55. Reclaim Your Life: How to Stop Running From Problems and Cultivate Healthier Coping Mechanisms Instead

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55. Reclaim Your Life: How to Stop Running From Your Problems and Cultivate Healthier Coping Mechanisms Instead

You’re listening to the  "Unhooked Podcast.” Welcome back to the show.  

In today's episode, I want to take you on a personal journey I've recently experienced, navigating through a turbulent storm of emotions, including anger, sadness, and self-doubt. It's a story I haven't shared in detail before, and it led me to reflect on how my coping mechanisms have evolved over time. In the past, I'd turn to my old addictions, but this time, I chose a different path, one of mindfulness, exercise, and deep conversations with friends. We'll explore these healthier coping strategies and how they've transformed my life. Join me for a mid-week episode of the Unhooked Podcast, and let's embark on a journey toward resilience and authenticity together.

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And if you enjoy this episode, please consider leaving a review.  

Transcript

 

You're listening to unhooked on today's episode, talking about putting an end to self-sabotage. And starting to cultivate healthier coping mechanisms. So stay tuned. 

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the unhooked podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy liquids with a short midweek episode this week. This is something that I am feeling really inspired to talk about from a recent experience from my own life. And it's exploring the topic of coping mechanisms and in particular, The difference between unhealthy coping mechanisms, which are things like addiction and healthier coping mechanisms and how important it is to start to transition out of some of these unhealthy ones. And start to build in healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with difficult emotions. Before we dive into the content for today. Just a little bit of housekeeping. Another announcement that soon I will be relaunching the unhooked recovery group coaching program. This is a cost-effective way to get accountability and get access to coaching. I get access to my unhooked recovery method. Which is going to walk you through everything you need to know about recovery. It's kind of like a kickstart to your recovery journey. So this is something that's coming up soon. It is going to be limited spots available for this cohort. So, if you're interested in that program, More details are going to be coming out soon. But what I want you to do is to send me a message and just let me know that you're interested. The people who send me a message are going to get priority access. You're going to be put on the wait list. So that when it launches, you can get first access. If you're interested. So you can send me a message through Instagram, just send me a DM. Or you can send me a contact or send me an email through my contact, which I will put into the show notes. So that's a little announcement about the unhooked recovery program, which is again, coming up soon. Another announcement is I have been hearing from so many of you lately, about how much you appreciate the show, how much you love the episodes that are coming out. And so I would love if you could just do me a big favor by leaving a review. That is one of the best ways to support the show. To support the work I'm doing. Uh, is leaving a review, a written review because that helps spread the word. It helps get this podcast into the eyes and ears of more people. And you can leave an anonymous review. You don't have to put your name so you don't have to worry about other people seeing it, but it really would be such a huge favor. If you could leave a review. So onto today's episode, the content for today. Is inspired by something that happened to me recently, just yesterday, which is going through a really difficult. Emotion. And in fact, a diff difficult mix of emotions. So I'm not going to go into details about what happened, but it was kind of a shit storm of different emotions. You know, things like anger. Sadness confusion, self doubt. I was really lost in my head around this thing that was going on in my life. And I felt like I was being hooked by it. You know, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I couldn't stop getting lost in these different emotions. And here's the thing that in my porn days, in my addiction days, I would have a thousand percent reached out to porn as a way to distract myself and numb out. I would have, you know, escaped into the world of porn because I didn't want to be with my feelings. I didn't want to feel those feelings. And of course, as you know, with, you know, porn with escapes, it works for a bit, you know, you, you escape temporarily. But in the end, it makes things worse. You know, the shame increases the self-loathing increases. And not only that the problem is still there. You're not actually dealing with the problem. It's like that beautiful image that metaphor of the ostrich with its head in the sand. You know, It sticks inside in the sand and it's ignoring the problems. But the problems aren't going away. You know, just because you put your blinders on and pretend the problem isn't there. You're not actually dealing with it. So  what had served as a coping mechanism in my early childhood, you know, masturbation pornography. Over time has grown into this form of self-sabotage. It was something that I thought was helping me, but it was really just a temporary escape. And in essence, this is the real problem with addiction is that it's an escape mechanism. But it doesn't actually work. We're just ignoring the problems and we don't make them go away. And in fact, we often make them get worse.  And it's not just porn that we run to, you know, this can be any kind of. Unhealthy coping mechanism. So some of the other common, unhealthy coping mechanisms. Are things like food in particular, junk food cookies, potato chips, fast food. Netflix and social media, you know, ways that we just distract ourselves. Also work can be an unhealthy coping mechanism. You know, when we dive into our work as a way to not deal with our problems in life. Drinking alcohol. Uh, sex sleep. And, you know, what's interesting here is some of these coping mechanisms can be healthy. But it's really about how we use it. So for example, sleep. Sleep can be a way to rejuvenate yourself and, and kind of heal. And. And rest. But sometimes it's used as an unhealthy coping mechanism. We just want to stay in bed all day. We don't want to face our problems. We don't want to face our life. So  it's important to look at your intention behind it, you know, whatever. Mechanism. You're doing whatever behavior you're engaging with. Is it a way to escape the problem or is it a way to actually work with the problem to heal, to kind of rejuvenate yourself?  So back to my story, you know, what was going on as I was experiencing this big mix of strong, difficult emotions. And, you know, fortunately,  

