Coping Mechanism Quotes & Sayings

The idea of evil is always subject to denial as a coping mechanism. — John Bradshaw

My coping mechanism with my dyslexia is to use wit and humor. — Max Brooks

I used self-injury as a coping mechanism to help me overcome the emotional stress that I was incapable of dealing with in any other way. Self-injury was a means of escape, a way to relieve the numbness, and an expression of the pain within me. Something that the police wouldn't care about. — Stephen Richards

Most survivors are cope-aholics, people who cope with whatever is thrown at them without reliance on others. They do not seek sympathy for their pain and feel undeserving if it is offered. They are especially adverse to sympathy from others. — Renee Fredrickson

That night, before bed, he goes first to Willem's side of the closet, which he has still not emptied. Here are Willem's shirts on their hangers, and his sweaters on their shelves, and his shoes lined up beneath. He takes down the shirt he needs, a burgundy plaid woven through with threads of yellow, which Willem used to wear around the house in the springtime, and shrugs it on over his head. But instead of putting his arms through its sleeves, he ties the sleeves in front of him, which makes the shirt look like a straitjacket, but which he can pretend - if he concentrates - are Willem's arms in an embrace around him. He climbs into bed. This ritual embarrasses and shames him, but he only does it when he really needs it, and tonight he really needs it. — Hanya Yanagihara

As a coping mechanism, or as a way to make a little hard count by shilling demons in the shadows, I try not to belittle the thought process of the conspiracy theorists. As a cocktail waitress in Vegas once schooled me: never get down on anybody else's hustle. — John Ridley

'Johnny' was a coping mechanism who could take those things which could have ordinarily destroyed me, by tweaking my past and throwing it back out there, getting laughs from things that would have otherwise upset me. — Johnny Vegas

Me with nothing left to lose, plotting my big revenge in the spotlight. Give me violent revenge fantasies as a coping mechanism. — Chuck Palahniuk

During the Great Depression, the philosophy of grin-and-bear-it became a national coping mechanism. — Maureen Corrigan

I've always had a quirky way of looking at things. It's my coping mechanism. — Sherri Shepherd

UNDERLYING NEED "COPING" MECHANISM To have support in figuring out your talents Getting stoned to avoid thinking about it To be loved, held, appreciated Negativity, pessimism to "control" expectations To have feelings received Overeating as an attempt at self-soothing To be recognized as mattering Overwork to prove worth To forgive yourself Becoming perfectionistic to try and avoid mistakes To avoid punishment or disapproval Focusing solely on the needs of others so you don't take care of yourself by exercising Rest and rejuvenation Drinking alcohol to excess, "rewarding" yourself with fatty or sweet foods Solitude and contemplation Picking fights so you end up alone Stability in chaos Worrying as a way to feel in control A sense of purpose Overspending in an attempt to find meaning in material things — M.J. Ryan

One day I looked at something in myself that I had been avoiding because it was too painful. Yet once I did, I had an unexpected surprise. Rather than self-hatred, I was flooded with compassion for myself because I realized the pain necessary to develop that coping mechanism to begin with. — Marianne Williamson

People hide truths about themselves from themselves. Such self-deception is a coping mechanism, and to one extent or another, most people begin deceiving themselves when they're children. — Dean Koontz

You might imagine that a person would resort to self-mutilation only under extremes of duress, but once I'd crossed that line the first time, taken that fateful step off the precipice, then almost any reason was a good enough reason, almost any provocation was provocation enough. Cutting was my all-purpose solution. — Caroline Kettlewell

I lock all my scaredness down in my stomach until the fear hardens into something I hardly notice. I myself harden into a person that I hardly notice. — Mary Karr

My coping mechanism is denial. We'll be fine. — Dannika Dark

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by. — Rachel Reiland

Him yelling, Give me lust, baby. Flash. Give me malice. Flash. Give me detached existentialist ennui. Flash. Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. Flash. — Anonymous

It was a lesson she was still learning. When she had first started nursing, she had taken every death personally, like she was losing her father all over again. Every patient lost under her care was a little piece of death she would carry around with her until the end of her own life. But the alternative seemed so unfeeling. Tina and the other nurses could crack jokes and banter back and forth about contestants on American Idol before the body of a deceased patient was even cold. It was a coping mechanism, she knew, but not necessarily one she thought she would ever adopt. There had to be something in between. Olive had been called a bleeding heart before, but her heart no longer had the same plasticity and tenderness - it was scarred and worn beyond repair — Andrea Lochen

Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant. — Patti Feuereisen

For me, writing is a kind of coping mechanism. — Chuck Palahniuk

Heroin was a coping mechanism that I had used to deal with my underlying fears. They were the real problems; heroin wasn't the culprit, my fears were. — Pax Prentiss

Faith is a natural evolutionary trait of the human mind, selected by Mother Nature as an internal coping-mechanism. — Abhijit Naskar

I have a lot of friends who are trying to clean up their act, or that are still making trouble for themselves, so I'm definitely well-versed on what goes on in the mind and the heart of a person who self-destructs as their coping mechanism, and also what they're like when you take their preferred substance away. — Natasha Lyonne

I've been married but I'm not anymore. And I still believe in love. — Nick Saint Clair

She and I, we were girls who never said anything. Never wanted to assume anything. It was a coping mechanism, saving our faces for when guys like Quin came along and acted all nice towards us. — Mina V. Esguerra

Denial is a critical part of the human coping mechanism. Without it, we would all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by focusing on stresses we can handle - like getting to work on time or paying our taxes. — Dan Brown

Food is a coping mechanism; people are afraid of giving it up because then they'll feel confused and lost. — Phil McGraw

If your world is out there and you are in here then the only things that will gather within these walls are time and bitterness. Eventually, that bitterness will eat away at you and leave nothing behind but resentment and hate. — R.D. Ronald

For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that, somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That's what has gotten you by — Rachel Reiland

What is forgiveness? An emotion? A coping mechanism? An element of deepest faith? A way for the heart and soul to combat the type of hate, anger, rage and a thirst for revenge that could ultimately consume a person? All of those and more? — Mike Barnicle

I think having imaginary friends is an amazing coping mechanism. It's pretty wonderful, and it makes a lot of sense to me. — K.A. Applegate

The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., "That wasn't really bad, I barely remember it"). — Brian Luke Seaward

The Doomsayers have always had their uses, since they trigger the coping mechanism that often prevents the events they forecast. — Walter Wriston

They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened
Exodus (1960) screenplay — Dalton Trumbo

If your coping mechanism to date has been to ignore your weight, don't feel badly. You're in good company. I've done my share of standing on the doctor's scale backwards, cringing as the nurse scribbled on the clipboard, anxious when the doctor came in glancing over my record. I scrutinized his face for any semblance of judgment. Whether or not I faced the scale or the doctor skipped a pep talk, it didn't change the truth and it still pervaded every hour of my waking thoughts. I knew what I needed to do and just agonizingly prolonged it. What about you?

We want our lies to be true--desperately. We think it means less work, less pain. But aren't we experiencing work and pain every day when we are obese? We don't escape it, we just reallocate it, attach it to different problems.

The sooner we face the numbers and start to deal with them, the sooner we can resolve them. — Shannon Sorrels

How often do we truly feel accepted?
Are we aware of the collateral effects inflicted when we reject someone or something?
How do we move on from a state of constant rejection?
How do we gratefully accept rejection?
With acceptance, we grow not in a constant state of rejection. — Angelica Hopes

I scrutinized the lyrics to every worship song, debated the content of every sermon. I rendered verdicts regarding the frequency of communion and the method of baptism. I checked the bulletins for typos. In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride. — Rachel Held Evans

More panic. More emergencies and disasters. Soon, emergencies fell into a sort of natural ranking: drop-everything emergencies, do-what-you-can emergencies, and you'll just-have-to-wait emergencies. Disasters, too, had their own ratings: unavoidable, did-the-best-we-could, my fault/your fault. Then there were godlike moments when a decision had to be made as to who most deserved to die. By the afternoon of her second day, Dtui wondered whether her heart had shrunk. She felt less. People had become less human. Death had become less of a tragedy. Her patients weren't blacksmiths or housewives, they were percentages. "With this little skill and this little pharmaceutical backup, this patient - let's call her number seven - has a forty percent chance of survival." It amazed and saddened her that, in order to do her job properly, she had to stop caring. — Colin Cotterill

We all deal with a certain amount of stress, on a day-to-day basis. I probably smoke too many cigarettes, which isn't a very good thing. I don't have any extraordinary coping mechanism. I certainly don't talk to a dog. — Elijah Wood

It registers that I am sitting there topless, but this body I am in doesn't feel like mine anymore so the half-nakedness seems irrelevant, like a rumor, something I'm supposed to care about but don't. — Lauren Miller

Survival in scarcity dictates nastiness with a rival clan, but also dictates goodness towards our own clan whose support is vital to acquire or defend the necessary scarcities.

