Coping Ahead Is Self-Soothing

In this talk, you'll learn the powerful practice of "coping ahead" - a mindfulness technique that helps you navigate life's uncertainties with greater ease. Through deliberate practice, you'll discover how to align your external commitments with your internal readiness, taking inventory of possible emotional states before they arise.

This talk teaches you to develop rapport with your future self, cooperating with what's to come rather than resisting it. By employing healthy thoughts as energetic instructions, you'll create meaningful frameworks for approaching challenges, regardless of the outcome. Remember: we cannot transform what we cannot see.

Join me in exploring how to move through future events in alignment with your deepest values, building resilience one mindful moment at a time.

Transcript

Hello everyone.

And welcome back to my page.

My name is Dylan.

I'm a meditation teacher here on Insight Timer.

And I wanted to talk about this perspective of coping ahead,

Which is a skill and a tool and a perspective from dialectical behavioral therapy.

And it's really about getting out in front of life,

Uh,

By creating an emotional forecast for the weather that's coming down the runway.

And what do we mean by that?

Well,

I don't know.

If you have something coming up,

Let's just say today is Monday and you're orienting towards the energy and the weather that's coming on Thursday.

And maybe you have a corporate board meeting.

Maybe your daughter is getting married.

You're not sure who's going to attend the wedding.

Or for example,

Your son is considering an eye surgery next month and you don't know about the results.

Okay.

So the perspective here is going to be a sort of saying that we want to take inventory within neutral curiosity of what might be coming down the runway for us in terms of our nervous system and our functioning.

What might be some of the things that could potentially throw us off center and cause us to experience a little discomfort or pain?

What could be something that could be difficult?

What could be something that could be challenging about what has yet to occur?

And what this is doing is putting you in the position of being and becoming an emotional meteorologist.

Okay.

So this is the perspective that,

Of course,

On,

You know,

Physically speaking,

We have meteorologists who tell us about an incoming rainstorm or,

You know,

Sunny days ahead,

Partially cloudy,

Partially sunny hail,

Tornado,

What have you.

What they're doing is they're telling us these things that we can be prepared.

So you know,

To pack a coat,

We know to pack an umbrella and we know to be ready to be prepared.

What this is doing is this is actually soothing us.

This is self soothing you guys on the perspective of our nervous system with a nervous system nourishment and regulation.

If we can do the same thing for upcoming events that could potentially knock us off center emotionally.

Imagine the results.

Imagine the benefits,

Right?

Imagine how that could help us to feel more mindful,

More centered and more grounded.

So coping ahead is about getting out in front of life and it's a deliberate practice cause it's not reactive.

It's much more proactive if you get what I'm saying.

Okay.

So how to cope ahead would be,

Take a look at your calendar concretely or just in your head,

Which you know you have coming up.

Let's use the example of somebody whose daughter is getting married in two months and they're feeling a little bit anxious.

And this actually came from one of my insight timer lives that I just did.

And they're feeling a little bit anxious cause they're not sure if anybody's going to come or how many people are going to come to the wedding and what happens if only a few people show up,

Right?

So this is an anxiety.

Now what is the spectrum of emotions?

What are the spectrum of emotions that this person might feel if the wedding venue is partially there's only a few people there?

Well,

They could feel dismay.

And what would the opposite of that be?

Well,

They could feel joy.

Well,

They could feel apprehension.

Well,

They could feel curiosity.

Why is nobody coming?

Right?

So coping ahead is about taking inventory of what you will feel coming down the runway at that wedding event so that you can actually manage your emotional response ahead of experiencing it.

This is a self soothing proactive nervous system regulation tool that allows you to take inventory of possible feelings states before they actually occur.

So there's a lot of things that are sort of happening in the sort of the future,

Which are not happening in the immediate present,

Right?

So,

You know,

A corporate board meeting coming up later this week,

Going to the dentist this weekend,

We know historically from experience that when we go to the dentist,

We're thrown a little bit off center.

So what we can do in the present moment is to take inventory of what off center looks like for us,

What anxiety at the dentist looks like for us,

Actually write it down on a piece of paper,

Take inventory,

Inventory of it and identify it.

Oh,

When I go to the dentist,

When I go to the dentist this Friday,

This Saturday,

It's possible.

I may be experiencing tension.

Okay.

When I go to the dentist this Saturday,

I might experience hesitation.

Okay.

So then the energy would be,

Or the invitation would be take the emotions and the experiences and the feelings of tension and hesitation and go ahead and breathe into them.

Now,

If you want to,

You can even use a breathing technique that says that you inhale what you want and exhale what you are ready to release.

So if you know that hesitation comes up for you at the dentist,

But you really would be intending to feel peace,

You could inhale peace and exhale hesitation.

Now what this does by pairing the in-breath with your sort of focus point for what you're focusing on,

The intention of what you are aiming to experience,

That peace,

You're inhaling that peace,

You're sort of soothing your nervous system.

Inhale peace.

Okay.

And then exhale hesitation all the way out.

Release.

