Quotes About Coping

Living in a place like East New York requires developing coping strategies, and for many residents, the more vulnerable older and younger ones in particular, the key is to find safe havens. As on every other Thursday morning this spring, today nine middle-aged and elderly residents who might otherwise stay home alone will gather in the basement of the neighborhood's most heavily used public amenity, the New Lots branch library.

After we hung up, I took the joint. If I was going to die here, in the creepy basement out of a horror movie, in an epic snowstorm that was like an icy prison, with a wife unwilling to pretend-like Bananarama to maybe save her husband's life, I should at least go out with a smile on my face.

How is it possible for me to be so miserable and embarrassed and humiliated and beaten and still function, still talk and smile and concentrate?

Life is a joke. The only way to survive it is to find the right punchline.

It's not a major crisis that will typically cause a woman to melt down. Forces somehow rally to meet these big challenges when they come. It's the little things, the drip-drip-drip of Chinese torture, the dozens of daily irritations that, over time, can send us straight into the fetal position crying for our mommy. Or God. Or chocolate. Or medication. Or all four, depending on the day

Overeaters often say they are swallowing their feelings.

Do you think it's odd, the way I've just switched off? She was supposed to be my best buddy!' 'I think you're hurt and your trust has been tampered with and you're doing what you have to do to cope.

When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.

my therapist constantly tried to convince me that the networking was a displacement activity to help me avoid dealing with my own emotional issues.

A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.

after Jonas died, in 1970, of a heart attack—occupied herself with reading and painting.

And just as he done for thriteen years, he forced his mind to ignore the hurt

I figured out that letting 'the world' hurt me served a few functions extremely well: It provided me with a kind of nurturing I didn't otherwise know how to attract, I couldn't be pinned with total responsibility, and it provided physical pain, a reason to cry that others could understand. So much easier than trying to explain all the accumulated rage and numbness and sadness.

When you can't fight or flee," she says, "you flow.

The deepest cuts are healed by faith.

You can know something and at the same time not know it. It's one of the things that help us put up with our lot in life and not go crazy

DENIAL Defense mechanism in which the existence of unpleasant realities is disavowed; refers to keeping out of conscious awareness any aspects of external reality that, if acknowledged, would produce anxiety.

I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music.

Humor is always important. There are people who help us deal with difficulty or hardship; from the concentration camps to the court jester, there was a need for humor. As long as these kinds of things exist, with repressive regimes, you need it to deal with the weight of daily life.

Bad things can happen to you, but it doesn't mean you have to have regrets. It's all about what you do with it.

There will always be a sense of things you want to achieve, where you want to be, a sense of disappointment, a few regrets here and there. Those are always going to linger. How you cope with them and how you move on is what your life is about.

I cry fairly regularly, it's important to let it out.

Building mental strength is about learning to regulate your thoughts, manage your emotions, and behave productively despite whatever circumstances you find yourself in.

People who have had severe childhood traumas lack the ability to regulate emotions and, as a result, gravitate toward whatever primitive means they can come up with.