Why Coping Skills Therapy May Not Produce Durable Recovery

Whether depression, anxiety, psychosis, trauma reaction, or some other Mental health difficulty, the common refrain I hear (from family, friends, YouTube followers, potential individuals for therapy) is, “Aaron, I am doing…” and then a laundry list of coping skills: walking, box breathing, tai chi, petting their schnauzer. They are putting out fires. Some Mental health […]

Lonely? 3 Effective Coping Strategies Could Help

Council on Substance Abuse. The loneliness epidemic persists: A post-pandemic look at the state of loneliness among U.S. adults. cosancadd.org/the-loneliness-epidemic-persists-a-post-pandemic-look-at-the-state-of-loneliness-among-u-s-adults/ Cox, D. (2021). The state of American friendship: Change, challenges, and loss. Survey Center on American Life. Floyd, K., Ray, C. D., & Hesse, C. (2025). Theoretic principles of rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) and […]

Beyond Coping: How to Heal Generational Trauma with Breathwork

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.” ~Akshay Dubey The realization came to me during a chaotic day at the Philadelphia public school where I worked as a counselor. A young student sat across from me, her body language mirroring anxiety patterns I knew all too […]

Personality vs. Trauma Coping: A Misunderstood Distinction

The difference between someone’s personality and their trauma coping and survival strategies is often misunderstood, leading to increasingly pernicious misjudgments about individuals’ character, intentions, or behavior. While personality refers to enduring, largely context-independent traits, trauma-coping and survival strategies and behaviors developed in response to (mostly unhealed) traumatic events. For the most part, trauma-coping and survival […]