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coping skills for emotional wellbeing

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Coping With Difficult Emotions

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Coping With Difficult Emotions

Coping skills are a set of behaviors or actions that have positive benefits to one’s mental health. They can be used in situations to help alleviate any difficult emotions (ie: anger, sadness, anxiety, etc.) or they can be used daily to assist in maintaining a positive mood.

 

The unique thing about coping skills is that they are different for everyone! Where one skill may be helpful for you, it may be something that does not work for someone else. It may take trial and error of varied coping skills to see what is unique to helping you. Try out different hobbies or interests to see if they are helpful in alleviating those difficult emotions, commonly these hobbies/interests can also work as coping skills. Additionally, try out coping skills that you may be skeptical about because they could surprise you in a positive way. As time goes on and you begin to learn more about yourself, it can become easier to recognize the coping skills that help you to manage these difficult emotions best.

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The Benefits Of Playing Video Games

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The Benefits Of Playing Video Games

Video games have frequently been portrayed in the media as, at best, a “waste of time”, and at worst, harmful to those who play them. However, there has been an increasing amount of research that not only contradicts these claims, but identifies numerous benefits of playing video games. Another common misconception of video games is that it is for children, particularly male children; however, the people who play video games has continued to become an increasingly diverse group. The age of the average video game player is 35 and it is estimated that approximately 59% of those who play video games are male and 41% are female (Halbrook, O’Donell & Mstefi 2019).

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Coping with Social Anxiety: Techniques for Support

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Coping with Social Anxiety: Techniques for Support

It is common to feel nervous during social situations, but if you have social anxiety, everyday activities can be challenging. You may feel self-conscious and struggle with self-esteem. There are several ways to cope with social anxiety. Here are some tips to help you feel better and manage the day.

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Taking Care of You: Daily Stress Management Techniques

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Taking Care of You: Daily Stress Management Techniques

We all experience stressors daily. Whether this be stress at work, running late, numerous family activities, or other daily tasks. Anxiety rises amidst all of these stressors which can lead to shifts in cortisol levels, exacerbating these negative feelings. So let’s stop for a moment. Take a 4-5-6 deep breath. Take a moment, close your eyes, and breathe in slowly for a count of 4, hold for count of 5 and breathe out for count of 6. Try this for 3 minutes or do this in a set of 10, with intention and mindful effort. Now slowly open your eyes and look around you. How are you feeling? What do you need in this moment? This is one strategy that can be used to manage stress on a day to day basis. Let’s look into a few more stress management strategies.

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Ride the Waves: Learning to Surf Your Feelings

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Ride the Waves: Learning to Surf Your Feelings

Emotional experiences can feel so overwhelming. So much so that they can make us convinced that they are insurmountable, like a large wave coming over you as you stand in the shallow waters. It turns out that this is a very fitting metaphor for emotional spikes. Just as one can be overtaken and overwhelmed by a large wave, so too can one learn the skills needed to read the onset of the wave, position themselves effectively with it, and surf the wave which allows one to experience emotions with mastery and confidence. Additionally, because we experience emotions everyday of our lives, learning to surf your emotional waves can be practiced every day. This starts with seeing your feelings as a wave; strong, influential, and temporary… yes… temporary. Many cognitive patterns that lead to mental health disorders are habits that take single-emotion events and reinforce them again and again until they feel chronic. The emotion typically only lasted a few seconds or a few minutes at most and any secondary or lingering feelings are being upheld by what your thoughts, beliefs, and responses create. With this understanding, one can experience the emotional wave effectively in the moment before allowing that wave to return to the ocean never to come back in that exact form ever again.