Find the right coping mechanism to keep your mental health balanced

Life has its ups and downs, so we all face anxiety and stress at some point. Before the next perfect storm for stress blows through, find a coping mechanism to help you stay afloat.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), more than 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience a mental health issue in any given year. That’s approximately 57.8 million people.

Even those who don’t have a diagnosed mental health condition face situations in life that cause psychological stress and mental health strain. When we’re feeling stressed, it can be easy to turn to unhealthy coping tools that offer temporary relief, such as an alcoholic beverage, a puff of a cigarette or a high-calorie fast-food meal.

Looking for a healthier way to cope with stress, anxiety and other emotions in 2025 and beyond? Explore a few common coping styles below.

Understanding different coping styles

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to handling stress and other emotions. An effective stress management plan may include a variety of coping responses, including:

• Deep breathing. When you’re feeling stressed, pause and focus on your breath. NAMI recommends 5-3-7 breathing, where you breathe in for five seconds, hold the breath for three seconds, then breathe out for seven seconds, but you may also find different breathing patterns or deep breath meditation helpful.
• Emotion-focused coping. Using this coping mechanism, you focus on managing your response to a stressful situation rather than trying to solve the problem.
• Mental reframing. This stress response involves naming what’s stressing you and reframing it in a positive context in your mind. It focuses on positivity or finding the silver lining in a stressful situation.
• Opposite-to-emotion thinking. At its most basic, stress is a “fight-or-flight” response, often making us want to escape the situation. With this coping method, you focus on doing the opposite—sticking around when you want to run away or seeking social support instead of isolating, for example.
• Problem-focused coping. This coping strategy is the opposite of emotion-focused coping. With this technique, you cope by problem-solving, looking for a way to solve the underlying problem causing your stress.

These healthy coping strategies offer a better method for handling stress and other emotions than avoidant coping. Avoidant coping, also called avoidance coping, is a frequent fallback for many people. It involves simply trying to escape a stressful situation by denying, ignoring or minimizing it.

You might feel temporarily better if you can pretend a stressor doesn’t exist, but that isn’t a long-term solution. It’s likely to crop up again and may even be worse next time.

How to find the one that’s right for you

When’s the time to find a coping method that works for you? Long before you face your next stressful situation.

Take a little time to explore coping tools and strategies, looking for one or two that help you the most. People cope in different ways, and your best method to cope with stress is a combination of strategies rather than just one.

In addition to finding a preferred coping mechanism, you can also take steps to build up your mental fitness. Start with these habits:

• Find a hobby, activity or group that makes you feel at your best—and participate regularly.
• Fuel your body with healthy meals built around vegetables and fruit.
• Let go of perfectionism and instead focus on doing your best.
• Limit your intake of alcohol and caffeine.
• Move your body often, ideally for at least 30 minutes daily.
• Prioritize getting enough sleep each night, aiming for seven to nine hours.

Still feeling the stress and strain of life? Hit the pause button. When times are hard, our bodies and minds usually benefit from resting.

If you are not feeling at your best, the team of behavioral health providers at University Medical Center New Orleans is here to help.

Vital Signs

In partnership with local radio personality and entrepreneur Wayne “Wild Wayne” Benjamin Jr., University Medical Center New Orleans (UMC) launched “Vital Signs,” a comprehensive mental wellness campaign that will run through Dec. 31. Designed to shed light on critical mental health issues affecting the New Orleans community, the campaign will focus on topics such as stress, trauma, depression, generational trauma, grief management and holiday stress.

Vital Signs will also feature content aimed at reducing the stigma around mental health in communities of color, providing specific resources and tools to help families address and break the cycles of generational trauma. The campaign will be available across multiple platforms, ensuring the hospital can reach those in need, where they are, with the resources to find help.

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Enter at 2101 Tulane Ave.

Outpatient Behavioral Health Center

2475 Canal St., Suite 106