You Can’t Choose the Waves, But You Can Choose Your Board: Building Coping Skills for Life’s Hard Emotions

What Are Coping Skills?

Coping skills are tools we use to manage stress, anxiety, and difficult emotions. They help regulate the nervous system, process what we’re feeling, and respond to challenges in ways that support long-term well-being as well as getting us through hard moments.

Think of coping skills as the board you ride on the waves of life—you can’t always control the wave, but you can improve how you stay balanced.

When the Wave Hits

Some days feel manageable. The waves are small, the water is steady, and you feel like you’re keeping your balance.

Other days, something hits you out of nowhere.

A conflict.
Bad news.
A sudden wave of anxiety or sadness you didn’t see coming.

One of the ways I often explain coping skills in therapy is this:
we don’t always get to choose the waves we ride in life. But we can learn to choose the board we ride them with.

Over time, coping skills become the board that helps us stay balanced—even when the water gets rough or unpredictable.

You Don’t Get to Choose the Waves

Life will bring waves.

Some are small and manageable. Others feel overwhelming, unexpected, and powerful enough to knock us completely off balance.

That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong.

It doesn’t mean you’re “bad at coping.”

It means you’re human.

Even the most skilled surfer still gets hit by waves they didn’t see coming or sometimes underestimates the size of the wave coming at them.

Big Emotions Are Not the Problem

When a big wave hits, big emotions follow.

Fear.
Anger.
Sadness.
Overwhelm.
Confusion.

These are not signs of weakness.

They are natural, healthy responses to what’s happening around you and within you.

The question isn’t whether you have emotions.

The question is: can you name them?

Why Naming Emotions Matters

Many people were never taught how to identify or talk about their feelings.

Instead, they learned to:

• push emotions away

• ignore them

• judge themselves for having them

  But naming emotions is one of the first steps toward managing them. We can start to deal with what we are able to recognize first.

When you can say:

• “I’m feeling anxious”

• “This is actually hurt”

• “Part of this is anger, and part is fear”

You begin to understand the wave you’re riding.

And understanding creates more stability, or at least less fear.

What Are Healthy Coping Skills?

Healthy coping skills are strategies that help you move through emotions, not avoid them.

Examples include:

• Deep breathing or grounding techniques

• Naming and identifying emotions

• Physical movement or exercise

• Talking with a trusted person

• Journaling or creative expression

• Setting boundaries

• Practicing self-compassion

These are not quick fixes.

They are skills that strengthen over time.

Learning to Ride the Tides

Part of becoming a better surfer isn’t just surviving the giant waves.

It’s learning how to manage the tides—the expected, everyday stressors of life.

Work stress.
Parenting challenges.
Relationship tension.
Daily overwhelm.

When you practice coping skills during these moments, you build confidence.

So when a wave comes that you didn’t see coming, you already know something about how to stay on the board.

Why Are Coping Skills Important?

Coping skills are important because life will always include stress, uncertainty, and emotional challenges.

While we can’t control what happens to us, coping skills help us:

• respond instead of react

• recover more quickly from setbacks

• feel more grounded during stress

• build confidence in handling difficult emotions

They don’t remove the waves. And it's important to note this because we often want a calm surface to deal with. The waves won't go away, though, which is why we need coping skills to help us change our relationship to them.

What Happens When You Stop Fighting the Wave

A lot of anxiety comes from trying to control or avoid emotions altogether.

But waves don’t disappear just because we’re afraid of them.

In fact, things often become easier when we shift from fear to curiosity.

Instead of asking:

“How do I make this feeling go away?”

We begin to ask:

“What is this feeling trying to tell me?”

Curiosity allows you to stay present.

And presence allows you to respond more intentionally - from a place of greater knowledge and understanding. It doesn't mean you're trying to "outthink" the wave, it just means you understand the waves and the various ways you can respond to them better.

How Do I Handle Big Emotions?

Handling big emotions starts with slowing down your response and increasing awareness.

A simple starting point:

1. Name the emotion

2. Pause and breathe

3. Ground your body (feet, hands, breath)

4. Choose a supportive action (talk, move, write, rest)

You don’t have to do this perfectly.

You just have to practice.

Trusting Yourself in the Water

The goal of coping skills isn’t to eliminate hard experiences.

It’s to build trust in yourself.

Trust that you can feel something difficult and survive it.
Trust that you can lose your balance and find it again.
Trust that even overwhelming waves will eventually pass.

Over time, something shifts.

The waves may not get smaller.

But you get stronger at riding them.

Therapy Can Help You Build the Board

Developing coping skills is not something most people were ever taught outright.

Therapy can be a place to:

• understand your emotional patterns

• learn practical coping strategies

• build confidence in handling stress and anxiety

• process deeper experiences that still feel overwhelming

I work with teens and adults across Colorado through secure telehealth therapy, helping clients develop coping skills for anxiety, stress, and big emotions—while also understanding the deeper “why” behind what they’re feeling.

You don’t have to figure it all out on your own.

Final Thought

You were never meant to control every wave.

But you are capable of learning how to ride them.

And that changes everything.