Coping and Hoping Keep Us Surviving Rather Than Thriving by Anne Andrew

Are you feeling stuck in unwanted patterns of emotions and behaviour?
Could it be that your coping skills are keeping you there?
There is a downside to coping. By facing emotions head on, rather than pushing them away you can become unstuck and actually thrive. I’m going to point to a transformative way of dealing with difficult emotions. 


At this challenging time in human history we’ve all needed to fall back on our coping skills to get us through unusual circumstances such as lockdowns, zoom overload, or working from home without a dedicated office space. These situations have given rise to feelings of isolation, overwhelm, anxiety and countless others.


Coping is how we deescalate a situation or turn down the volume on unwanted emotions. Whether it is counting to ten to avoid bursting with anger, downing a glass of wine after a stressful day of working from home, or binging on Netflix to quiet anxiety over endless bad news, we have found ways to get by. The problem is that this is a temporary solution and the root cause of our emotional reactions has not been tackled. There is a downside to merely ‘coping’. The same emotions will keep coming up and the pattern is held in place.


There is a better way that will allow you to thrive rather than just survive. Our emotions can help us get to the root cause of our upsetting feelings and heal them there where it can actually produce lasting change. That’s where the Choose Again Six Steps to Freedom come in.


SOLUTION
Here are the necessary steps (for the complete version see Choose Again Six Steps to Freedom by Diederik Wolsak):

• Allow yourself to feel

Allow yourself to feel the emotion, rather than push it away. It might be necessary to use a coping skill in the moment, but then revisit the painful emotion later in the evening or when you have more time to take a closer look. We humans can get into an emotional state just by thinking about an event, so don’t worry about forgetting what the feeling was – it’ll be right there in an instant. Identify the emotion you are trying to cope with. Is it anger, fear, worry, rage? How would you describe it in a word?

• Process your Upset! Apply the Choose Again Six Steps to Freedom

If you are reading this post, it is likely that you have some knowledge of the Choose Again Six Steps to Freedom (Wolsak 2018). For those unfamiliar with it, here’s the basic idea: 


Whenever we are experiencing an emotion (other than love, joy or peace), we can be considered to be upset. Our emotional reactions are driven by the negative beliefs that we formed about ourselves in early childhood events which we have experienced as being traumatic and these are stored in our systems. We can therefore feel our way back in our memories to find the initiating incidents and the beliefs about ourselves we made up as a result. It is not true that you are unlovable because you broke your grandmother’s favourite vase or didn’t win the spelling Bee. We can forgive ourselves for making up negative beliefs that were never true and remind ourselves of our Inherent Worth. Reassure yourself that nothing you do or say or did or said can change the truth of that. This realization frees us and changes our behavior patterns. You will find that you are no longer triggered to the same degree when your adverse childhood experience is reinterpreted in this way. 

• Practice

Be vigilant with your emotions and process them frequently so that you can quickly identify which negative beliefs are driving the emotion that you are experiencing. We usually have just a few ‘go to’ emotions which are driven by some pretty common underlying beliefs, such as ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m bad’, ‘I’m weak’ or ‘I don’t belong’.  You’ll soon become adept at spotting the beliefs and correcting them so that the process doesn’t take more than a few seconds. Choose Again offers numerous in-person and online circles every week to keep you on track and workshops both in person and live on Zoom.  Mastering the Six Steps is an online course that you can take at your own leisure online. www.choose-again.com


SUMMARY
Coping skills by nature help us to avoid looking at root cause of emotional reactions. There is a time and place for them – they allow us to survive, but to thrive you can revisit painful emotions and use them to heal old limiting beliefs that you made up as young children. The Choose Again Six Steps to Freedom provides a proven path to calm and self-realization. 
To recap, here are the steps:

• Allow yourself to feel
• Apply the Choose Again Six Steps to Freedom to your upsets
• Keep practicing!

CONCLUSION
Turn surviving into thriving in any situation by welcoming the emotions that coping skills downplay. By following emotions into memories (using the Six Steps to Freedom), you can go to the root cause of the discomfort that COVID-19, relationship problems, climate change, and other challenging situations seem to provoke in us. Practicing the Choose Again Six Step process regularly will lead to the ability to stay calm rather than needing to ‘cope’.


Helpful resources:
Choose Again Six Steps to Freedom by Diederik Wolsak RPC, MPCP
Choose Again online Circles
Mastering the Six Steps online course

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​Anne Andrew is a Choose Again circle facilitator and author of What They Don't Teach in Prenatal Class.