When we cope with something, we engage in a specific procedure, process or technique, which helps us to adapt to a stressor. Adapt is the key word here. Why? When we adapt to something, we change ourselves so as to be able to live with something the way it is. We don’t change what is. Our coping mechanisms are what keeps things the way they are. Our coping mechanisms are what prevents us from making changes to what is. And this goes for the microcosm of our individual lives as well as the macrocosm of human society and the world that we are co-creating. And the coping mechanism that prevents change in both the micro and macrocosm in the most extreme way, is when we cope by becoming the same as the stressor that we are facing… In other words, the same as what harmed us.
So that you can understand this better, I’m going to give you some examples. Let’s begin with Sophie. Sophie had parents who used the things they did for her and her brother as leverage to control Sophie. Everything had strings attached. For example, in order to get her to do the things they wanted, they would hold it over her head that they fed her and put a roof over her head and paid for things like dance lessons. This manipulation and control was a consistent stressor. And Sophie adapted to it. She adapted to it by becoming exactly like her parents without realizing it. Fearing that she would be controlled, she would make sure to have the upper hand in relationships and do things for them such as pay for meals and help them when they were in need, so she could make sure they were in debt to her; not the other way around. She developed the feeling that relationships in general were an invitation to be taken advantage of, so she was very vigilant of things and became stingy and withholding of her love. When she felt like she was being taken advantage of (or needed something from someone) she would hold the things she did for them over their head. She did not admit to her conditions for doing things for others to herself, much less to other people. So many people around Sophie feel like it isn’t safe to receive anything from her because it will only come back to bite them later.
When Richard was five, his parents were struggling so much, they sent him to live with his grandparents. The problem is, his grandfather was dictatorial and abusive. Richard was degraded and whenever he upset his grandfather, he was in for a serious beating. Richard felt he could do nothing to change the stressful situation, so he adapted to that stressor. Richard decided very early on that any weakness was going to get him in trouble. He decided that it was dangerous for anyone to have more power than he had. And that power is about overt intimidation. As a result, he decided to make himself as hard and invulnerable as possible. He stayed safe in the world by bullying and intimidating other people. He became obsessed with having power over other people and accruing all the things that would give him the most power possible. Status, money, physical prowess, powerful character traits. He became abusive. He would degrade other people and even took to beating his wife.
For a more macrocosmic example, people have proven for so many thousands of years to be bad at caretaking each other’s best interests. Society is not a loving, safe place for people. As a result, sensitivity is seen as a liability. It is seen as a weakness that is borderline pitiable and that guarantees the world will eat you up. Because of this, so many of us adapt to this stressor by toughening up and making sure our kids to toughen up. We become insensitive. We adopt protector personas that are good at preserving our own best interests despite other people. But by becoming insensitive and hard and guarded and slipping into protector personas, we guarantee that this Society continues to stay an unloving, unsafe place for people.
We coped with cruelty by becoming cruel. We coped with being controlled by becoming controlling. We coped with abandonment by being the one to abandon. We coped with manipulation by becoming manipulative. We coped with weakness by becoming weak ourselves. We coped with ideologies by adopting those same ideologies and living our life according to them. One of the things that we all inevitably become aware of on the path of awakening, is all of the many ways in which we became the very same as the thing that harmed us. All the ways that we, ourselves adapted to situations that needed to change, and as a result of adapting in that way, ensured that those situations would never, ever change.
The ways that you coped by becoming the same as the thing that harmed you, will be revealed to you on this path of self-development that you have embarked on. But one of the ways you can speed up this process is to make a list of the painful, scary or stressful things you have experienced in your life. These should be experiences that happened in your life where you felt distress. These could be things you judge as really big and/or things you judge as small. Next to each one, you’re going to write down a second list detailing what you made each experience mean. What beliefs did you develop as a result of it? What decisions might you have made as a result of it? And then, next to each one of those answers, you are going to write down a third list detailing what changed about you and your life as a result of that experience. Did your personality change in any way? Did your behavior change in any way? Did you change what you did every day? Did you adopt any coping mechanisms? And looking at these, you are going to see if you can recognize ways that you became the same as what harmed you. And ways you adapted that doomed you to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where what you decided to do, brought about the very thing that you wanted to avoid. (Show example).
If we want the elements of our life to change, we need to recognize the ways we are preventing it, by having coped with the problem by becoming part of the problem. If we want to the world to change, we need to recognize the ways we are preventing that change by coping with the world by becoming part of the problem rather than becoming the antidote. Doing so, takes an incredible amount of bravery. After all, we coped in these ways because we thought doing so would keep us safe. And this means, letting go of these coping mechanisms will make us have to not only face our pain and our fear, but choose to lean into them. But by leaning into them, we can change the world.
