Coping Mechanisms

Looking back from 2026:

This post from March 2024 has recently seen a bit of a “second life” in terms of traffic, and honestly, it’s one of the few I wouldn’t change a word of. The “Feelings are” philosophy remains my North Star. While my coping mechanisms have matured—moving from just “getting through the day” to what I now call “Option C”—the core trio of Movement, Exercise, and Writing remains the foundation of how I look toward the horizon

Daily writing prompt

What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?

View all responses

Back in college, I had an Educational Psychology professor who said

“Feelings are.”

My initial thought was: what the hell kind of touchy-feely crap is this? Then I remembered that I was in college, so it tracked.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit how long it took me to actually understand this sentence. It sounds corny, but it really is true. Feeling are neither good nor bad, positive nor negative; they just are. However, I won’t get too far into semantics. I understand what the prompt means by negative feelings, so I’ll bite.

Unfortunately, negative feelings are something i have to deal with more often than I would like. Even though I have my anxiety pretty well under control, every now, and then I do get hit with a flash of it, usually when stress is pretty high. I feel like I have it to a point not unlike people who suffer from migraines. I there are things that I can do sometimes to be proactive when I feel anxiety starting to rise. If I leave it unchecked, however, it’s almost paralyzing. I’m pretty much useless for a good portion of a day.

Move!

First and foremost, I try to keep busy. There have been a few times that I can think of specifically when kid 2 was with me, and I started to feel my anxiety rise. Those moments, we had to get out of the house. We would go grocery shopping, or even make a trip to the recycling center; anything just to get moving.

Movement, any kind of activity, allows me to get out of my own headspace for a little bit and focus on the moment.

Work out

Exercise has always been another great coping mechanism for me. Everything they say about the release of endorphins is true. Once I start working out, if I can get through the first 10 or 20 minutes, the endorphins start to kick in and I find that I want to keep working out even more. I guess you could say I’m a little bit of an endorphin addict. But, there’s worse things that I could be addicted to.

Yeah, I wish I looked like this…

Write it out

As I’m sure, most of my fellow bloggers can attest, writing is a great coping mechanism as well. If I’m in a headspace, where I can write, if the anxiety hasn’t taken too much of a hold over me, it is a good release valve. I have especially realized this to be true over the last six or seven months since I’ve been writing on a daily basis.

Writing, whether it’s blogging or attempting to be creative, helps me process my thoughts. sometimes when I write, it helps me get to the heart of my anxiety – whatever it may be in that particular moment.

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