it's time to stop coping. let that survival behavior go.

it's time to stop coping.

let that survival behavior go.

Addiction Relapse Prevention Strategies - YouTube

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healthy coping skills - YouTube

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Say when it's time to stop coping.

In her book Recovering from the Loss of a Child,

author Katherine Fair Donnelly writes of a man

whose infant daughter, Robyn, dies from SIDS

(sudden infant death syndrome). The child had

died in the stroller, while the mother was out

walking her. The father had stopped to get a

haircut that day and was given a number for his

turn.

"It was something he never did again in future

years," Donnelly wrote. "He would never take a

number at the barber's and always came home

first to make sure everything was all right. Then

he would go and get a haircut. It became one of

the ways he found of coping."

I hate coping. It's not living. It's not being free.

It reeks of surviving.

But sometimes it's the best we can do, for a

while.

Eight years after my son died, I was signing the

papers to purchase a home. It was the first home

I had bought since his death. The night before he

died, I had also signed papers to buy a new

home. I didn't know that I had begun to associate

buying a home with his death, until I noticed my

hand trembling and my heart pounding as I

finished signing the purchase agreement. For

eight years, I had simply avoiding buying a

home, renting one less-than-desirable place after

another and complaining about the travails of

being a renter. I only knew then that I was "never

going to buy another house again." I didn't

understand that I was coping.

Many of us find ways of coping. As children,

we may have become very angry with our

parents. Having no recourse, we may have said

to ourselves, "I'll show them, I'm never going to

do well at music, or sports, or studies again." As

adults, we may deal with a loss, or death, by

saying, "I'm always going to be nice to people

and make them happy. Then they won't go away." Or we may deal with a betrayal by saying, "I'm never

going to open my heart to a woman, or man,

again."

Coping often includes making an incorrect

connection between an event and our behavior.

It may help us survive, but at some point our

coping behaviors usually get in our way. They

become habits and take on a life of their own.

And although we think we're protecting ourselves

or someone we love, we aren't.

Robyn didn't die because her father took a

number and waited to get his hair cut.

My son didn't die because I bought a new house.

Are you keeping yourself from dong something

that you really want to do as a means of coping

with something that happened to you a long time

ago? Cope if you must, if it helps save your life.

But maybe today is the day you could set

yourself free.

God, show me if I'm limiting myself and my life in

some way by using an outdated coping behavior. Help me know that I'm safe and strong enough now to

let that survival behavior go.

You are reading from the book:

More Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

More Language of Letting Go © 2000 by Melody Beattie. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No portion of

this publication may be reproduced in any manner without the permission of Hazelden.

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