Man's nastiness or goodness is not his fault or merit;
They both create the vital coping mechanism to his environment of scarcity. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

Sometimes, it is easier for people to believe lies then deal with the uncomfortableness of their own fear of action. These type of people feel uncomfortable unless everyone is the same or God presents them with what is easy and obvious. It is a life long coping mechanism for the greatest fear of all
regret. — Shannon L. Alder

I think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

God is merely a part of the human brain, an evolutionary coping mechanism that developed to make bearable our awareness of our own deaths. When — Greg Iles

Open your umbrella of creativity when glaring heat of adversity hits you unaware."
~ Angelica Hopes, If I Could Tell You — Angelica Hopes

He lights a cigarette off a candle. These death-tubes, these little crutches or fuses: useful for getting through all sorts of things you don't want to get through. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Possibly this is some demonstration of how amazing the human brain is, adjusting and readjusting reality, plugging up potential crazy with a handy coping mechanism. As for myself, I think it demonstrates that the human brain is made of recycled monkey bits and pure, unadulterated stupid. — Rachel Sharp

It's hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I'm sad to say that this method works. If you don't give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do. — Alan Cumming

I used food as a coping mechanism for many, many years, and it was my best friend for a long time. — Carnie Wilson

I didn't do drugs. It wasn't my thing. But the drink was terrible. Today when I look back, it's like I was another person. You could call it a coping mechanism, but that would be an excuse. I just drank too much. — Gary Oldman

Show me a writer that doesn't use their craft as a coping mechanism and I'll show you my unicorn. — Angelina Assanti

Rise flexibly, courageously and perseveringly upon the challenges and trials in our life. Beneath the depth of fresh wounds, heavy cross and years of scars, is our wise silent mind, a beating faithful heart with understanding and patience matched with a humble soul who walks with hope towards charity, kindness, peace and harmony. — Angelica Hopes

Lying is not only a defense mechanism; it's also a coping mechanism and a survival technique. — Monica Raymund

The moments of silence are gone. We run from them into the rush of unimportant things, so filled is the quiet with the painful whispers of all that goes unspoken. Busy-ness is our drug of choice, numbing our minds just enough to keep us from dwelling on all that we fear we can't change. A compilation of coping mechanisms, we have become our fatigue. Unwilling or unable to cut ourselves free of this modern machine we have built, we're dragged in its wake all too quickly toward our end. The virtue of a society's culture is reflected in the physical, mental, and emotional health of its people. The time has come to part ways with all that is toxic, and preserve our quality of life. — L.M. Browning

There are abusive individuals whose worst little demons are greed, sloth,envy, gluttony, pride and wrath enslaved by their god which is money. They usually set their false assumptions, wrong judgments, gossips and lies forceful than the ones who hold the truth but what they missed out is that the victims of their aggressions, the targets of their wrong accusations and the recipients of their repetitive harassments carry what is truly essential and what lives longer, that is: truth and goodness, both of which shall always prevail against their vicious, evil manners. — Angelica Hopes

The stress and sadness of it all had been tough to handle, but there had also been a simmering, irrational resentment on his side. So yes, he had embraced a coping mechanism that he'd known Qhuinn hadn't approved of or liked. It had been a subversive, petty payback for sins the male wasn't actually committing. But — J.R. Ward

I have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know. It started when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, the land of junk stores, garage sales, and flea markets, as a kind of coping mechanism. — Ransom Riggs

Popular religion is a coping mechanism for the anxieties of a dysfunctional social and economic environment. — Gregory S. Paul

Music for me is not just being on a stage and singing. It's my coping mechanism. — Tessanne Chin

Joy breathes from within,
It is not in things but a sense of well-being,
an inner peace in harmony with our soul.
True joy in our life gives us more energy.
Live joyfully!
There are elements in the society and of this world that disrupt such inner joy, peace and harmony within our soul and how we may feel and carry this depends on our individual coping mechanism. — Angelica Hopes

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. — Chuck Palahniuk

Disassociation. It is a word I have heard before but never in reference to that mind trick I had used to cope. That trick isn't a figment of my imagination. It was real. It had a name. And if the coping mechanism was real, it means what I have experienced was real too. — Elizabeth Esther