Episode 8: What Even Is A Coping Box?

If you have seen enough movies about inpatient treatment and recovery programs, you know that when you roll into the facility as a new patient, you absolutely must act like a badass punk who doesn’t give a shit. That’s right, you’re just here ‘cause your mom is making you be here and when you get out you’re gonna get right back to it and also you aren’t gonna talk to ANYBODY and NOBODY is gonna make YOU cry because YOU’RE too busy smoking cigarettes. Oh, and you wear hella eyeliner. Just like, so much eyeliner. And probably cool wristbands and REAL Chuck Taylors. Are you actually just Avril Lavigne circa 2003? Maybe.

Day two of inpatient care comes along and you, fake Avril Lavigne, are forced to sit at a table for, of all things, arts and crafts. If Arts and Crafts was a number, it would be very large; the opposite of that number would be how many shits you don’t give about recovery.

It’s time to begin. The project at hand? A coping box.

As a brief aside, I think it’s important to point out that I went through my Avril Lavigne phase after treatment. You didn’t ask but yes, I was in a garage band at the time and yes, I played super cool electric violin solos and yes, I sang a cover of Don’t Tell Me while wearing (off-brand) chucks, eye liner, and cool wristbands... for the end-of-the-year dance at a local middle school.

In spite of the cultural and media-driven expectations, I wasn’t a punk when I started treatment; I was just tired. When it was time to make my artsy-fartsy coping box I wasn’t resistant, nor was I particularly inspired by the hot glue gun or crayola crayons set in front of me. Spoiler alert: this activity was obviously important to me in the long run as it is THE TITULAR ACTIVITY OF MY BLOG.

Here is how you make a coping box.

1. Start with an empty tissue box.

2. Remember how you used to wrap your textbooks in deconstructed paper grocery bags when you were in public school? Do that but this time to your tissue box. IDK it was a long time ago, you figure it out.

3. Cut a hole in the top of the box to match the hole that already existed from the box’s previous life as a snot rag dispensary.

4. Decorate your box. You can also not decorate your box if you are a real tough sk8er boi. I decorated mine even though I was very sleepy and parts of my body didn’t work very well so you can probably at least try, Susan.

5. Time to switch gears. Set the box aside and grab a piece of paper to write on.

6. On said paper, jot down a list of things you like to do. Maybe make them things that you like to do but also can, physically and financially, do. I mean, I’m sure I would enjoy traveling to Greece for a weekend but that would not be practical at this moment as I just have a lot of work to do and not enough money. I suppose these items should also be generally healthy things. So yes, hard pass on key bumps at Rock-and-Roll McDonald's.

7. Cut or tear your list into strips. Each item on the list should now be on its own strip of paper. If you want, you can also divide the paper first and then write the items on those strips, but that’s not how I did it so that can’t be right.

8. Fold each paper strip and stick it in the box.

Cool. You have made a coping box. One uses a coping box to get through moments of struggle, and this is particularly helpful when the usual coping strategy isn’t a wholesome one. When anxiety, depression, or a craving hits, instead of falling back on the old habit, pull an activity out of the box at random and do it.

Scene shift back to my days of inpatient care: Making the box itself was cool, but I found the listing of activities to be a herculean task. At my sickest I viewed myself as a violinist and an anorexic - and that’s all. Thus, my range of activities was limited to practicing the violin, listening to recordings of dead-white-male violinists, researching and memorizing the caloric content of all fast food items on the planet, looking at skinny people, and fantasizing about the food I would eat when I reached my goal weight.

Nevertheless, I put my pen on the page and started to write. Practice the Violin I wrote. Okay, not bad but also not necessarily the healthiest of options given my current relationship with that task. Go for a walk, I added. Getting better, but not allowed at that moment because of low weight. Do a puzzle. An excellent item for inpatient treatment as there was always an abundance of jigsaw puzzles. It was a mystical abundance; as soon as one was completed another, appeared immediately, clearly the work of magical jigsaw puzzle elves.

As I pushed onward with my coping-box list, additions started to flow more easily. Make miniature fruit pies, sized for a dollhouse, out of polymer clay and beer bottle caps, I added. Read a book. Paint your toenails. Alphabetize your library. Go to a petting zoo. Soon, I had two pages full of items to stick in my box. While I may not have been Goth-Punk-Angelina-Jolie from Girl Interrupted at the start of my treatment, I walked into that arts and crafts session expecting little to nothing. I walked out of the session with an object that would propel me through some darker moments and also the following idea: I am not just a violinist, I am not just and anorexic. No one thing defines me, and there are many things I enjoy doing.

Today, even though I am healthy physically, even though I keep up with mental health care through therapy, even though I love my job(s) and surround myself with beautiful people, I occasionally slip into negative ruts. I want to hurt myself; I feel so ugly and fat that I want skip a meal or four; I feel like a failure of a violinist, teacher, or adult and I don’t want to get out of bed because what is the point.

This may sound strange: in those moments I give myself permission to act on my negative impulses, but only if I do a certain amount of activities first. My healthy brain negotiates with my mentally ill brain using items from my Coping Box.

For instance, let’s say I want to cut myself. I will declare:

Ok self, you can do it. But only if you:

1. Clean the bathroom sink with an old toothbrush

2. Do a pilates workout video on YouTube for free! #fitnessblender

3. Order prints of some of your favorite Instagram uploads.

4. Do a chapter of algebra problems out of your dad’s old textbook.

I generally won’t feel the desire to engage in harmful actions once I accomplish my list. That is to say, the Coping Box still helps me. Many of my antagonizing thoughts and dark emotions are just temporary. As a wise person once said, this too shall pass.

Coping doesn't equal cured, and that’s important to acknowledge. Coping is just a piece of treatment that can keep a patient alive and kicking so the careful exploration of underlying stressors, triggers, and traumas can continue. For me, once I make it through my moment of distress, I journal about it or make mental note of it so I can bring it up with my therapist and thoroughly process it.

What I’m trying to express here is best summed up in, of all things, a U2 lyric. I don’t like U2 so I’m kinda angry about this reference. Remember when we were all forced to have that U2 album on our iPhones? Worst. Band. Ever. Still, here it is:

• You've got to get yourself together

• You've got stuck in a moment

• And now you can't get out of it

• Don't say that later will be better

• Now you're stuck in a moment

• And you can't get out of it

Okay but now put the Coping Box into the picture and you get…

• You've got to get yourself together

• You've got stuck in a moment

• And now you CAN get out of it WITH YOUR COPING BOX

• Don't say that later will be better IF YOU DO SOME ACTIVITIES

• Now you're stuck in a moment

• And you CAN get out of it WITH YOUR COPING BOX