As I’m sitting here watching the Buffalo Bills game and smelling some yummy chocolate chip cookies I just made, I decided it would be a good time to write about coping skills. Coping skills are tools and techniques that a person can use to help manage situations such as stress, anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation. I am going to share with you some coping skills that I have been practicing to help me through recovery. 

1- Baking: I love to bake! I find that baking helps me to relax and distracts me. When I first went into residential, instead of going on an outing with the group once a week, I would stay back at the house and bake. It was my time to do something I enjoy doing during a stressful time and typically none of the other patients were around. It was also something I did on the weekends. I like to be creative and have fun with my baking. It doesn’t always turn out well, but at least I have a good time doing it. Since being at the clinic for PHP and IOP, I have been baking at my apartment at least once a week and then take it in to share. 

2- Art: Art therapy has been one of my favorite groups most weeks. I love to be creative and when I can’t express how I’m feeling with words, I can typically find a way to do it with art. The most relaxing art that I have found to do is fluid painting. There is no right or wrong way to do it and it doesn’t take much thought. When I have had an exhausting day and need something mindless to do, I chose to do fluid painting. Right now I have a line of canvases on my living room floor. 

3- Music: I haven’t been doing much playing or singing, but I definitely listen to music. I can listen to music while doing just about anything and the type of music depends on what kind of mood I’m in. Most recently I’ve been listening to coffee shop stations on Amazon Music. 

4- Movies/TV Shows: I don’t have a TV, but I have some streaming services that I use on my computer. There are days when I feel like I did to be on the go and I don’t allow myself to just rest. On days like that, I will find a TV show or movie and just sit in my rocking chair or lay in my bed while watching it. I used to not be able to give myself permission to just rest, but with practice, I’m able to rest a lot easier. 

5- Walk: I love being outside. Something I have learned and practiced a lot this year is mindful movement. One aspect of my eating disorder was compulsive exercise. After a few weeks in residential, I was given permission to go on short walks. Typically I went out with one of the other patients and we had some really good conversation or just enjoyed listening to the sounds around us. I find that using my senses while taking a walk helps me to stay in the present and be mindful instead of focusing on calories burned or my body. Moving my body in ways that feel good such as during a walk is so much better than compulsively moving it even through pain. Some day I may be able to get back into doing some more exercise, but for now I will continue to enjoy my walks. 

6- Journaling: This is something that I definitely don’t do enough of. Journaling is a great way to get all my thoughts out and then be able to more easily process them. I will occasionally share my journaling with my therapist so she can help me process and work through different situations. When I have some tough emotions, I find that writing down those emotions to be helpful. One technique I learned in residential is using the senses to write out the emotion. First, you give it a name and then you write down what it looks like, sounds like, feels like, tastes like, and smells like. This helps me to separate the emotion from myself and then I can also do the same thing with what emotion I would like to have. 

There are more coping skills that I use at times, but these are the main ones. One big thing I have had to practice is to use the coping skills in the first place but also that coping skills are not supposed to be used to avoid situations. Instead, they can help distract but it’s important to go back and confront the situation to process and work through it. 

What are some coping skills that you use?

I’ve been pretty quiet on my blog this year and I decided that now is the time to put out an update. In this post I am going to give you an update on where I’m at right now and what I have been learning along the way. 

Last Fall, I relapsed with an eating disorder that I have struggled on and off with for many years. After much fighting with my outpatient treatment team, I packed my bags and headed out to Norman, OK in my friends car to a residential eating disorder treatment center. I continued to fight a lot of the process through a couple residential stays with partial hospitalization in between. Here are some learning experiences I had during that time.

1. Recovery can not be done alone. I was set on being able to do recovery at home by myself however after a couple weeks at residential I realized how difficult the process was going to be. I needed the 24/7 support, therapy, groups, dietitian sessions, and medical supervision. I also needed the other patients. I have met some of the most supportive, fun, and encouraging people. When you live with people, you get to know them pretty well and we got into routines of doing things like going for walks in the evening once we had permission to. I didn’t tell many people what was happening and where I was going but the support I received from the friends and family I did tell was incredible. I am very thankful for all the people I have in my life. 

2. I love being able to use my 5 senses. The residential house is a little outside of the city, back from the road, and surrounded by trees and water. I spent a lot of time outside when there wasn’t snow on the ground and the temperature was lower than 100*. In the Spring, the flowers were beautiful and the grass was green again. In the evenings one of the patients and I would go for a walk down the long driveway and we also would go into more of the wooded area. We saw lots of trees, flowers, water in the creek, turtles, fish, snakes, and turkeys. Fun fact: Turkeys sleep in trees and yes they can fly. I liked finding the snakes and petting them (there were not venomous). I enjoyed laying outside feeling the grass and the warmth of the sun and listening to the sounds around me. I struggled a lot with depression and anxiety at the beginning and going outside and using my senses helped me to ground myself. 

In July, I was able to spend a week in New Hampshire leading worship at a CFO camp. I was so excited to go but as it got closer I started to doubt myself and told myself I wasn’t qualified to be the worship leader. I had such a great time during that week. My mom came and brought one of my brothers and my two nieces and I saw friends I haven’t seen in a few years. My first night leading worship definitely did not go as planned and I was so discouraged. It seemed to confirm what I had been telling myself that I was not qualified to be in that leadership position which brings up learning experiences number 3 and 4. 

3. Who am I to tell God that I am not qualified to do something He has called me to do. The rest of my week leading worship I had a great team of guys helping me. There are all so talented and encouraged me along the way. We had some amazing times of worship and God showed up. I needed to focus more on Him instead of relying on my own abilities. 

4. Trust. I didn’t just need to focus more on God, but I also had to trust him. I also trusted the guys on the team. Giving up control and going with the flow made it so much more comfortable and helped with my confidence. I was so thankful during that week to have a prayer group of women who were so easy to trust. We spent a lot of time talking, praying, laughing, and crying. This also related back to all the treatment I was going through and trusting people and the process. 

A few days after I got back from New Hampshire, I was admitted back into residential treatment. This time though I had a very different outlook on it. I was more trusting of the providers and the process of recovery. Recovery is not easy and it’s not linear. The word that kept coming to mind is number 5 in my learning experiences.

5. Acceptance. This time going into residential I started to accept the process and stopped trying to control everything myself. I became more open to trying new foods, learning and using coping skills and techniques to help with my anxiety and depression, and the biggest part was starting to accept my body. I started focusing on my health instead of weight and size. I don’t always feel like I can accept my body because it hasn’t always been reliable due to underlying conditions, but I started really focusing on what it does for me and how important my body is to me. 

It was hard to accept the process and continue working on it, but I am glad I did it. My residential stay was only a month which is short compared to my first stay of 4 months. I was then able to step down to partial hospitalization for a month and am in my last couple weeks of intensive outpatient. I am ready to find my life again in recovery and will be starting that with a mission trip to Kenya at the end of October for 2 weeks. I am so much happier now and excited that I am healthy enough to be able to do missions which I love to do. I still have a lot of work to do in recovery, especially as I discharge to outpatient but I am going to continue to trust and accept the process, use my coping skills, enjoy the body I have been given, and do what brings me joy. I also hope to be able to use what I have learned and experienced this year to help and educate others. 

I am going to be working on more blog posts with pictures and memories from this year so stay tuned for that! I would also love to hear what you all have been learning this year if you are comfortable sharing.