Can you cope?

7 min readAug 26, 2023

We all live our daily routines.

BUT life plays games with us continuously and once it hits the start button then it steps aside and watches us crawling and thriving.

It is sometimes a lonely road for quite a few; for the ones who lost their ties with their close family members and friends. We get ‘hit’ and fall on our knees and then we have to find a way to rise back on our feet to keep going.

Never expect life to support you there and then.

YOU have to support YOUR life!

Then there are and will always be incidents; right around the corner.

Loss of a loved one;
A destructive accident, a natural disaster;
Bullying;
Gossip;
Mobbing;
Abuse, Harassment and Discrimination;
Unsupportive relationships, parent(s) and family
The social environment.
Psychologically unsafe workplace

Any one of the above carries the tendency to cause long lasting traumas and harm.

It is certain that you have to cope and evolve for the better!

BUT How do we cope?

Can you cope wityh the unexpected?
Can you cope with the unacceptable?
Can you cope with the unplesant?
Can you cope with the intolerable?

LOSS OF A LOVED ONE

When the retired NBA star Kobe Bryant fell to the ground like a free falling rock in his helicopter with his daughter and 6 more in a deadly crash how do you think his remaining family members cope with this unexpected?

>>> How is Vanessa Bryant coping with the loss?

Vanessa recently spoke to PEOPLE about how she has been navigating life without her husband and daughter.

“I can’t say that I’m strong every day,” she told the OUTLET. “I can’t say that there aren’t days when I feel like I can’t survive to the next.”

Vanessa has been keeping herself busy. She recently rebranded her husband’s nonprofit, which provides opportunities to at risk and underserved athletes, as Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation. But even with all of her tasks, Vanessa has still found it hard to get out of bed some days.

“This pain is unimaginable [but] you just have to get up and push forward,” she said. “Lying in bed crying isn’t going to change the fact that my family will never be the same again. But getting out of bed and pushing forward is going to make the day better for my girls and for me. So that’s what I do.” <<<

BULLYING

Bullying is a huge problem our kids may directly encounter or witness somehow at school, Primary thru to high.

With all the cameras and trained teachers it should be eliminated by now. BUT NO! Still humans are doing this to humans.

Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively to impose domination over others.

The behavior is often repeated and habitual.

One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power.

Behaviors used to assert such domination can include verbal harassment or threat, physical assault or coercion, and such acts may be directed repeatedly towards particular targets.

Justifications and rationalizations for such behavior sometimes include differences of class, race, religion, gender, sexuality, appearance, behavior, strength, size or ability. If bullying is done by a group, it is called mobbing.

“Targets” of bullying are also sometimes referred to as “victims” of bullying.

How can your child cope with bullying? How can you?

“Where’d the days go, when all we did was play? And the stress that we were under wasn’t stress at all, just a run and a jump into a harmless fall.”

GOSSIP

Gossip. We’ve all heard about it. We’ve all done it. We’ve all been on the receiving end of it too. No one is immune. Yes, some are addicted to it and use it as a means of connecting with others.

Workplace bullies thrive on using gossip. It takes a true leader to not participate in gossip. Furthermore, it takes a true leader to stop it. So now what?

They say if you really want to know what people think about you, go to the washroom at work and wait to hear what others say! Well, even if you’ve never done that or won’t do that, know that gossip is happening everywhere. The question is, do you have a personal policy with regard to not spreading gossip? Do you have an organizational policy? What can you do if you are on the receiving end? What is gossip anyway?

How can you cope with gossip?

What is Gossip?

Gossip can be explained as: — Rumor or discussion of a personal or sensational tone. —

Gossip is a way of avoiding responsibility for one’s feelings, and it can be used by someone with a lower self-image as a way to connect with others and feel better about oneself, but at the expense of another.

Why Do People Enjoy Hearing Gossip?

Gossip is almost always something personal toward the target where the target is being presented as ‘less than’. When we hear of someone as ‘less than’, we do not have to do the work to be more ourselves. Competitiveness is king in this equation. Anyone addicted to competitiveness and envy will surely have to discipline themselves to not gossip. But will they?

MOBBING

Many people assume that once they leave school, their risk of being bullied drops to zero for the rest of their adult lives. However, this is not always the case.

Workplace mobbing — a form of bullying that involves the intentional targeting of a coworker through isolation, humiliation, and/or aggression — takes place between adults in many work environments.

Who Might Be Targeted For Mobbing Behavior?

Anyone can be a target of workplace mobbing, but there are some trends. Research indicates that “economically and/or socially disadvantaged groups” are typically more vulnerable to workplace bullying, as are those from lower-income groups. It may also be more likely to occur in organizations with poor or disorganized management, those with few opportunities for advancement such as universities with tenured faculty or unionized organizations with strong contracts, or in fields traditionally dominated by one gender.

How do you cope with mobbing?

Yes, how do you cope with such intolerable human behavior?

How can we accept the unacceptable?

Sometimes it’s necessary to accept the unacceptable. It’s a reality of life. The question is how?

Practice accepting that the traffic is heavier than you planned, that it’s raining on the day you wanted to go to the beach, or that you didn’t get that job that looked so promising. Practicing the skill is important for coping well and living a more contented life. It also prepares you for larger, more challenging problems.

Practicing acceptance in smaller situations also helps you prepare for acceptance in more difficult circumstances. When you practice acceptance, you are still disappointed, sad and perhaps even fearful, but you won’t add the pain of non-acceptance to those emotions and make the situations worse.

How do you deal with unpleasant feelings?

These include:

Don’t blow things out of proportion by going over them time and again in your mind.

2. Try to be reasonable — accept that bad feelings are occasionally unavoidable and think of ways to make yourself feel better.

3. Relax — use pleasant activities like reading, walking or talking to a friend.

4. Learn — notice how grief, loss and anger make you feel, and which events trigger those feelings so you can prepare in advance.

5. Let go of the past — constantly going over negative events robs you of the present and makes you feel bad.

Can you cope with them?

We have to learn how to cope during our early ages getting help from pedagogs and psychologists. Schools need to be staffed by such professionals to provide guidance to cope.