How to Create a Coping Skills Toolbox
United States Department of Homeland Security
Key Points
- A coping plan could be a physical paper reminder or on a digital smartphone app.
- It needs to be immediately accessible.
- These coping skills are short-term interventions.
- Practice before you are in crisis.
- None of these skills work for everyone.
- A coping card is a living document.
Materials Downloads
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Transcript
Greetings, and welcome to this video. At this point, we have learned a wide variety of coping skills and coping mindsets. Now we need a plan to put them into practice. In this lesson, we will learn how to help a client create a personalized coping plan. So, let’s get started.
Once you have taught your clients these various distress tolerance skills that we’ve been learning in all of these videos, the next step is to help your client create a personalized coping card. A coping plan can actually come in many forms. It could be a literal physical paper reminder, that's where we get the term coping card from, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. It could also be some sort of digital prompt such as a smartphone app. But regardless, there are several points to keep in mind when creating a personalized coping card.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.,Reutter, K. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook for PTSD: Practical exercises for overcoming trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (1st ed.). New Harbinger Publications.
First of all, the coping plan needs to be immediately accessible. It needs to be within reach at all times. Why is that important? Well, your clients will not always be in their balanced minds. So that’s why you can think of the coping card as a sort of backup balanced mind. But if you can’t find your coping card, well, now you’ve lost both of your minds, which none of us can afford to do.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.,Reutter, K. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook for PTSD: Practical exercises for overcoming trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (1st ed.). New Harbinger Publications.