My Coping Mechanism Quotes

Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. And if I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second.

You might imagine that a person would resort to self-mutilation only under extremes of duress, but once I'd crossed that line the first time, taken that fateful step off the precipice, then almost any reason was a good enough reason, almost any provocation was provocation enough. Cutting was my all-purpose solution.

I've always wanted not to give a fuck. While crying helplessly into my pillow for no good reason, I would often fantasize that maybe someday I could be one of those stoic badasses whose emotions are mostly comprised of rock music and not being afraid of things.

Me with nothing left to lose, plotting my big revenge in the spotlight. Give me violent revenge fantasies as a coping mechanism.

Тo me, the future doesn’t seem real. It’s just this magical place where I can put my responsibilities so that I don’t have to be scared while hurtling toward failure at eight hundred miles per hour.

And finally - FINALLY - after a lifetime of feelings and anxiety and more feelings, I didn't have any feelings left. I had spent my last feeling being disappointed that I couldn't rent Jumanji.

I had tasted cake and there was no going back. My tiny body had morphed into a writhing mass of pure tenacity encased in a layer of desperation. I would eat all of the cake or I would evaporate from the sheer power of my desire to eat it.

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.

Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are my source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life. I'm still hoping that perhaps someday I'll learn how to use willpower like a real person, but until that very unlikely day, I will confidently battle toward adequacy, wielding my crude skill set of fear and shame.

I have a subconscious list of rules for how reality should work. I did not develop these rules on purpose, and most of them don’t make sense – which is disturbing when you consider that they are an attempt to govern the behavior of reality – but they exist, and they play a large role in determining how I react to the things that happen to me. Large enough that a majority of the feelings I feel are simply a reaction to reality not complying with my arbitrary set of rules. Reality doesn’t give a shit about my rules, and this upsets me.

Avoidance has always been my coping mechanism. If I don’t think about it, it doesn’t matter. My day goes on.

.... but when a person is upset, old patterns of behavior emerge. It's true for me too, except my coping mechanisms are different

But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don't feel different.

For all these years, you’ve lived under the illusion that, somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That’s what has gotten you by

What I am is constantly thrust into my face while I'm trying to be better than I am. Even if I'm actively doing all the right things, I can't escape the fact that my internal reactions are those of a fundamentally horrible person.

For the first time in months, I felt together. Sharp. In hurting myself, I had at last found a way to release the pressure. But it was more than that. I was now different. I felt different. I’d discovered a way to control my feelings. Just because self-mutilation wasn’t deemed an acceptable coping mechanism didn’t mean I was going to stop doing it

I coped, in the grand tradition of children everywhere, by retreating into my imagination.

My coping mechanism is denial. We'll be fine.

The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief. I had always viewed feelings as a weakness-annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

I lock all my scaredness down in my stomach until the fear hardens into something I hardly notice. I myself harden into a person that I hardly notice.

Heroin was a coping mechanism that I had used to deal with my underlying fears. They were the real problems; heroin wasn't the culprit, my fears were.

Slowly, my feelings started to shrivel up. The few that managed to survive the constant beatings staggered around like wounded baby deer, just biding their time until they could die and join all the other carcasses strewn across the wasteland of my soul.

But for years, my best coping strategy has been work. I have assumed so many responsibilities and said yes to so many things. Working hard creates my own gravity. The more I work, the more I am on terra firma.

The more I added to my schedule, cleaning regimen, or athletic training, the less I felt. My coping mechanism won most people's approval. Adults were unusually impressed. Who doesn't like a kid with a serious work ethic? One of my biggest flaws turned into my best asset. A hard worker. Determined. Unstoppable. Tireless.

It’s hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I’m sad to say that this method works. If you don’t give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do.

Eating disorders are so profoundly a coping mechanism for failures in human relationships that to get over one it’s essential to strengthen the capacity to relate to another, which is a lot of what happens in therapy. Underneath my desire

my books begin when my characters' coping mechanisms stop working

Whenever I read the term 'belief system', somewhere between my eyes and my brain, it becomes 'coping mechanism.

So I did what I did best. I ignored my lack of mental health and relied on inappropriate humor and unhealthy coping mechanisms to survive.

I need my coping mechanism. I need the depleted feeling I get after a good purge.

I also saw very clearly in that moment that there was no separate monster and never had been one. Eager to disconnect my mind from my desires, I had - as was my habit - personified that hated part of myself to distance it from the parts that I considered me. Just as I had created the harpy to give myself someone to fight. It was a coping mechanism and not a very good one. Better to see myself as the whole, bad and good, and work with the reality of it (370).

-to me, the future doesn't seem real. It's just this magical place where I can put my responsibilities so that I don't have to be scared while hurtling toward failure at right hundred miles per hour.

...everybody lies. It’s a necessary coping mechanism. That’s easy for me to forget with the constant voice in my head reminding me of every little transgression, like it’s something unnatural, wrong, and harmful. And sometimes it is. But sometimes, it’s just what we need to do to protect ourselves.

Over the years I have developed and employed a variety of such coping mechanisms, mostly focusing around a philosophy I call, “Live Because.” “Live Because” is in contrast to what I’ve termed “Live Despite,” which is the idea that people can live rich, full lives in spite of their physical or emotional barriers. “Live Because” takes this a step further by suggesting that in many cases, patients can live a more fulfilling life with their illness than they could ever have done without it. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome has transformed me from a frequently petty and self-absorbed person into the person I am today (still somewhat self-absorbed, but a lot less petty, and with a clearly defined purpose of alleviating whatever suffering I can). I am better because of my illness, and not just in spite of it. But this process was, and still is, a journey. Chronic illness is nearly always accompanied by depression, and the need to constantly remain one step ahead of my illness has left me fearful and exhausted. I could never go through this alone... A part of me will always be angry; such is the process of mourning the pieces of oneself that are lost to chronic disease. I have learned to accept the duality of being bitter and at peace; ignorant and enlightened... while still laying a foundation of hope for the possibility that I can still realize my personal dreams and ambitions, even if not in the exact ways I had expected.

Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are the source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life.

This sisterhood to which those of us who identify as women belong is the cushion I place my translation on. The coping mechanisms we devise, the solutions we find and the adjustments we make around men are survival strategies nurtured across generations. The particulars may be different, but at the core is a resistance to being controlled, ‘tamed’, or disallowed the exploration of our full potential. These experiences, both Banu and I believe, can be found anywhere in the world. Some of us step on the cindering balls of coal and carve a space for ourselves. Some of us learn to exist too close to the fire. None of us are left unscarred. __ Translator's Afterword

It’s hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down.

In my research, I have discovered practical, effective ways to do so. I’ll explain more in chapter 11, but for now let it suffice to say that you can modify your Emotional Style to improve your resilience, social intuition, sensitivity to your own internal emotional and physiological states, coping mechanisms, attention, and sense of well-being. The amazing fact is that through mental activity alone we can intentionally change our own brains. Mental activity, ranging from meditation to cognitive-behavior therapy, can alter brain function in specific circuits,

I finally had the courage to start talking about how I developed dissociation as a coping mechanism as a child and carried that through my life, I talked about being trained to initiate and accommodate abuse and about how these coping mechanisms carried over for me as a teenager and young adult.

I wasn’t empty because I was abandoned by others, but because I had abandoned myself. Who I am was repressed—collateral damage in a longterm coping mechanism gone unchecked. My subconscious had put up partitions to contain the flood of emotion in the wake of trauma but in doing so my identity was trapped and locked away as well. Everything that is repressed would one day come forward­—without warning, without control, and without a shutoff valve.

Bonnie was so drunk she could hardly walk. ... I had always felt sorry for her, having to live the life she was living, never a minute’s peace. She had often told me she was happier when she had something to drink. So I did not blame her for staying drunk most of the time, if it made her feel better.

Because self-destruction was the only coping mechanism that made sense to me at the time, at the age of eight, I often thought about killing myself. And I’m not talking abstractly. I’m talking vivid fantasies of suicide; fantasies that I never told my parents about; fantasies that I never told anyone about until I sat down to write this book.

Whatever the answers, I am now pushed up against the Monster I’ve been trying to hide from. And suddenly I face two paths. Just two choices: Either accept this and allow myself to be violated all over again—remain the Anonymous Girl and hide even deeper behind my masks and coping mechanisms. Or this time stand tall. Fight back. Be seen. No longer the ghost.

I had spent my last feeling being disappointed that I couldn't rent Jumanji. (...) And thus began a tiny rebelion.

Just now I'm not so grateful to be living. My ears and eyes are buried in my book, Because I dare not look, I dare not look.

My ego hates getting out of its tower to deal with this shit.

I prepare for my new life as an adult like some people prepare for the apocalypse

I ignored my lack of mental health and relied on inappropriate humor and unhealthy coping mechanisms to survive.

Avoidance—that was, and still is, my greatest coping mechanism.

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” personality is deep anxiety. The infant and child who perceives that his needs are unmet may develop an obsessive coping style, anxious about each detail. When such a person fears that he is unable to control events, he experiences great stress. Unconsciously he believes that only by controlling every aspect of his life and environment will he be able to ensure the satisfaction of his needs. As he grows older, others will resent him and he will come to dislike himself for what was originally a desperate response to emotional deprivation. The drive to control is not an innate trait but a coping style. Emotional repression is also a coping style rather than a personality trait set in stone. Not one of the many adults interviewed for this book could answer in the affirmative when asked the following: When, as a child, you felt sad, upset or angry, was there anyone you could talk to — even when he or she was the one who had triggered your negative emotions? In a quarter century of clinical practice, including a decade of palliative work, I have never heard anyone with cancer or with any chronic illness or condition say yes to that question. Many children are conditioned in this manner not because of any intended harm or abuse, but because the parents themselves are too threatened by the anxiety, anger or sadness they sense in their child — or are simply too busy or too harassed themselves to pay attention. “My mother or father needed me to be happy” is the simple formula that trained many a child — later a stressed and depressed or physically ill adult — into lifelong patterns of repression.

Disassociation. It is a word I have heard before but never in reference to that mind trick I had used to cope. That trick isn't a figment of my imagination. It was real. It had a name. And if the coping mechanism was real, it means what I have experienced was real too.

In fact, some might argue that starting C-PTSD treatment by diving into the back of your closet and chasing out your scariest, most deeply buried skeleton is a terrible idea. You could find a murderous clown in the storm drain of your life, and he could start haunting your everyday existence. You could dig up something that triggers you badly and makes your symptoms worse or is so unpleasant to look at that you just quit therapy and never come back. That’s why many trauma therapists try to set up a strong framework of coping mechanisms before people launch into their foundational traumas.

I saw him as a circuit breaker; something that could put my big, unmeetable desires on pause. I had wanted to funnel all that wanting into him, into something that seemed manageable, immediate, tangible. I had hoped that falling in love would make all the disquiet go away. And maybe it would have, for a while. But probably not forever.

The coping mechanism I ultimately went with was to devote my life to sleep. Even I was surprised by how sleepy I was. I know it was probably my body’s way of helping me avoid reality, but once I buried myself in my covers, I would fall asleep right away. I spent days in a deep sleep in my little room, drifting all alone through outer space.

And what about this. When we’re thrust into it, we anxious folk can often deal with the present really rather well. It’s worth remembering this. As real, present-moment disasters occur, we invariably cope, and often better than others. The day after no sleep, I get on with things. At funerals, or when I’ve fallen off my bike, or the time I had to attend to my grandmother when she stopped breathing, or whenever a major work disaster plays out leaving my team in a panic, I’m a picture of calm. Dad used to call me “the tower of strength” in such moments. I also don’t tend to have a lot of bog-standard fear (as opposed to anxiety). In fact, I relish real, present-moment fear and actively seek it out.

The person is both a self and a body, and from the beginning there is the confusion about where "he" really "is"-in the symbolic inner self or in the physical body. Each phenomenological realm is different. The inner self represents the freedom of thought, imagination, and the infinite reach of symbolism. the body represents determinism and boundness. The child gradually learns that his freedom as a unique being is dragged back by the body and its appendages which dictate "what" he is. For this reason sexuality is as much a problem for the adult as for the child: the physical solution to the problem of who we are and why we have emerged on this planet is no help-in fact, it is a terrible threat. It doesn't tell the person what he is deep down inside, what kind of distinctive gift he is to work upon the world. This is why it is so difficult to have sex without guilt: guilt is there because the body casts a shadow on the person's inner freedom, his "real self" that-through the act of sex-is being forced into a standardized, mechanical, biological role. Even worse, the inner self is not even being called into consideration at all; the body takes over completely for the total person, and this kind of guilt makes the inner self shrink and threaten to disappear. This is why a woman asks for assurance that the man wants "me" and "not only my body"; she is painfully conscious that her own distinctive inner personality can be dispensed with in the sexual act. If it is dispensed with, it doesn't count. The fact is that the man usually does want only the body, and the woman's total personality is reduced to a mere animal role. The existential paradox vanishes, and one has no distinctive humanity to protest. One creative way of coping with this is, of course, to allow it to happen and to go with it: what the psychoanalysts call "regression in the service of the ego." The person becomes, for a time, merely his physical self and so absolves the painfulness of the existential paradox and the guilt that goes with sex. Love is one great key to this kind of sexuality because it allows the collapse of the individual into the animal dimension without fear and guilt, but instead with trust and assurance that his distinctive inner freedom will not be negated by an animal surrender.

I am a wall. I am a wall. I am a wall. I am a giant and I tower above you. I am a giant and I can't hear your voice. There is familiarity in this. I spent years like this growing up, my mother hovering over my every move, me responding monosyllabically, face blank, voice blank, heart blank. It is a coping mechanism and it is easy, if you are able to block out false promises of love with the understanding of what love has become.

Magda was competitive and rebellious; I was the peacemaker, hustling between my sisters, soothing their conflicts, hiding my own thoughts. How easily we can make even the warmth and safety of family into a kind of prison. We rely on our old coping mechanisms. We become the person we think we need to be to please others. It takes willpower and choice not to step back into the confining roles we mistakenly believe will keep us safe and protected.

I needed a focus. A purpose in life. I’d assumed I’d go to college because I was a high achiever, but none of it truly interested me. How could I decide on a life path when nothing fit? The only time I felt perfectly at ease was sitting at my piano. When my fingers danced across the keys, the world around me melted away until all that was left was the comforting embrace of a haunting melody. Some people wrote in a journal or talked to a therapist. My coping mechanism was the piano. Every emotion under the sun was there to be drawn forth with the right combination of ebony and ivory. A lively Chopin mazurka for bright sunny Saturdays. Beethoven or Rachmaninoff when my emotions were dragging me under. Music was everything to me. But if I didn’t want to play for others, how could I ever take my music further? Being a music teacher was one thing, but being at a university would require performances. Just the thought terrified me.

Of course, some people, confronting hardship, don’t have that agency: The circumstances are so overwhelming or their internal coping mechanisms so compromised that their lots hinge on the interventions or generosity of those around them. But it’s my educated guess that more people have sway over the direction they turn in. And it’s my observation that there’s a crucial period, a discrete phase, when they summon the will to steer toward a sunny horizon or they don’t.

Coming of queer age in the 1990s, to love queers was to love damage. To love damage was a path to loving yourself. ...Queers do not come out of the minefield of homophobia without scars. We do not live through out families' rejection of us, our stunted life options, the violence we've faced, the ways in which we've violated ourselves for survival, our harmful coping mechanisms, our lifesaving delusions, the altered brain chemistry we have sustained as a result of this, the low income and survival states we've endured as a result of society's loathing, unharmed. Whatever of theses wounds I didn't experience firsthand, my lovers did, and so I say that, for a time, it was not possible to have queer love that was not ins some way damaged or defined by damage sustained, even as it desperately fought through that damage to access, hopefully, increasingly frequent moments of sustaining, lifesaving love, true love, and loyalty, and electric sex.

Sarah: I can be cynical. But I don’t think of myself, at my core, as cynical. So much of it is location. Like, who is Muslim? Who is a Jew? Who is a Catholic? Who is a Christian? Who’s Buddhist? Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it is where you happen to be born. So how can one be right and another be wrong? It seems pretty clear to me that it’s a coping mechanism for people who cannot handle the not knowing of things. I am okay knowing I will never be able to comprehend the world.

She rambled on and on about how my attending a new private school was going to be a “stressful time of tremendous personal growth” and how my best “coping mechanism” would be to “communicate” my “thoughts and feelings.” I was absolutely ECSTATIC because you can communicate with a NEW CELL PHONE! Right?! I kind of zoned out on most of what my mom was saying because I was DAYDREAMING about all of the cool ring tones, music, and movies I was going to download. It was going to be LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT!

My perfect storm was nothing permanent. But of course it's far from the last storm I'll face. There will be many more. The key is building fires where you can. Warm yourself up as you wait for the tempest to pass. These fires, the routines, habits, relationships, and coping mechanisms you built, help you to look at the rain and see fertilizer instead of a flood. If you want the lushest green of life and you do, the grey is part of the natural cycle. You are not flawed. You're a human. You have gifts to share with the world and when the darkness comes, when you're fighting the demons, just remember. I'm right there fighting with you. You're not alone. The gems I found were forged in the struggle. Never, ever give up.

