All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.
Practice how you’d cope with difficult events. Pick from the scenarios in this chapter or come up with others that are meaningful to you. Make it real and vivid – walk through each step; picture what you’d think, feel, say, and do.
The more you practice, the more you’ll be ready to cope with whatever comes your way. Like an athlete picturing a golf swing in slow motion, get it into body memory. Be a coping athlete – don’t let trauma and addiction win. Each time you cope well, you build resilience.
Remember to choose good coping that doesn’t hurt you or anyone else. For ideas, see “Safe coping skills” (Chapter 12).
Explore . . . How would you cope . . . ?
Others?
Suggestions
Imagine it as a movie scene. Watch yourself coping as if you’re the star of the movie. Or play the movie director who instructs the actor on what to do. Really imagine it.
Contrast safe versus unsafe coping. If the scenario is “Your doctor finds a lump that needs further testing,” what would your unsafe coping be (getting high? panicking and assuming the worst?)? Next contrast what your safe coping would be (finding out as much information as you can? talking it over with a friend?).
Start easy. Build up to harder scenarios. This creates mastery, like a musician who practices simple scales and eventually plays complex songs.
Get feedback. This is important for any type of practice – athletic, musical, academic. A coach gives you realistic feedback while also encouraging you. Find people who can give you honest feedback on how well you’re coping.
Remember the bottom line. Nothing – no matter what happens – has to lead to unsafe behavior. There is always a way to cope safely.
Make it fun. Find a coping buddy to rehearse scenarios.
Set aside time to practice. Learning fades if practice ends. Rehearse while you’re walking, cooking, cleaning, driving, or any other routine part of the day.
If you practice coping skills, how might your life improve – in a week, a month, a year?
RECOVERY VOICES
Barbara – “When you practice, you create new connections in your brain.”
“I’ve been in therapy most of my life and have done a lot of trauma work. But I think another big part of my recovery has been just sheer practice. I role-play little scenarios in my mind – how I might say something to someone or how I’d think through something or coach myself through something. As the chapter says, it really is like an athlete doing all that preparation in sports psychology – picturing the scene, each move you’ll make, and how you’ll stay calm when there’s havoc around you. I say to myself that it’s like a muscle, and muscles aren’t strong unless you practice. Like if your trauma involved the sound of gunfire and now you hear a loud explosion on the street, the way the neurobiology of trauma works is that you don’t have a chance in hell to respond in a healthy way unless you practice. But when you practice, you create new connections in your brain and you have an alternative instead of spiraling down into unsafe addictive and trauma behaviors. That neurobiology piece is really important – it’s there in your body until you retrain yourself to have a counterweight to those triggers. Both trauma and addiction are triggering, and I know that I need to do double-duty here and practice both types of triggers.”
This chapter was adapted from Seeking Safety by Lisa M. Najavits (Guilford Press, 2002) with permission of the author.