• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

Coping Skills

Hopefully you have a good person or people nearby to lean on. Everyone has good and bad days or weeks or months, it’s the people around us who can lift us up and help in time of need.

I knows it’s really hard in this digital life but all I have to give is a few minutes or hours, you are always welcome to PM me and I can see if meatspace can be accommodated!
 
Grissom said:
"Think of all the good things you’ve done and accomplished."
Serious question - How is this validated
By ones self, family, co-workers or employer?

This morning I was having breakfast at a restaurant by myself when I read a posting that really threw me off. At the moment I wish the person was having breakfast with me because I would have asked why they felt that way and just listened.
Click to expand...

I think it can only be validated by the individual person who is depressed. Though what other people say and do has value as well. In my case, not only do I have many things I can point to, but others can and have pointed them out to me as well. For instance, I have very close friends, that I know and have worked with for more than 35 years, starting up and contributing to various companies, and they have pointed these things out to me.
 
Brokenlink said:
I don't have a good answer. I suffer from depression and especially the whole seasonal thing.

I endure. I can think all the good shit I want but when I'm in it, I'm in it. Thinking about fluffy bunnies ain't gonna fix it.

I try to recognize where I am at. And I endure. Because I know eventually I will get past it.

Exercise does help. But for me, it has to involve the outdoors. Mtn biking has become my thing. It truly does change my attitude, even if it's for just a short time. Until I do the next ride, I endure.

Knowing someone is there helps too. If you need to talk, I am here.
Click to expand...
I’m high fiving you on the mountain biking.
 
Be here now

An amazing book if you're into hippie bullshit, but it's helped me for 30 years. He was an amazing man that I got to learn from and experience love in a pure form.

Struggling in life, is just life for me. One way or another, one emotion or another. I've gone through different things that have got me to where I am today, but the joy throughout is that helps me cope with the darkness.

The light at the end of the tunnel, is still at the end of the tunnel and it's really dark inside it and those steps are really long to take out of it.

But recognizing it in the moment, acknowledge that it's existing in that moment, and moving on to the next moment...

Be here now

Finding joy in any moment. Whether it's the most magical experience you've ever encountered, or just watching a leaf fall from a tree, is an incredible skill. Changing your mindset from spinning in the dark, to finding the light around you as small or simple as it is. The feeling of a deep breath, the smell of something clean, the sight of a kitty or the sound of its brrrtttt...

Be here now.
 
Melissa said:
It truly helps.
Click to expand...
My wife and I were in Sac a couple of weeks ago for a 3 year old great niece's birthday party, at William Land Regional Park. What a lovely space! I thought about you as I made a wrong freeway turn on the way home that put us on some street in West Sac. Prior to my navigation buffoonery we drove through old town which was absolutely mobbed, then through somewhere in Sacramento looking for a place to eat, which I never found.

Anyway, the point of all this drivel is that if you and your S/O would like to meet for lunch one of these days, let me know. We have talked/typed of this in the past.... SWMBO and I could take a drive.

Above all else dear lady, be well and be good to yourself.

Oh, and be forewarned, I am quite boring. SWMBO can carry a great conversation though! :)
 
for me, learning to cope was around anxiety. after a serious riding accident (horse), i’d get serious panic attacks when i got close enough to even smell the barn. and horses are phenomenal at detecting that when you’re on their back. it was a disaster. then the anxiety propagated to other situations (any time it felt like i had to be focused and ‘on’ - for lack of a better way to say it - clinical term: performance anxiety). spent a lot of years in therapy. learned how i was ‘built’ (how my mind worked). my personal coping mechanism? fix it - or forget it. i usually choose ‘fix’, but have gotten quite good at blowing shit off too (no patience for towing a sea anchor).
 
budman said:
Classic shit is drink or sleep. Neither fixes a damn thing.

Riding helps but I have to push myself out the door.

Edit to add: Exercise helps too. Get those endorphins going one way or another.
Click to expand...
Mental Doppelganger
 
when I'm feeling down I like to escape into a book or some silly anime, sometimes the right music can help. Going for a walk or a ride can create space for contemplation of what's bugging me.
 
Akira-R said:
One thing that does help is accomplishing tasks. Sweeping the yard, vacuuming the house, hanging up a painting etc.
Click to expand...
Only by reading this do I realize the degree of satisfaction I get from maintenance. My workweek is too frenetic to sit and stew. Any break time is collab time. There is no down time.

Dividing my weekends into categories continues makes me happy. Personal, chores for the family, professional. Today I'll test drive the KTM 1390 super adventure over to my moto bro's house nearby the dealer. Me/social. Then I'll do the maintenance circuit home and away, it's always there waiting. Tomorrow I'll tune-up the presentation my bosses gushed over but asked for changes on. If I'm at all bored and risk of stewing and these things are all done, I'll talk to my partner and watch a Ukrainian guy (I think) restore a FUBAR piece of furniture for 45 minutes and try to add an idea or novel tool technique to my knowledge base. Some days I feel like Neo in the Matrix: "I know how to rebuild a front-loading washing machine." The wife: "Show me..."
 
Another thing that I've done over the years when things got bad was to read, it helped my to calm my brain down so that I could go to sleep. Over the last several years I've moved to audio books, and listening to them has helped. Sometimes, when my brain wants to start back up in the middle of the night, I'll listen to the audio book and calm my mind back down so that I can get back to sleep.
 
I don't have any specific suggestions. I'm a coper, I'm very good at it.
Brokenlink said:
Knowing someone is there helps too.
Click to expand...
But I hope the response and positivty on this thread offers some margin of help, perhaps in showing that there's some light out there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top