EPISODE 3

When Survival Becomes Survival Mode

What happens when the coping mechanisms that saved you stop working.

Nicole Roundy examines the coping mechanisms that helped her survive cancer, athletics, trauma, and everyday life. What happens when those ways of coping become a way of living?

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Episode guide

In this episode

·The ways we learn to cope with difficult things
·Being independent, pushing through, and not asking for help
·How survival skills follow us into the next version of our lives
·The difference between being shaped by the past and controlled by it
·Recognizing when strength means you no longer have to handle more

Episode notes

We all develop ways of coping with difficult things. Sometimes those skills become part of who we are: being independent, pushing through, avoiding conflict, staying busy, not asking for help, being the strong one.

And sometimes, the very things that helped us get through one version of our lives follow us into the next.

Lets talk about what happens when survival becomes a way of living. I’ll break down the coping mechanisms I developed through cancer, athletics, trauma, and simply learning how to navigate the world…and what happened when I started questioning whether I still needed to cope.

Because there’s a difference between being shaped by your past and being controlled by it.

And maybe strength isn’t always about handling more. Maybe sometimes it’s recognizing that you don’t have to keep doing something just because you’ve done it before.

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