Why it's important to stop being hard on yourself when developing coping mechanisms

While it is a given that life is full of uncertainties, caused by various stressors, we have different ways of responding to them

Thirty-one-year-old journalist Arshia Dhar uses food to communicate with herself. If she’s craving something savoury or spicy, things are on track. But as someone who doesn’t have a very active sweet tooth, if she starts craving something sweet, and it’s not related to menstruation, she’ll stop to introspect. “I get very easily overwhelmed. If I want to stabilise my emotions, the sweetness of anything in my mouth will help me anchor my emotions for a little while,” she explains. Her eating habits are also a way of sounding the internal alarm for herself. If she’s faced with a short-term stressor, like waiting to hear back after a blood test, she’ll not eat much on those days. But if it’s a long-term stressor, something that’s going to take months or years to resolve, she’ll binge-eat, enjoying the immediate satisfaction it offers. “If there are days when dealing with it [long-term stressor] is becoming difficult, since it doesn't have an immediate outcome, I’m going to eat.” 

Often, her cravings are triggered by something she reads about food or when she watches a character on screen eat something that looks appealing. She orders her food, waits impatiently for it to arrive, and is often satiated after a few bites. “It’s not even hunger. I just have that craving for a few hours. It’s very impulsive.” Essentially, Dhar’s eating habits are an archive of the uncertainties she’s facing. “Either I undereat or I overeat. I don't consume normal amounts of food on most days,” she says. But when she has the energy to look inward, the habit’s silver lining makes itself visible. “If I can figure out what eating pattern I’ve developed over time, I can go to the depths of it and figure out what’s going on in my mind,” she adds.

Dealing with easy escapes

In our already busy lives, when a stressor comes along, doing something that, in the past, has made us feel good, releases the feel-good hormone dopamine in the brain. It’s responsible for the feeling of reward and motivation. “Once you get that dopamine rush, you want more of it,” says Mumbai-based consultant psychiatrist Dr. Akanksha Rathi Maheshwari. “It can’t be called addictive but it’s something that you want to keep doing over and over again, leading to the development of a coping mechanism,” she says. In times of stress, chasing that instant pleasure is normal. We tend to rely on familiar and comfortable habits. We may rant to a loved one, turn to certain substances, distract ourselves with exercise or temporarily give up. We may try to control our emotions or let those feelings dictate our behaviours. We may do some, or all of these things. 

The important factor is assessing how that habit is affecting us. “Any coping mechanism is serving a protective function. It’s for coping with a certain situation or emotion that is difficult to deal with,” says Bengaluru-based counselling psychologist Joanne Johnson. But when that habit goes into overdrive, “it has detrimental side effects”.

For instance, earlier, 28-year-old Mumbai-based content strategist Chandni D’Souza (name changed) used to watch one or two episodes of a show before bed. But with a new job came more free time and the ability to work from home. Slowly, her watch time increased, having something on when doing chores like mopping or cutting up vegetables. As someone who deals with anxiety, to avoid the anxious thoughts, watching something became her go-to response. “The minute I felt uncomfortable or wanted to get distracted, binge-watching a show was my first option,” she recalls. In bed each night, she would watch something till her eyes couldn’t stay open anymore. “I just needed to have some sort of noise in the background, something that wasn't my thoughts.” If there was a work opportunity that wasn’t looking like it would work out, or a relationship problem that hadn’t seen a solution for months, she’d find the shows an easy space to escape into.

It wasn’t long before D’Souza reached this point where, if her phone was charging or otherwise unavailable, its absence added to her anxiety. Once she realised it had gotten out of hand, she deleted everything from her phone. When she redownloaded one of the streaming apps two months later, she noticed herself falling into the same obsessive pattern again. “I needed to go cold turkey,” she says. So during Lent (a 40-day period where Catholics give up something dear to them), she decided to stop consuming content entirely. “It was a test run;  I could do it.” Now, she’s training herself to focus on any task at hand, even if it’s as simple as washing a vessel, prioritising mindfulness in everything.

Acknowledgement of a problem

Dealing with unhealthy coping mechanisms means acknowledging there’s a problem—beyond the problems for which one was using the coping mechanism in the first place. It means another challenge to overcome. And that can be an exhausting realisation.

When tackling this issue, “it’s important to look at the triggers that draw us to these mechanisms in the first place,” says Johnson. “It can also help to restructure things in your environment, making it harder to access certain coping mechanisms, so it’s not a test of your willpower to resist something you’ve been relying on for so long. Have alternates for cravings that are hard to control. When you go from relying on this consistently to trying to change it, it’s important not to be all or nothing about it. Creating a space for acceptance can help you stick with bringing about the change,” she explains. 

Moreover, coping mechanisms are of two types—internal and external. “Internal ones are emotion-based coping mechanisms,” says Maheshwari, and include things like journaling, exercise and mindfulness. They deal with the inner world and build up resilience and healthy thought patterns. External ones are situation- or problem-based responses to a stressor. “For example, if someone is prone to binge-eating, an external coping means not having junk food at home, prepping your meals in the morning and ensuring there isn’t a period where you’re hungry and start craving something,” explains Maheshwari. 

