Three Ways to Begin: Practical Tools for Shifting Type C Coping Patterns

The Type C Files, Part 4.

Photo by Miguel Ángel Hernández on Unsplash

We have spent three days together looking inward. Today strap in, we fly forward.

If you have recognized yourself in this series, you are already doing the most important thing: paying attention. Now I want to give you something to work with. Three practices, grounded in research and lived experience, that offer a genuine path toward updating the coping patterns that no longer serve you.

These are invitations. Small, sustainable, deeply meaningful ones.

1. Begin on the Page

For Type C copers, the struggle with expressing emotion is real. Others often see us as composed, rational, always keeping our cool. We have learned to respond to life with I am fine even when we are anything but.

The first step of expression can begin in private, on the page.

Psychologist James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin has spent decades studying what happens when people write about their emotional experiences. In one foundational study, participants wrote for fifteen minutes a day over four consecutive days. Those who wrote about past traumas, including both the facts and their feelings, initially felt some discomfort. Six months later they had made significantly fewer visits to health centers than any other group and reported a sense of resolution about the experiences they had explored.

Pennebaker’s conclusion: concealing or holding back powerful emotions is itself stressful. It elevates cortisol and suppresses immune function. Expressing them, even privately, even imperfectly, begins to shift that.

You do not need a perfect journal or a writing practice with a formal name. You need a page and fifteen minutes. Start there.

Note: If you need some prompts to get you going, Lisa Weinert’s book Narrative Healing is a goldmine. She is an amazing human and I’ve experienced some deep healing with her work. You can listen to an interview with her here.

2. Practice the Word No

Assertiveness is not aggression. It is not selfishness. It is the practice of being honest about what you need and what you are genuinely able to give.

For many Type C copers, assertiveness begins with a single, complete word: No.

I remember the first time I started practicing this. What I discovered surprised me. The world did not end. My relationships did not crumble. People did not reject me. What I found instead was that my lack of assertiveness had actually been making me harder to trust. Because when you always say yes, people cannot tell what you actually mean.

A few grounding principles for beginning the practice:

• Give yourself permission. No is a complete sentence and a complete answer.

• Be honest. You do not need an excuse. A direct refusal respects both of you.

• Refuse the request. Be specific about what you are saying no to.

• Be timely. A quick, clear no is kinder than a prolonged, anxious maybe.

• Hold the line. If someone pushes back, you are allowed to simply say: I have already made my decision.

Admittedly when my therapist explained to me that always being agreeable made me untrustworthy, needless to say, it struck a chord. Me. Untrustworthy?!? It only took me a minute to know in my bones she was correct. That was an earth shattering moment for me. If it is for you, my invitation is this: hold this new found awareness with great compassion. These ways of being kept you safe. AND, you get to change your way forward.

Note: Dr. Rick Hanson’s Being Well Podcast and his book Making Great Relationships both offer practical guidance on communicating what you want and need. I recommend them warmly.

Photo by Gastro Editorial on Unsplash

3. Ask What Would Please Me

Here is a question to try on the next time you feel the pull to manage a situation, fix someone else’s discomfort, or keep the peace at your own expense:

What would please me?

It sounds simple. It is not small.

For Type C copers, inner harmony often gets confused with outer harmony. We work so hard to keep the peace around us that we lose track of the peace within us. We give ground and accommodate and smooth things over, then wonder why we feel hollow at the end of a day spent being endlessly available.

One client described the moment she realized her role as family harmony-maker had created a quiet disharmony in herself, her husband, and her children. She had believed that no conflict on the surface meant everyone was okay. What she found was that the cost of her constant peace-keeping was a profound disconnection. From her family. From herself. When she shared her reflection I could visibly see her shoulders relax and her spine strengthen. I watched her on Zoom get three inches taller!

We can be kind without being endlessly accommodating. We can care for others without disappearing into that care. And when we begin asking what would please me ?, we are not taking something away from anyone. We are finally giving something to ourselves as well as the humans in the circles we influence.

Tell me which one you are choosing. I would love to cheer you on.

Tomorrow: the final post in this series. We step back, we celebrate how far you have come, and we look forward together.

I am so glad you are here.

Peacefully,

Kathy