Substance abuse, self-harm - coping strategies?

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By Kez Rebekah McNeill

This blog is a sort of followup from me from a random conversation with a virtual stranger on mental health.

Addictions, substance abuse, self harm… coping strategies? How does that work?

I think a big issue with the misunderstanding of these issues is because of what people define as a coping strategy. If I went up to people on the street and asked what they thought of as a coping strategy for anything, possibly talking, curling up with a blanket and cookies, watching a movie, reading a book, having a long bath or going to the gym would be some of the most common replies. Now let me analyse that: I would have asked an exceptionally vague question and got a range of answers which are all entirely viable as coping strategies. I have probably used all of them myself when I have been having a bad day and needed something to help me remove myself from what my day felt like.

Coping with emotions

But coping strategy is a very broad term. It is defined by Google as “Actions to invest conscious effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimize or tolerate stress and conflict”. In layman’s terms, it basically means anything at all which helps gives you a release. So yes, drugs, alcohol, smoking, self-harm of any type do all fit under that. They’re all efforts to cope with underlying emotions which, often, the individual themself cannot describe.

The thing is, I guess, at the end of the day, a lot of this started with emotionally lost and confused people. I was going to say children, but it’s not just children. Mental health has no discrimination, no type, it doesn’t select only people with blonde hair and blue eyes. It’s something so many are unfortunately going to encounter at some point.

Substance abuse and self-harm start because people are looking for a way to express what they cannot, a way to clarify emotions they cannot comprehend – people who would love to cry out for help but are too scared of those two words “attention seeking”, which are launched like a bomb by uneducated, misunderstanding peers. People don’t start with the intention of destroying their lives. They start as an attempt to be more okay. An attempt to understand how and what they are feeling. Nobody realises the downward spiral it begins.

A release

People always see others and wonder how they dropped so low, but when it’s you? Then you realise how hard a fight it is. Because it does give you a release. For a little while, although it doesn’t help you understand your feelings, you do get a release. A release long enough to find it worth continuing and trying another day, and that is the purpose of coping strategies.

The issue is that substance abuse and self-harm all affect chemicals in our brain and over time, we become more dependent on these chemicals to continue. We need them to get us through the day – it goes from a sporadic want to a daily need which we must have. Our brains need more. We drink more, we smoke more, we take more, we cut deeper, we burn longer… we just need more. It’s honestly not a choice. It spirals out of control and if it was as easy as putting down the bottle or dropping the blade, trust me we would! But it isn’t. We can’t. It’s something we need to get us through the day.

We need support, not stigma

We’re sorry, we feel we’re letting people down by not snapping out of it and doing what they say, so we withdraw – and our addiction withdraws with us. We need help, but admitting that is terrifying and getting it feels impossible. So please, support your friend or family or colleague or whoever it is, because together we can beat it with the right support.

A final point, I want to make it clear that I am not encouraging self-harm or any sort of substance usage as coping strategies. I am only trying to raise awareness of how (in my perception) they work. I’ve been virtually clean for almost 18 months, and that would have to be my biggest achievement. I just want people who have never felt the need for any of these negative coping methods to gain understanding of them, so we can work together to try and overcome them and reduce the stigma.

Reproduced with permission, originally posted here mymoonlitshadow