10 coping skills to integrate your mind, body, and soul.
Coping skills are a wonderful way to regulate your body and connect with your mind and soul. Anytime there is a threat to your internal system, your body reacts to defend you and keep you safe. But in your body’s effort to protect, it can sometimes make you disconnected from your mind and soul.
Let me explain further. When your body feels unsafe, it goes into hyperdrive and hyper-focuses on a perceived threat. This in turn, prevents your mind from really thinking rationally and overtime it deadens your spirit. Ever wonder why when you are feeling really overwhelmed, you can’t think straight? Or why when you are feeling really distressed, you lose your passion and zeal? That’s your mind and soul being hijacked by the body.
And this is why you need strong coping skills. Coping skills help you to honor the body and affirm the body’s function to keep you safe, while bringing in the mind and the soul to anchor you. It offers you integration and regulation, instead of dysregulation and discord.
When your body reacts in defense mode, you tend to engage in really harmful behaviors and think in ways that are self-debilitating and destructive. But when you begin to understand how your body functions and how much control you really have over your body, you can attune to it and respond to it’s needs in a way that is affirming, soothing, and healing.
Let me give you an example.
When I was in graduate school, I was so stressed almost every day. Every moment of my day was filled with something to do for school or work, or to sustain a relationship. I barely had anytime for myself. Without really knowing it, I was becoming dysregulated. My body needed rest and I wasn’t listening. It began to really take a toll on my mental health and I felt this aching pain in my shoulders and back.
At any moment I felt like I could quit my job, drop out of school, and then crawl into a tiny black hole. I wasn’t practicing any coping skills. There was no self-care. There was barely a self. Everything began to feel dead inside. I was just a lifeless robot functioning on autopilot. My body had crippled my mind and soul, and it was doing everything in it’s power to make sure I pay attention to it.
But that’s where coping skills enter in.
When I started taking care of my mental health and practicing coping skills, like seeing a therapist, praying every morning, making time to workout, and journaling, my body started to calm down, and it eased the chock hold it had on my mind and soul. I felt like I could think more rationally again and I felt inspired to live with passion and invigoration.
If I integrated coping skills into my daily routine and prioritized my self-care, I most likely would have never took such a dark turn. I didn’t need to wait until everything was crumbling around me and within me to practice coping and caring for myself. But I am so glad that when I did start practicing coping skills and self-care, I felt whole again.
And that is why it is absolutely essential to practice a coping strategy every day and respond to your body’s needs as soon as you experience the “threat,” or shift that signals to you something is wrong. When you do just that, you are also responding to your mind and soul, and in turn, you experience more wholeness and deeper fulfillment, that carries you through the stressors and struggles of life.
HERE ARE 10 COPING SKILLS YOU CAN TRY THAT HAVE BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN TO REALLY HELP INTEGRATE YOUR MIND, BODY AND SOUL.
TAKE SLOW, CONSCIOUS BREATHS
Anytime you take slow, conscious breaths and focus only on your breathing, you help your body reset. It sends an instant signal to your brain that you are okay and are in control. This in turn, helps your entire body to relax which helps you to think more positively and feel more uplifted in your soul. When you take take slow, conscious breathes, make sure to breathe in from your belly, and allow the breath to slowly rise up. When it reaches up towards your lungs, gently hold your breathe, and then slowly breathe out allowing the breath to fall back down into your belly. It may be helpful to start off with an exhale to fill more air into your lungs for your inhale.
AFFIRM YOURSELF
When your body goes into hyperdrive, there are a million of negative thoughts or worries that can flood your mind. It’s important to think about all the wonderful things that make you who you are or positive words and/ or phrases that have been said to you to challenge the negative thoughts. You can repeat these words and phrases, imagining all the words/phrases are true for you over and over again until your mind becomes unclogged and the flood goes down the drain. It’s also helpful to ask yourself, “What is more rational and true right now?” Bringing in more rationality and truth, will help you to experience more positivity and rest your body, mind and soul.
USE YOUR SENSES
When your body hyper-focuses on the threat, you lose your ability to ground yourself in the present moment. It’s like you are transmitted into another place and time period where the threat doesn’t exist. For example, you may dissociate and feel like you are no longer even in your body. Or you may be thinking so much about the past and the future, that you are unable to see what is happening in the present. But when you use your senses, such as touch, taste, smell, sight, and listen, you can be present to what is going on within you and around you in the now, and you will feel less threatened by the future or past, and more connected to your body.
