tips on how to cope: dealing with your feelings, dealing with the consequences of self-harm in your life. share your ideas and maybe pick up some new skills, too. you don't have to want to stop to learn something new here.
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Licentia Poetica
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by Licentia Poetica » Sat May 21, 2005 11:14 am
This is just something I wrote about what coping means to me, was wondering how other people define it.
Coping is hard to understand, and harder to put into practice.
There seems to be a large difference between coping and surviving. Surviving is good, it's got potential, it keeps your options open, but it's damn depressing. If your standard of living is only 'survive', it seems like there's little stopping you from falling into the 'non-survival' kind of [permanent] state.
Coping means being able to say 'I love you too' instead of 'why?' at least some of the time. Coping means being able to lie a little bit, at least until you find out you're not lying. Coping means pretending you're enjoying something, until you realise you're not actually pretending. Coping means entertaining the idea that you're wrong about yourself, admitting there might be more out there than you're experienced enough to believe in, understanding that understanding sometimes means not understanding at all, and success is sometimes failing badly but learning from it.
If coping is, to me, a step into the darkness putting trust into something I don't believe in to break my fall, going against my ideals, faith and everything I've come and learnt to accept, maybe I'm just a coward...
..or maybe I'm surviving until I find a life worth coping with this for.

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plantt
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by plantt » Sat May 21, 2005 6:17 pm
coping is doing whatever it takes to get through without making the situation worse &/or hurting/doing damage to myself.
coping is holding on to whatever i can find... to somehow act towards believing that life will eventually be worth it... even when i'm unable to really believe that.
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kate_
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by kate_ » Sun May 22, 2005 8:32 am
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coping is the key to survival, they go hand in hand. those who cannot cope do not survive.
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coping is hanging onto this very moment, even when it doesn't feel worth hanging on to, in hopes that the next moment will be worth the struggle.
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coping is opening your mind to the possibility that things may get better, or simply loosening your grip on the belief that they won't.
this is a great idea, i never really thought about it before...i like what you guys wrote, very inspirational

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balletomane
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by balletomane » Sun May 22, 2005 6:44 pm
surviving is when everyone else can forget that you are hurting.
coping is when you can forget too.
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Wandering
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by Wandering » Tue May 24, 2005 10:21 pm
For me right now, coping is clutching onto that rope that is the only thing stopping me falling back down the cliff. It is holding on for the chance that maybe one day it'll all get a little easier and the sun will come out from behind the clouds. It's taking each minute as it comes, hoping that if I can live through this one, the next may come more easily.
Unfortunately, right now coping is damn hard. But I know it has been easier in the past, and one day it will be again.
Perhaps one day this too will be pleasant to remember
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eyeris
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by eyeris » Tue May 24, 2005 11:13 pm
coping is . . . HARD!!
"Subvert the dominant paradigm."
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VowsOfSadness
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by VowsOfSadness » Wed May 25, 2005 1:12 am
coping is recognizing that things are hard, but not giving up. It is when you start to get to that place where you know you have options. It's when you may not be happy but at least you aren't cutting. Coping is something that is retrospectivly beautiful
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kate_
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by kate_ » Wed May 25, 2005 7:16 pm
yay for coping!

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Illumina
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by Illumina » Sat Jun 04, 2005 8:46 pm
Coping is breathing when it hurts, because you know each breath will make it easier to go on.
Surviving is breathing because it's all you can do.
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Tamrick
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by Tamrick » Sun Jun 05, 2005 8:21 am
Coping is accepting I'm not perfect and I don't know everything and yet still trying. It is hoping without realising it, allowing myself to feel for the briefest moment. Coping is carrying on without knowing why, but doing it nonetheless, coping is trying something different cause what I did before didn't work as well as I would have liked. Coping is letting go of things I don't like to give myself some breathing room. Coping is letting myself live cause I'm worth it whether I believe it or not.
“A Sunrise is God's way of saying, "Let's start again.”
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jaded melody
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by jaded melody » Sun Jun 05, 2005 2:23 pm
For me, survival is a human instinct, something we do because deep down, no matter how we feel, a part of us wants desperately to live and it will do anything to keep us alive.
Coping is getting on with things, getting on with life, even when things are rough. It's taking a deep breath and dealing with things rather than having a panic attack or feeling like I need to hurt myself. Coping is necessary to survive, in the long run. It's knowing that if i keep breathing things will be okay. Its living not just to survive, but because i know i want to live.

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marylou
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by marylou » Sun Jun 05, 2005 4:20 pm
Coping is what I am doing right now.
Coping is something I am proud of achieving.
"You loosen my chains and just ask me to trust you. But it's so much easier this way, even though I know that I am bound."
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by XclippedXwingsX » Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:39 pm
Coping is very hard to get through when SI is all you've ever known to get through something so hard... It's like once you get rid of SI in your life there's this huge void in your life that drives you back to SI, but you have to have the will to cope with the urges and not act on them.
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pretty
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by pretty » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:26 pm
Coping is doing the best I can to hold my self together. At one time I felt like the best I cold do was hurting myself, but I learnt, and I'm still learning.
Coping is asking myself what I really need, and giving myself that in whatever way I can.
At one point positive coping was new, and I didn't really trust it to take care of me, but it got easier, and I learnt that I could trust things apart from self-injury to hold me together and keep me alive.
'this is what she says gets her through it,
"if I don't let myself be happy now, then when?"' - jimmy eat world
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pretty
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by pretty » Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:59 pm
~*~Kayla~*~ wrote:coping is easier said that done...
True, but it is worth the effort. It's worth trying.
'this is what she says gets her through it,
"if I don't let myself be happy now, then when?"' - jimmy eat world
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plantt
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by plantt » Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:14 pm
how i cope is a choice. & i can widen my choices by practicing different ways of coping.
coping healthfully may be more difficult than not; yet also helps me feel more human. more connected to myself & the world around me. it gives me a different way of looking at things.
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Heart7799
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by Heart7799 » Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:24 pm
coping is a concious hard desicsion to try to stay away from things that hurt me
coping is getting through the day
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Aly
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by Aly » Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:51 pm
thatway wrote:Coping means being able to say 'I love you too' instead of 'why?' at least some of the time
balletomane wrote:surviving is when everyone else can forget that you are hurting.
coping is when you can forget too.
Illumina wrote:lumina"]Coping is breathing when it hurts, because you know each breath will make it easier to go on.
Surviving is breathing because it's all you can do.
Fantastic words or wisdom!
The wind and I, we speak the same, but he don’t hear so well.
Well, you’re gonna have to curse him, well you’re gonna have to yell.
The sky and I, we’ve had our fights and I’m coming round to rain,
Well, if the rain come round and it don’t come out, then I’ll never have to speak again,
I can tick tick tick tick tick tick tick away.
If Heaven is as Heaven does then this is Hell for sure...
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