Over the past few years I have been thinking about coping skills and self-care. We tend think of them very different and because we think of them differently different people do self-care of use coping skills.
Psych Central defines self-care as "any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health". The World Health Organization defines it as "the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider". Self-care can promote health, but also help us cope with disease (read dis-ease); it's prevention and treatment. Social workers typically talk about self-care as a strategy to deal with stress and promote burnout. There are many examples of self-care, but I think of it as both instances and practice. Taking a bubble bath or venting to a close friend are instances of self-care. Practices of self-care could be setting boundaries in one's professional and personal life or drinking enough water every day to stay hydrated. Here is a list of 134 self-care activities.
The Center for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) define coping as "the thoughts and actions we do to deal with a threatening situation". Whether you call them coping skills or coping strategies, they are things people do to deal with stressful situations. I have issues with the term coping skills because it seems like sometimes we just talk about coping skills while people are getting treatment instead of talking about how people can have a better quality of life. Even if coping gets easier, it's still just coping.
CSHS discussing coping skills as either problem-focused or emotion focused. Depending on the type of stress, coping skills differ but coping is a process. The Cleveland Clinic offers a good article on coping with stressful situations and gives some examples of common coping skills. There are many different times of coping skills and their effectiveness varies from one person to another. I've always encouraged people to find coping skills that work for you. Coping skills help people cope with stress and (hopefully) prevent further negative consequences. Here is a list of examples of coping skills.
When you start to think about coping skills they start to look a lot like the instances and practices of self-care.
Now who does self-care and who uses coping skills?
When you listen to conversations, self-care generally focuses on the professional while coping skills are more for the client.
- A social worker who sleeps in may say "Oh I needed that" and colleagues may recognize that as self-care. A client who sleeps in may be considered lazy or unmotivated.
- A social worker who says that are going to have a bottle of wine after a stressful week at work is celebrated for their commitment to themselves, but a client who says they drank a bottle of wine after a long week could be seen as having a "drinking problem".
- A social worker who goes and gets a manicure is typically seen as investing in themselves, while a client who gets a manicure may be seen as wasteful.
I think we have unintentionally (or intentionally?) made self-care a privilege with how we talk about it and made coping skills something "the other" has to do to get through stress. In other words, professionals get to engage in self-care while clients get to cope. Perhaps it's becomes the professionals have moved beyond coping or they know how to cope. Maybe it's healthier (or easier) to help clients focus on coping skills rather than the instances and practices of self-care.
The Equation for 2021
In 2021, let's change our thoughts around self-care and coping skills. We see by definition that each can serve a slightly different purpose, even though the act is the same. Mindful meditation can be a practice of self-care, but it can also be used to cope with an emerging life stressor. We need both coping skills and self-care. Social workers, professionals, and the people we work need both. This year let's think of self-care and coping skills as part of the wellness equation. It may be a bit over simplified, but when we start to combine self-care in it's fullness and coping skills we can achieve wellness for ourselves.
When there many components to wellness such as emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual. Wellness is interrelated and interdependent. Self-care and coping skills both can help us promote our own wellness.
Challenge
As we begin 2021, let's think about how we can practice self-care and use our coping skills as part of our strategy to achieve and maintain our own wellness.
