Coping Skills Quotes

“Many of us learned that keeping busy…kept us at a distance from our feelings...Some of us took the ways we busied ourselves—becoming overachievers & workaholics—as self esteem…But whenever our inner feeling did not match our outer surface, we were doing ourselves a disservice…If stopping to rest meant being barraged with this discrepancy, no wonder we were reluctant to cease our obsessive activity.”
― Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse

“Love with open hands, with an open heart, knowing that what is given to you will die. It will change. Love anyway. You witness incredible pain in this life. Love anyway.”
― Megan Devine, It's OK That You're Not OK

“I was seized by doubt. Should I have come here? But going back was impossible. I had fled a known terror, and perhaps I could cope with this unknown terror that lay ahead.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“Pain is a predator when we run from it, it will inevitably chase us down and catch us in its clutches. The goal isn't to wallow in the pain or to avoid it, but rather, to move through it. Pain only holds us hostage when we get stuck in it or try to repress it. Pain is a part of the human experience. Life is a bittersweet journey. Developing the ability to learn from our pain and to cope with it, effectively, is one of the most empowering gifts we can give ourselves.”
― Jaeda DeWalt

“And then there's this: no matter how many bullshit stories you have or don't have, there are no guarantees in life. Nothing is owed to us. That "not knowing" is scary, but the tools to help us--writing, breathing, yoga, connecting--are all we have. And honestly, sometimes the tools are Netflix and coffee as well as breathing and yoga and writing. But we must have tools.”
― Jennifer Pastiloff, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard

“With improved coping skills forged through my midlife crisis, I now listen first and do not control, and I allow these now adult children to come to their own conclusions about what they want for their lives.”
― David W. Earle LPC- Love is Not Enough

“I will ask over and over until I die why doctors, therapists, school educators, and counselors are not looking deeply at the individual in front of them and creating a treatment plan with options that heal trauma, offer tools and adaptive coping strategies to navigate their emotional life, and address underlying mental issues before placing that young person on a rapid medicalization pathway that ignores complex dynamics of their personality and experiences.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“Many of us, often without knowing it, live our lives in narrow corridors, hemmed in by fear. It’s as if there were walls of electrified fencing on the right and left of us, and we’re wearing a shock collar. If we veer too close to one side, we start feeling the fear, and we move back toward the center, often without noticing it. The challenge of change is not to get better at withstanding electric shocks, but to somehow reduce the voltage or remove the shock collar. It’s not about becoming more courageous; it’s about becoming more fearless. When the fear subsides, the walls come down, and we can go anywhere.

This is not learning a new coping skill; it’s becoming a new person. We do things we’ve never done before because the fear that hemmed us in is gone, or reduced. The loss of fear is the mark of change, and the proof of change is what’s happening when we’re not trying.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience