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Transcription de la vidéo

This session's activity is to add your coping mechanisms (whether healthy or less helpful) to your timelines.

Think about your coping mechanisms, like the ones you use now. Make a list – of the positive, the less healthy, everything – and put them on the timeline where you are now. Use this as a snapshot of the present; our present is what links our past and our future. We may be able to identify how any of our unhealthy coping mechanisms links to a traumatic event of the past. But we can also see what tools we have to face the future ahead us. 

Trauma can leave us with many different complicated emotions, fears, and concerns. Based on narrative therapy and journaling techniques, we explore how to identify triggers, understand the science of trauma, re-build self-esteem, work through shame, and recognise the ways we’ve already been resilient.

Reclaiming resilience in your trauma story

Week 1: Foundational Concepts

Week 2: Psychosocial elements of trauma

Week 3: Resilience - the magic trick

Week 4: Coping mechanisms

Week 5: Building a narrative that feels right

Overview

We identify unhelpful coping mechanisms, and introduce the Internal Family Systems framework for understanding the purpose of coping mechanisms. 

Unhelpful coping mechanisms

Just a content warning: in this video we talk about healthy and unhealthy uses of food and exercise, substance abuse, and self harm. If you would feel more comfortable reading this session instead of watching it, feel free to read the transcript instead.

Hello everyone! 👋🏻 It’s Beatriz and Nooreen, back for Week 4, Session 2. 

This is our week on coping mechanisms. So today,

 We will be discussing coping mechanisms that aren’t as healthy, like controlling food, over-exercising, and substance and alcohol use. We know this could be a difficult topic for many, so please do take care with the session. That being said, learning about the Internal Family Systems framework will hopefully help us see these coping mechanisms with compassion, for what these were doing for us at the time. Throughout all of it, we have been doing our best to survive, and we have already been resilient. 

the idea is to pick up an object and describe it in detail. Describe its colour, texture, size, weight, scent, and any other qualities you notice.

My object today, sorry it's the thing that I have in hand, is my phone so, I think it's quite heavy for a phone, and also it's quite big. They're very clunky right, nowadays? And if you ask me about the scent, well it smells like alcohol because I keep spraying it with alcohol every time that I go out. So that’s it.

And well, remember that every one of us is different. So a grounding exercise that works for someone may not work for you, which is why we’re trying different ones each week. If you’ve been struggling to do the grounding exercises, or would like more suggestions, please reach out and let us know.

What’s your favourite piece of clothing? So if you were a cartoon, what would your character wear? (Think: The Simpsons). What is your favorite type of clothing Beatriz?

Well in real life it's high-waisted pants or shorts but since it's gonna be a cartoon, I don't know, I just loved the anime dresses from Sakura Cardcaptors. I don't know if you have ever seen that one, but they're very girly. 

Yeah and she has different dresses at every stage, so I just thought they were beautiful when I was a little kid. What about you Nooreen?

So I really like beachwear, but I'm going to actually say, maybe a really nice white beach dress. Because if this is a cartoon character we're going to make her like, you know she can... because cartoon characters just have that one outfit they wear everywhere. So to the store, to everywhere so yeah I'll pick a really nice white dress that, you know. And definitely my character lives somewhere where it's always sunny and pretty so that, you know, you can actually keep wearing that dress and anywhere you're going for it, to do any chores. So that would be mine, but please let us know what your answer would be. We would love to hear from you again, always let us know through our live chat.

And with that we're going to move forward with our content for today. 

So last session, we talked about the importance of positive coping mechanisms in building our resilience. We also looked at the function of coping mechanisms – in helping us manage our everyday stress and ability to get through the day. So today, before we get onto talking about unhealthy coping mechanisms, we also wanted to talk about how and 

when healthy coping mechanisms become unhealthy

Firstly, we know that all coping mechanisms – healthy and unhealthy – are about us helping manage the stresses of everyday life. We need to get through the day, experience relief, and have things to look forward to. That’s why they’re called coping mechanisms – they help us cope with life! 

But our healthy coping mechanisms can become unhealthy if we are using them consistently as a form of avoidance. So let's think about 

 for a moment, as people often talk about eating too much cake or too many sweets when you ask them about a coping mechanism that could or has become unhealthy. 

Firstly, the good side: eating comfort food can work wonders to make us feel better and help us recuperate from highly stressful or traumatic experiences. However, if we 

 resort to this coping mechanism in times of difficulty, even though the coping mechanism is not unhealthy on its own, it can lead to an unhealthy use of it. We want our coping mechanisms to be as varied and colorful as the food we should have on our plates. The more we have, the more chances we have to lead a healthy life.

