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‘Tis the season for depression, suicide and relapse. Some people call it the holiday blues. But, this is a time where many people struggle the most whether that be with self-harm, alcohol, drugs outside of weed, or other addictive coping patterns.
Friendly Reminder: If you are reading this, please be kind to people! Do yourself a favor and be aware of yourself, take accountability, and responsibility for the way you treat/talk to people. No one deserves to receive the back end of unprocessed, conscious, subconscious, unconscious, etc. thoughts and emotions. We don’t know what another person is going through; even if we are near them!
December is a hard month for my family. Personally, the colder days are hard and so is the winter season. To say the least, it’s a time where I experienced loss of innocence, valued time/family members, and overall the sense of control. It came to the point of me being desensitized to my own pain at a young age. So I have a harder time with it during the colder days.
I used to cope to avoid. Since 2020, I have become aware that coping to avoid wasn’t helping. It honestly led me to self-harm relapses and near suicide attempts. Since then, I tried using silence to view my thoughts and have used coping to bring out those trapped feelings. I can’t forget about self-care. Self-caring has honestly helped me get out of a rut with myself when coping hasn’t helped. Which is why I am sharing my understanding of coping and some self-caring tips!
Some people actually find silence and time alone to be scary, weird, unhealthy, and/or not helpful. Despite opinions, I found it to be most helpful for me! I love the silence and that time to sit with my thoughts. Believe it or not, this is actually a coping mechanism. I also use other coping mechanisms, but to bring out my emotions of a thought when I’m having a hard time understanding them.
Many people use coping to only occupy the mind in managing difficult emotions. Coping mechanisms are not supposed to be only mind occupying but also strategies used to face/manage difficult emotions. Many times I hear people say that their coping mechanisms aren’t working and not taking their pain, thoughts, etc. away. As sucky as it sounds, coping isn’t going to take it all away, but looking within may help you understand where these feelings are coming from.
When coping didn’t help, I turned to self-care. We all need a little self-care. For myself, I set goals each day to make sure I am self-caring! We do more self-caring than we think and tend to forget about the little things!
But sometimes we need to show ourselves that we are special! Onto thought provoking self-caring tips!
Coping and self-caring isn’t all that easy when we think of it as this grand thing with expected outcomes. That’s why it is important to acknowledge the little things!
Be kind to yourself and others!
If you haven’t seen my last post and would like to read it, click here! I share changes, a poem and talk about society!
– Dez 🙂
TurningPointCT.org was developed by young people in Connecticut who are in recovery from mental health and substance use issues. We know what it’s like to feel alone, stressed, worried, sad, and angry. We’ve lived through the ups and downs of self-harm, drugs and alcohol, and the struggle to find help.
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