Ok, maybe not dinner. But it does fill you up. When you have a huge plateful of stress, you swallow down your bitter entree, and follow it up with a glass of citric acid. Welcome, reflux.

So we all have coping skills that help us get through stress. There are healthy coping skills, and those that are not quite so healthy. In the mental health world, we call this adaptive and maladaptive. Both can be very effective. You might say, “but Debby, how can unhealthy, maladaptive coping skills be effective?” That would be a very good question. The answer is that they help us to get our needs met. The downside of that is that after using the maladaptive coping skills, there are usually unwelcome consequences.

Let me give an example. So imagine that you’re a child, living in a home where things are unpredictable. Maybe your parents fight about stupid things, and you never know what will trigger an argument. Maybe one of your parents is addicted to alcohol or drugs, and can be very unpredictable. You don’t know if you are safe at home. This might go on for years, and you just live with a sick feeling in your stomach. But then one day, someone offers you a drink, or a hit, or some other means of numbing your emotions. You accept, and then all of the sudden, things don’t seem so bad. So you continue to utilize mind numbing substances any time things aren’t going right. Now, it’s twenty years later, you’re married, you have kids, and things are stressful. Something happens and you feel you can’t handle the emotions. So you go to a bar. Or you call a friend who can hook you up. You get drunk, or you get high. And then you feel better. Maybe you can even go home and you’re feeling calm, and things settle down and you feel great because you just made things better for your kids. Better than it was when you were a kid. You’ve used a maladaptive coping skill. And it worked. But it only worked for a while. Because you know that next time something feels bad, you’re going to head for the same solution. And that’s gonna come back and bite you.

Now imagine that you live in a home where your parents are so wrapped up in their own issues that they pretty much don’t even notice you. They’re using drugs, or they’re stressed out about their own problems, or they have a chronic illness of some sort. You pretty much have to take care of yourself. But then a time comes where you need something, and you can’t take care of it on your own. No one hears you when you ask for help. You try everything you know in order to get them to listen, but nothing that you’ve tried has worked. So you have a gigantic tantrum, scream and yell, knock things over, and now, suddenly, you have everyone’s attention. And you’ve learned something important. When you freak out and lose control, people listen to you, and your needs get met. Now, it’s twenty years later (see how quickly time goes by?) and you’re trying to succeed in your own romantic situation. Everything is going well until one day when there is something you want and you’re not getting it. Suddenly, your subconscious mind remembers that in order to get what you want, you need to make a gigantic fuss. So you skip right over all of the healthy means of letting someone know you need something, and go right for the tantrum. Your partner is shocked by your behavior; it’s the first time they’ve ever seen you act like this. And they respond. They give you what it is you need, to try to help you calm down. Your need was met. But then, it happens again, a month later. And this time, your partner looks at you with confusion and frustration, asking themselves, “what the heck is going on here?” and maybe they start questioning the logic of being with you. Now, the coping skill is no longer working for you, and now, probably, your relationship fails. 

Maladaptive coping skills are formed in childhood. They are necessary for children who don’t have the opportunity to learn healthy skills from their environment. Either there are parents or caregivers that don’t validate emotions in a healthy way, or maybe they are just not able to meet the special needs of the child for some reason. It’s not clear if this is a nature or nurture situation. I suspect it’s a bit of both. So a child learns these skills,and it helps them to get by. In a way, this is a positive thing, as it’s a survival technique. But just like everyone else, this child will grow up and have to be on their own in the world, probably having to get a job and engage with other people. And other people are not always thrilled to have to deal with their behavior. So it’s important for these now adult children to learn skills that work for them, or those around them. Adaptive skills.

I had awesome, validating parents. That’s not to say that they were perfect. Parents are doing the best that they can, and sometimes their best depends on their own coping skills. I know my parents did their best, and I love them for it. But I was a very sensitive kid. I cried at the drop of a hat. I was prone to injury, including two broken arms by the time I was in fifth grade. I didn’t respond well to teasing, and I had two older brothers; not a good match! And to top it all off, I had undiagnosed ADHD, which made it very difficult for me to relate to many of my peers. When the time came for us to kind of break up into groups of friends, or cliques, in about third grade, I had no idea what to do. None of it made sense to me. I didn’t know how to initiate conversations, or to converse in a crowd. I was a one on one kind of friend. So I found myself starting to be on the outside of the circle. The strange thing was, I wanted people to like me so much, but I think I walked around with a big sign on my forehead that said “I’m really not interested.” I was focused on wanting people to like me, but I never once considered whether or not I liked them. But somehow, I conveyed a message to others to pretty much stay clear. And in addition to that, I was awkward, and most of the time, I said the wrong thing. I spend a good deal of my childhood palming my forehead and asking myself why I just said the dumb thing I said. 

