As someone who has personally struggled with mental health issues for a long time, I am rather glad I came across this writing prompt question. I have tried many different forms of therapy, treatments, and medications, as well as explored various coping skills. I am going to cover some that I have learned about over the years, as well as explain what I like about them. Just a reminder, that this is all just my thoughts and experiences, individual results and experiences may vary.
Journaling
My top way to cope with negative feelings and thoughts is journaling. There are many videos on YouTube that talk about different ways to do it, but the number one way to journal is to just do it. When I first started journaling, I was lost in depression and anxiety desperately wanting some kind of release for the pain that I was feeling. My therapist at the time suggested I try it; I was skeptical and couldn’t comprehend how writing down what I was feeling would help me. I asked him what I am supposed to write about, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “whatever you want to”. Being in the state of mind that I was at the time I essentially scoffed at him and told him how ridiculous it sounded. If I sit down and write about my problems and how I am feeling it is just going to make it worse, and on top of that I am just going to waste time that I could be using for something to improve my life. I needed more direction. I wanted him to tell me the magic things I needed to write. But to my dismay he just kept telling me to write about anything.
Leaving my therapist’s office, I kept thinking to myself how stupid it sounds to just sit and write about anything and how that’s going to magically make me feel better. But I was willing to give it a try, and on my way home I swung by the store and bought a journal as well as a pack of pens. The first step was complete. I am not saying you should go out and buy a special notebook and special pens just to start journaling. You can start with any writing utensil and paper. The first few times I wrote in my journal I merely wrote how dumb I think it is, what I am upset about, and how I don’t see the way writing about it is going to help. Yet day after day I kept adding to it. Then one day I realized that I had just written four pages. I started with how I was feeling. Then what thoughts I was having about the way I was feeling. What had happened that day to trigger these thoughts and feelings. What I could have done differently, and lastly that it was normal for me to feel the way I was feeling and reminded myself that tomorrow is always a new day.
Now all of these years later I love to journal. Somedays I will only sit down at the end of the day and write about things I did that day, or merely just write that it was a good day. I am human, on occasion over the years I have gone days, weeks, and at one point months without journaling. I find myself “slipping” emotionally when I haven’t been journaling. It’s almost like I begin reverting back to having the inability to cope with regular everyday stressors. These days I find myself journaling about everything, and after watching a YouTube video about journaling like a philosopher I now have two active journals. The first one goes with me everywhere. It is the one that I write down my to-do list for every day and make notes about things I need to remember. I write down quotes I hear, random thoughts that cross my mind, and even things people recommend I check out. The other is the one that I write in nightly to reflect on my day, record different things that stand out to me, and share my deepest thoughts and feelings. The first one has things in it that if others saw I would not be bothered, but the second has all the things that I have no intentions of ever showing another person and hope another person never reads it. Not because there is anything troublesome in it, but because it is my inner most thoughts and feelings. It is a safe space to vent, that is its whole purpose.
Journaling is the first way to cope that I wanted to cover because in my opinion it is the most effective. I feel it is the most effective because I can go back and read where I have been in life. I can easily reflect and see just how much I have grown. The more I read my own journal entries and think back through those issues, reading about what I did after and how it helped or didn’t help allows me to really learn from my past without relying on just mental memories that can be distorted. Then I am able to remember how I coped in situations when they arise again. Thats why I think journaling is the best, when used properly it can facilitate tremendous growth in a short period of time.
Meditation
My second favorite coping skill is meditation. I know what you are thinking, “ugh. how is sitting in silence supposed to help you cope?” Well firstly you don’t have to be sitting in silence to meditate. Secondly it doesn’t even require you to be sitting. Meditation at its root is just the practice of controlling your own mind.
In the world today most people are bombarded with stimulation from the second they wake up in the morning until they shut their eyes at night. Then, if they are like me, Sir David Attenborough continues narrating life on the African plains until Netflix gets tired of asking “Are you still watching?” All of the constant stimulation cannot be good for our mental health, I am not sure if there have been studies on this or not. While the answer is more than likely just a Google search away, I will leave confirming that for another time. Maybe I will do a more in-depth article on the effects of meditation. Any ways back on track, sorry ADHD moment there.
Being bombarded with so much stimulus doesn’t give me much time to truly process my thoughts and emotions. All day long my mind is constantly jumping from thought to thought, my emotions go back and forth. The smallest things can trigger an avalanche of emotion. I struggled to stop it for a long time, I felt I had no control over my thoughts and emotions. Meditation is practicing controlling your thoughts, once I learned to control my thoughts better the ability to control my emotions began to follow. I am not sure if this is something everyone who meditates experiences or if it was just my experience.