So,

And this can be applied to and works with,

Um,

Different,

A full variety,

The full range,

Right?

Of different things that could be coming down the runway.

So what we're trying to do here is employ healthy thoughts as energetic instructions.

Now,

What does that mean?

So an affirmation is an example of a healthy thought that is also an energetic instruction.

I have the ability to attend the dentist with strength and ease,

Focus,

And resilience.

I can move through my dentist appointment.

I can do this.

I've got this.

These are healthy thoughts that are also energetic instructions,

Meaning they signal things to our subconscious,

To our nervous system,

To our deeper functioning,

To our deeper minds.

So the reason why the skill or how the skill can be useful,

The coping ahead skill,

Which again is getting out in front of life,

Being the emotional meteorologist taking inventory of what might occur before it does.

So we can be proactive within coping and managing our feelings is basically what we're doing is we're cooperating with our future self.

We're developing rapport with our future self.

We're shaking hands with our future self.

So the future version of ourself,

This could be at the dentist on Saturday or Sunday,

Whatever it is,

We're cooperating with the presence of being at the dentist today.

We're mocking it up in present time.

We're doing a rehearsal.

We're doing,

We're in the green room,

Right?

So it's almost as if we're sort of prototyping or mocking up or rehearsing for self soothing purposes.

Coping ahead is about self soothing because we cannot transform what we cannot see.

So if we want to transform our relationship to the dentist or the corporate board meeting or a daughter's wedding next month or a son's potential eye surgery,

Which could be,

Could have an outcome or could not,

You know,

Some different complexity within the future.

What you got to do first is identify how you might feel when that thing transpires.

How might I feel when I arrive at the dentist?

Well,

I don't know.

Let me think about it.

Let me journal about it.

Let me identify some feeling state realities,

Which could come down the runway for me.

Oh,

I might feel tense.

I might feel hesitation.

I might feel second guessing.

I could feel scattered.

Okay.

Well,

What does scattered feel like today and let me breathe into the opposite of it.

What's the opposite of scattered?

We could just say regulated or organized,

Right?

So breathe in regulation,

Breathe in nourishment and exhale scattered.

That's kind of the perspective,

Right?

So it's basically developing a plan to move through future life events that aligns with your value system.

If breathing is not a part of your value system,

By all means,

Engage in activity that is right.

Nobody here is saying there's a one size fits all.

It's really about creating meaning about what has not happened yet.

And this can help you to have a more full sort of balance,

Sort of regulated experience of that thing.

So you create meaning about it upfront.

So I'm deciding,

I'm creating meaning that my dentist journey this coming weekend can be one that I've got.

I can move through it.

So we create that confidence.

You create that meaning kind of mock up or rehearse that feeling state now because the only time you can talk about the future is in the present anyway,

Right?

The past and the future exist in the present.

The only time you can talk about those two feelings to answer those two emotional times is in the present in the now.

And the final perspective I want to share with you on this talk as well is the idea that chronological time is different from emotional time.

Something could have happened 16 years ago in chronological time,

But it feels as though it occurred yesterday.

Emotionally speaking,

This goes to show us that emotions maybe are timeless,

Timeless,

Infinite,

Who knows it,

But just don't operate.

I would argue in the same sort of linear sort of chronological sort of past,

Present,

Future sort of Cartesian,

Newtonian grid,

Right?

I mean,

Emotions are a little bit more nuanced,

More complex,

More sophisticated.

So this coping ahead skill where we're invited into doing the emotional weather forecast,

Being the emotional meteorologist for events yet to come,

Helps us know when to pack a coat.

It helps us know when to pack an umbrella if we should grab our rain boots,

Right?

If it's going to rain,

If we're seeing there's something on this Friday it's going to rain.

This is a proactive skill for getting out in front of it.

And I hope you found it in some way,

Shape or form or another useful,

Nourishing,

Uplifting,

Empowering,

Or inspiring.

Again,

What we're doing here is cooperating with the dentist appointment on Sunday,

Today on Monday.

So we're getting out in front of it.

We're rehearsing.

It's a self-soothing skill and I hope you found it useful.

Thank you so much.

Reviews

Thank you so much for this practice. Thank you also for the concrete examples you gave. I truly appreciate you sharing your time and talents through Insight Timer. You were able to reach so many people who otherwise would not have ever come across your path. Beautiful practice that I will use!

This talk is very effective in illustrating the power of positive affirmations, breathing techniques, etc. to boost empowerment when faced with potentially challenging situations.

Thank you for making that live into a Audio. Something in my mind wants to feel that coping ahead is bad for me but I have enough context now (due to other sources) to understand that if you keep projecting and forecasting but never do the part with affirming or breathing into the feeling, the trouble of rumination starts. I had Massive anxiety about a month and a 1/2 ago when I started a new job, but with all the tools I've learned I am making strides in overcoming such resistances. This audio serves me to remind me that it's not entirely bad to look ahead at the future as long as I have self compassion towards my struggles and self faith

This is a great perspective, Dylan. Thanks for this. 🙏🏻