How do we know that we need coping skills? We are doing this life thing, and there are moments where we stumble and fall. Truthfully, that is the norm. We will stumble and bumble our way through. And those falls are as natural as they are challenging. It’s common in therapy to encounter feelings of being overwhelmed by setbacks, with most of us expressing concerns about feeling not quite good enough.
Truly, the most accomplished of us struggle with these feelings. Reflecting on our past, it’s all too easy to wince at the memories of times we’ve faltered. Yet, what if these painful moments were the catalysts propelling us towards success? Imagine the possibility that with every fall, there’s a lesson to be learned, a new insight to be gained. Falling down is hard. Getting back up again is even harder.
One of the frequent questions in therapy is feeling like a failure. How many of us look back and cringe when we think of times when we have tripped and fallen? What if the pain from the failure moves you to act in a way that brings you success? What if every time you fell, you learned something new?
My visual for failure is a toddler learning to walk. That baby is unsteady and will fall. Guaranteed. That baby will cry and hurt, but that baby grows from that pain. That baby eventually learned to walk. I was that baby once, and so were you. Growth and comfort lie in opposition to one another. We can have one, or we can have the other. Rarely do we have both.
Coping Skills: The Art of the Reframe
Learning to reframe our circumstances is one of the most critical coping skills we can develop in this lifetime. As therapists, we learn this art early. Reframing is the ability to step back and look at life events with a “wise mind.” We cultivate a wise mind when we take information without emotion or judgment. Using our coping skills and wise minds, we allow ourselves to process information to see how it can serve us meaningfully. We can also see reframing and this wise mind process as putting us in the driver’s seat of our emotions.
Steering Our Emotional Journey
Through the practice of reframing and employing a wise mind, we effectively take the helm of our emotional journey. This approach empowers us to navigate through life’s ups and downs with grace and resilience, transforming potential stumbling blocks into stepping stones for personal growth.
In embracing this perspective, we learn to rise after each fall and see each challenge as an opportunity for development. This therapeutic viewpoint encourages us to approach life’s inevitable setbacks with compassion and understanding, both for ourselves and for others.
Learning from a Toddler’s First Steps
As we continue on our path, let’s hold onto the image of that persevering toddler, reminding ourselves that growth often comes from the places we least expect. Together, in a space of warmth and support, we can learn to reframe our experiences, steering our emotional journey with wisdom and resilience.
We are all human, and therefore we make mistakes daily. Don’t you agree? We may be attached to a vision of the person that we want ourselves to be, but don’t get attached; that vision does not exist. It is an illusion in this carefully curated and sanitized world.
Images of perfection lack the authenticity of the human experience. The human experience is messy, but we are always learning, sometimes painfully. Reframing your “mistakes” as learning opportunities is important because that is what they are.
Think back to every mistake or misstep you have made. Think back to when your face was so hot with embarrassment or your heart was heavy with sadness; now think about how much you have grown since that time. In this lifetime, we only learn from our mistakes if we allow ourselves self-compassion and encouragement. It may seem strange, but we may quickly forgive someone else but may hesitate to forgive ourselves for the small errors in our experience.
There are No Perfect People; We are still in Draft Mode.
It is tough to look around and see a world where other people seem to have it together as you struggle. Please understand that they are also struggling in their own way. What you see on the surface is the best that they can do at that moment, and their best can change. The most important piece as you look around is that image in the mirror that is worthy of your encouragement. You are worthy of self-compassion. You are worthy of growth. To grow, we must fall down and then get back up again. That energy that looks out needs to come back in and grow.
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