In seeking out help for my husband, counseling soon
became an integral part of our lives and probably our first healthy coping
skill. I remember from those initial counseling visits the counselor asking
what our current coping skills were and discussing if they were healthy or
unhealthy. Not being aware previously, we soon realized the way we were
handling stress in our lives was by spending money. Money we didn’t have which
in turn led to more stress which in turn led us to continue spending money.
Looking back, it seems it should have been obvious but realizing how young we
were and that no one had ever shown us before, we are grateful we did discover
this truth early on.
And so began our journey to replace our unhealthy coping
skills with healthy ones. We received help making a budget and keeping
to it. We soon realized it was easier to keep our budget if we also managed our
time more wisely which in turn also helped our stress levels. Focusing on time
management led us to realize how important sleep was and that our sleep hygiene
needed some serious attention. Along with sleep hygiene we were introduced to mindfulness,
mediation, and yoga. Studying and improving our sleep hygiene led us to realize
that we were not drinking enough water and so we made it a goal to drink more
water as a family.
Drinking more water led us to be more mindful of our bodies
and that we needed to be more careful to eat healthy. One of my worst unhealthy
coping skills I had to kick was eating chocolate almonds. I was horrible! I
would go to the bulk store and get a huge bag of them and keep them handy, too
handy and I had far too many and used my stress to justify eating them
constantly. I’m super grateful that I was able to through time, hard work, and
many attempts replace snacking on chocolate almonds all day to snacking on my
favorite veggies. For our family personally, we realized it was the snacking we
liked. So, finding tasty veggies that I enjoyed like cherry tomatoes, baby
carrots, snap peas, and spinach leaves and placing them in my chocolate almond
stash spots helped me a ton. What I really wanted was something small I could
go to throughout the day and use as a stress snack.
Once we started eating better, it gave us the energy to
finally do one healthy coping skill we talked and talked about but never did.
Exercise! We are still fine-tuning this one and enjoying it! It definitely
helps us manage the many things that life throws at us. Another fun coping
skill we have learned is to every once in a while, have a nothing day. A day
with no appointments, VA or otherwise, where we can just sit, relax and enjoy
our family. I imagine as we continue, we will learn more healthy coping skills
that will enrich our lives and make it possible to enjoy our lives regardless of
the many challenges involved.
As I look over this little blog post, the summary of our
healthy coping skills journey looks so neat and organized. I assure you; it was
not! There were many steps forward and steps back and there were many repeat
attempts. It was not a perfect sequential line but overlappings of many
experiences. One aspect that strikes out the strongest to me is being patient
with yourself in these kinds of transitions. To remember that even if you have
an unhealthy coping skill it is unwise to just stop doing it without a plan to
transition to a healthy coping skill. Even unhealthy coping skills are helping
you deal with the stress. Once, I simply eliminated some unhealthy coping
skills (such as chocolate almonds) without any plan of replacement for a
healthy coping skill to take up what the chocolate almonds were alleviating for
me. My stress shot through the roof and put us in crisis mode instead of
management mode and I learned my lesson. I have learned if I want to make an
improvement in how I am handling the stress of our lives, I first make sure a
safe transition is set in place.
One more thing I would like to say about all these wonderful
experiences of trial and error sprinkled with improvement is thank you to the
many organizations that helped us in the process. Many times, the ones to
introduce us to and/or help us refine healthy coping skills were veteran
service and nonprofit organizations. Thank you for the continued and thoughtful
support in addition to activities of relaxation to our family. How wise to remember
to give ourselves a day off occasionally and we are grateful for all these
opportunities.
~Veteran Caregiver
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