Coping Strategies Quotes

When a person is in emotional pain, it's hard to be rational and to think of a good solution. Nevertheless, many of the coping strategies used by people with overwhelming emotions only serve to make their problems worse. ~ Matthew McKay

Many coping strategies have a Zen simplicity. Instead of resolving chaos, find beauty and happiness amid chaos. I am reminded of a friend who said that when she found out her husband couldn't fill her needs, she changed her needs; ~ Andrew Solomon

Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant. ~ Patti Feuereisen

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference. ~ Robert Fulghum

The only problem was, when your whole existence is something you have to cope with, you look back one day and find that your strategy has become a way of life. ~ Joanna Cannon

For children who depend on mentally escaping into their minds to survive, imagination can become both refuge and desert island. ~ Na'ama Yehuda

I was powerless over my childhood but the coping strategies that I developed, to survive, all of which were creative and brilliant and got me through, as an adult those became my defects of character. Those became my shortcomings, control and all that kind of stuff ... and that's my responsibility.
I was a blameless child in what happened in the home; I take responsibility for my behaviors as an adult. ~ Ashley Judd

How do you get through any of your classes?" Cath had hours of assigned reading, almost every single night.
"Coping strategies."
"Such as?"
"I record my lectures and listen to them later. Professors usually cover most of what's on the test in class. And I find study groups."
"And you lean on Reagan --"
"Not just Reagan." He grinned. "I'm really good at quickly identifying the smartest girl in every class."
Cath frowned at him. "God, Levi, that's so exploitive."
"How is it exploitive? I don't make them wear miniskirts. I don't call them 'baby.' I just say, 'Hello, smart girl, would you like to talk to me about Great Expectations?'"
"They probably think you like them."
"I do like them."
"If it wasn't exploitive, you'd harass smart boys, too --"
"I do, in a pinch. Do you feel exploited, Cather?" He was still grinning at her over his coffee cup.
"No," she said, "I know that you don't like me."
"You don't know anything."
"So, this is old hat for you? Finding a girl to read a whole book to you?"
He shook his head. "No, this is a first."
"Well, now I feel exploited," she said, setting her drink down and reaching for the book.
"Thank you," he said.
"Chapter seven --"
"I'm serious." Levi pulled the book down and looked at her. "Thank you."
Cath held his eyes for a few seconds. Then she nodded and pulled back the book. ~ Rainbow Rowell

The key to happiness is to listen to campy Parisian music and smile at a bird. It hinges on insanity, but it works. ~ Erica Goros

While I pressed the tissue to my face, Beck said, "Can I tell you something? There are a lot of empty boxes in your head, Sam."
I looked at him, quizzical. Again, it was a strange enough concept to hold my attention.
"There are a lot of empty boxes in there, and you can put things in them." Beck handed me another tissue for the other side of my face.
My trust of Beck at that point was not yet complete; I remember thinking that he was making a very bad joke that I wasn't getting. My voice sounded wary, even to me. "What kinds of things?"
"Sad things," Beck said. "Do you have a lot of sad things in your head?"
"No," I said.
Beck sucked in his lower lip and released it slowly. "Well, I do."
This was shocking. I didn't ask a question, but I tilted toward him.
"And these things would make me cry," Beck continued. "They used to make me cry all day long."
I remembered thinking this was probably a lie. I could not imagine Beck crying. He was a rock. Even then, his fingers braced against the floor, he looked poised, sure, immutable.
"You don't believe me? Ask Ulrik. He had to deal with it," Beck said. "And so you know what I did with those sad things? I put them in boxes. I put the sad things in the boxes in my head, and I closed them up and I put tape on them and I stacked them up in the corner and threw a blanket over them."
"Brain tape?" I suggested, with a little smirk. I was eight, after all.
Beck smiled, a weird private ~ Maggie Stiefvater

One study proved just how powerful exercise can be: Three groups of depressed patients were assigned to different coping strategies - one group took antidepressant medication, one group exercised for 45 minutes three times a week, and one group did a combination of both.33 After four months, all three groups experienced similar improvements in happiness. The very fact that exercise proved just as helpful as anti-depressants is remarkable, but the story doesn't end here. The groups were then tested six months later to assess their relapse rate. Of those who had taken the medication alone, 38 percent had slipped back into depression. Those in the combination group were doing only slightly better, with a 31 percent relapse rate. The biggest shock, though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was only 9 percent! In short, physical activity is not just an incredibly powerful mood lifter, but a long-lasting one. ~ Shawn Achor

