Coping Skills
Handout 1
GRADE 6 LESSON 15
Introduction to Coping Skills
The pre-teen years are the best time to learn these skills and begin to use
simple, brain-based coping tools. During this time our brain is rapidly
developing and our thinking ability becomes more like an adult. These skills and
tools give us the power to control our stress and get over daily upsets. We
learn coping skills like we learn math, English or music. Coping is like learning a new language. Many
of the terms are quite simple to learn, but only through practice can we improve our coping ability.
Let’s start by introducing some basic coping principles.
Humans are born with instinctive coping IMPULSES, but we have to learn coping SKILLS. All of us
are born with strong survival brain instincts that help us to stay alive when we were helpless and
totally depended on mother (and dad) as well as emotional brain instincts. While our survival and
emotional brain coping impulses are pretty well developed at birth, our thinking brain (neocortex)
needs time to develop since it's what we use to learn difficult things including coping skills. For
helpless babies, crying is emotional and survival brains' instinctive way of getting attention and help
when we had too much gas in our tummy or our bottom was cold or irritated by a soiled diaper.
When we were a bit older toddlers and got frustrated or upset while playing with other children,
hitting playmates became our other main protective instinct. These same emotional and survival
brain impulses were important to protect our self when our bodies or feelings were hurt. But by the
time we're nine-years-old, pre-teens and their brains are far more developed. We are able to learn
and use higher thinking abilities of our brain to "manage" those childhood emotional and survival
brain instinctive responses when we were frustrated or emotionally upset. Research studies show
that by about the age of nine, pre-teens become capable of managing upsets by themselves.
By using our brain (neocortex) to "figure out" how to cope with challenges we create new brain
coping cells. It's like lifting weights. Each time we challenge our thinking brain to understand why we
feel upset, we also become smarter in the way we act and respond to stress. Each coping success
brings greater confidence that tells us we CAN get over our next upset more easily. This makes kids
more resilient, the ability to use our barin to be more flexible, confident and stronger, and may even
help us to like ourselves more!
There’s nothing “wrong” with you when your feelings are hurt. Sometimes our upsets are more
stressful because we believe “Something is wrong with me” when the only thing that’s happened is
your brain feels threatened and that makes us afraid. We need neocortex to help us understand that
everyone gets their feelings hurt, but not everyone learns healthy coping skills for getting over it.
Taking responsibility for our own feelings. We cannot always control what others do or say to us
which bring on our upsets. But we can learn to be responsible for coping and dealing with the
emotional pain and stress we feel inside.
Coping skills increase our self-management ability. Once we learn how our coping brains work,
we gain a new sense of control over all of our own coping brain functions. The more we practice
healthy coping skills, the easier it becomes to get over the next upsetting experience.
Coping takes courage. It takes coping courage to learn how to deal with difficult or painful
problems head-on. Just wishing that stress and emotional pain goes away doesn't work. Neither does
trying to "blur out" our hurt feelings and stress by using drugs or alcohol. Drugs are like trying to give
our emotional brain a shot of Novocain like dentists use to numb our mouth. It only lasts a short
time. After it wears off we still have to cope with the real hurt stored inside our brain. If you have the
courage to face difficult situations, you will find yourself growing stronger after each time you cope
successfully. We can't run away from brain strain or pain. If we don't deal with it directly sure enough
it stays there inside our brain's memory!
Brains Rule! Neuroscientists have used new imaging equipment that lets us see where feelings
start inside our brain. Our powerful coping brains are there to tell us when we are upset and need to
use our coping skills. Just like emotional and survival brains help us recognize when we feel
threatened, our thinking brain is always there if we use it to figure out why we’re upset. We have a
choice to go on "automatic" and let our instinctive brains – survival and emotional – take over and
tell us how we should react when we're upset. Or we can get our neocortex “thinking brain” involved
to take control of the coping process.
Ignoring or just storing our hurt feelings can be a dangerous coping habit. Once we sense our
feelings are hurt by something that happens, trying to ignore it doesn’t make it go away. It only
buries the pain more deeply in our emotional brain memory system, where it can challenge and
threaten our sense of safety and even the ability to like our self. Since pretending that we're not hurt
doesn't help us get over it, that same part of our brain that remembers pain is what we need to use
to learn, pay attention and remember when we're learning new things at school.
When we are upset and under stress, so is our brain! Yes our brain can become so stressed when
we’re upset for long periods scientists have found the stress chemicals in our body can shrink
portions part of our emotional memory. So our brain can lose some of its ability to remember,
concentrate and learn. If you're having trouble paying attention in class your brain may be distracted
from learning. Coping skills just don't make you feel better, they are important so that we learn to
deal with and recover from stress and use all our brain's thinking and learning ability.
Our coping brain has three different and necessary parts, but just one "captain.". We can learn
how to make the different parts of our coping Brain Team work together. Neocortex is by far the
largest and most powerful learning tool in the universe. This thinking brain contains 85% of our total
brain cells for learning, six times larger than each of our two instinctive (survival and emotional)
coping brain functions. So Rep (survival) and Emo (emotional) brains mostly work automatically
rather than think.
Our thinking brain can tell us when we can’t cope and need help. We can learn that it’s OK to ask
for help when we just can’t get over some upsets, anger or sadness. Coping skills include the ability
to seek and use outside help when we know we need to build more coping confidence. People who
learn to ask others (friends, parents, counselors, etc.) for help to build coping ability become stronger
(not weaker) the next time a challenging experience causes stress. We all need help and support
from others sometimes. It's nothing to be shy about telling others. Often the most resilient people
are those who've learned to ask for help when they know they need to build their own abilities to get
over upsets more easily in the future. This website has lots of activities and resources you can
practice to become better able to use brain-based coping skills.