*Trigger warning: The following paragraphs discuss self-harm*

But sometimes, the answer isn’t as simple as switching out an unhealthy coping mechanism for a healthy one. Coping is essentially one’s response to pain. For 28-year-old therapist Rahat Sanghvi, then a distressed 17-year-old, the answer lay in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. Since reading the book, she’d been curious about self-harm, and finally decided to try it herself. “I was really trying to connect, and the only people I connected with were the ones who were really struggling. So even if they were talking about quitting, I wanted to try it [self-harm], because I would do anything to feel better,” she says. 

Upcoming exams or fighting with her then partner led to a lot of crying for Sanghvi. “And crying was something I didn't feel safe to do in my house. So it was easier to cut and I would feel much better.” The behaviour soon attained a process and familiarity. She would go into her bathroom when distressed, use a disposable razor that had been carefully cleaned first, and cut in places that weren’t very visible. It would also, in a way, be a “mindful activity” which she did alone. “When pain is external, it's very distracting from emotional pain,” says Sanghvi. “I was very overwhelmed by my own emotions. I didn't understand them. It [self-harm] helped me feel a lot more in control,” she adds.

The exact time frame is hazy in her mind, but after at least four years of self-harm, Sanghvi finally decided to stop. Although she still thinks about it sometimes, she hasn’t cut herself since. Over time, she’s developed some less harmful coping mechanisms like binge-watching content or binge-eating, along with healthier coping strategies like reaching out to people more and working out. “Now, I feel like I have more control over my life,” she says.

*Trigger warning ends* 

Inculcating healthier coping mechanisms

Many of us aren’t taught how to sit with our feelings and process them. “Underlying psychological stress, which has not been tended to or treated, is one of the major reasons why people would turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms,” says Maheshwari. Unhealthy coping mechanisms might also be inherited, especially with behaviours like substance use or alcohol addiction. How a person responds to an unexpected stressor will also depend on their psychological history, their past coping strategies and how those made them feel, and what they’ve learned from those around them. “The nature-versus-nurture principle is what plays a role here. While a few things are innate to us, most coping mechanisms are actually developed over time,” says Maheshwari.

One must use times of rest to inculcate healthier habits that will then become go-to strategies during stressful moments. “You can train your mind and body in such a way that you’re prepared for any unexpected event,” says Maheshwari. “So we start developing it in our minds and bodies before even having something to cope with.”

Being less hard on ourselves

But it’s important to realise how powerful stressors can be, and not beat oneself up for our ways of coping. As is evident from 28-year-old Shikha Kapoor’s (name changed) experience, even a healthy habit can become harmful. Kapoor has always been a planner. She’d make lists and mentally plan out her days in a way that allowed her to be the most productive and have a bird’s eye view of the next three months of her life, anticipating challenges and being better prepared for them. But a few years ago, when she first started living independently, something changed. As a student pursuing her second Masters in London, she was entirely responsible for her dissertation. “I found myself in an unstructured environment. Nothing was scheduled and I was just waiting for things to happen,” she says.

She would wake up around 7 am, but stay in bed, microplanning each moment of the morning. She would plan what she would do in the bathroom, then decide what she would wear that day, imagining every step, including which shirt and what pants would work best with it. Then she’d play out going to the kitchen, deciding breakfast, cooking and eating it. “Unless I was satisfied with the sequence of actions, I would keep repeating it in my head. I’d realise it’s been an hour since I’ve woken up and that I need to get up and actually do these things.”

Once up, she’d have to face the challenge that her shirt wasn’t where she imagined or her room wasn’t organised the way she’d thought. “When I actually started doing things, I realised that reality is not as I thought it to be. So I had to change my approach all over again, causing frustration.” All over again, she’d fall into the same cycle. It would be around 11 am when she finally got around to starting her day. “By that time I had mental fatigue and just wanted to take a break.”

By micromanaging herself through excessive planning, Kapoor had taken a healthy habit to an unhealthy extreme. Through professional help she could implement strategies like clearing her mind by writing down her thoughts, packing her bag and picking out her clothes the night before, and keeping a check on how long she was spending in the bathroom or kitchen each morning. Soon, her morning routine came down to an hour, and Kapoor was able to reclaim the planning as a healthy habit again.

“Depending on the need of the stressful situation, there’s a coping mechanism that we create,” explains Johnson. “It’s not necessary that a specific need will bring about a healthy or unhealthy coping mechanism. It’s just an individual’s way of approaching it.” If what’s developed is an unhealthy coping mechanism, the important thing is to be patient. “Have self-compassion. There tends to be a cycle of shame around unhealthy habits. But you’re not alone in going through this sort of experience. Don't isolate yourself, be open about it, be okay with failures. And when you’re triggered in a situation, ask yourself what you need in that moment. Comfort? An action plan to deal with it? Resources? And find the best way forward—one that doesn’t lead to so many negative consequences. But know that it takes time,” says Johnson.

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