Amy always tried to maintain some semblance of dignity in front of me. Even so, I never met the same Amy more than once. On some days she behaved like a small child, sucking her thumb, talking in a baby voice and sitting on my knee; at other times she'd adopt the aggressive, butch act, the Rizzo character - the girl who had 'out-Jaggered Jagger'. The more vulnerable she felt, the more pronounced that persona would become. I think she brought her characters out as coping mechanisms, to get her through anxious moments or stressful situations. In all honesty there was rarely a time at Camden Square [her last home] when Amy was a whole person. Rather, she continued to be this fragmented girl, a series of creations I suppose I'd become accustomed to.

More panic. More emergencies and disasters. Soon, emergencies fell into a sort of natural ranking: drop-everything emergencies, do-what-you-can emergencies, and you’ll just-have-to-wait emergencies. Disasters, too, had their own ratings: unavoidable, did-the-best-we-could, my fault/your fault. Then there were godlike moments when a decision had to be made as to who most deserved to die. By the afternoon of her second day, Dtui wondered whether her heart had shrunk. She felt less. People had become less human. Death had become less of a tragedy. Her patients weren’t blacksmiths or housewives, they were percentages. “With this little skill and this little pharmaceutical backup, this patient—let’s call her number seven—has a forty percent chance of survival.” It amazed and saddened her that, in order to do her job properly, she had to stop caring.

The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment to what is called positive thinking. Too many times in the course of palliative care work I sat with dejected people who expressed their bewilderment at having developed cancer. “I have always been a positive thinker,” one man in his late forties told me. “I have never given in to pessimistic thoughts. Why should I get cancer?” As an antidote to terminal optimism, I have recommended the power of negative thinking. “Tongue in cheek, of course,” I quickly add. “What I really believe in is the power of thinking.” As soon as we qualify the word thinking with the adjective positive, we exclude those parts of reality that strike us as “negative.” That is how most people who espouse positive thinking seem to operate. Genuine positive thinking begins by including all our reality. It is guided by the confidence that we can trust ourselves to face the full truth, whatever that full truth may turn out to be. As Dr. Michael Kerr points out, compulsive optimism is one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confronting it. That form of positive thinking is the coping mechanism of the hurt child. The adult who remains hurt without being aware of it makes this residual defence of the child into a life principle. The onset of symptoms or the diagnosis of a disease should prompt a two-pronged inquiry: what is this illness saying about the past and present, and what will help in the future? Many approaches focus only on the second half of that healing dyad without considering fully what led to the manifestation of illness in the first place. Such “positive” methods fill the bookshelves and the airwaves. In order to heal, it is essential to gather the strength to think negatively. Negative thinking is not a doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as “realism.” Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working. What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden. Even more fundamentally, not posing those questions is itself a source of stress. First, “positive thinking” is based on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enough to handle reality. Allowing this fear to dominate engenders a state of childhood apprehension. Whether or not the apprehension is conscious, it is a state of stress. Second, lack of essential information about ourselves and our situation is one of the major sources of stress and one of the potent activators of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress response. Third, stress wanes as independent, autonomous control increases. One cannot be autonomous as long as one is driven by relationship dynamics, by guilt or attachment needs, by hunger for success, by the fear of the boss or by the fear of boredom. The reason is simple: autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything. Like a leaf blown by the wind, the driven person is controlled by forces more powerful than he is. His autonomous will is not engaged, even if he believes that he has “chosen” his stressed lifestyle and even if he enjoys his activities. The choices he makes are attached to invisible strings. He is still unable to say no, even if it is only to his own drivenness. When he finally wakes up, he shakes his head, Pinocchio-like, and says, “How foolish I was when I was a puppet.

Much of my research had stated that people with PTSD had shrunken prefrontal cortices—that experiencing triggers often shut down the logical centers of our brains and left us irrational and incapable of complex thought. But Siegle told me he’d discovered that research to be flawed. He’d found that with many people with complex PTSD, the exact opposite was happening. In moments of intense stress and trauma, our prefrontal cortices were actually far more active. Normally, if you’re facing a threat, your body immediately reacts to it. Your heart starts pumping blood. The hair on the back of your neck stands up. This is all in service of getting blood to your legs so you can run the hell away from it. On top of this, you feel your heart beating faster. You recognize that you’re freaking out. That makes you even more anxious, and your heart beats even faster. But Siegle told me, “As far as we can tell with complex PTSD, in really stressful situations, you’ve got this coping skill that allows the prefrontal cortex to just shut off some of our evolutionary freak-out mechanisms and instead have high levels of prefrontal activity. So our bodies stop reacting.” In other words, in some moments of intense stress, we are super-duper good at dissociation. Our hearts don’t pump as hard. Our brains cut themselves off from our bodies, so we don’t really have that feedback loop of getting anxious about getting anxious. Instead, our prefrontal cortices blink online—we become hyperrational. Super focused. Calm. Siegle explained it this way: “If running away has never been an option for you, you have to be cunning and do other things. So it’s like, this is time to bring all of our resources online, because we’re going to survive this.

I’ll let that go,” Ro told him, “if you tell me what it was like in my father’s head.” Fitz let out a relieved breath. “Fluffy.” “Like sinking into a giant marshmallow covered in feathers,” Sophie agreed. Ro choked on her laugh. “Okay, I need to figure out how to blackmail him with that.” “Maybe you can get him to reassign Bo,” Sophie suggested. “Yeah, that’s never going to happen. Once my father gets an idea in his head, he can’t let it go.” “What kind of idea?” Keefe asked. “The kind that involves smooching and weddings and little baby prince and princess BoRos?” “Dude, she is seriously going to stab you,” Fitz warned. “No, I’m thinking I’ll tunnel us deep underground and leave him in a dark little hole for a few days,” Ro corrected. “Just him and some of my favorite bacteria.” “Sounds like the perfect place to add more verses to The Ballad of Bo and Ro,” Keefe noted. “He really doesn’t know when to quit, does he?” Ro asked Sophie. “I’m pretty sure it’s a disease,” Fitz told her. “Coping mechanism,” Keefe argued.

What’d you think?” Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top. “I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology,” I said with a sigh. “Also, what’s this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn’t actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we’re at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice.” “Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility.” Lord, have mercy. See, I’ve got this coping mechanism thing where, when I’m feeling frightened or vulnerable or over my head, I intellectualize the situation to try and regain a sense of control. . . . In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride. I confess I preened it. I scoffed at the idea of being taught or led. Deconstructing was so much safer than trusting, so much easier than letting people in. I knew exactly what type of Christian I didn’t want to be, but I was too frightened, or too rebellious, or too wounded, to imagine what might be next. Like a garish conch shell, my cynicism protected me from disappointment, or so I believed, so I expected the worst and smirked when I found it. So many of our sins begin with fear . . .

I think back to this so often in trying to make sense of the world - how there are people who have so much and people who have so little, and how I fit in with them both. Often I find myself trying to bridge the two worlds, to show people, either the people with so much or the people with so little, that everything is yours and everything is not yours. I want to make people understand that boxing ourselves into tiny cubbies based n class, race, ethnicity, religion—anything, really—comes from a poverty of mind, a poverty of imagination. The world is dull and cruel when we isolate ourselves. Survival, true survival of the body and soul, requires creativity, freedom of thought, collaboration. You might have time and I might have land. You might have ideas and I might have strength. You might have a tomato and I might have a knife. We need each other. We need to say: I honor the things that you respect and I value the things you cherish. I am not better than you. You are not better than me. Nobody is better than anyone else. Nobody is who you think they are at first glance. We need to see beyond the projections we cast onto each other. Each of us is so much grander, more nuanced, and more extraordinary than anybody thinks, including ourselves. […] I’ve seen enough to know that you can be a human with a mountain of resources and you can be a human with nothing, and you can be a monster either way. Everywhere, and especially at both extremes, you can find monsters. It’s at the extremes that people are most scared—scared of deprivation, one one end; and scared of their privilege, on the other. With privilege comes a nearly avoidable egoism and so much shame, and often the coping mechanism is to give. This is great and necessary, but giving, as a framework, creates problems. You give, I take; you take, I give—both scenarios establish hierarchy. Both instill entitlement. The only road to equality—a sense of common humanity; peace—is sharing, my mother’s orange. When we share, you are not using your privilege to get me to line up behind you. When we share, you are not insisting on being my savior. Claire and I always looked for the sharers, the people who just said, ‘I have sugar, I have water. Let’s share water. Let’s not make charity about it.

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. In fact I was not alone in doing this. Almost everyone cried, but we all learned to hide it, and those who didn’t were the ones who got bullied. As a kid, you can only cry so much before you run out of tears and learn to get tough. I meet lots of folks nowadays who say how great boarding school is as a way of toughening kids up. That feels a bit back-to-front to me. I was much tougher before school. I had learned to love the outdoors and to understand the wild, and how to push myself. When I hit school, suddenly all I felt was fear. Fear forces you to look tough on the outside but makes you weak on the inside. This was the opposite of all I had ever known as a kid growing up. I had been shown by my dad that it was good to be fun, cozy, homely--but then as tough as boots when needed. At prep school I was unlearning this lesson and adopting new ways to survive. And age eight, I didn’t always pick them so well.

Get at the Root Causes While we’re working to break the cycle of addiction and adding healthy coping mechanisms, we must go deeper, to figure out what drove us outside ourselves in the first place. In other words, we need to intentionally deal with the root causes of our addiction. For me, the answer was never to just stop drinking, or to just stop sticking my finger down my throat, or to just stop weighing myself, or to just stop buying shoes in order to temporarily plug up some bottomless hole. The answer was to heal all those things that made it so desperately uncomfortable to be in my skin, so that I wouldn’t want to do those things to myself. The answer was to learn to love and respect myself so much, I didn’t want or need to do the harmful things anymore.

Other cults use different dissociative processes, such as chanting, meditation, or lecturing. Cult groups employ this bombardment of the senses, plus some degree of isolation from the outside world and restriction of communication within the group, to increase the impact of the cult leader’s message. If successful, these techniques move members into a state of intense anxiety and confusion in which they are induced to abandon previous coping mechanisms. Therefore, they inevitably enter into a dissociative state, which is reinterpreted as being some form of a higher power. This belief promotes the members’ veneration of the leader and acceptance of the ideas presented. In addition to deception and positive and negative reinforcement, cults also employ group pressure, intimidation, and environmental manipulation. All of this coalesces to develop a new “pseudo-identity” that is formed above the recruit’s original personality (West and Martin, 1996, pp. 268-288).

I have pointed out that the concept current among most flying-saucer enthusiasts that the unidentified flying objects are simply craft used by visitors from another planet is naive. The explanation is too simple-minded to account for the diversity of the reported behavior of the occupants and their percieved interaction with human beings. Could this concept serve precisely a diversionary role in masking the real, infinitely more complex nature of the technology that gives rise to the sightings? [...] Here then, is a brief statement of five new propositions based upon the material we have reviewed so far: 1. The things we call unidentified flying objects are neither objects nor flying. They can dematerialize, as some reliable photographs seem to show, and they violate the laws of motion as we know them. 2. UFOs have been seen throughout history and have consistently recieved (or provided) their own explanation within the framework of each culture. In antiquity their occupants were regarded as gods; in medieval times, as magicians; in the nineteenth century, as scientific geniuses; in our own time, as interplanetary travelers. (Statements made by occupants of the 1897 airship included such declarations as "We are from Kansas" and even "We are from anywhere... but we'll be in Greece tomorrow.") 3. UFO reports are not necessarily caused by visits from space travelers. The phenomenon could be a manifestation of a much more complex technology. If time and space are not as simple in structure as physicists have assumed until now, then the question "where do they come from?" may be meaningless; they could come from a place in time. If consciousness can be manifested outside the body, then the range of hypotheses can be even wider. 4. The key to an understanding of the phenomenon lies in the psychic effects it produces (or the psychic awareness it makes possible) in its observers. Their lives are often deeply changed, and they develop unusual talents with which they may find it difficult to cope. The proportion of witnesses who do come forward and publish accounts of these experiences is quite low; most of them choose to remain silent. 5. Contact between human percipients and the UFO phenomenon always occurs under conditions controlled by the latter. Its characteristic feature is a factor of absurdity that leads to a rejection of the story by the upper layers of the target society and an absorption at a deep unconscious level of the symbols conveyed by the encounter. The mechanism of this resonance between the UFO symbol and the archetypes of the human unconscious has been abundantly demonstrated by Carl Jung, whose book Flying Saucers makes many references to the age-old significance of the signs in the sky. I am not regarding the phenomenon of the UFOs as the unknowable, uncontrollable game of a higher order of beings. Neither is it likely, in my view, that an encounter with UFOs would add to the human being anything it did not already possess. Everything works as if the phenomenon were the product of a technology that followed well-defined rules and patterns, though fantastic by ordinary human standards. It has so far posed no apparent threat to national defense and seems to be indifferent to the welfare of individual witnesses, leading many to assume that we may be dealing with a still-undiscovered natural occurrence ("It cannot be intelligent," say some people, "because it does not attack us!"). But its impact in shaping man's long-term creativity and unconscious impulses is probably enormous. The fact that we have no methodology to deal with such an impact is only an indication of how little we know about our own psychic world.

My job largely existed not because of how terrible humanity is, but because humanity has some pretty terrible coping mechanisms for stress, ignorance, despair and frustration. These can often involve thoughtlessness, lashing out or reckless disregard for other people’s feelings, which can look a lot like vindictiveness or malice, but are often just the howl of the powerless.

See, I’ve got this coping mechanism thing where, when I’m feeling frightened or vulnerable or over my head, I intellectualize the situation to try and regain a sense of control. (I’ve read a lot of books on air travel, parenting, and death.) It was scary starting over at a new church and trying to make new friends, so before each visit, I girded myself with a sense of smug detachment wherein I could observe the proceedings from the safety of my intellectual superiority, certain I could do a better job at running the show thanks to my expertise as, you know, a Christian blogger. Oh, I talked a big game about the importance of ecumenicism and the beauty of diversity within the global church, but when I deigned to show up at one of these unsuspecting congregations, I sat in the pew with my arms crossed, mad at the Baptists for not being Methodist enough, the Methodists for not being Anglican enough, the Anglicans for not being evangelical enough, and the evangelicals for not being Catholic enough. 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.

Many of us are in a place where we know the bottom is falling out, but we can't put a name on it. We don't know how much we can take before the bottom falls out, so we just find coping mechanisms. Instead of speaking clearly about my emotions, what I found was a collection of coping mechanisms to numb myself from the need to express what I was feeling. This is where I found myself in the middle of this cycle of depression. Most of us don't know that we're coping. We can't recognize that our obsessive behaviors are actually addictions that empower us to avoid our deeper issues. Then we ignore how serious they are to justify ourselves. We make it through our hardships by any means necessary.

Society was crazy like that, able to move past a tragedy and keep grinding. Not judge ourselves too harshly. Push past grief in order to live life. It was a valid coping mechanism, and there was no doubt in my mind that Bayfront Park would shed the memory of the shooting and go full steam ahead with the New Year's Eve bash tonight. Though I dwelt on the hopeful resilience of mankind, a more cynical part of me also knew the celebrations would be a prime target for a crazed militia. But the police weren't stupid. They knew that too. Any gathering of that magnitude would have an army of good guys watching. I

What I see now is that the coping mechanisms that I developed to outlive these circumstances served me as a child. As an adult, though, they've slammed into whatever structures I've tried to build with potential life mates, eliciting cracks and fractures in the fragile web of trust I long to construct. Even as I try to craft a healthy and safe container in which love and tenderness might bloom, that old wrecking ball of learned behaviors keeps crashing into whatever I try to build, raising dust that clings to my hair and hurts my eyes, splintering my efforts to smithereens.

Running away to the pages of a book became my coping mechanism.

Nowadays, you struggle with the fact that you don’t want to feel. You struggle to turn your emotions off, but you just can’t. You want to get it out, talk about it, get it off your chest, but when you do, you’re judged or feel like you are failing at doing it “right.” I was criticized for being too emotional, so I learned to repress my emotions. I kept my feelings inside for the comfort of others, and it nearly killed me. Expressing your feelings might as well make you a leper. All of this only propagates the problem. Just like the feedback loop, you keeping it in, letting the emotions fester, will one day result in you blowing up. You could avoid the blow-up altogether if it weren’t taboo to talk about mental health.

I was right about everything. I was right about her words, her desire to make her novel into reality. I was right that it was her coping mechanism to survive a violent, loveless marriage. And I was right about her being the woman for me. She’s the one. My soulmate.

At the Lord’s table, I surrender the hurts and hang-ups, the failed coping mechanisms that point to my striving. It’s where I confess sin, exchanging my old life for new. I remember all that Jesus has done for me.

I developed this compulsion to clean as a sort of protection ritual performed when I felt even the slightest bit abandoned, an eventuality that tormented my young imagination.

Indigenous Lives Holding Our World Together, by Brenda J. Child American Indian Stories, by Zitkala-Sa A History of My Brief Body, by Billy-Ray Belcourt The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert Apple: Skin to the Core, by Eric Gansworth Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot The Blue Sky, by Galsan Tschinag Crazy Brave, by Joy Harjo Standoff, by Jacqueline Keeler Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie Spirit Car, by Diane Wilson Two Old Women, by Velma Wallis Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School, by Adam Fortunate Eagle Split Tooth, by Tanya Tagaq Walking the Rez Road, by Jim Northrup Mamaskatch, by Darrel J. McLeod Indigenous Poetry Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, by Joy Harjo Ghost River (Wakpá Wanági), by Trevino L. Brings Plenty The Book of Medicines, by Linda Hogan The Smoke That Settled, by Jay Thomas Bad Heart Bull The Crooked Beak of Love, by Duane Niatum Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier Little Big Bully, by Heid E. Erdrich A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation, by Eric Gansworth NDN Coping Mechanisms, by Billy-Ray Belcourt The Invisible Musician, by Ray A. Young Bear When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, edited by Joy Harjo New Poets of Native Nations, edited by Heid E. Erdrich The Failure of Certain Charms, by Gordon Henry Jr. Indigenous History and Nonfiction Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong, by Paul Chaat Smith Decolonizing Methodologies, by Linda Tuhiwai Smith Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862, edited by Gary Clayton Anderson and Alan R. Woodworth Being Dakota, by Amos E. Oneroad and Alanson B. Skinner Boarding School Blues, edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc Masters of Empire, by Michael A. McDonnell Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior Boarding School Seasons, by Brenda J. Child They Called It Prairie Light, by K. Tsianina Lomawaima To Be a Water Protector, by Winona LaDuke Minneapolis: An Urban Biography, by Tom Weber

Like others who seek to be what they are not, we invariably end up with secondary problems engendered by chronic anxiety. As rage and frustration are pushed below our consciousness, we suffer depression. Somatic difficulties like stomachaches and headaches and other ailments can be chronic as a result of unrelenting anxiety and the repression of coping mechanisms while trying to fit in.

I haven't grieved the life I thought I'd live, and I sure as Hell hasn't grieved the son I thought I'd get. I got right on with accepting the son I did get, which is exactly the opposing coping mechanism to the one my husband has applied to the situation.

First as a child, then as a teenager, I found my primary coping mechanism for not belonging in studying people. I was a seeker of pattern and connection. I knew if I could recognize patterns in people’s behaviors and connect those patterns to what people were feeling and doing, I could find my way. I used my pattern recognition skills to anticipate what people wanted, what they thought, or what they were doing. I learned how to say the right thing or show up in the right way. I became an expert fitter-in, a chameleon. And a very lonely stranger to myself.

I had my excuses, of course. My numbness was a survival mechanism. It had been beaten into me by my father. By the time I’d turned seven, I’d developed a POW mindset. Going numb was how I took my beatings and maintained some level of self-respect. Even after my mother and I escaped, I continued to be stalked by tragedy and failure, and numbness was how I coped with the fact that losing was all I ever knew.

I get it—the need to have control over things when everything else is so unsure. I’m the same. It’s my coping mechanism.

Whatever advantages I might have as a verbal human being with a handy batch of coping and masking mechanisms in place, I am no better than anyone else on the spectrum. We are equals. When I say that autistic lives have value, I'm speaking for every single one of them.

Avoidance, my coping mechanism of choice.

I still didn't know very much about the complex coping mechanism that had helped me survive my childhood. It was as if my conscious mind wasn't strong enough yet to fully grasp that I had parts. I knew it superficially, but I didn't feel it all the way through.

I have tried to drink this pain away, to smoke it away, to write it away. I tried to make it numb, I tried to run away from it, I tried to fight it. But everything I tried to escape found me in my sleep again.

The codiscoverers of the impostor phenomenon, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, along with various collaborators, point to four coping and protecting mechanisms: diligence and hard work, holding back, charm, and procrastination.1 In my own work I’ve observed three more: maintaining a low or ever-changing profile, never finishing, and self-sabotage.

If your coping mechanism to date has been to ignore your weight, don't feel badly. You're in good company. I've done my share of standing on the doctor's scale backwards, cringing as the nurse scribbled on the clipboard, anxious when the doctor came in glancing over my record. I scrutinized his face for any semblance of judgment. Whether or not I faced the scale or the doctor skipped a pep talk, it didn't change the truth and it still pervaded every hour of my waking thoughts. I knew what I needed to do and just agonizingly prolonged it. What about you? We want our lies to be true--desperately. We think it means less work, less pain. But aren't we experiencing work and pain every day when we are obese? We don't escape it, we just reallocate it, attach it to different problems. The sooner we face the numbers and start to deal with them, the sooner we can resolve them.

Show me a writer that doesn't use their craft as a coping mechanism and I'll show you my unicorn.

I knew Steve was starting to cope when he proposed one of his most ambitious documentaries with John. They would journey literally to the end of the earth, to Antarctica, and document conditions for wildlife there. Steve knew that Antarctica functioned as a canary in a coal mine--an early-warning mechanism for environmental problems with the earth as a whole. It was summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and that’s the only practical time to go to Antarctica, but the continent was still no place for small children. I felt torn about being separated at such a tumultuous time, but the doco Icebreaker had been planned for a long time. Steve went south with John Stainton and a camera crew. I went to Florida and Disney World with the rest of my family: Robert and Bindi. As he had with the fauna of the Galapagos Islands, Steve discovered that the Antarctic wildlife had little fear of humans. There were no hunting parties out terrorizing the wildlife, so they didn’t perceive people as a threat. The penguins were among the friendliest. In fact, he found if he mimicked their actions, they would often repeat them in response. Steve slid on his belly down the slopes of ice, and the penguins did the same.

There’s a coping mechanism I’ve started using recently where I pretend to retreat back into the shell of my heart and crawl out of my body, like I’m not really here and am instead observing the world from another person’s perspective.

Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game the I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do . If I lose. I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second.

My coping mechanism was to wrap my thoughts--when they came--into a scrap of paper, then discard them like a piece of gum.

I’ve never shed a single tear for him, but I have shed tears for the little girl I was, who should’ve had a dad who loved and cared for her. Who protected her and showed her how a man treats a woman. Sometimes, that little girl doesn’t even feel like me. To survive what I did, I had to separate myself mentally from my past. I don’t know if that’s how it is for everyone, but that was my coping mechanism.

It’s my coping mechanism. It’s a way to release the hurt inside me.

Step 4: Engage your child to problem-solve with you. Offer “leading” ideas, but allow your child to experience the aha moment of brainstorming a coping mechanism. Resist the urge to explain the fear away or solve the problem on your own. Phrases like “I wonder” and “I’m thinking about” help engage your child in problem-solving. It might sound like this: “Hmm . . . I’m wondering if we can go to the basement and start going down the stairs one at a time . . . let me know when the scary feeling starts and when it feels like it’s getting bigger.” As you inquire about the fear in this way, you infuse your parental presence into the moment, and as your child feels less alone in her fear, it won’t hold such a strong grip. Next, maybe say, “I wonder what you could say to yourself as you go down one of the stairs . . .” Or maybe you suggest a solution like, “I’m thinking about practicing going down one stair now, then in a few days maybe another stair, and the next day a few more . . . hmm . . .” Step 5: Create a mantra. For kids who struggle with anxiety, mantras can be very helpful in the moment. Whether spoken out loud or recited internally, a mantra focuses their attention on the calming words rather than the source of distress. Examples of mantras include, “It’s okay to be nervous. I can get through this,” “I can feel scared and brave at the same time,” and “I’m safe, my parents are near.” Work with your child to develop a mantra that feels good to them and encourage them to repeat it during scary moments. Step 6: Share a “slowly coping with a fear” story. Yours might sound like: “This reminds me of when I was about your age, and I was scared of dogs. I still remember how bad those moments felt in my body.” Do not offer a quick fix like, “But then I realized that I was safe and it was okay.” Instead offer a story of slow coping, something like: “I remember talking to my dad about it, and realizing it was okay to feel scared. I remember that my dad and I would read a lot about dogs, then I’d start to walk closer to dogs with him. And then one day, my dad helped me touch a dog. Little by little, dogs felt less scary. It was such hard work to be brave when I was feeling scared!