She doesn't approve of either sentimentality or graveyard humor at crime scenes. She says they waste time that should be spent working on the damn case, but the implication is that coping strategies are for wimps. ~ Tana French

But, of course, we cannot choose. We can only try to cope. That is what one does with sorrow, with tragedy, with any misfortune. We do not try to explain it. We do not try to explain it. We do not justify it by telling ourselves that we somehow deserve it. We do not even accept it. We survive it. We recognize its unfairness and defiantly choose to go on living. ~ Harold S. Kushner

Once an individual shines bright walking in average light to some may appear as dim surroundings.. ~ Victoria Addino

Do you want to live a long, healthy, and prosperous life? Don't smoke. Exercise. Eat right. But also take good care of your interpersonal relationships and the way you deal with life's inevitable upsets and traumas. Your mind-set, your coping strategies, how you navigate challenging circumstances, your capacity to transcend distress, your capacity to love – these things, I believe, are also a matter of life and death. ~ Sandeep Jauhar

Noble failure atones for the impossibility of resisting progress successfully. ~ Richard Appignanesi

By the time the clock had moved past midnight on Christmas 1993, they finally clicked the last piece into place: Angola, nestled between Zaire and Namibia and bordering the vast lapping Atlantic. Then, having succeeded in putting the world back together, they went to bed. ~ Jessie Ann Foley

Helen devises plans to become a monster herself. ~ Ekaterina Sedia

When you cross a challenge that is expansive and deep, you may not even realize when you've come to the other side. That day will come. And when it does, how will you look at your crossing? ~ Teresa Hirst

Everyone needs fudge, Hildy. It's how God helps us cope. ~ Joan Bauer

Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didn't keep a hard eye on herself. ~ Kevin Brockmeier

When difficulties seem insurmountable, optimists react in a more constructive and creative way. They accept the facts with realism, know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity, draw lessons from it, and come up with an alternative solution or turn to a new project. Pessimists would rather turn away from the problem or adopt escapist strategies - sleep, isolation, drug or alcohol abuse - that diminish their focus on the problem.9 Instead of confronting them with resolve, they prefer to brood over their misfortunes, nurture illusions, dream up "magic" solutions, and accuse the whole world of being against them. They have a hard time drawing lessons from the past, which often leads to the repetition of their problems. They are more fatalistic ("I told you it wouldn't work. It's always the same, no matter what I do") and are quick to see themselves as "mere pawns in the game of life. ~ Matthieu Ricard

Understand and influence students' and teachers' perceptions, tolerance, knowledge, and empathy about diverse populations to help increase students' successful integration into American educational settings; Help teachers develop and implement tools and strategies in the classroom that encourage effective communication and understanding of and between members of diverse cultural backgrounds; Build and maintain collaborations between students, families, teachers, and other community members to assist diverse populations. ~ Donald L. Anderson

In 2008, the national Coping with Cancer project published a study showing that terminally ill cancer patients who were put on a mechanical ventilator, given electrical defibrillation or chest compressions, or admitted, near death, to intensive care had a substantially worse quality of life in their last week than those who received no such interventions. And, six months after their death, their caregivers were three times as likely to suffer major depression. Spending one's final days in an I.C.U. because of terminal illness is for most people a kind of failure. You lie on a ventilator, your every organ shutting down, your mind teetering on delirium and permanently beyond realizing that you will never leave this borrowed, fluorescent place. The end comes with no chance for you to have said goodbye or "It's O.K." or "I'm sorry" or "I love you."

