time or “not real therapy.” These may be clients who struggle to buy into their own influence over their daily lives or who face significant motivational challenges. No matter the reason, if someone sees new and effective ways of coping with daily life stressors as unimportant, treatment can become much more difficult.

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The Jewelry Box vs. The Old Sock

To help clients understand this concept, I often use a metaphor: I ask them to envision a beautiful, ornate jewelry box as well as an old sock bunched up in the back of their drawer. Then I ask what difference it might make if they store their expensive, personally valuable items in the jewelry box versus the old sock.

This metaphor highlights an important point: if we treat coping skills like they belong in an old sock, their effectiveness diminishes. Conversely, when coping skills are regarded as deserving a purposeful and pleasing display, they tend to yield clearer and more desirable results.

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Mindful and Intentional Coping

Keeping your coping skills in a metaphorical jewelry box starts with intention and mindfulness. One must be actively coping rather than passively coping. This makes a clear difference in goal-oriented efforts, such as playing a strategy-based board game. Mindful, intentional players tend to do better than those paying less attention. The same is true for coping skills: if they are used reactively or with limited effort, you deny yourself the full benefits.

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Coping Skills and the Placebo Effect

Some may argue that the benefits of coping skills are just the Placebo Effect, in which the mind’s beliefs influence perception. To this, I would make two points:

1. The Placebo Effect is often how many mental health challenges persist. When someone is convinced of future stressors or an undesirable perception of life, these convictions can manifest regardless of the facts. So, if believing in coping skills is “just the placebo effect,” why not use it to improve quality of life when it has the power to weigh it down otherwise?

2. Most coping skills are grounded in research, facts, and logic. For example, a 2018 study found that paced breathing techniques were clearly correlated with multiple psychological and neurological changes. These changes led to increases in relaxation, pleasantness, alertness, comfort, and vigor, as well as reductions in symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger, confusion, and physiological arousal (Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, et al., 2018, Front Hum Neurosci, 12:353).

If you struggle with the idea of buying into the use of coping skills to manage your moods and thoughts to improve your quality of life, feel free to reach out and talk to a therapist about the background and research behind the use of coping skills.  Approaching new strategies with an open mind is important because one of the most foundational coping skill you will ever have is the commitment to coping in the first place.