I close my eyes and breathe deeply, trying to shake off the anxiety that clogs every pore. There’s always been an incessant need inside me to please other people, to make sure that I’m well liked and that everyone around me is taken care of and happy, and although over the years, I’ve learned different coping mechanisms for easing the burden of my runaway thoughts, there’s never been anything that’s completely cured me of having to put everyone else before me.

doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, or you don’t agree that it should be there or perhaps just don’t understand why it is. What helps you process it is saying, ‘Okay. This sucks, but you’re here. I’m not sure why, but I’m allowed to experience negative emotions, even when they don’t make sense to me or when I don’t want them. It’s okay. Feeling this is unpleasant, but it’s okay’. You need to accept fully—this is happening. Do you think that, now that you know more about why you would feel like that after praise, it may be easier to accept it when it happens?” “I mean…yeah, in a way, but I’m not sure that’s actually gonna make me feel better. And I know! I know what you’re going to say. Sometimes it’s about not having the emotion escalate and…okay, yeah. It might do that but…urgh. I just…hate that it happens.” “And so you should. It absolutely sucks. But don’t indulge in the hate so far that it causes you to reject the emotion. Accepting that the emotion is there is a necessary part of dealing with it. ‘Okay, you’re here. I’m allowed to feel this, even if I don’t want to. Now I can deal with the actual emotion instead of focusing on the situation and how fair or unfair it is or worrying about the impact of the emotion as if I can tell the future. All I can do is what I can do right now, and what my body is telling me it needs right now is comfort and care so…comfort and care it is’! And onto one of your coping mechanisms.

I was grieved that my life had come to this point; it had all happened so quickly. I just found myself running from one thing to the next and the things I was using to cope started more problems in and of themselves. The cycle spiraled out of control when one coping mechanism created consequences that led to the next coping mechanism, which created consequences, and on and on, without ever addressing the hurt and confusion inside.

I was forced to be sober, at least until I figured out how to work the system. The process of regaining my mind made me feel as if I were losing it. Drugs were my coping mechanism, my source of confidence, my sanity.

I wasn’t empty because others abandoned me, but because I had abandoned myself. Who I am was repressed—collateral damage in a long-term coping mechanism gone unchecked. My subconscious had put up partitions to contain the flood of emotion in the wake of trauma, but in doing so, my identity was trapped and locked away as well. As a result, everything repressed would one day come forward—without warning, without control, and without a shutoff valve.

I was born to an unwed female in a settlement that makes Windhaven look like a tolerant, welcoming paradise. She was shunned for bearing a child out of wedlock, and forced to give birth to me alone in a tent in the dead of winter.' Horror lurched through her. She'd known Cassian was low-born, but that level of cruelty because of it... 'What of your father?' 'You mean the piece of shit who forced himself on her and then went back to his wife and family?' Cassian let out a cold laugh that she rarely heard. 'There were no consequences for him.' 'There never are,' Nesta said coolly. She blocked out the image of Tomas's face. 'There are here,' Cassian growled, as if he sensed the direction of her thoughts. Cassian gestured to the city below, hidden by the mountain and the House blocking the view. 'Rhys changed the laws here in the Night Court, and in Illyria.' His face hardened further. 'But it still requires the survivor to come forward. And in places like Illyria, they make life a living hell for any female who does. They seem it a betrayal.' 'That's outrageous.' 'We're all Fae. Forget the High Fae or Lesser Fae bullshit. We're all immortal or close to it. Change comes slowly for us. What humans accomplish in decades takes us centuries. Longer, if you live in Illyria.' 'Then why do you bother with the Illyrians?' 'Because I fought like hell to prove my worth to them.' His eyes glittered. 'To prove that my mother brought some good into this world.' 'Where is she now?' He'd never spoken of her. His eyes shuttered in a way she had not witnessed before. 'I was taken away from her when I was three. Thrown out into the snow. And in her so-called disgraced state, she became prey to other monsters.' Nesta's stomach twisted with each word. 'She did their backbreaking labour until she died, alone and...' His throat worked. 'I was at Windhaven by then. I wasn't strong enough to return to help her. To bring her somewhere safe. Rhys wasn't yet High Lord, and none of us could do anything.' ... 'It's a story for another time. But what I meant to try to explain is that through it all, through every awful thing, the training centred me. Guided me. When I had a shit day, when I was spat on or pummelled or shunned, when I led armies and lost good warriors, when Rhys was taken by Amarantha- through all of that, the training remained. You said the other day the breathing helped you. It helps me, too. It helped Feyre.' She watched the wall rise in his eyes, word after word. As if he waited for her to rip it down. Rip him down. 'Make of that what you will, but it's true.' Oily shame slithered through her. She'd done that- brought this level of defensiveness in him. Heaviness weighed on her. Started gnawing on her insides. So Nesta said, 'Show me another set of movements.' Cassian scanned her face for a heartbeat, his gaze still shuttered, and began his next demonstration.

When studying the Course every student is thrust into an unrelenting quest for peace by walking through his or her darkest fears and jealously guarded coping mechanisms. Not an easy or pleasant experience! As J. R. Richmond, my friend and co-author of one of my other books, Side by Side — the Twelve Steps and ‘A Course in Miracles’ once stated, “. . . soon ‘A Course in Miracles’ begins to seem like a ‘curse’ in miracles!

I finally realized who really ran the show at home; my mom. I just didn't realize how toxic it was until I saw him crumble under her will and joined forces with her when I was violated. I had no idea at the time what this kind of dysfunction was, but I knew it was wrong and unfair treatment. My dad was a decent hard-working man who found himself caught in a web of an extremely controlling wife he loved but who emasculated him. He found her difficult to live with, and so the best way he could try to keep peace in the marriage was to play the role of “go along to get along”. That grew into a whole different branch of coping mechanism; enabling.  Mom was the boss and he accepted it by withdrawing and avoiding the big elephant in the family. His little girl, his only girl, his “little shadow” no longer was his priority; pleasing mom at all cost was the main vein that fed his insufficiency to step into his authority as the head of the home. As time passed, I witnessed repeatedly, that his needs were not a priority and he accepted my mom's behavior no matter how it infected us or the atmosphere of the home. He did all this just to keep her pleased and so he didn't have to hear the constant bickering, even though it was a temporary fix.

Maybe it was the need to feel a stronger buzz, maybe it was built up residual fear and trauma from the accident, maybe it was the lack of other more adequate coping mechanisms, or maybe it was just the fact I’d trained myself to act on these habits for years and hardwired my brain for failure.

My smile was a mask that hid the pain of suppressing who I was. Masking is a common coping mechanism for a Black queer boy. We bury the things that have happened to us, hoping that they don’t present themselves later in our adult life.

They'll probably say I'm crazy or even mad, and maybe they're right—I should have kept my distance. There were so many things I wanted to say, truths I wanted to share, but I knew they would only cause pain. So instead, I buried those thoughts deep inside and let the pain consume me. No matter how much I tried to explain, it wouldn't have made a difference. I couldn't even understand the turmoil within myself, so how could I possibly make them understand? As time passes, I find myself growing weaker, but with that weakness comes a strange relief. The less I remember, the less I can be hurt. The fading memories bring a certain numbness, and with it, the suffering begins to fade too.

Weston Belmont saved me from a grizzly bear. Saved me from myself, really. From my own naiveté. A smarter girl would be captivated by his bravery, or his deep voice, or his quippy one-liners. Not me. I’m following him down a backcountry road in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, daydreaming about his big fucking hands. I make a mental note to follow up with my therapist about this too. I have to be diagnosable. It has to be a coping mechanism of some sort. Do daddy issues give you a hand kink?

Avoidance has always been my coping mechanism. If I don’t think about it, it doesn’t matter. My day goes on.

I think my humor is a coping mechanism,” I said. “So if I start laughing when I cut off body parts, does that count as therapy?

So when the two come into conflict in a child’s life, the outcome is well-nigh predetermined. If the choice is between “hiding my feelings, even from myself, and getting the basic care I need” and “being myself and going without,” I’m going to pick that first option every single time. Thus our real selves are leveraged bit by bit in a tragic transaction where we secure our physical or emotional survival by relinquishing who we are and how we feel. The fact that we don’t consciously choose such coping mechanisms makes them all the more tenacious. We cannot will them away when they no longer serve us precisely because we have no memory of them not being there, no notion of ourselves without them. Like wallpaper, they blend into the background; they are our “new normal,” our literal second nature, as distinct from our original or authentic nature. As these patterns get wired into our nervous system, the perceived need to be what the world demands becomes entangled with our sense of who we are and how to seek love. Inauthenticity is thereafter misidentified with survival because the two were synonymous during the formative years—or, at least, seemed so to our young selves. Here we see the perilous downside of our much-vaunted and wondrous capacity to adapt to diverse and challenging circumstances. After all, most adaptations are meant for specific situations, not as eternally applicable responses in every possible case. Here’s an analogy plucked from the headlines: At the time of this writing, freezing weather has enveloped Texas.[*] People are adapting by wearing extra clothing, heating their homes when power is available, wrapping themselves in warm blankets—all necessary strategies for surviving inclement winter conditions. Those same adaptations, meant to be temporary, would jeopardize health and life if not discarded by the time of summer’s blazing heat. The internal adaptations we make to our own personalities in order to survive adversity early in life carry the same risks as conditions shift, but we are far less wise to the danger. No matter how the weather changes, the protective gear, welded as it is onto the personality, never comes off. It is sobering to realize that many of the personality traits we have come to believe are us, and perhaps even take pride in, actually bear the scars of where we lost connection to ourselves, way back when.