People have concerns besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys of patients with terminal illness find that their top priorities include, in addition to avoiding suffering, being with family, having the touch of others, being mentally aware, and not becoming a burden to others. Our system of technological medical care has utterly failed to meet these needs, and the cost of this failure is measured in far more than dollars. The hard question we face, then, is not how we can afford this system's expense. It is how we can build a health-care system that will actually help dying patients achieve what's most important to them ~ Atul Gawande

We all deal with a certain amount of stress, on a day-to-day basis. I probably smoke too many cigarettes, which isn't a very good thing. I don't have any extraordinary coping mechanism. I certainly don't talk to a dog. ~ Elijah Wood

As we pulled up at the big school gates, I saw tears rolling down my dad's face. I felt confused as to what part of nature or love thought this was a good idea. My instinct certainly didn't; but what did I know? I was only eight.
So I embarked on this mission called boarding school. And how do you prepare for that one?
In truth, I found it really hard; there were some great moments like building dens in the snow in winter, or getting chosen for the tennis team, or earning a naval button, but on the whole it was a survival exercise in learning to cope.
Coping with fear was the big one. The fear of being left and the fear of being bullied--both of which were very real.
What I learned was that I couldn't manage either of those things very well on my own.
It wasn't anything to do with the school itself, in fact the headmaster and teachers were almost invariably kind, well-meaning and good people, but that sadly didn't make surviving it much easier.
I was learning very young that if I were to survive this place then I had to find some coping mechanisms.
My way was to behave badly, and learn to scrap, as a way to avoid bullies wanting to target me. It was also a way to avoid thinking about home. But not thinking about home is hard when all you want is to be at home.
I missed my mum and dad terribly, and on the occasional night where I felt this worst, I remember trying to muffle my tears in my pillow while the rest of the dormitory slept.
Bear Grylls

No relationship is perfect. No matter how much love there is, there's a strong chance you're going to hit rocky times at some point. Life is unpredictable. It can throw out the unexpected and the challenging. Coping with that requires trust and honesty. ~ Sarah Morgan

…just as determined belief yields no ground to the most irresistible powers and strategies, so too determined unbelief. ~ Harry Lang

Elizabeth was counting on Marco to keep cousin Mary occupied until after the board meeting was over. A piece of cheese might catch a mouse, but an afternoon alone with a muscular masseur would ensnare her cousin far more effectively. And afterwards, while Mary lay sated and sleeping upon a massage table, wiser heads could determine the company's future. There were times, Elizabeth thought, when success in business demanded utter ruthlessness. ~ Barbara Taylor Bradford

The acceptance of woman as object of the desiring male gaze in the visual arts is so universal that for a woman to question or draw attention to this fact is to invite derision, to reveal herself as one who does not understand the sophisticated strategies of high culture and takes art "too literally," and is therefore unable to respond to aesthetic discourses. This is of course maintained within a world - a cultural and academic world - which is dominated by male power and, often unconscious, patriarchal attitudes. In Utopia - that is to say, in a world in which the power structure was such that both men and women equally could be represented clothed or unclothed in a variety of poses and positions without any subconscious implications of dominance or submission - in a world of total and, so to speak, unconscious equality, the female nude would not be problematic. In our world, it is. ~ Linda Nochlin

You must showcase your work, achievements and performance in the best possible manner. ~ Abhishek Ratna

Maybe it was being orphaned and alone all my life, but I always steeled for the worst outcome I could envision. That way I could shrug and be almost happy with anything that fell short of the worst. It was a peculiar life skill and one I had gotten damn good at. ~ James Anderson

An Appreciative inquiry Conversation is the catalyst for strengths based innovation. ~ Tony Dovale

There are two basic coping mechanisms. One consists of dreading the chaos, fighting it and abusing oneself after losing, building a structured life of work/marriage/gym/reunions/children/depression/affair/divorce/alcoholism/recovery/heart attack, in which every decision is a reaction against the fear of the worst (make children to avoid being forgotten, fuck someone at the reunion in case the opportunity never comes again, and the Holy Grail of paradoxes: marry to combat loneliness, then plunge into that constant marital desire to be alone). This is the life that cannot be won, but it does offer the comforts of battle - the human heart is content when distracted by war.

