Who's ready for their winter arc? + rethinking our coping strategies

This latest self-development trend could be a good time to reflect on whether your coping strategies are helping or harming you.

Lock in — It’s the last quarter of the year and the final push to make 2024 the year you want it to be, according to my fellow self-development enthusiasts.

They’re calling it the winter arc; instead of hibernating or winding down in preparation for the end of the year and cold and dreary months, it’s time to amp up your efforts and wring this ultimate stretch for all that it has to offer. Per Carly Berges, the TikTok creator who seems to have coined the term, the concept of a winter arc originated in gym culture as presumably people are able to spend more time in the gym as the months get colder.

I kind of love the idea. I’ve never believed that you need to wait until January to set a new goal or intention for your life, and in fact, I think often waiting for the right moment prevents us from enacting those changes. Plus, whenever we try to change too many things or work on too many goals at once — as many of us do come January 1 – we bound ourselves to fail.

Still, I see how it can cause added pressure to get everything in order before the year closes out.

Whether you’re doing a winter arc or just trying to incorporate some healthier habits at any random time of the year, however, it’s important to look at what the possible obstacles to making those changes could be and identify whether those challenges are doubling up as a coping mechanism.

How your coping mechanisms are holding you back

Being a person in this world is difficult and we all have our own ways of coping with these challenges.

Some of our coping mechanisms are conscious, others are not. Similarly, some of these methods are positive, while others are undermining our efforts to become the people we want to be.

Do you know what your coping mechanisms are?

Often we’re so used to doing things on autopilot that we don’t even stop and question why we do certain things. Or if we do realize we are relying on a coping mechanism that’s ultimately harmful to us, we blame our lack of discipline and willpower.

But many of us developed certain coping mechanisms when we were younger and didn’t know better. And regardless of when we adopted these coping mechanisms, we can’t lose sight of the fact that we did so to COPE. We took on certain behaviors because we wanted to feel better. We wanted to help ourselves. And maybe at one point these coping mechanisms actually did work for us, but now it’s up to us to decide whether they still do or whether they’re preventing us from living as we want to be living.

This isn’t to shame you in any way because a) who am I, with my own questionable coping mechanisms, to shame you? and b) me shaming you and you shaming yourself isn’t going to lead to a better, more productive outcome.

It’s to get you to become aware of the ways in which you may be working against yourself.

Common coping habits and how to address them

The key is that most things in moderation are fine; anything in excess is probably not.

Which is to say that even as you begin to address the coping mechanisms that are ultimately not serving you, you may still indulge in them from time to time, and that’s ok (i.e. scrolling on social media to avoid a difficult task or sitting with uncomfortable feelings). We’re aiming for progress, not perfection.

But how do you know whether your coping mechanism is unhealthy for you? First, identify which of the following behaviors you may rely on:

1. Control: feeling the need to make the plans and dictate others’ behavior or push your (often unsolicited) advice on other people and/or trying to plan every aspect of your life because you’re uncomfortable with uncertainty

2. People-pleasing: feeling compelled to be agreeable and go along with what everyone else wants because you can’t bear someone being upset with you

3. Overbooking: keeping busy and not giving yourself any time to sit with your own emotions or any uncomfortability

4. Using food, social media, overspending, or substances to quell difficult emotions

5. Overworking: using work as a means of distraction from facing tough situations and/or as a way of coping with deeply-rooted feelings of inadequacy and self-concept

6. Procrastination: avoiding a difficult task or issue as a way to self-sabotage, delay experiencing a difficult emotion, or to avoid addressing perfectionist tendencies

Any of these look familiar? Yeah, for me too. So what can we do about it?

• Get honest with yourself: If you find yourself time and time again making commitments you don’t want or spending too much time on social media or whatever coping mechanism it might be, it’s time to be real with yourself.

  You have an unhealthy coping mechanism that you want to change.

• Identify when you are most likely to revert to that coping mechanism: So your manager chewed you out and when you got home you spent the night scrolling — coincidence? Probably not. Start observing what precedes the unhealthy action; yes, some of our habits are on autopilot, but some of them are triggered by a thought or interaction.

• Once you identify the trigger, prepare yourself to behave differently: So now you know that every time you run into a certain acquaintance you feel bad about yourself and are tempted to go straight to the fridge or every time your friend guilts you into doing something you don’t want to do, you say yes because you don’t want to let them down. Once you’ve identified your triggers, you can better prepare yourself for the next time they come up, i.e. making an excuse so you only have to talk to that acquaintance for a few seconds or establishing a boundary with a friend in the moment because you’d prepared what you were going to say beforehand.

• Take a pause: Sometimes reverting to an unhealthy coping mechanism is so automatic that even just taking a pause before we do so can help us feel grounded in our bodies and prevent us from rushing to a coping mechanism we may regret

• Replace the unhealthy coping mechanism with a healthier one: Maybe you resolve to go to the gym, make plans to talk to a friend, family member, or therapist, or complete a fun hobby before or after a stressful event. It doesn’t necessarily matter what you do; what matters is you give yourself a more productive, helpful outlet for your difficult emotions.

• Seek professional help if things feel like they’re getting out of hand: As always, this newsletter is layman advice; please seek professional medical resources if you find you’re overly relying on a substance or anything else that is harming your life to cope. You don’t need to do this alone and there is no shame in needing support while trying to address addiction.

• Accept that you’re not going to be perfect: Many of these coping mechanisms are deeply engrained in you at this point. They didn’t appear overnight, which means that you’re not going to get rid of them overnight. Accept that it might take some time to replace your unhealthy habits with healthy behavior and that sometimes you might slip up. Once again, that’s alright; we don’t have to burn everything down overnight to reap the benefits. Incremental positive change matters. As James Clear writes in Atomic Habits, “Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime, these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.” Every time you make a choice, however small, that serves your highest good you’re affirming that you’re worthy of your own care and that you’re looking out for yourself.

Winter arc or not, this is your life. Healthier coping mechanisms are undoubtedly going to be difficult to implement — especially at the beginning — but with enough repetition, they’ll become your new ways of living.