Why Coping Skills Matter More Than Willpower in Recovery

Hey everybody, welcome to the Addiction Unlimited podcast where you get to learn everything you want to know about addiction and recovery. I'm your host, Angela Pugh, co-founder of Kansas City Recovery, Life Coach and Recovery and Alcoholic. To learn more about me, you can listen to episode zero on your podcast app or find us on the web at AddictionUnlimited.com. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to Addiction Unlimited. This podcast is about what it really takes to stay sober and we're getting right into it today with some real talk about willpower and coping skills. If willpower worked, you would have quit already. I know that sounds harsh, but think about it. How many mornings have you sworn you were done? How many hangovers? How many promises? How many Monday mornings did you mean it with every fiber of your being? The problem is that wanting something and doing the things required to get it are not the same thing. Most people think they need more willpower. I don't believe that. I believe most people need better access to their coping skills because here's what happens. You're cruising along in your life and you're fine. Then something happens. You get stressed, angry, lonely, rejected, overwhelmed. You feel insecure. And suddenly you're activated. When I say activated, I mean your emotions are running the show. Something happened and now your upset, stressed, hurt, angry, scared, embarrassed, overwhelmed, whatever the thing is. Your nervous system starts sounding the alarm and suddenly everything feels more urgent, more personal, more intense than it did five minutes ago. That's activated. You can usually feel it in your body too. Like your chest gets tight, your stomach drops, your face gets hot, your ears start burning, your heart races. Maybe you feel shaky or restless or like your insides are vibrating. That's the big one for me. When my anxiety shoots up, I feel like my heart is beating. My whole insides are vibrating. But you can't settle down, you can't focus. Something feels off and you know you need relief. And the moment you're activated like that, your ability to think clearly drops dramatically. You've probably experienced this a thousand times. It's like you know what you should do and you did the opposite, right? Because you know what I've been telling you for hundreds of episodes. It's that people don't lack information. You have the information. You read all the books, you listen to the podcasts, you do a bunch of information gathering things. It's one of the first natural steps of making changes to gather information. The problem is when you're activated, you lose access to the very skills and tools you already know how to use. When you're activated, you stop being curious, you stop being rational, you stop using your tools, you stop thinking about consequences, you just become reactive. And then here comes the temper tantrum. Not in a childlike way, right? We don't throw ourselves on the floor and lose our damn minds. But in a nervous system, temper tantrum way, when adults get emotionally flooded, we do adult versions of temper tantrums, right? It could be isolating, ghosting, picking fights, doom scrolling, catastrophizing, revenge spending, giving somebody the silent treatment, overeating, drinking, those are all attempts to discharge discomfort. So the question isn't whether you know what to do. The question is whether you can access what you know when you're upset. Your coping skills matter more than your willpower because your coping skills are what bring your brain back online. I know you can probably relate to this. We've all felt this a million times. It's like we can talk about all the healthy things, all the things to do. But when you're in the moment and you're activated and you're pissed and you're uncomfortable whatever the thing is, it's like you get paralyzed and you can't think of what you're supposed to do. That's what this is about, right? And this is where most people get coping skills completely wrong. They think coping skills are supposed to make the feeling disappear because we're used to numbing. Alcohol numbs everything so you don't have to feel it. But coping skills don't work the same way. And because that's what you're expecting, you end up frustrated. You go for a walk and you're still anxious. You journal and you still feel angry. You call a friend and you still feel upset and you think, well, that didn't work. But that's the wrong measurement. The purpose of a coping skill isn't to erase the feeling. It's to help you behave better while you're feeling bad. Because when you're activated, your brain wants relief immediately. And that's when people start making decisions they have to clean up later. So let's talk about why we keep looking for relief. The moment you're activated, your brain doesn't care about your long-term goals, right? It doesn't care about your sobriety date. It doesn't care about who you're trying to become. It wants one thing. Not growth, not healing, not the vision you wrote in your journal on January 1st. It wants relief. Right? The F now. And here's the part that sucks. The part we all hate is alcohol worked. Not forever, not well, not without destroying everything around it. But in the moment your nervous system is on fire, it works. It changes how you feel quickly. That's not a character flaw. That's a brain doing exactly what it was trained to do. Your brain learned a pattern, right? Feeling bad, drink, feel different. And your brain is really good at patterns. That's literally what it's built for. It finds what works and files it away. It doesn't evaluate whether the solution is good for you long term, right? It just notes that the discomfort went away and it remembers how you made that happen. That's a learning system doing its job. The