Do you control or do you cope…?
I remember all those years ago when I was going through The Thrive Programme as one of Rob’s clients, the discussion about coping skills, and about how to build them and create a more ‘internal’ sense of power and control over my life. I remember learning early on that I had pretty much zero coping skills (although you don’t end up in Rob’s clinic, drinking heavily, barely eating, and having daily panic attacks, without a bit of an inkling already that you lack some serious life coping skills…). I remember him telling me that you can help to build much stronger internal foundations by starting to challenge yourself, pushing yourself (gently at first!) outside your comfort zone, and using that as a springboard to take on bigger and bigger hurdles and challenges. I then remember doing mostly nothing about that for quite a while…!
And that’s how I ended up as a difficult client, because my comfort zone was really very safe and comfortable, thank you, and in contrast the world outside of it looked really rather scary. So for months and even years I stubbornly stayed right where I was, dipping my toe in the water occasionally to see what it was like but never quite leaving the safe comfortable zone I had gotten used to.
The reason I write this is because once I started to build my psychological foundations and ‘secondary control’ skills (more below!) to the point where I felt more competent to take on these situations, I began to step out of my comfort zone, challenging myself, and realising I could achieve far more than I ever believed I could! It was exactly what I had to do to start my journey to thriving, and now even as a Thrive Programme Coach I still force myself to do challenges on a regular basis, precisely to build and hone those coping skills so that I never go back to how I was all those years ago. It’s something I encourage all my clients to do too, because it is absolutely critical to learning how to thrive, and it’s why I wanted to write about it in this blog! But first, a little bit on our coping and control skills…
Controlling and coping - what’s the difference?
In order to understand the little mental merry-go-round I was on in this area of my thinking (and many others thrive trainees too), it’s important to understand the relationship between controlling and coping, and how internally powerful somebody feels - key skills that we teach clients as we take them through The Thrive Programme.
There are two main areas to our sense of power and control - one is our primary control, and the other is our secondary control. Primary control is all about your skillset in controlling, managing and avoiding situations in life (essentially, your controls over people, places and things!). Secondary control is totally different - that’s your skillset for tolerating and coping with things, and it’s almost entirely about emotions and our ability to manage our emotional responses effectively.
So if you think about it, if somebody can't manage their feelings and emotions well, they tend to over-manage the situation/their environment instead. It’s ‘Desire for Control’ in its most primitive form, because it’s wanting/needing to take control to get away from an intolerable feeling and escape to something better, rather than tolerating and coping with it instead. It’s somebody who - regardless of the consequences - wants to feel better, RIGHT now. They don’t believe they have the internal skills to manage their emotions around that thing or experience instead, so they run away from it it or just take steps to avoid it entirely.
It’s something that is actually SO important that it’s a key measurement in our online Thrive Quotient assessment for clients starting the programme (which you can do yourself to measure your own skills here!).
The impact of controlling
How exactly did control and coping impact on my life before The Thrive Programme, as I described it at the beginning? Well, pretty massively as it turned out (not that I knew that at the time, until I started the programme and gained those all-important psychological insights), because my lack of internal emotional coping skills resulted in me avoiding things I felt I couldn’t cope with, left right and centre! This meant for example that rather than coping with travelling on the tube, I got up 2 hours earlier to take the bus through London to work to avoid it. This meant that rather than cope with the tiny possibility that I could be sick, I ran around avoiding foods, situations, and people that might put me ‘at risk’. This meant rather than coping with emotions, feelings and social situations I found uncomfortable, I drank to numb them instead (or just didn’t go…). Essentially, my default setting was ‘avoid avoid avoid' - because I never really believed I had the secondary control skills to cope, so I over-used my primary control skills instead.
This avoidance strategy made me feel slightly better in the immediate short term, because I was avoiding something I didn’t want to do or experience, but it got me precisely nowhere in the long-term because it just reinforced the idea that I couldn’t cope with anything so I started to avoid things more and more. And of course, when I faced unexpected situations that I COULDN’T avoid, with my huge lack of coping skills my massive emotional overreaction (usually panic attacks, drinking, crying/getting angry, or trying desperately to run away) would be absolutely huge because I felt utterly unable to tolerate the situation. It’s why it was such a huge part of the programme for me, and changed my whole life!
My Year of Fear - How I ditched controlling and practising coping!
The reason to write this blog is because skip forward four years and my psychological foundations and secondary control skills were hugely different, and to put those new skills to the test in 2019 I completed a ‘Year of Fear’! It was a whole year where I was doing something every month that scared or challenged me, to raise money for charity at the same time as pushing my own boundaries too, and on one particularly memorable weekend I did a double whammy and smashed two of them in just one weekend.
On the Saturday, I did a day at Thorpe Park, and did ALL of the most extreme rides. I used to run away from these as a youngster (afraid of heights, sickness, and the feeling of falling - not a great combination for theme parks!!) so it pushed me to tolerate very uncomfortable feelings and realise I could handle them and push through them. On the Sunday, I did a 3 hour underground caving experience (again, confronting some big previous fears of mine - heights, darkness, small confined spaces, and not being able to exit easily) and again I came away feeling elated that I had managed it, despite the odd ‘ohhh what have I done’ moments…!
It was an incredibly challenging weekend, but the impact on my secondary control - almost immediately - was huge. In the immediate hours and days after the challenges I instantly felt more empowered, more able to cope with anything life threw at me, more in control of my emotions and my reactions - because I’d just tested them and come out on top! It has also given me some more great autobiographical experience to draw on, when I next find myself in a challenging situation again - i.e. ‘I coped with that, so I can cope with this too’.
Learning to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and situations, and to manage my own reactions and emotions during them without running away or avoiding the situation entirely, has been one of the biggest and most important learning curves for me. Because once you truly start to realise that you can cope, you feel ready to take on the world, because you know (rather than hope) that you CAN!!
So my question to everyone reading this is, what are you going to do to start building, broadening and testing out those coping skills, and challenge yourself too?! (Or if you’re not thriving already, starting the programme would be a great step in starting to understand exactly how to build the skills to do that). Trust me, the rewards to your mental wellbeing and sense of internality will be immeasurable, and it will take your thriving to a whole new level!!
You can watch a summary of my Year of Fear in the video below…!!