I used to hear the words “coping strategies” and “coping mechanisms” and honestly think, what the fuck does that even mean?

Luckily, after more than a decade of yo-yo dating my mental health as if I was breaking up, getting back together, ignoring all the red flags, I think I finally get it. So here’s my take. Not from a textbook. Not from a therapy worksheet. But from lived experience, questionable decisions, and the realisation that “pretending I’m fine” is not actually a long term wellness plan. I was the problem.

Coping strategies sound like something you’d see on a worksheet while you sit there nodding like, “yeah, absolutely,” when really your main coping strategy is ignoring your messages, avoiding your feelings, restarting your entire life in your head, and hoping a new personality arrives by Monday.

For a long time, I thought I was coping. Turns out, I was mostly just surviving with a few questionable accessories. Alcohol. Pretending. Laughing things off. Saying “it is what it is” when it absolutely was not what it was. Keeping busy so I didn’t have to feel anything. Avoiding hard conversations. Avoiding myself. And sometimes other things I’m not going to share online, because healing is great but so is having boundaries. But I also don’t think we should beat ourselves up for the ways we survived. You dealt with what you were going through with the capacity you had back then. And sometimes, that capacity was tiny. Sometimes you were running on fumes, confusion, survival mode, and a nervous system that had absolutely no interest in behaving itself.

I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD, and honestly, it’s opened a whole can of worms. Suddenly you start looking back at your life like, “Oh… so I wasn’t just lazy, dramatic, messy, emotional, inconsistent and incapable of being a functioning adult with matching socks? Doing the work is scary. It’s actually really hard. And who has the time, right? You’re working full time. Or looking after kids. Or studying. Or trying to keep a house semi-clean. Or replying to messages. Or seeing friends. Or doing the food shop. Or trying to remember whether you’ve washed your hair this week or just thought about washing it very seriously. Everything gets trapped in between. And then, in the middle of all that, there’s that quiet little voice. The one that pops up when you’re already tired. Telling you that you’re behind. That you look older. That you’ve gained weight. That you’re not doing enough. That everyone else seems to be handling life better than you. And then it starts. The spiral. The shame. The “what is wrong with me?” playlist on repeat. But sometimes, and I say this with love, you do have to ask yourself: Am I actually the problem here? Not in a self-hating, “everything is my fault” kind of way. Not in a “let me blame myself for every bad thing that’s ever happened” kind of way. But in a grown-up, slightly uncomfortable, very annoying way. Because sometimes the problem isn’t that everyone hates you. Sometimes the problem is that you’re exhausted and reading tone into everything. Sometimes the problem isn’t that your life is ruined. Sometimes the problem is that you haven’t eaten, slept properly, or left the house. Sometimes the problem isn’t that nobody cares. Sometimes the problem is that you keep saying “I’m fine” and then getting upset when nobody magically hears the scream behind it. Sometimes the problem isn’t that you can’t change. Sometimes the problem is that your old coping strategies are still trying to run the show. And that’s hard to admit. Because it’s easier to blame your past, your parents, your ex, your friends, your anxiety, your job, your childhood, your hormones, the moon, Mercury being in microwave or whatever. And sometimes, to be fair, those things did affect you. People hurt you. Life shaped you. You learned certain ways of surviving because you had to. But there also comes a point where you have to stop using pain as a permanent permission slip to stay the same. That doesn’t mean your pain wasn’t real. It doesn’t mean you deserved what happened. It doesn’t mean you need to forgive everyone, hold hands, skip into the sunset and pretend it was all character development. Absolutely not. It just means your healing is yours now. Annoying, isn’t it? Because we’re somehow taught to put our needs last. To attend to everything else first. Work first. Everyone else first. The house first. The messages first. The responsibilities first. Then maybe, one day, when everything is calm and perfect and organised, you can finally show up for yourself. News flash: that day is not coming. Not because life is awful, but because life is life. There will always be dishes. There will always be something to sort. Someone to reply to. A job to do. A body to look after. A brain having a weird little moment in the background. So you can’t keep waiting until everything else is handled before you decide you matter.

This is your one chance. And I don’t mean that in a terrifying “change your entire life by Thursday” kind of way. I mean it gently. You are the only person who is with you from birth to your death bed. That sounds dramatic, but it’s true. You are the one who hears every thought. Every insult. Every criticism. Every “you’re not good enough.” Every “why are you like this?” Every horrible little comment you would probably never say to someone you loved. So maybe one of the most important coping strategies is learning to make your own mind a nicer place to live. Not perfect. Not positive all the time. Not floating around like a monk with great skin and zero unread messages. Just kinder. Speak to yourself better, even if you don’t believe it yet. That’s one coping strategy I’m trying to develop: learning to self-soothe. Learning to talk myself down instead of tearing myself apart. Learning to say, “Okay, this feels hard, but I’m not broken.” Learning to say, “I’m overwhelmed, not useless.” Learning to say, “I’m allowed to rest before I completely fall apart.” Learning to say, “I did what I could with what I had.” Because maybe coping strategies are just the things we reach for when being human feels too much. Some of them help. Some of them hurt. Some of them got us through a version of life we didn’t know how to survive any other way. But we’re allowed to learn new ones. We’re allowed to outgrow the ones that keep us stuck. We’re allowed to stop calling self-destruction a personality trait. And we’re allowed to become someone who is safe to live inside. So, what the fuck are coping strategies? Maybe they’re not just about calming down. Maybe they’re about coming home to yourself.