Coping Skills Quotes

“Be an epic goofball. Seriously. Praise be to Pokemon Go for getting people out and doing stuff again. For about five minutes, Pokemon Go was beating out porn in internet usage. That’s crazy awesome. Who knows what the fuck the new hot thing will be by the time you are reading this book, but I am all in for anything that gives us permission to be epic goofballs. I will talk in a crazy accent, wear weird t-shirts (I love buying t-shirts from the boys’ section of the store) to work (the benefit of being self-employed… I set the dress code), dance with my waiter in the middle of the restaurant (thanks, Paul!), and have my husband (a deeply patient man) push me through the grocery store parking lot while I stand on the shopping cart.”
― Faith G. Harper, Coping Skills: Tools & Techniques for Every Stressful Situation

“Internal Judo Skills—Here is where we go a bit deeper, and change our relationship with the bullshit in our own mind. How do we make space with what’s going on in our minds that gives us more of a sense of control but without blowing smoke up our own asses?”
― Faith G. Harper, Coping Skills: Tools & Techniques for Every Stressful Situation

“You may not have been the one who bought the ticket, but it is now officially both your circus and your monkey.”
― Faith G. Harper, Coping Skills: Tools & Techniques for Every Stressful Situation

“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”
― Faith G. Harper, Coping Skills: Tools & Techniques for Every Stressful Situation

“Recognize that no one goes from 0 to 100 instantaneously. They were probably already at 99. They may be good at hiding the fact, or you may have missed the signs, but if it seems like they flipped out at something small, it likely was a proverbial last straw piled on top of everything else they have been trying to manage.”
― Faith G. Harper, Coping Skills: Tools & Techniques for Every Stressful Situation

“You can’t force other people to treat you the way you want to be treated (or the way you want the world to be treated), but you can change how you respond. How much power do you want to give them? Do you want to carry that around forever? I don’t mean letting people get away with douchebaggery, but I do mean not giving them the power of owning your headspace. Responding appropriately doesn’t mean responding with equal vengeance. Or seething and carrying all those intense, negative feelings for days. You aren’t punishing other people with your anger, not really. You’re mostly just punishing yourself.”
― Faith G. Harper, Coping Skills: Tools & Techniques for Every Stressful Situation

“We read often about the “fight or flight” response, but the freeze response is often left out of literature describing trauma reactions. The freeze response is the one that most human beings are embarrassed about, although it makes just as much sense as a protective strategy as fight and flight do. A freeze response is no more a failure than any other protective coping strategy and is nothing to be ashamed of. Peter Levine states that there are four potential evolutionary survival benefits to the freeze response: • Most predatory animals won’t eat an animal they believe is already dead unless they are really hungry. Most animals have encoded information that meat that is already dead may be spoiled and therefore is a risk to eat. • It is more difficult for predators to detect prey that is not moving. Immobilization shuts down all movement responses. Even if we are trying to be still and quiet it is difficult to do so unless we have become biochemically immobilized. • When one animal collapses in a group, this distracts the predator from the rest of the group, allowing their escape. • The freeze response releases a numbing agent in the body that makes the pain of attack more bearable.”
― Faith G. Harper, Coping Skills: Tools & Techniques for Every Stressful Situation