I tried meditating for a while before I finally figured out the way that worked best for me. Starting out I was taking a pillow and setting it on the ground, sitting on top of it while crossing my legs, and then not think about anything. That just did not work for me, number one I have destroyed my body over the years and sitting in that position starts to hurt fast, and number two the silence would cause me more anxiety at that time. Normally that would have been enough for me to just give it up, but I wanted it to be something that worked for me. In my mind I had to just be doing it wrong, I had heard of so many people saying how they benefited from it, then you have religions like Buddhism that almost entirely center around meditation.
Years ago, I came across a video on YouTube of an interview with a Monk named Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (See video here). The way he describes giving “Monkey Mind” a job just clicked with me. I don’t need to stop my thoughts; I just need to redirect them. So that was one problem I had with mediation solved, but what about the anxiety caused by sitting in silence?
Well, that is another problem that was solved by the great YouTube. Singing bowls. Yes, you read that right, singing bowls. Used by Buddhist during their meditation the bowls depending on size and material emit different frequencies of sounds. The different frequencies are supposed to have various benefits. Meditating with these various frequencies solved the issue of silence induced anxiety. Over time of meditating with YouTube videos of these different frequencies playing I began to learn to meditate in any noise. Now when I feel myself needing to cope with some unexpected stress or emotion I can stop, briefly meditate and refocus, then carry on. I still find myself every couple of weeks needing to sit and meditate with the singing bowls playing in the background. But that’s just proof every now and then it doesn’t hurt to go back to the basics.
Hobbies
A big part of being able to cope with negative feelings for me is my hobbies. I often find my negative feelings stemming from a feeling of lack of control over my own life. I start to feel like I am doing things because I have to, my hobbies stop those feelings. For the past decade I have been teaching myself to play the guitar. Can I play you a song you know? No. Can I tell you all of the notes in the pentatonic scale? Also no. I am not even sure if I spelled pentatonic correctly, but spell-check didn’t flag it, so I assume I did. Yet I keep playing my guitar because it makes mee feel good when I am messing around and put something together that sounds half decent.
Another hobby of mine that I find myself only really using when I am really struggling to process negative feelings is art. I have different sketch books full of doodles and drawings. Some are complete, some aren’t, and that is ok to me. I am not drawing in an attempt to make a living as an artist, I draw because sometimes I am not sure exactly what I am feeling. When I start drawing and let things just kind of flow out of me, I begin to notice where my mind is. At that point I can stop and journal about where my thoughts and feelings truly are to fully process them.
There are various hobbies that I dabble in, and I think everyone should have multiple. I am always trying new hobbies because it allows me to feel more in control of my life. It is almost like my way of reminding myself that we have the ability to be new every day, and every day you can choose to do something different.
Nature
The warmth of the sunshine on my skin, the freshness of the air in my nose, the sounds of the birds in my ears, I love being outside. No, just going outside isn’t going to make your negative feelings go away. I found out that when I go outside in a bad mood the sun is just too hot, something smells bad, and those birds just need to shut up and quit being so happy. I need to go outside with the mindset that I am going to find the good. I remind myself that it is a good thing the sun is shining, I wouldn’t want to be walking in the rain. It doesn’t smell bad all the time; it’s just a temporary smell right now because that old beat-up truck just passed by. The birds are happy because they are free just like me.
Getting outside and going for a walk has been recommended by everyone from ancient philosophers to modern doctors, and I am here to recommend it as well. I find getting outside and walking around with no other intention than merely observing the world around me. I look at the plants, I watch the animals, I check for signs that animals were there, I watch the cars, I pay attention to the direction the wind is coming from, what the sky looks like. It is ok to still be a kid at heart and pick up rocks to just say wow this is a cool looking rock before dropping it back on the ground.
These are the coping skills that are at the top of my list if someone asks me what I do. There are so many different ways to deal with negative emotions, and I personally believe that even if one doesn’t seem to work for you right away try it a few times. Find out about different ways of doing something, and experiment. We are the only ones who can find what works for us, there is no magic coping skill that works for everyone. Sometimes all it takes is having a different person explain how to use a coping skill. Also, much like medications, sometimes it isn’t just one type of coping skill that we need, sometimes we need to find ourselves a little coping skill cocktail. I hope that this helps and thank you for reading until the end!
The Meandering Mind 
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