Unlike eating, not many people would mention working out as something that can be unhealthy. We know that exercising can be a great positive coping mechanism, as movement brings joy, lowers stress, and helps us ground in positive physical sensations. Isn’t exercising linked to decreasing stress levels, anxiety, and filling our body with endorphins? Well, in short, yes. So why are we talking about it?

So if we exercise to a very great extent – such that we don’t have the time in our lives to see people or do other activities that we find fulfilling; we become incredibly upset if we miss a workout; or we cannot get through a single day if we haven’t exercised to the extent or intensity we feel is ‘satisfactory’ – that’s less healthy. And that’s the thing about unhealthy coping mechanisms. When we feel like we ‘need’ an activity or thing to be able to ‘get through the day’, that is when it may have become a dependency. We’re using exercise as a way of avoiding painful feelings and thoughts, instead of using exercise as a supplementary tool that helps us better address these painful feelings or thoughts. If used very excessively, exercise, which is usually a way to keep ourselves healthy and fit, can lead to fatigue, muscle damage, dehydration, and large mood changes.

Similarly, swiping through social media for inspiration on makeup, fitness, or even going on holiday may be a nice time-kill. But when we obsessively go through social media, start comparing our life to others, and feel anxious looking through it – we know something is probably wrong. 

And overworking can be another common coping mechanism that can turn unhealthy if done too much. We may get satisfaction and even a sense of purpose from our work, and that same purpose is one of our tools for resilience that we discussed last session. But we may overwork to the extent that we, that it’s not enjoyable, but also such that we feel unable to gain satisfaction from anything else in our lives 

 for work. We turn to work to numb ourselves from everything else in our lives and don’t engage in any other meaningful activities or relationships outside of work. 

So, we can enter a cycle of dependency with our coping mechanisms, if we’re using them to excess. This is the cycle of

 how ‘want to’ becomes ‘need to’: 

so we repeat – we do it to excess – we become dependent on the behaviour – and we experience a lack of enjoyment. 

 Yes, this lack of enjoyment is different, however, from the reluctance we may feel to engage in positive coping mechanisms when we are going through a difficult period. For example, when we’re feeling really low, we might not want to leave the house, go for a walk, or see our friends. It is very normal to feel this, and not something we should be ashamed of. However, at these times, it is important to still try to do something positive for ourselves. Maybe not every single time but more often than not. It goes back to that hope: the belief that investing in our wellbeing and resilience, even if we don’t want to or feel like it is ‘not worth it’ in the moment, will over time be nourishing and fulfilling. 

If you feel that this lack of desire to do anything positive for ourselves, is becoming a consistent pattern, please reach out for support. You’re not alone.

There are also times when we know that one of our coping mechanisms is overall unhealthy. What do we mean by unhealthy or unhelpful? Well, it’s a coping mechanism because it helps, it helps us manage those demands on our energy and time that we’ve been talking about. But just because a technique is helping us endure our stress or pain, does not necessarily mean it’s healthy. Some coping strategies can be unhelpful and lead to more problems in our lives. We’re avoiding the word ‘bad’ or ‘negative’, which we’ll talk about a little bit later, as it’s still something that helps us manage stress, which we shouldn’t have to feel ashamed about, but it affects that, its effects may still be negative overall. 

Now, as we go through this list of unhealthy coping mechanisms, please remember that your trauma is not your fault and neither is whatever coping mechanisms you use. Coping mechanisms, whether healthy or unhealthy, exist because at some point in our lives, they have actually helped us cope with difficult feelings and circumstances. However, we can still re-evaluate them at different points in our lives to assess if they’re still relevant to us in the present. The purpose of reading out these coping mechanisms is not to shame anybody, but to just bring your attention to behaviours you may or may not have been using to manage difficult emotions like stress, fear, and anger.

Yes. If you need to take a pause after that list, please do. It can be very difficult to think about some of these coping mechanisms, if we realise we identify with them to some extent. So if you want to go away from this video and come back, please do. Do a grounding exercise, get a glass of water, maybe walk around a bit: whatever you need to do. When you get back, we won’t be going into any more details of specific unhealthy coping mechanisms, but rather why we use them.

So we wanted to actually address why we use unhealthy coping mechanisms. If they can be so bad for us in the long term, why would we ever use them? It’s a good question. For one perspective on this question, we’re going to introduce you to a particular framework from the field of psychology, which will helpfully, which will hopefully help you reflect on this question in a useful way.

 One way of understanding why we use unhealthy coping mechanisms to manage our emotions is the Internal Family Systems framework, which was created by Richard Schwartz, in the 1980s, and has been implemented by many psychotherapists. This framework or theory suggests that we think about our ‘self’ as a collection of many parts working together to make up a ‘family’, like family memberss – resulting in how we are and behave.

