Coping

                “Coping”

 

 

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”  William James

 

I recently helped with an open house at the counseling center I now work with.  A number of clinicians were there and I kept hearing this one counselor saying to others, “People just don’t know how to cope.”

It is so true.  People don’t know how to cope because we don’t teach people how to cope.  Maybe it is a sign of the times or maybe it just isn’t the American way.  I know other countries and societies are better and incorporating meditation and work-life balance than we are.  It seems to me the East is better with meditation and yoga practices and the Scandinavian countries are better with work-life balance.

Portugal is leading the way in terms of how they deal with addiction.  They had one of the worst drug problems in Europe until they changed the way they looked at the problem.  They have now cut their addiction rates basically in half.  How did they do it?  They de-criminalized drugs.   They took the money they used to spend on prosecuting and jailing the drug users and instead put it into getting the drug users into holistic recovery.  They treated the users, taught them about the disease, helped them learn coping skills and got them connected to communities again.  They got them on their feet and gave them purpose.  Even those who radically opposed this method in the beginning are now touting its success.  I got this information from an article in Yes Magazine but I had been hearing about it from many other sources.

I recently read on Upworthy that there is a school in Baltimore that has gotten rid of detention and instead they send the children to the “Mindful Meditation Room”.  They are taken through breathing exercises and meditations to get them centered and then they talk through the problem and their feelings with a teacher there in the room before returning to the classroom.  The school incorporates mindfulness practices and yoga as well and their suspension rate dropped to zero. 

Dermot has been struggling to concentrate lately and it stresses him out when it surrounds homework.  The other night I was with him when he started to get upset over his homework.  I had him stop and got him to sit with his feet on the floor and his back again the back of the chair and I took him through a 2 minute meditation using an app on my phone called Insight Timer.  When the meditation was over he was able to calmly start working again and though it wasn’t perfect concentration, it was improved.

What does this tell you?  We need to teach coping skills so people don’t turn to addictive behaviors and substances.  We need to be kinder, more mindful and more connected so we as a society can cope.