If you're not careful, these coping skills could become very very dangerous for teens who struggle to cope with depression, self-harm, anxiety, or even suicidal thinking.

Dangerous coping skills don't always start out dangerous- in fact, they can be quite useful to many.

Since coping skills are so personal, it's important to notice their impact on your mood and ask yourself this question:

"Is this coping skill helping or hurting?"

You can use this question to assess and adjust your coping skills if you need to find alternatives to self-harm, depressed mood, or anxiety attacks as needed.

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here’s what you need to know about these 5 dangerous coping skills you need to watch out for:

🎶 MUSIC

Usually, we talk about music as one of the most universal coping skills that we recommend and suggest to people.

But the thing is, you've got to pay attention to how music is impacting your mood.

So whether that is listening to music, creating music, enjoying it, all of the above- you just need to check in and ask yourself: is this helping, or is this hurting my mood?

There was a study a few years ago, found that music was a coping skill that could either be really useful and helpful for people with depression, or it could be really harmful.

Now, I know that sounds totally inconclusive, but let me break it down for you:

✅ People who listen to music when they were feeling depressed and they felt a connection, a community that they weren't alone, that other people knew what they were feeling and had similar experiences, found that listening to music actually helped boost their mood and lifted how they were feeling out of that depression.

❌ When people who were depressed listened to music and they found themselves ruminating. overthinking, or considering over and over again all the reasons that they were depressed, actually caused them to become more depressed.

🚗 DRIVING

When it comes to driving, it can be a really, really great coping skill because it can help you move locations.

It can even potentially help you focus on other things rather than thinking, and thinking, and thinking because you have to concentrate on driving.

But it can get a little dangerous if you're not careful:

😤 If you are somebody who is prone to anger

😶‍🌫️ If you are somebody who is prone to dissociating or daydreaming

🤩 If you are somebody who is easily distracted

then driving is probably not the healthiest go-to coping skill for you unless you are driving as a passenger. And then you wouldn't be driving, you would be riding, but that's a different story.

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This next coping skill can be a little controversial because there is a ton of emotion around it.

🌮 FOOD

When it comes to food, we can't avoid it. We need it to live and survive as people.

Food tends to be a natural gathering for families, communities, friends, whenever we are celebrating something good that has happened to us or in our world. It can even potentially bring us great joy!

But the thing is when it comes to food, sometimes it can get into the danger category:

🧮 If you find yourself counting calories

🥦 If you find yourself consumed with what types of food you're eating

⏰ If you are tied to the time when you can and cannot eat, that could be potentially dangerous.

Now, I am NOT a registered dietician or nutritionist. I am not here to give you advice or counseling on food. But what I will tell you is to check in with what feels good and right for your body.

And if you are having trouble with that, that's where working with a therapist and a registered dietician can really be useful.

🧘‍♀️ MEDITATING

I know you might be a little surprised because I talk about meditating and mindfulness as being super useful for a variety of conditions and circumstances and symptoms, and that is true. There's a lot of research and science behind that.

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What a lot of these meditation and mindfulness teachers don't tell you is that it can get a little dangerous if you're not careful:

😱 If you're somebody who has undergone something really traumatic

🤸‍♀️ If you are somebody who has a hard time thinking and sitting still

💭 If you are somebody who is prone to dissociate or daydream

then meditating might not be a healthy coping skill for you.

I HATE it when I hear people say:

"But everybody can benefit from meditation."

No, no. I have seen it live in person. I have experienced it. It's not true.

You need to check in on what feels good and right for you or make some modifications or adaptations to how you engage with this coping skill.

So if you are not sure if meditating is useful and helpful for you, you might wanna do it with somebody else who can help observe and monitor.

✍️ DRAWING ON SELF

This coping skill makes me cringe because so many people recommend it, especially when it comes to coping with self-harm urges or behaviors.

I actively encourage all of my clients to NOT rely on this coping skill.

Drawing on yourself can be so harmful because it's literally training your brain to associate those visual cues with self-harm. And so you're not really retraining your brain to think differently and experience those urges differently. You're literally reinforcing that same concept.

→ I would highly recommend if you are somebody who struggles with self-harm urges and you're looking for alternatives to self-harm to check out this video for healthier coping options: https://youtu.be/tu6F6QIL6ww

If you found the information in this video useful and helpful, please share it.

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