Spring Coping Skills

Spring is here! While I find a unique beauty in each season, spring’s beauty is one of the most rejuvenating to witness and enjoy for me.

Few things beat the sights, sounds and smells that come with nature awakening after its winter’s rest. The birds’ songs seem to chirp louder and with more excitement, the color green all around takes on a hue that has a captivating vibrancy and the colors and smells of flowers remind me the beauty of the natural world is beyond stunning.

With things taking a turn seasonally, many people start to feel better as they come out of seasonal depression and the winter blues. This upturn in emotions should be enjoyed, rejoiced in and embraced. And part of helping us sit with these emotions and all other emotions that come up for us is our coping skills.

Coping skills help us maintain a steady baseline of functioning that allows us to ride the wave of emotions without the wave becoming all-consuming. They also help prevent us from turning to defense mechanisms that could lead to us suppressing or avoiding emotions. While there are steady coping skills I turn to no matter what the season, there are also some I enjoy leaning into depending on the time of year it is.

Here are some of my favorite spring coping skills:

Stopping to feel and smell flowers
Walking barefoot in the grass
Spending time sitting in the grass instead of on patio furniture or the deck
Laying down outside and watching the birds fly in the sky
Opening windows when it is raining to hear the rainfall
Bringing a big bowl of fruit to snack on while playing out back
Getting outside in the morning for morning sunshine
Sitting outside in the evening while we grill dinner
Doing something in the yard every day such as watering plants, tending to the flower beds or mowing
Driving with the car windows down
Going on a walk and keeping our eyes out for spring blooms and wildlife

For me, my spring coping skills help me slow down, be attuned to the moment, minimize distractions and spend plenty of time in nature. By engaging with these coping skills regularly, I feel much more grounded, I can feel emotions but they don’t become consuming and I can sit with my emotions with a well-rounded perspective. Coping skills are never meant to take emotional fluctuation away, but they are meant to help the wave of fluctuating emotions feel manageable to ride.

So, this week, may you find some time to engage with some of your favorite spring coping skills and enjoy this season of reawakening.

Warmly,

Kylie Larson, MA, LPC

www.illuminate-counseling.com