problem is the solution stopped working and you kept using it anyway because your brain didn't get the memo that the short-term relief was creating a long-term disaster. An alcohol isn't the only thing we use for this, right? We use food, scrolling, shopping, gambling, sex, anger, isolation, different behaviors, same mission, relief. The method changes the mission doesn't. And until you understand that, you'll keep judging yourself for the thing you used instead of understanding why you used it. You're not weak, you're not broken, you're activated. When you reached for the fastest thing that worked, the work isn't to beat yourself up, the work is to build something better. So how do you know if a coping skill actually worked? Most people say it worked if I felt better, but that's the old measurement. That's the alcohol measurement. Here's the new one. Did it help me avoid making the situation worse? That's it. That's the whole measuring stick. You were still angry, but you didn't send the text. You were still anxious, but you didn't drink. You were still hurt, but you didn't blow up the relationship. You still felt overwhelmed, but you didn't quit your job. You were still lonely, but you didn't self-destruct. That's a win. Not because the feeling disappeared, because you didn't let the feeling drive. A coping skill is successful. It helps you avoid becoming a bigger problem than the problem you're trying to solve. That's everything. Because here's what I see happen over and over again in early recovery, and even in people who have been sober for years, somebody gets through something hard and they do the right things. They go to the meeting, call their sponsor, take a walk, journal, do all things. At the end of it, they still feel a little bad, right? And they call it failure, but it wasn't failure. They felt bad and didn't drink. That's the win. They felt bad and didn't blow up their marriage. That's the win. They felt bad and still showed up the next morning. Huge win. We've been so conditioned to expect relief that we don't recognize resilience when it's standing right in front of us. Now let's talk about the difference between reacting and responding, because this is where it gets real. A reaction is immediate. It's emotional. emotional and impulsive. It's what happens when there's no space between the trigger and the behavior. Someone says something and you snap back before you even decided to, right? You get bad news, you're in the car, headed to the liquor store before your brain, every even caught up with your body. Or you feel some rejection and you're sending a message you'll regret before you even finished thinking it through. That's a reaction. A response is different. A response is intentional, thoughtful, aligned with who you actually want to be. Not perfect, not emotionless, not robotic, just a chosen response. There's a pause in there somewhere, even a small one. And what I want you to get is that pause is the whole game. The space between trigger and response is where your life changes. I've said this to clients a million times, had them write it down, stick it to their mirrors, and come back six months later and tell me what's the one sentence that shifted everything for them. Because most of us spent years with zero space between trigger and reaction, something happened and we were already drinking, something felt hard and we're already numbing, something hurt and we're already in the behavior that made it worse. Coping skills don't erase the trigger, but they create the space. Without coping skills, it's trigger reaction. With coping skills, it's trigger, pause, choice. That's recovery in one sentence. You don't get to control what happens to you. You get to build the pause. And the more you practice, the wider the pause gets. The first time you use a coping skill in the middle of activation, it might be three seconds of pause before you make a better choice. That's enough. Three seconds is enough to not send the text. Three seconds is enough to put the car keys down. Three seconds is enough to call someone instead of pouring something. And the more you practice, the longer the pause becomes. Seconds turn into minutes. Minutes turn into the ability to actually think through what you wanna do before you do it. That's not willpower. That's a practiced skill. There's a big difference. So let's get practical. I want you to answer an honest question and I mean actually answer it. Not the version you'd tell your therapist, like I don't want that edited bullshit. I want your real raw response. What do you actually do when you're activated? Not what you think you should do, not what you've learned as healthy, but what do you actually do when you're angry, when you're lonely, when you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're scared, when you are rejected, when you're stressed, because whatever you answer, those are your current coping skills. Maybe they're healthy ones, that's great. Maybe some of them aren't. That's okay too, that's information. Because if your current coping skills keep creating more problems, that's your sign. Not to beat yourself up, not to start over, just to build something new alongside what you've already got. And here's a simple exercise. I want you to do this week. And I mean actually do it, not just not along while you're on a walk and then forget about it. Okay, write down three things you currently do when you're activated that aren't serving you. And be honest with this, maybe scrolling for four hours, picking a fight with your partner, eating until you feel sick, whatever it is for you. Not judgment, just honesty. Three things you currently do that aren't serving you. Then I want you to write down three healthy coping skills you already know about, the walk, the journal, the breathing thing, you learned that one time, and it