CREATE A SAFE PLACE
When your body feels unsafe, your world feels unsafe. It is difficult to experience peace. Especially, if you have experienced a lot of trauma. The mind can take you back to that trauma in an instant, the moment your body feels triggered. When you create a safe place for yourself, one that you and only you have permission to go to, you give yourself the interior freedom to escape from the perceived harm or threat, and experience your own internal safety. Make sure to use your senses to help you really enter into this safe place, so that it can ground you in this place. If it helps, imagine a safe person in the space with you and the comforting words that they might say to you.
GET MOVING
When we are living disintegrated, it is easy to neglect your body’s health. Everything can feel so empty and lifeless, and it can be hard to have motivation to even get up from bed. However, research suggests that when you get moving and exercise (anything to get the heart pumping) it releases a specific chemical (serotonin) in your body to help you relax and experience more peace, and even happiness.
BE MINDFUL
Mindfulness is all about noticing what you are experiencing in the present moment without judgment. It’s attuning to your mind, body and soul. This can be hard to do if you are experiencing a threat or feeling unsafe in your body, or perhaps you are experiencing many distressing emotions or thoughts. Therefore, this practice is best done when you have successfully got your body to relax. However, the most you practice mindfulness, the more your body will naturally relax and you will feel more attuned to your whole self. You will begin to notice when “shifts” happen and your mental health is being compromised.
JOURNAL
Journaling helps you to slow down and process what is going on inside of you and around you. It is not necessarily a “Dear Diary, today I…” but an intentional and active listing to your hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities, struggles, failures, and/or accomplishments. It’s helpful to think about your journal as a safe place to be the real you and deal with your real feelings. You will also come to find when you make journaling a consistent practice, that you have a lot of internal wisdom. The Holy Spirit will even work through you and offer you new perspectives and guidance. Remember to also read back to prior entries when you are experiencing distressing thoughts and emotions. You will be amazed by how much your past words can help you in the present. Struggling to know what to journal about, check out these journal questions from the “resources” page.
PRAY OR MEDITATE
Pausing to center yourself in something bigger than yourself has so many positive benefits to your overall health. When you pray or meditate, your brain releases oxytocin which helps you to feel better. It helps your body to release tension and helps your mind to experience hope. Entrusting yourself to a higher being, also elevates your consciousness and gets you out of the rut of negative thinking patterns and/or relying on your own frailty. It’s a mindful act which helps you to focus your attention on the here and now, and pay attention to your needs and feelings. This is all good medicine for your mind, body and soul, and provides much support for your overral mental health.
RELEASE TENSION
When your body does not feel safe, or there is a threat to your internal system, your body will respond by tightening up. This is why when I was feeling overwhelmed in graduate school, I felt like I was walking around with a ton of bricks on my shoulders every day. In order to best release the tension before it starts to impact your overall health, it is important to get in touch with your body through body scans and progressive muscle relaxation. This is also a mindful practice but it does require a little bit more deliberate action on your part. In order to best practice this, utilize your deep, conscious breaths, and then scan your entire body from the tip of your head to the tip of your toes. Do your best to notice any sensations or feelings. Beginning with your toes, tighten the toes and then release the tightness. Then repeat with each body part, all the way up to your head. You can even imagine your deep breaths, lifting away any pain, discomfort or tension you may be feeling. Continue practicing this exercise until your body feels more relaxed and the tension is released.
IMAGINE THE “CONTAINER”
When your mind, body and soul become disconnected and you start to feel dysregulated, it can be hard to “contain” yourself. It can feel like you are about to explode or disintegrate into a million tiny pieces, or in my case crawl into a tiny black hole. It can be helpful to acknowledge when this happens and your need for a “container.” The reality is, sometimes you are not in a safe place or space to really explore your body, mind and soul, and practice various coping strategies. The “container” helps you visualizing everything you are experiencing being put into it so that your body knows you are paying attention it but can’t do anything at this time. Then, when you are in a better place or space, you can open the container up and deal with what you put inside of it.