Week 6 Discussion

Whenever I think about coping skills and my life, it makes me reflect on how bad
they were until the Fall of 2007. I never realized the exciting parts about this until later
that I used both problem and emotion-focused coping skills. I was severely overweight,
angry, and dealing with a deep bout of depression. If I stayed in St. Louis, where I am
from, I knew nothing would get better. I decided that I need to get away and spend time
focusing on myself. I moved to a town of 8000 and worked in a city of 200. In doing this,
I got away from people who drove me into a life where I allowed myself to be made fun
of and treated as if I was not essential to have a "friend." I began to avoid situations
where I knew I wouldn't control my eating, thus allowing me an opportunity to lose some
weight. I also spent a lot of time learning how to become efficient with my time. I
organized my life to use everything I did in a day to have a specific purpose in helping
me grow both personally and professionally. I started to reflect on what particular
situations and things caused me to overeat and lead me to feel more anxiety and
depression. Once I discovered I was a stressed, depressed, and bored eater, I found
strategies that I could use to help me through. The skills I just discussed are problem-
focused. These skills are ones that I have continued to grow and adapt to my life. Without
most of these, I would not have accomplished a lot in my professional career. Knowing
when I needed to get away had allowed me to take jobs that had taught me a lot of who I
needed to be, and then that same feeling led me back home when I was going down a
destructive path.
When I realized that many of my struggles came from when certain emotions arose
in my life, it became necessary to find tools that can help me navigate these times. These
emotion-focused coping skills have become part of who I am today. When I realized the
situations that caused me to eat, I started to find ways to help cope with those emotions.
Every day, I would take a walk. During this time, I would talk to myself about what was
going right and wrong in my life. I called it my "Chat time with God." I would just lay
everything out that was going on in my life and how I was struggling or succeeding. I
would use this time to think of lesson plans or basketball practice plans, or even going to
the store. It is the one activity that when I get anxious, I run to every time. I have found
it plays so many roles in my life, exercise, prayer time, and "journaling" time. The
writing was always a struggle; I believe that had to do with growing up with a learning
disability and reading comprehension problem. My "journaling" during my walks, for
some reason, I can remember clear as day. As I have grown in my psychology work, I
realized how many problems and emotion-focused coping skills have always been apart
of my life; I didn't even know it.