Everything You Wanted to Know About Coping Skills
In today’s fast-paced and high-stress world, stress and emotional situations are a part of our daily life. Almost every client who comes to therapy expresses being anxious or depressed, even when that’s not the primary reason they sought therapy.
Bills, family responsibilities, work-home demands, and even positive life changes can feel overwhelming, especially within systems that emphasize productivity in ways that can heighten stressors on the workforce. This is where coping skills for depression, anxiety, or other stressful situations come into play.
You may have seen the term floating around Pinterest or Instagram, Coping Skills Bingo or colorful “wheels” of coping skills to try. These resources can be fun and a good introduction to the concept, but many don’t answer the deeper questions:
What exactly are coping skills?
Why do adults need coping skills?
How do you know which coping strategies actually work?
As a therapist, I’ve had countless conversations with clients about coping, which is not surprising. What might be more surprising is that I’ve had similar conversations in my personal life too, with friends, family and acquaintances I barely know.
Although everybody has heard of coping skills, many of us don’t quite understand what they are or how to use them in our life. The fact of the matter is that we all need more coping skills. It’s how we survive this hectic, modern society while still remaining balanced and present.
This guide is designed to help you understand more about coping skills and give you practical, research-backed tools to add to your coping toolkit.
What Are Coping Skills?
Coping skills, also called coping strategies or coping mechanisms, are tools and techniques you can use to help you handle difficult emotions, decrease stress, and establish or maintain a sense of internal order. They can be helpful to use when you’re feeling angry, anxious, sad, stressed, or overwhelmed.
Two Types of Coping Skills
1. In The Moment Coping Skills
These are simple tactics you can use in the moment if you feel you need to get control over your emotions and need relief right away. They’re especially useful during stressful or overwhelming moments. Examples include:
Deep breathing or box breathing
Mindfulness exercises
Grounding techniques (like 5-4-3-2-1 sensory awareness)
Counting to 10 before responding
Taking a walk around the block
Journaling or brain-dumping racing thoughts onto paper
These simple actions help bring your nervous system back into balance, giving your brain a chance to respond instead of react.
2. Lifestyle-Based Coping Skills
These are proactive or reflective strategies that can be used before or after a challenging event. They are habits you can incorporate into your daily routine. Using lifestyle-based coping skills allows people to build resilience over time. These might be things like:
Going to bed at a reasonable time
Visualization exercises
Having regular down time to decompress
Eating healthy
Getting exercise
Connecting with friends or family
Decreasing or stopping substance use
Guided meditations
Decreasing screen time
Limiting or avoiding caffeine
How Many Coping Skills Do People Need?
There’s no magic number. The more coping skills you have, the better prepared you’ll be.
Imagine you’re a builder wearing a tool belt. You won’t be able to fix every problem with a hammer. Sometimes you need a screwdriver, sometimes a wrench, sometimes a tape measure. Coping skills work the same way. As you build your tool belt and expand your methods of coping, you’ll start to learn which techniques work best for you in which situations.
For example:
Breathing exercises may work during a panic attack.
Talking to a friend may help when you’re sad.
Physical activity may be better when you’re angry or restless.
Building a toolkit of diverse coping skills for adults ensures you always have options no matter what stressful or emotional situation you find yourself in.
How Do You Know Which Coping Skills Work For You?
Coping is highly individual. Coping skills look different for everyone and work differently based on the situation or circumstance. What works for your friend or neighbor might not work for you, and vice versa.
Tips for figuring out what works for you:
Try new skills in low-stress situations before using them in a crisis.
Notice how your body and mind feel afterward. Are you more relaxed, more focused, or still agitated?
Adjust based on the situation. (For example, closing your eyes to meditate may not work while driving, but listening to music might.)
Developing a set of effective coping skills means learning more about yourself and getting curious about what works and what doesn’t.
Rethinking Coping Skills: Beyond Individual Productivity
Traditionally, coping skills are defined as strategies to manage stress, regulate emotions, and respond to challenges. While that’s useful, it can feel limiting. Especially when the stress we experience is rooted in systemic constraints beyond your control like work demands, childcare gaps, or inequities that may shape your experience.
When we consider this, coping skills aren’t just about calming ourselves down when we are alone. They can also be practices that:
Build resilience and reduce stress through rest, joy, and cultural or ancestral practices.
Encourage collective care and connection through community, mutual aid, or shared rituals.
Reimagine systems by co-envisioning ways to reclaim time, setting boundaries, or turning frustration into activism.
From this perspective, coping isn’t always an individual task. It’s a form of survival, liberation, and collective care. That means activities like spending time in nature, creating art for pleasure, building community, or engaging in advocacy work can all be considered legitimate coping skills.