This part of us that is neglected, abused, hurt, scared, and damaged by the experience of trauma. This is the part that carries the weight of these experiences and so is the most vulnerable. 

Like the manager of a cafe, this part runs our ‘day-to-day’ abilities. The manager cares about everything going smoothly, so it will control things to stop “exile” from exerting its influence. 

If we have a loud inner self-critic or have a perfectionist attitude towards work, or maybe we engage in a healthy coping mechanism to an excessive level, like exercise or working – that might represent our manager working. 

Finally, we have the firefighter. His job is to put out fires: that is, to do whatever it takes to extinguish the negative feeling or thought that is threatening us. This might be where some of our negative coping mechanisms come in – like self-harm, substance abuse, extreme eating habits. The firefighter is doing damage control but doesn’t necessarily care about what it damages while it’s working.

And like we mentioned, this framework can also help us understand how healthy coping mechanisms can become unhealthy coping mechanisms, if we think of the ‘manager’ of the Internal Family System. Putting excessive effort into aspects of our lives that we can control, at least to some extent – our work, our physical fitness, what we eat – is that manager micromanaging our lives as a way of maintaining control and keeping the exile out. 

 As people who have experienced trauma, we try hard to separate ourselves from all the negative feelings and sensations that are associated with our trauma. These sensations can be overwhelming for our systems and it’s exhausting going through the cycles of hyper-focus and dissociation. Sometimes, we need a break from the task of managing our emotions – and that’s where our firefighters and our managers step in. We may even be worried that our exile will take control of us – and that all of the negative thoughts, feelings, and experiences associated with our traumas will become too overpowering, and our ability to ‘function’ will come to a standstill.

Whether our unhealthier coping mechanisms represent our manager or our firefighter, understanding them can bring us to a new self-awareness. And ultimately, this understanding can be used to recognise that part of ourselves that is scared, fearful, and anxious; that part of us is vulnerable and needs love and care. Recovering from trauma isn’t about banishing any one of these three parts of ourselves, not even the firefighter. It’s about restoring 

 in the relationship between these components of our emotional wellbeing, a balanced working relationship that might have been set off kilter by trauma, so that they’re able to function in harmony without one of them taking over. 

The point of this explanation wasn’t to say that you have to be familiar with the Internal Family Systems framework to analyse your coping mechanisms or to change them. We just find it a useful way of understanding that the point of identifying our coping mechanisms isn’t to be ashamed of them or even to immediately stop them. It’s to give ourselves space to recognise what they are, and what aspects of our emotional needs they are addressing. There might be negative emotions, or anxieties, or bad memories, that we just haven’t given ourselves permission to deal with or that are too difficult to deal with, at a particular time. 

This is how coping mechanisms are linked to traumatic experiences. We may look to more extreme ways of managing our feelings and may even seek to numb them, because those feelings are even stronger, due to the trauma. For example, the rate of self-harm is higher amongst survivors of childhood trauma than amongst people who haven’t experienced early trauma. That doesn’t mean that people who’ve experienced trauma necessarily use unhelpful coping mechanisms, and people with none or few experiences of trauma have the healthiest coping mechanisms. No. But when we’ve been exposed to an extreme situation or environment which was out of our control, as in a traumatic experience, it can influence our sense of safety, the ways that we interact with our environment, and therefore the ways in which we are able to look for comfort in our environment. 

Also, using unhealthy coping mechanisms doesn’t make us bad. You can look at coping mechanisms, even ones that are less healthy, as evidence that you’re resilient. Your body and mind are working together to look out for you, and they are trying to manage a whole host of difficult trauma-related emotions. Identifying the ways in which you are coping can be a powerful first step in recovery. But know this: you have already been resilient. And you are not alone. 

a final bit of work on our timelines, before we have our timeline session next week! 

We’ve already put some markers of the past on our timelines and some hopes for the future. Today, let’s think about the present. And let’s integrate what we’ve learned this week about coping mechanisms.

So remember, this is an investment in your own journey to recovery. Give yourself the best chance to build resilience. You can do this. 

Yes and with that please let us know if you have any concerns, questions, or feedback. We would love to hear from you. We are here to support you, so please get in touch!

Thank you everyone for coming to this session and showing up for yourself and others who are here because they aren’t, they know they’re not alone. As always, we’re in this together. 

And with that let's do our final grounding exercise. We're going to take five deep breaths, and on the last one we're going to let out a big sigh! And I'll count us down. So breathe in,

We would like you to name one positive thing that you will take away with you from this session, or something that you've learned today.

And with that, we will see you next session! 