actually works, but you never remember to do it. The meeting, whatever's in your toolkit, and then write down three people you can contact when you're activated. People you can actually call or text, not people you should call, people you will call. There's a huge difference there. And that's it. Three unhealthy patterns, you're currently using three healthy tools you already have. And three people you can reach out to when you can't think straight. That's your crisis plan. It's not complicated. You don't need a spreadsheet or a workbook or a 12 step framework to get started. You just need to know before you're activated what you're going to do. Because when you're activated, you're not gonna think clearly enough to come up with a plan from scratch. This is why the plan has to exist before the feelings do. Here's where I wanna land all of this. The goal isn't to become someone who never gets activated. That's not recovery. It's not even possible. Everybody gets activated. Everybody gets anxious, angry. We get our feelings hurt. High functioning, 10 years sober, done all the work people still get their feelings hurt, and their nervous systems lit up and their buttons pushed. That never goes away. What changes is what you do when it happens. The people who succeed in recovery aren't the people with the most willpower. They're not the people who white knuckled it hard enough and wanted it badly enough or had some deeper motivation that the rest of us just haven't found yet. They're the people who have practiced using their tools long enough that they can still reach for them when life gets hard. That's it. Not perfect people, not people who stopped feeling things, just people who built the pause wide enough to make a choice. Because life is always gonna hand you uncomfortable feelings. Stress doesn't stop because you got sober. Grief doesn't stop, rejection doesn't stop, loneliness doesn't stop. Hard conversations, hard days, hard seasons, those don't stop. The question was never whether you'd feel them. The question is what you're going to do with them. And now you know the answer, not willpower, coping skills, not erase the feeling, navigate it, not become someone who never breaks down, become someone who knows what to do when it happens. That's the work, that's recovery. Coping skills don't erase feelings, they ease them. And over time with practice, with repetition, showing up for yourself when it's hard, they do something even more important than that. They make you better at feelings. Not numb to them, not above them, not someone who's transcended the human experience and floats through life unaffected, right? That's not realistic, but it makes you better at them because feelings aren't going anywhere. They were here long before you picked up a drink and they'll be here long after you put one down. The anxiety and loneliness, rejection anger, that's just being alive, that's part of the deal. And one of the things that most people don't realize until they've been in recovery a while, you know, feelings are almost always what lead people back to drinking. Not circumstances are bad luck or a rough day. It's feelings they didn't know how to handle. So getting good at managing your feelings isn't just a nice to have skill. It's not a therapy bonus or a personal growth side quest. It is the work. It's how you protect your sobriety and protect your serenity. It's how you show up as a functioning adult in your own life and in your relationships in your career, your family, your future. Every time you feel something hard and you don't let it run you, you get a little stronger. Every time you use a tool instead of a drink, you build evidence that you can handle it. And every time you sit in discomfort and come out the other side, you're proving to yourself that the feeling isn't gonna kill you. That's how trust gets built. Not in the easy moments, but in the activated ones. And if you're listening to this and you've been sober for a while, maybe you did it on your own, maybe you whitenuckled your way through early recovery, but now you're kind of stuck. You're sober, but you're not sure what comes next. You're not in crisis, but you're not thriving either. You know there's more, but you can't quite see the path. I created something for you, exactly for that person. It's the sober strategy intensive. It's one focused session designed to get you unstuck and moving forward immediately, right? We identify what's keeping you stuck right now, will build a clear realistic plan for where you're going and figure out the next steps to get you there. Clarity, direction, and a real strategy built specifically for where you are. If that sounds like what you need, go to addictiononlimited.com/call and book a call with me to talk through it and we'll see if it's the right fit for you. Addictiononlimited.com/call. That link is always in the show notes. And if you want a different package, we can talk about that too. Remember, the biggest misconception is thinking that coping skills erase the feeling or numb it and make it go away the way that alcohol did. But that is not realistic. The realistic view is the coping skill softens the edges of the feelings. It makes them not as intense so we can navigate them without making things worse. That's the key. I hope you're having a fantastic day, my friend, and I will see you next week. You've reached the end of another great episode of the Addictiononlimited podcast, Candid and Honest Conversation about Addiction and Recovery. Be sure to visit us at Addictiononlimited.com to join the conversation and access show notes and links to everything we talked about. Love this episode? Please take 30 seconds to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes to help us improve and give you the information you want. Thanks for listening. See you next week. [BLANK_AUDIO]