 instead of going into some of these unhealthy ones, like porn, To escape my feelings. Fortunately because of my recovery work because of the work that I've done, my habitual response was to look for healthier strategies. So instead of running away into porn, I actually sat with my feelings. You know, I listened to them. I made space for my feelings. And this is what, you know, mindfulness and self-compassion is all about. I also took the time to schedule a paddle session. In, you know, a way to get exercise, to connect with friends, to drop into a flow state, to have some healthy competition. Another thing I did is I talked with a friend about how I was feeling. You know what I was going through. And so this is what recovery is all about. It's giving yourself healthier coping mechanisms, so you can move through the inevitable difficulties in life, more skillfully.  Because here's the thing. Difficulties in life are going to continue to happen. You know,  just because you quit watching porn doesn't mean you no longer face. Strong emotions. Difficult things challenging times. So giving yourself these tools of how can I be with difficult emotions. It's like having more tools in your toolbox. Without needing to run away to numb out, to escape again, which just exacerbates the problems. So through the work of recovery. You become the type of person who deals with their shit. You know, who sits with their emotions and feels their emotions. Who isn't afraid to be vulnerable and express when they need help. So thinking about that type of person you want to become, you know, rather than the type of person who, whenever a strong emotion comes, they run away. Right? They're avoidant. They detach. They numb out. That is not the type of person that you want to be, and it's not the type of person that you should cultivate becoming.  So instead. What I wanted to do today is to talk about some of my favorite healthy coping mechanisms that you can start to cultivate. So, this is just a list of some of the ones that I use. The first one is exercise. It's a great way to process, you know, just to. To kind of like make yourself feel better, but in a healthy way. This, this is again, one of those ones that you have to be a little bit careful to make sure you're not escaping the emotion. But it's a way to. You know, to feel good about yourself in a healthy way. You're moving your body. You're lifting up your spirits. Um, so exercise is a great one. Connecting with friends, you know, being around people who, who make you feel safe and make you feel nurtured. And in particular, when you're around those friends, talking about what you're feeling. You know, what are you feeling around these emotions? Are you feeling sad? Are you feeling. Afraid are you feeling angry? Talking about what you're going through is so important. Related to that. Journaling is a great, healthy coping mechanism. It's kind of like talking about what you're feeling, but you're talking to yourself, right. You're journaling. About your emotions, about your experience, about what's going on in your life.   📍 Another healthy coping mechanism that I like is solitude. Uh, and again, this can be both healthy and unhealthy. You can use solitude as a way, you know, I don't want to be around anyone. I want to escape. But solitude can also be a way of being with your emotions. You know, real solitude, it's about not having input from other people's minds. And so solitude isn't necessarily like just sitting at home, watching Netflix solitude is really being with yourself. Sitting, you know, just for five minutes by yourself, sitting with your emotions, going for a walk.  And that leads me to some of my other ones is like being in nature, going for a walk, watching the sunset, sitting by the beach. These are all really healthy ways. To deal with strong emotions. But if I had to pick. Like my top two, I would say exercise and talking with friends are the two biggest ones.  When you are experiencing a strong, difficult emotion. Finding ways to move your body. To get into that flow state to sweat. Is so powerful. And then also kind of a compliment to that. There's no substitute for being vulnerable and talking about what you're experiencing. So many times in my life when I've been dealing with something heavy. And I have the ability to just express what I'm feeling. Just the act of talking about it already makes it better. You know, just, you know, knowing that you're not alone. Not needing to push that down. And so for me, even right now, like talking about how I was feeling really upset, I was feeling really confused. I was feeling really sad. Just expressing it. It's like lifting a weight off your shoulders. And so these again are some of the healthy coping mechanisms that you can do because again, addiction. Is that attempt to escape difficulty. It's the running away from pain, running away from suffering. And we run into things that. Make us feel like we're in control where we can numb out.  Right. So. That's it for today, a short little mini episode on healthy. Coping mechanisms. I would love to hear from you as well. What are some of your healthy coping mechanisms? What helps you get through the day? Send me a message. Let me know what you think of this episode. So that is it from Bali signing off. We'll catch you on the next episode.