"The second mechanism is an across-the-board acceptance of the absurd all around us. Everything that exists, from consciousness to the digestive workings of the human body to sound waves and bladeless fans, is magnificently unlikely. It seems so much likelier that things would not exist at all and yet the world shows up to class every morning as the cosmos takes attendance. Why combat the unlikeliness? This is the way to survive in this world, to wake up in the morning and receive a cancer diagnosis, discover that a man has murdered forty children, discover that the milk has gone sour, and exclaim, 'How unlikely! Yet here we are,' and have a laugh, and swim in the chaos, swim without fear, swim without expectation but always with an appreciation of every whim, the beauty of screwball twists and jerk ~ Jaroslav Kalfar

There are three processes every company has to have: Somehow you've got to set strategies; you've got to have a budget, so you need an annual operating plan; and somehow you've got to do succession and people planning. ~ Noel Tichy

Marketers spend millions developing strategies to identify children's predilections and then capitalize on their vulnerabilities. Young people are fooled for a while, but then develop defense mechanisms, such as media-savvy attitudes or ironic dispositions. Then marketers research these defenses, develop new countermeasures, and on it goes. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

Brent Kessel combines some of the most sophisticated knowledge of financial planning and investment strategies with a sincere and grounded practice in the meditation arts. He has written the deepest and most comprehensive book about money in some time. I applaud him for it. It calls for a serious reading. ~ George Kinder

He thought about the future. He thought about where he was now and where he would have to be tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. He thought about coping and moving on ~ Santino Hassell

Of all my false identities, the strategies in my campaign to be accepted, being a sworn Republican is the hardest to explain. In my later political life, I can only be described as a Kennedy Democrat, eager to pursue equitable treatment for the least fortunate. ~ James McGreevey

If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change. ~ David W. Earle

Art then becomes a safety valve for the expression of individual and collective neuroses originating in the inability of coping with the environment. Its products serve as a retarded correction of perception braked by the system of conventions and stereotypes that stabilize society. They create a slightly updated system which, eventually assimilated by history, will require a new system and so on without end. Art objects serve as points of identification alienated from the consumer, requiring more sympathy than empathy. ~ Luis Camnitzer

French parents don't worry that they're going to damage their kids by frustrating them. To the contrary, they think their kids will be damaged if they can't cope with frustration. They also treat coping with frustration as a core life skill. Their kids simply have to learn it. The parents would be remiss if they didn't teach it. ~ Pamela Druckerman

Photography has a natural affinity for the strategies of surrealism - the exaltation of chance and eros, the exploration of obsession and the release of the unconscious. ~ Douglas McCulloh

We are at the cusp of another big evolutionary change. Something that happens only every hundred of thousands of years. Everything about humanity as we know and understand it, everything we learned about how to be successful in the world, is based on the species Homo sapiens that's been in existence for 150,000 years. Around 85,000 years ago their communication ability reached a stage in its development, with the mutation of the dropping of the larynx and the full mental potential, which allowed the development of language, which in turn made mind possible. If you don't have language, you can't think, you can't develop strategies. ~ Steve Rhodes

When I feel threatened, vulnerable, or insecure, whether it from simply walking into a room of unknown people, meeting someone for the first time, an unexpected or expected confrontation, or doing something new, I affirm in my mind (over and over): There is no danger, there is no threat. From there, the discomfort lessens and I become open for discovery and adventure. ~ Charles F. Glassman

What is ahead of me is fueled by the experiences behind me. ~ Celeste Cooper

I highly recommend Marci Alboher's One Person/ Multiple Careers. It includes lots of practical strategies for living the slash. Malcom Gladwell is also a constant source of inspiration for me. In his book Outliers, Gladwell proposes that there are three criteria for meaningful work - complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward - and that these can often be found in creative work.2 These criteria absolutely fit with what cultivating meaningful work means in the context of the Wholehearted journey. Last, I think everyone should read Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist3 - I try to read it at least once a year. It's a powerful way of seeing the connections between our gifts, our spirituality, and our work (slashed or not) and how they come together to create meaning in our lives. ~ Brene Brown

I have to own up and say that, much as I love my PowerBook, which now does about 97.8 percent of what I used to use the lumbering old desktop dinosaurs for, I've given up trying to use it on planes. Yes, yes, I know that there are sorts of power-user strategies you can use to extend your battery life - dimming modes, RAM disks, processor-resting, and so on - but the point is that I really can't be bothered. I'm perfectly capable of just reading the in-flight magazine if I want to be irritated. ~ Douglas Adams

Here's my favorite bonehead concept from the 1990s in the Pentagon: the theory of anti-access, area-denial asymmetrical strategies. Why do we call it that? Because it's got all those A's lined up I guess. This is gobbledygook for 'If the United States fights somebody, we're going to be huge. They're going to be small.' ~ Thomas P.M. Barnett