So I had to develop some coping skills to deal with my emotions. My emotions left me feeling empty, so of course when you’re feeling empty, you want to fill yourself up. And what better to fill yourself up with, than food. Lots of food. Lots of sugary, delicious, comfort food. Oreos. Ice cream. Chicken McNuggets. If it was food and it was yummy, I ate it. Now, if you are much younger than me, you might not know this, but it was very common in the late 1970s and early 1980s for mothers to put their daughters on diets if they have gained “a little” weight. And I had. Now when I look back, so had everyone else. It was pretty normal to fill out quickly later in elementary school. Your body is changing, and shifting around. Hormones are arriving on the express train. But the medical community had decided that young girls needed to be thin to be healthy in those days, and doctors were putting out books to tell mothers how to help their daughters. So I was put on a diet. And I didn’t like it. So I snuck food to make up for it. Think about it; I was using food as my coping skill, and now I was being told I could no longer do it. So I had to cope with all of my regular stressors in life, plus the stressor that I was being deprived of what helped me to cope. It was a swirling eddy of disaster. 

Sneaking food became the norm for me. I felt ashamed if I was seen eating too many sweets, or if my portions were too big. Let me make this very clear: this shame was put on me by me, no one else. Well, maybe, the diet culture helped a bit. So I would sneak food, feel bad about it, and then eat more. I thinned out quite a bit as I grew, but always saw that chubby girl every time I looked in the mirror, and I felt bad.

I won’t go into the coping skills I learned in college, because they’re not relevant here, but they were clearly maladaptive, caused by feelings of deprivation, and caused a lot more problems than they solved. Cut to my mid-twenties, and I finally learned about SSRIs, the magic happy pills, and seriously, one month into taking Paxil, I stopped obsessing over food. But that doesn’t mean all my problems went away.

I have had many other coping skills over the years, some helpful, some not so much. I love to read. I make sure I have time to read every day. I like comedy, so I make sure to watch funny sitcoms on TV, sometimes the same ones over and over, because I also thrive on repetition. I enjoy going for walks. I like cats. I like to spend time with my friends. I took up knitting, and started to make hats. I love watching baseball and football, and when I go home to Massachusetts, I usually try to make it to Fenway park to a Red Sox game. And I really love to write. 

Writing became my main coping skills during the last year of COVID. I have always loved to write. I wrote poems in high school, and also some interesting novel-type things. In college, I journaled and wrote poems, mostly dark ones. In my 20s, I took some classes in fiction writing, and I started a novel. I was almost done with the darn novel, and it was pretty good, but then I got pregnant, and lost all sense of creativity and gave up for some time. That was 18 years ago. So when I started to feel extreme anxiety 18 months ago because we were told that COVID once again had spiked, and it was unlikely that we would be able to return to in-person activities for several more months, first I turned to knitting hats. I literally knitted 42 hats, I am not kidding. But then that novelty wore off, and I turned to writing. It helped a lot. I got so much out of my brain that had been swirling around for months, even years, and I was hooked. In 18 months, I have completed 9 complete manuscripts, have published one, and one is now at the editor. I finished book 9 two days ago. 

So my coping skill is awesome. I love to write. I love to see the results of my writing. I love when someone reads my book(s) and tells me that they loved it/them. I love that I have 20 positive reviews on Amazon. I love to come up with new ideas. But as I said, I just finished a book. It’s been two days. I am trying to take a break from writing, just to rest. And guess what’s happening? I’m feeling really stressed out. I feel compelled to write, but I’m not ready to start again. I’m sitting here right now writing this blog, so I can write. So I don’t feel the stress for a few minutes. But then the post will be done, and I’ll have some time on my hands. I could go eat some ice cream. It would be okay. I can eat ice cream. That doesn’t freak me out so much anymore. But maybe I’ll go for a walk. Maybe I’ll knit a hat. Maybe there’s a Red Sox game on TV. Or maybe I’ll just let myself sit in my stress and anxiety for a while, and see what that feels like. I will not resort to old habits that don’t work for me anymore, because those just cause new problems. But every now and then it’s good to look back on those and remember, and see how far I’ve come. We all have stress. It’s just a matter of how we deal with it. 

“May I Have Your Attention Please” is available now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere that eBooks are sold. Please check it out, and if you do read my book, please leave a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, or whatever other platform you are using. It would mean a whole lot!

I Just Can’t Say I Love You will be available on September 15, 2023, staring Carl and Kim and the usual cast of characters.

Here again are the links to my Facebook page, Debby Meltzer Quick Author, TikTok, @dbmquick and Instagram, quickdebby_author. Please follow me on these pages. And please explore my page here at debbymeltzerquickauthor.com.