When we reframe coping skills in this way, it allows us to honor practices that sustain us emotionally, socially, and spiritually. It connects with the greater collective and reminds us that we are more than our individual struggles. Coping skills are not simply a survival technique in the pressures of our current world: they’re a way to reclaim our whole selves.
Coping Skills for Adults
Adults face unique pressures, many of which are shaped by structural factors and challenging systems. Our society pushes long work hours, places caregiving responsibilities disproportionately on women and marginalized communities, creates constant financial stress, and makes holding a job difficult in a culture that values productivity over people.
Developing coping skills for adults helps you reclaim your right to rest, experience joy, and open up time for community and relationships.
Examples include:
Using calendars or lists to carve out protected time for rest
Setting boundaries with work and family to resist overextending yourself
Practicing assertive communication
Engaging in hobbies or creative practices
Prioritizing community involvement
Gratitude journaling
These approaches reduce stress, but more importantly, they create space to live beyond survival mode and productivity.
Building Your Coping Skills Toolbox
The good news is that you likely already have some coping tools in your tool kit, and you may not even know it! If you’ve ever gone for a drive to calm down when you’re feeling upset, that’s using a coping skill.
If you like to take your dog for a walk to think things over when you’re anxious, that’s a coping skill. Cooking comfort foods, calling a loved one, singing along to your favorite jams, or getting your hands dirty in the garden are all valid and powerful coping strategies.
While you may have a few go-to skills, you can always work to broaden and strengthen the coping skills in your tool belt. Sometimes what used to work, doesn’t work anymore. We change throughout our life as people, so it makes sense that our coping skills may need to change with us. When this happens it’s helpful to switch it up.
To expand your toolkit:
Identify the strategies you already use
Add 2-3 new coping skills to try this month
Rotate and adapt as your needs change
Keep track in a journal to see what works best
Healthy vs. Unhealthy Coping Skills
Not all coping mechanisms are created equal. Some provide temporary relief but hurt you in the long run. Many unhealthy coping skills are marketed to us as rewards but keep us stuck in cycles of harm.
Unhealthy coping strategies include:
Excessive drinking or substance use
Emotional eating or restricting food
Overspending or “retail therapy”
Avoiding difficult conversations or responsibilities
Numbing through screen time
Overworking or burning yourself out
While these might distract from stress temporarily, they create more problems later.
By contrast, healthy coping skills reduce stress in the moment and also strengthen your long-term well-being. Real coping helps us process emotions and build resilience, not just distract from pain.
If you find yourself using unhealthy coping skills, it may be helpful to get support from an experienced therapist to help you build more healthy and effective coping skills.
Why Life Coping Skills Are a Long-Term Investment
Think of life coping skills as an investment in your future self. Just like saving money or maintaining your physical health, practicing coping consistently pays off later.
Adults who practice strong life coping skills tend to handle stress more effectively, recover faster from setbacks, maintain stronger relationships and experience better overall mental and physical health.
In short, coping skills are not just about stress relief and surviving tough times. They are about enjoying our everyday life. When we commit to rest, boundaries, and joy, we reimagine systems that tell us we are only valuable if we produce, consume, or endure silently.
When to Seek Support
Sometimes coping skills alone aren’t enough. If you find that stress, anxiety, or depression continues to overwhelm you despite your best efforts, it may be time to seek professional support. Therapy, support groups, or counseling can help you learn new coping strategies and strengthen existing ones.
Final Thoughts
Coping skills aren’t just tools for managing stress. They’re practices of survival, care, and thriving. Whether you’re exploring coping skills for adults, building coping skills for depression, or developing long-term life coping skills, the goal isn’t to perform wellness or optimize productivity. It’s to reclaim your body, your time, and your joy.
I hope that you now have a better understanding of what coping skills are and how to use them in your life. I also hope you test out some new coping skills in an effort to build your own personal tool belt.
We’re Here to Help You in Georgia
Building your coping skills toolkit can be empowering, but additional professional support makes all the difference. If you’re in Georgia and looking for guidance on coping skills for adults, coping skills for depression, or developing long-term life coping skills, our Georgia-based therapists are here to help.
We offer individualized support tailored to your needs. Reaching out is a crucial step toward building resilience and reclaiming balance in your life. We offer telehealth therapy sessions throughout Georgia.
Contact us today for a complimentary phone consultation with a licensed therapist in Georgia.
If you are not located in Georgia, we encourage you to find a trusted, licensed mental health professional in your state to support your coping skills and mental health journey safely.
