Everyone develops unique ways of dealing with stress. Perhaps you throw yourself into work to distract from nagging worries or take a day to focus on self-care when you feel overwhelmed. But sometimes, coping mechanisms outlive their usefulness. What began as an effective way to get through a stressful period can gradually become a source of anxiety, relationship problems, burnout, or other consequences.
Why We Develop Coping Mechanisms
All coping mechanisms begin with a legitimate purpose. If thinking about a painful experience makes you anxious, avoiding it can provide immediate relief. If you feel uncomfortable in social situations, alcohol might temporarily make conversation easier. If slowing down leaves you alone with difficult thoughts, staying constantly busy can keep those feelings at a distance.
The release you feel when something reduces your discomfort reinforces the behavior, making you more likely to repeat it the next time you encounter a similar feeling. Eventually, the response can become automatic. You may reach for your phone whenever you’re uncomfortable, pour a drink immediately after work, or say yes to requests before you’ve even considered whether you have the time or energy.
How Does Avoidance Shrink People’s Worlds?
Avoidance is one of the most common coping strategies. It can take obvious forms, such as refusing to drive after being in a frightening car accident. But it can also be subtle.
You might postpone reading an email from your boss because you’re afraid of what it says, skirt around difficult conversation topics with your partner to prevent conflict, or turn down invitations because you always feel on edge in social situations. Every time you do this, it will temporarily increase your anxiety.
Unfortunately, your brain may interpret that relief as evidence that avoidance kept you safe. The next encounter can feel even more threatening, reinforcing a cycle in which anxiety increasingly determines what you do. Over time, habitually avoiding discomfort can also affect your relationships, experiences, and opportunities.
When Productivity Becomes Avoidance
Many maladaptive coping mechanisms are socially acceptable, such as overworking. Professional ambition and a high work ethic are valuable qualities. But work can also become a convenient way to avoid grief, relationship problems, loneliness, anxiety, or other uncomfortable emotions.
You may praise yourself for productivity, all while feeling restless whenever you aren’t in the middle of a project. Eventually, this can contribute to chronic stress and burnout. Your relationships may suffer if you always put work first, and downtime may feel uncomfortable rather than restorative.
People-Pleasing Can Protect You From Conflict
Keeping other people happy can also function as a coping mechanism. If disagreement, criticism, or rejection feels threatening, accommodating everyone around you may seem safer than expressing your needs and wants.
People-pleasing may reduce tension in the moment, but constantly monitoring other people’s moods and apologizing when you haven’t done anything wrong can eventually produce resentment, exhaustion, and unhealthy relationship dynamics.
Substances and Addictive Behaviors Can Become Coping Tools
Alcohol, drugs, gambling, and other behaviors can also provide short-term emotional relief. However, the fact that a behavior serves an emotional purpose doesn’t eliminate its potential consequences. Unhealthy, maladaptive coping mechanisms can:
- Become a source of relationship conflict
- Interfere with your work or responsibilities
- Become increasingly difficult to control, while providing less relief than it once did
- Leave you feeling ashamed, anxious, or depleted afterward
People who develop healthy emotional regulation skills have the capacity to experience unwanted feelings without becoming overwhelmed or needing to immediately escape them.
Therapy Isn’t Just About Taking Coping Mechanisms Away
Telling someone to stop avoiding, drinking, overworking, or people-pleasing rarely addresses why the behavior developed. If a coping mechanism has helped you manage anxiety, trauma, stress, loneliness, or another difficult experience, removing it without replacing it can leave a significant gap. Therapy can help you understand what specific habits accomplish for you and develop healthier ways to meet the same underlying need.
That might mean learning to tolerate anxiety instead of automatically avoiding it, setting boundaries rather than keeping everyone happy, developing emotional regulation skills, or finding alternatives to substances or compulsive behaviors.
Treatment at Insight Into Action Therapy can also address underlying concerns such as anxiety, depression, trauma, burnout, relationship difficulties, substance use, and addiction. The goal is a targeted plan that improves your ability to function in your daily life.
If the strategies you use to escape discomfort have started creating more problems than they solved, that may be a sign that it’s time to develop a different set of tools. Schedule your appointment today to learn more.