Although I witnessed the faithfulness of God to meet my basic needs, I used coping mechanisms to meet my immediate, personal needs.

Upon reflection, I came up with my theoretical statement which lands in the assimilative integrative theoretical orientation camp: Fundamentally, I believe that a person’s family environment, birth order, and early childhood experiences (all within their cultural context) significantly influence personality development, shaping how they interact with others and the world. Sometimes, these influences can lead to patterns of thought that are flawed, perhaps due to adverse circumstances or family dysfunction. These patterns can impact brain development and a general approach to life. My role is to guide my clients in understanding the link between their experiences, these patterns, and in identifying a new orientation that enables them to utilize coping skills and uncover internal resources that have always been present. I greatly respect my clients and their autonomy, acknowledging that they may not always comprehend the subconscious forces at play. It is vital to bring these subconscious elements into awareness. It is essential to help clients recognize the significance of their past coping mechanisms and the potential for growth through increased awareness. I also emphasize the interconnectedness of their work in therapy with me and its impact on their other relationships, encouraging awareness of these dynamics. In this statement, you can hear the influence of Alfred Adler, Murray Bowen, Carl Rogers, Victor Frankl, and the influence of neuro-informed counseling.

Thanks to my detractors, I appreciate you all. Without you I would never see opportunities steps, I would only see failures fall

Thanks to my detractors, I appreciate you all. Without you I would never see opportunity's steps, I would only see failure's fall

There’s a coping mechanism I’ve started using recently where I pretend to retreat back into the shell of my heart and crawl out of my body, like I’m not really here and am instead observing the world from another persons perspective.

My therapist tells me that I am doing everything I can to not be like my mother, so instead of dealing with the prospect of a relationship, I just shut that part of my life off all together. Then again, I think my therapist has a bit of a wild imagination. It’s her job to analyze me and figure out my “coping mechanisms” as she calls them. I call them my rules. I live my life with a certain set of rules to keep me safe and grounded. I am comfortable with those rules. One of them, the most important, is no dating.

acquired a sponsor, and she helped walk me through the twelve steps. Those steps saved my life, allowed me to understand why I did all the things that I did, and gave me other coping mechanisms and tools to use instead of turning to drugs each time I felt uncomfortable

I can’t stop cleaning and I have a monster inside my brain and I miss you and Sloan is falling apart and his parents won’t take him off life support, so his organs are rotting. I can’t get all the lines right on the carpet with the vacuum and Stuntman is in a kennel and I haven’t seen him in days, and I just need you to let me clean this fucking apartment!” I’m not sure how much of it he heard, if any. I was crying so hard I could barely understand myself. He just held me and caressed my hair, and for the first time in weeks the velociraptor hunted other prey. Josh made me weak. Or strong. It was hard to tell anymore what I was without my coping mechanism. At least when I rode the beast, I got shit done. And now I was nothing but an emotional mess. But at least the mess was mine. Why did he have this effect on me? He had this way of waking up dormant parts of my soul. He ripped through me and let everything in with him like a storm surge. I took on water. And at the same time, something told me if I let him, he’d keep me afloat. He wouldn’t let me sink. I’d never felt this vulnerable and safe with anyone. I felt hot and shaky. I gasped and clutched his shirt until the crying spasms stopped. He held me so tight my knees could have given out and I wouldn’t have fallen an inch. “I can’t be the only one who has their shit together,” I whispered. His chest rumbled as he spoke. “It doesn’t look like you have your shit together…” I snorted. “Josh, please.” I looked up at him, my hands trembling on his collarbone. “I need you to insert yourself here. Go talk to his parents. They’ll listen to you.” He looked at me like seeing me cry was agony. The longing on his face was razor blades to my heart. His sad eyes, the set of his mouth, his knit brows. He loved me almost as much as I loved him, and I knew I was hurting him. I knew he thought I was enough. But I wasn’t enough. How could one of me be any kind of substitute for the half dozen kids he’d always wanted? It just couldn’t. The math didn’t work. The logic wasn’t sound. He wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll go. Just, sit down or something. Stop cleaning.” He dipped his head to catch my eyes. “Are you okay? You’re shaking.” He put a hand over mine to still the tremor against his chest, and the closeness of him made me whole for the first time in weeks. “I’m fine,” I said, swallowing. “Just hurry, okay?” He looked at me for a long moment, like he was trying to memorize my face or steal an extra second to hold me. Then he turned for the bathroom. When he walked away from me, the absence of his body pressed into mine felt like I’d lost my clothes and I stood naked and exposed to the elements. I missed him. No amount of time lessened it. It made it worse. My heart was a neglected building, and every day I weathered a fierce storm that dripped through my roof, flooded my floors, and broke my windows, and the disrepair just made me weaker and closer to collapse. The water turned on in the bathroom and I looked around the apartment, my compulsion raging back with a fury now that he was gone. At least I could do this for him. I could take care of his space, give it order. Wash his clothes and his blankets. Make things smell clean, turn his home into someplace he wanted to be. Do this thing that he obviously couldn’t do for himself at the moment.

Dr. Campbell handed us off to the orthopedic surgeon, who went over the next steps to deal with Brandon’s broken bones. Another surgeon told us about the repairs to the laceration to his liver. Then a plastic surgeon talked to us about the skin grafts he would need to cover the extensive road rash on his left arm. By the time the doctors were done with us, Sloan was wiped. I put her back in her chair and called Josh. The phone was still ringing when I heard it behind me. I spun and there he was. The second I saw him, my emotional disconnect from the situation clicked off. My coping mechanism snapped away from me like a rubber band shot across a room, and the weight of what happened hit me. Sloan’s grief, Brandon’s condition—Josh’s trauma. I dove into his arms, instantly withered. I’d never trusted anyone else to be the one in control, and my manic mind gave it to him immediately and without reservation and retreated back into itself. He clutched me, and I held him tighter than I’d ever held anyone in my life. I wasn’t sure if I was comforting him, or if I was letting him comfort me. All I knew was something subconscious in me told me I didn’t have to hold the world up anymore now that he was here. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I whispered, breathing him in as my body turned back on from being in suspended animation. The sound to the movie around me turned all the way up. My heart began to pound, I gasped into his neck, and tears instantly flooded my eyes. He put his forehead to mine. He looked like shit. He’d looked bad this morning at the station—I knew he hadn’t slept. But now his eyes were red like he’d been crying. “Any updates?” His voice was raspy. I couldn’t even comprehend how hard it must have been for him to see what he saw and stay at work, going on calls. I wanted to cover him like a blanket. I wanted to cover them both, Josh and Sloan, and shield them from this. I put a hand to his cheek, and he turned into it and closed his eyes. “He just got out of surgery,” I said. Then I told him everything, my hands on his chest like they anchored me. He stood with his arms around my waist, nodding and looking at me like he was worried I was the one who wasn’t okay. It didn’t escape me that we were holding each other and I didn’t care what it meant or what wrong signals it might send to him at the moment. I just knew that I needed to touch him. I needed this momentary surrender. For both of us.

But I keep allowing it to happen because, to me, the future doesn’t seem real. It’s just this magical place where I can put my responsibilities so that I don’t have to be scared while hurtling toward failure at eight hundred miles per hour.

I chose to not worry about it," I told him. "I filed it away into the same place keep things like Earth is a globe & ice floats. I'm aware of it, & when I need it, I'll pull it out & dust it off, ... They are my memories. I decide how to view them...

I'm here as a person who coped in a way that allowed me to be here today but made me vulnerable to abuse when I was a teenager and young adult...

