Coping: A strategy to Avoid living fully. By Terryann Nikides When we cope we try to find ways to alter experiences by manipulating our over-reaction to the situation at hand.  Once we have succeeded in finding a way to cope we say things like “I am coping better now”, “I used to over-react”, “As I get older things don’t bother me as much anymore”. The latter comments just serve to underscore that there is a problem! In effect we are saying that there is a problem but we have coped or resigned ourselves to it. A cope is the vestment worn by a priest. When we cope we are trying to cloak the feelings, the emotions, and the experiences we are having. We keep placing one cope on top of another till we no longer feel, so we no longer experience our over-reactions. Yet we know on some level we are over-reacting to the situation otherwise we could not point out that “This no longer affects me like it used to” ! Coping means that I have resigned myself to the fact that I cannot change the situation so I have learned to suppress my feelings, emotions, and manipulate myself –manipulation to achieve a goal is also abusive-into believing that I have dealt effectively with the situation by manipulating what I believe about the situation. When we believe that something cannot change it is inevitable that resignation results.  In direct opposition is seeing the world filled with possibility resulting in adventure. Adventure denotes that we explore different possibilities. Coping only serves to find ways to dull our experience. In coping we seek ways to escape the adventure because we perceive it as something dangerous.  What is that we find dangerous? Usually it is ourselves, our own inability to see things from different perspectives, our own rigidity and resistance to change that is in danger hence dangerous. We say we want to live life fully, we want to let go, we want to really feel everything life has to offer and in the same breath we talk about how “we are coping with our daily lives as best as we can considering…”  We have an unlimited number of excuses, justifications, defenses, things or people to blame to keep us defensively living life.  When we live defensively then we cannot possibly be living fully.  If we perpetually need to justify our actions, blame life, death, the job, being unemployed, money, our wives or husbands, mothers, fathers our emotions, our bodies, our culture, our education, our intelligence, being ill, being healthy, being young, being old, not having kids, having kids, being single, being married, being ugly, being beautiful, the list is endless, it is apparent that having all this and more to blame makes us a victim hence we live in perpetual over-reaction.  We consistently have our buttons pushed and over-react to life all the time. In BreakThrough’s 7 steps we explore a specific scenario in life wherein a button is detonated and we over-react.  Through the adventure of the 7 steps we look in depth at what catalyzes our over reactions. Through detective work, or deductive reasoning, we the find the host of should’s and should not’s and false identities that make up our recipes for living a limited life.  Once we see the faulty beliefs that we have been carrying around for a whole lifetime we are freed like slave from bondage.  The impact is life transforming, every step of the way BreakThrough’s steps frees up the tension in the body, like a snake unwinding the body, mind, and emotions stop and becoming and can just BE!   Join us for this life transforming Journey. Stop becoming and Just be!