Coping requires honest self-discovery and awareness of your strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, if you don’t work at translating your strengths and weaknesses into productive actions, you will have no anchor to reality; you will have nowhere to go, and begin on a road of self-criticism that leads to unhappiness. We talk about depression often in this blog because people feeling “down” can easily fall into the trap of believing that they’re severely depressed and need medical intervention. Sometimes that is the case, but it’s also true that unhappiness can occur simply from actions that allow you to avoid facing challenges. Over time, these actions become hard to change, rob you of energy, motivation, and positive attitudes, and are unlikely to be affected by anti-depressant medications.
You are human. Like anyone else you experience unhappiness, anxiety, anger, and other emotions brought about by current life circumstances. When that happens, instead of saying, “I’m depressed,” ask yourself some important questions: “Am I depressed or simply unhappy?” “Are my problems related to anger or anxiety that make me unhappy?” “Could there be underlying conflicts from a harsh past that I have never dealt with?”
If you decide to seek professional help, see both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. The former will recommend non-drug approaches to your problem; the latter will also likely write you a prescription. If you have periods of unhappiness because of current life circumstances, remember: psychiatric medications are generally no better than a placebo for low levels of depression; these drugs can take as long as 4 weeks to begin working; only about a third of clients prescribed a specific medication show improvement; treating depression with medication is largely trial and error, because some compounds may not work well with your particular biochemistry, but others might; and, there is no medication that will help you develop a plan to navigate the challenges of life through satisfying and productive actions. This is not to say that you should not consider medication as part of your treatment plan. We are simply saying to keep the use of medication in perspective, get multiple professional opinions, and do not rely on drugs to “cure” your emotional issues. Any good psychologist or psychiatrist can help you decide if medication is appropriate for your treatment plan.
Here is a brief sample of some non-prescription actions you can do to try and take some control of your life and walk through each day with more confidence, assertiveness, enjoyment, and satisfaction. When done regularly, such actions tend to inoculate you against feeling overwhelmed by current circumstances. (1) Be vigilant about your health, and take a positive and assertive attitude toward life in general.(2)If you are feeling “down” more often than usual, monitor your daily behavior to look for avoidance actions you may be taking to reduce stress in your life. (3) Maintain a regular exercise routine, follow a healthy diet, and get frequent medical check-ups. (4) Identify actions that bring you satisfaction and contentment, and the situations in which you can express those actions. (5) Volunteer and help those in need. (6) At the end of the day write down your activities and how they made you feel. Use that information to your advantage tomorrow. (7) Others can be a great source of help in maintaining these activities, so cultivate a reliable and trustworthy social network of friends and acquaintances.
The pandemic threw a lot of kids a curve ball. No prom, no graduation exercise. This sort of disappointment can cause unhappiness, and that is precisely when folks young and old can let avoidance responses kick in. They deny the disappointment; they commiserate with others in a similar situation so everyone can feed off each other’s unhappiness; they feel sorry for themselves and wear their “I’ve had it tough badge”; they cultivate a martyr’s entitlement, and seek out enablers.
One day I was taking a walk and saw four young people in the park, each wearing their graduation cap and gown. They were laughing and having a great time as they posed for pictures taken by each of them in turn. I wasn’t sure what high school they had attended, but it didn’t matter because every school in the area had canceled graduation exercises because of the coronavirus. But these four kids were doing a great job of coping with what had to be a disappointing time for them. They took action, and spit in the face of the adversity that threatened to make them feel unhappy. Good for them! Some might say that their future will be rough down the road because they were robbed of the happy time of a graduation ceremony. Nonsense! You know what I think? Years from now those kids will have kids of their own, and one day their kids will suffer a terrible disappointment, and the parent will take them aside and say, “You think you have it bad? Let me tell you what happened when I graduated from high school!” Kind of like when our grandparents tell us how they walked five miles to school each day, usually in a foot or two of snow, uphill both ways.
Your biggest coping enemy is trying to avoid failure and unhappiness, because then you will never learn to correct mistakes and improve. To cope well, you must accept challenges, face your failures, examine the information they provide, and take action to correct your mistakes to increase your chances of success.
Psychology and Stress 