Human bodies are extremely complicated and over the years I learned three important things about them, none of which I had been taught by lecturers or professors at my medical school. First, I learned that no two bodies are identical and there are an infinite number of variations. Not even twins are truly identical. When I first started to study medicine I used to think how much easier it would be for us all (doctors and patients) if bodies came with an owner's manual, but the more I learned about medicine the more I realised that such a manual would have to contain so many variations, footnotes and appendices that it wouldn't fit into the British Museum let alone sit comfortably on the average bookshelf. Even if manuals were individually prepared they would still be too vast for practical use. However much we may think we know about illness and health there will always be exceptions; there will always be times when our prognoses and predictions are proved wrong. Second, I learned that the human body has enormous, hidden strengths, and far greater power than most of us ever realise. We tend to think of ourselves as being delicate and vulnerable. But, in practice, our bodies are tougher than we imagine, far more capable of coping with physical and mental stresses than most of us realise. Very few of us know just how strong and capable we can be. Only if we are pushed to our limits do we find out precisely what we can do. Third, I learned that our bodies are far better equipped for selfdefence than most of us imagine, and are surprisingly well-equipped with a wide variety of protective mechanisms and self-healing systems which are designed to keep us alive and to protect us when we find ourselves in adverse circumstances. The human body is designed for survival and contains far more automatic defence mechanisms, designed to protect its occupant when it is threatened, than any motor car. To give the simplest of examples, consider what happens when you cut yourself. First, blood will flow out of your body for a few seconds to wash away any dirt. Then special proteins will quickly form a protective net to catch blood cells and form a clot to seal the wound. The damaged cells will release special substances into the tissues to make the area red, swollen and hot. The heat kills any infection, the swelling acts as a natural splint - protecting the injured area. White cells are brought to the injury site to swallow up any bacteria. And, finally, scar tissue builds up over the wounded site. The scar tissue will be stronger than the original, damaged area of skin. Those were the three medical truths I discovered for myself. Over the years I have seen many examples of these three truths. But one patient always comes into my mind when I think about the way the human body can defy medical science, prove doctors wrong and exhibit its extraordinary in-built healing power.

She told me she lined up the call with the doctor. “She’s ready now. Are you?” “Yes,” I said, looking up at Nikki and Riawna. They nodded. I didn’t hesitate for a second. I trusted them and I knew now was my time. Besides, I didn’t care who heard my truth. I was tired of letting shame dictate my actions. And do you know how hard it is to schedule Nikki and Riawna? Once I was on the phone with the doctor, I started in with a complete play-by-play of all my life’s traumas. The sexual abuse I suffered in childhood, and the abusive, obsessive relationships I clung to in adulthood. I was crying, the women doing my extensions were crying, and my friends were a mess. Still, I reeled off everything in a matter-of-fact manner, connecting dots about why each event had contributed to my anxiety, finally ending with, “So this is why I need help and why I can’t do this on my own.” I paused to breathe. “Wow,” the doctor said. My eyebrows shot up. Was I that bad? “First of all,” she continued, “people don’t know themselves that well. And the fact that you don’t know me, and you’re telling me all this on the phone tells me you are desperate.” I wasn’t trying to get an A in breaking down. She said a lot of people who use alcohol as a temporary coping mechanism generally aren’t aware of what they’re covering up, so the abuse becomes permanent. Knowing what I had to face was a good sign for me.

I talk of those incidents [with Bonnie and Clyde] as if I were not a part of any of it, like a character in a book I once read. It’s the only way I keep from going crazy. Maybe we were all pretty young then, but we knew what we were doing. Clyde never held a gun to my head. I was there because I wanted to be! What’s that they say in the movies? ‘The show must go on!’ Well, life goes on.

avoidance is a coping mechanism when someone is struggling.” Our daughter was scared to sleep in her room, so she was avoiding it. By allowing her to sleep on our floor, I made her anxiety worse. Every day, when I said, “You can sleep on the floor of our room,” I was telling her with my actions, “I believe you’re not strong enough to face this.

It's a coping mechanism, I think, which tracks for me; a combination of painfully self-aware of my issues and unable to do anything about it.

Why the hell do I always have to look like such a train wreck when I run into him? Hmm, maybe because I’m depressed and grieving and my only coping mechanism is to drown myself in work? Just a thought!

I know, I know, I know: it’s a defense mechanism, it’s a coping mechanism, capitalism killed all my hopes so I’m entitled to this, I hate my dad, yeah yeah yeah. You certainly are entitled to live this way. The question, my friend, is whether you actually want to live this way. How’s that coping mechanism going for you, hmmm? You coping pretty good? Posting Simpsons memes really defending you against the drudgery and injustice of a broken world? I’m guessing not! How many times a day do you have to evince derision without directly stating it to be impregnable? It seems exhausting. And how fucking old are people going to get, exactly, before they decide it’s beneath their dignity to live their entire lives in sneer quotes?

Why did my publishing output skyrocket around 2019? Put your conspiracy theories aside, I’ll tell you why. When I started writing, I had a partner, I had plans to settle in Sofia with her. But then I lost my link to the Balkans, when she grew weary and took the hand of another. I couldn’t write a single word for days, but then, I let the god complex unleashed. That’s about when my writing skyrocketed, as the heartbreak jolted my brain into a hyper-publishing engine. I had all the time in the world, and enough pain to fuel my pen.

Amy always tried to maintain some semblance of dignity in front of me. Even so, I never met the same Amy more than once. On some days she behaved like a small child, sucking her thumb, talking in a baby voice and sitting on my knee; at other times she'd adopt the aggressive, butch act, the Rizzo character - the girl who had 'out-Jaggered Jagger'. The more vulnerable she felt, the more pronounced that persona would become. I think she brought her characters out as coping mechanisms, to get her through anxious moments or stressful situations. In all honesty there was rarely a time at Camden Square when Amy was a whole person. Rather, she continued to be this fragmented girl, a series of creations I suppose I'd become accustomed to.

I don’t need your jacket,” Lyra told Grayson. “Perhaps I need to give it to you,” Grayson suggested. “Chivalry. It’s a coping mechanism.” “I’m warning you, Hawthorne: If you try to put that jacket around my shoulders, I’m taking mine off and giving it to you.

And I’ve noticed in my own life and in the lives of many people I know well that what begins as an every-once-in-a-while coping mechanism can become an everyday habit

Rewiring Divinity, 2732 (Diary of A Monk Scientist) One thing you must realize, there is no absolute truth in this world, whatever you put your life and mind into, goes. I found the world's perception of religion prehistoric, so I poured my existence into rewiring the very reality of divinity - because, there is no other divinity out there, whatever we humans come up with, goes - and if some prehistoric baboons with two brain cells could normalize blind faith as divinity, then a human being with a hundred billion nerve cells, could cast aside such blindness and redo divinity from ground up, and this time, not as a coping mechanism against the unknown, but as enhancement of our humanity.

Rebounding quickly was my coping mechanism. I recovered in record time from devastation. I was a glass-half-full optimist. An inherently positive person. It was my thing. I lived life to the fullest

was most common in women and often arose as a coping mechanism for repeated physical or sexual abuse. Most frequently, the second identity manifested for the purpose of absorbing the host’s pain by enduring the trauma in her place—a kind of proxy victim—sustaining the anguish, blocking all memory of it, and enabling the host to “disassociate” from her own suffering. The secondary personality was known as the alternate or “alter” and typically appeared in an abrupt schismatic break during acute trauma. Having manifested, the alter could then take up permanent residence in the host, lingering for years or a lifetime as a kind of guardian, even subsuming the subject’s darkest memories in a kind of selective amnesia—providing a clean slate with which to move forward. It was not uncommon for a protective alter to assume control of the body and become the dominant personality, deciding when and how the traumatized subject could safely “surface.” Dissociative identity disorder had first been diagnosed in the 1800s under the name “double consciousness”—a kind of waking sleepwalking in which an individual seemed to be taken over by another consciousness, who then carried out actions without the permission, knowledge, or recollection of the individual. Two of the most extraordinary cases in history were so meticulously documented that they became the basis for the bestsellers The Three Faces of Eve, Strangers in My Body, and Sybil. Of course, the most famous book of all time on the condition was Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Katherine knew that many instances of DID involved multiple alters—some with more than a dozen identities living in one host body. Incredibly, the alters all had different voices, accents, handwriting, skill sets, food preferences, and even gender identities. They walked differently, preferred different living spaces, suffered different physical ailments, and even had different IQs and eyesight. One radio receiving multiple distinct stations… Psychiatrists diverged wildly over how these stark dissimilarities between alters could be possible, and some skeptics even accused DID patients of being skilled actors looking for attention. However, when patients submitted to rigorous testing involving MRIs, lie detectors, and sophisticated lines of interrogation, the results were always the same—there were indeed multiple discrete individuals existing within one body. Some of the alters were aware of the others living with them in what was known as “the system.” These alters were called “co-conscious.” In contrast, some alters were oblivious that the system even existed, believing instead that they were alone in the body. They often suffered memory gaps when stronger alters blocked them out, taking over the forefront of the mind in an action known as “fronting.

What she didn't know what whether his apparent ease was a coping mechanism or an act to settle her, assuage her turmoil. Either way, unlike her, he certainly didn't try to control every aspect of life to make up for the fact that life was anything but controllable.