I've been married but I'm not anymore. And I still believe in love. ~ Nick Saint Clair

And that's because liberals are mistaken in the most fundamental way: they have not simply misjudged their enemy's priorities or strategies, they have misjudged the very situation in which they find themselves. They think they are dealing with a debate partner rather than an enemy. ~ Adam Kotsko

I scrutinized the lyrics to every worship song, debated the content of every sermon. I rendered verdicts regarding the frequency of communion and the method of baptism. I checked the bulletins for typos. In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Spend more time with people who bring out the best in you. ~ Abhishek Ratna

What is forgiveness? An emotion? A coping mechanism? An element of deepest faith? A way for the heart and soul to combat the type of hate, anger, rage and a thirst for revenge that could ultimately consume a person? All of those and more? ~ Mike Barnicle

Life simply blew through her. ~ Valeria Kogan

Work hard, keep your nose clean, and just stick around. ~ Clint Eastwood

The Lord knows our bearing capacity, both as to coping and to comprehending, and He will not give us more to bear than we can manage at the moment, though to us it may seem otherwise. Just as no temptations will come to us from which we cannot escape or which we cannot bear, we will not be given more trials than we can sustain. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Every child learned the skills and attitudes that are valued by their own class culture. But outside of the family unit, all skills were not considered to be equal. Modern American culture, Lareau wrote, valued the qualities that middle-class children were developing over the ones that poor and working-class children were developing. "Central institutions in the society, such as schools," Lareau wrote, "firmly and decisively promote strategies of concerted cultivation in child rearing. For working-class and poor families, the cultural logic of child rearing at home is out of synch with the standards of institutions." In one poor household Lareau studied, for example, family members didn't look each other in the eye when they spoke - an appropriate response in a culture where eye contact can be interpreted as a threat, but ill-suited to a job interview where a firm handshake and a steady gaze are considered assets, and a failure to make eye contact can make a candidate seem shifty. ~ Paul Tough

Global health players can become impervious to critique as they identify emergencies, cite dire statistics, and act on their essential duty of promoting health in the name of "humanitarian reason" or as an instrument of economic development, diplomacy, or national security. We are left, however, with an open-source anarchy around global health problems--a policy space in which new strategies, rules, distributive schemes, and the practical ethics of health care are being assembled, experimented with, and improvised by a wide array of deeply unequal stakeholders ~ Joao Biehl

The body of work I create combines traditional storylines and postmodern narrative strategies to approach themes such as belonging, identity politics and conflict, as well as the push towards - and resistance against - modernization. ~ Aman Mojadidi

Physiological stress, then, is the link between personality traits and disease. Certain traits - otherwise known as coping styles - magnify the risk for illness by increasing the likelihood of chronic stress. Common to them all is a diminished capacity for emotional communication. Emotional experiences are translated into potentially damaging biological events when human beings are prevented from learning how to express their feelings effectively. That learning occurs - or fails to occur - during childhood. The way people grow up shapes their relationship with their own bodies and psyches. The emotional contexts of childhood interact with inborn temperament to give rise to personality traits. Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood.

There is an important distinction between an inherent characteristic, rooted in an individual without regard to his environment, and a response to the environment, a pattern of behaviours developed to ensure survival. What we see as indelible traits may be no more than habitual defensive techniques, unconsciously adopted. People often identify with these habituated patterns, believing them to be an indispensable part of the self. They may even harbour self-loathing for certain traits - for example, when a person describes herself as "a control freak." In reality, there is no innate human inclination to be controlling. What there is in a "controlling" ~ Gabor Mate

But the manner of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. The difference was highlighted for me when a fifty-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women. On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about the relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she could trust him, whether their relationship would destroy her independence, whether this relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out.
As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness.
In contrast, the man admitted, he himself goes to the othe ~ Deborah Tannen

Anyone who has worked within biblical scholarship knows, or ought to know, that we biblical scholars come to the text with just as many interpretative strategies and expectations as anyone else, and that integrity consists not of having no presuppositions but of being aware of what one's presuppositions are and of the obligation to listen to and interact with those who have different ones. ~ N. T. Wright

Animation is capable to go beyond superego defense strategies and touch deep human being contents as no other art expression. ~ Luiz Bolognesi