Coping: A Seat at the Table
An Invitation to Reconsider Who or What I’ve Been Giving License to Stay
Growing Place Chico does not prescribe diets or medical treatments. This document is offered for educational purposes only.
WHY IT MATTERS
There are seasons in life that demand we cope, and cope well. The loss of someone we love. A diagnosis that changes everything. Or circumstances we did not choose and cannot change. In those moments, coping is not weakness. It is wisdom. It is the snorkel that allows us to breathe underwater when we have no other option. We honor that. We teach it. And we support people in doing it well.
This conversation is not about those moments. This is for something else entirely.
Many of us are coping with things that were never meant to remain and in some cases should have never been given a seat at the table. A relationship whose cost keeps compounding. A belief about ourselves we inherited rather than chose. A behavior pattern that once made perfect sense, and may have even kept us safe, but has long since outlived its purpose. Or a fear that has been sitting at our table of influence for so long it now has its own chair.
The question worth asking, and one worth honestly sitting with, is this:
Are there things in my life I have been coping with,
That should never have had a seat at the table?
Here’s why this matters: coping (the snorkel), by definition, implies that the ‘it’ (the water or ‘agitator’) remains. The ‘it’ now has a seat at my table of influence. And what our human experience has always known and research now confirms — we become like what we ascribe value to and live alongside.
Neuroscience has documented this with precision. The brain literally rewires itself in the direction of what we habitually attend to and accommodate. (Hebb, 1949; Doidge, 2007) What we give a seat at the table of influence in our lives doesn’t just passively stay. It speaks. It shapes decisions, relationships, and over time, identity itself.
And here is the part that is both the hardest and also the most hopeful: nobody pulls up that chair without some form of consent. That consent may have been given in childhood, under duress, or simply by default. But the table, that belongs to you! And, seats can be taken away.
The Intimacy We Didn’t Plan For
There is another dimension worth considering. The person, place or thing to which we take our first responses to our fears, our shame, our relief, our joy, our grief — intimacy grows in that space. Not metaphorically, but neurologically and relationally. (Bowlby, 1969; Berridge & Robinson, 1998; Porges, 2011)
Wherever we first route our emotional responses becomes, over time, what (or who) we become most bonded to. Whether a behavior, a substance, a belief, or a relationship — intimacy will grow. In a strange and even painful way at times, it can become our safe space. And this is by design.
This is why walking away from what shouldn’t remain at the table is rarely a matter of sheer willpower. It is a matter of intimacy. And leaving a (perceived) ‘safe’ space — even one that may be detrimental — requires more than a decision. It requires a genuinely safe alternative.
When Coping Becomes a Cage
Coping, properly understood, is a time-limited tool for navigating a reality that cannot be changed. (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) The snorkel works because the water is real and I am genuinely incapable of breathing under water. But the snorkel doesn’t give me gills! 😊 When we apply coping strategies to things that could, or even should change (things we have learned to manage rather than address), coping stops being a tool and starts becoming a cage. A familiar cage — but a cage nonetheless.
Research has shown that when management (coping) becomes my primary strategy: the very thing being avoided grows in influence. (Hayes et al., 1999) We cope, and in coping, we grant the ‘it’ a permission and permanence it was never entitled to. An influential seat at our table.
There is a category of things people cope with that they did not choose and could not control. Those deserve compassion and skilled support. But alongside that sits another category: patterns, relationships, (Gottman, 1994) habits, and beliefs that persist not because they must, but because they have become expedient but self-limiting habits more comfortable than the discomfort of removing them.
The table of influence… that belongs to you!
And, seats can be taken away.
The Invitation
Whatever has been given a seat arrived there for a reason. You were doing the best you could with what you had and with what you knew. That is worth honoring. There is no shame in that. (Brown, 2010)
But you are reading this. And something in you already knows the difference between the things in your life you must cope with — and the things you have simply been coping with because nobody ever told you that you didn’t have to.
You are not broken. You are functioning exactly as designed. That design, however, also includes the capacity for something genuinely different. The question is not whether change is possible. The question is, who or what is worth keeping at the table of influence in your life?
You get to answer that.
And, you don’t have to answer it alone.
References
Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (1998). What is the role of dopamine in reward: Hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? Brain Research Reviews, 28(3), 309–369.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1: Attachment. Basic Books.
Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection. Hazelden.
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain That Changes Itself. Viking.
Gottman, J. M. (1994). Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. Simon & Schuster.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Guilford Press.
Hebb, D. O. (1949). The Organization of Behavior. Wiley.
Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Springer.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton.