Everything I "Love" Turned Out To Be a Coping Mechanism

From the outside, it looks like passion. But beneath the surface, many of us are simply gripping onto lifelines with WIFI signals. Every book we binge, every game we marathon, every playlist on loop. A desperate stitch in our psyche that's fraying faster than ever before. For many in this generation including myself, Coping has become indistinguishable from living.

Credit:Florenz Mendoza

When Everything Is A Lifeline

It started off quietly enough, Mental health awareness began trending 2015 onwards if i'm not wrong? not just through campaigns but through memes, tweets, and 'therapy tok' as we call it now, those soundbites floating around everywhere in our feeds. "I self soothe by researching 12th century plague rituals, deep dives, obscure rabbit holes," someone jokes, but the laugh doesn't quite mask the desperate accuracy. Once the ADHD, anxiety, and trauma language started circulating. It was hard not to see the signs in ourselves, or the distractions we used to keep from spiraling.

It's no coincidence. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five US adults experience mental illness each year. The global numbers are rising, and the pandemic only threw gas on the fire. With traditional support systems crumbling and attention spans fired by digital overstimulation, coping mechanisms became a survival tool.

Neurodivergent Isn't A Trend

When I first stumbled into the neurodivergent conversation, it felt like finding a label for a feeling I didn't think was shared. Being different wasn't just an awkward personality quirk, it was wiring. Obsessive rabbit holes, hyperfixations and sensory seeking weren't random. They were indicators.

But awareness alone doesn't heal. In fact, it sometimes reinforces the pain, once you know you're different, you also know you're expected to adapt in a world that won't slow down for you. Highlights by the CDC confirms that diagnoses of ADHD and anxiety in young adults have increased sharply over the past decade.

At Alpha Healing Center, I've seen clients begin the process of untangling their lives from their learned survival habits. Here, coping isn't pathologized, It's understood as a roadmap to deeper insight. The journey toward healing isn't about shame. It's about support, ritual and a radical kind of empathy.

Coping Vs. Escaping: Walking The Line

There's no hard line between using something as a balm and turning it into a drug, but we know the difference in our gut. Are we learning and resting, or avoiding and numbing?

For me, every video essay on philosophy, every replay of a game I've already since, every cosmic fact I can't stop repeating, don't even get me started on the Roman Empire. It's survival. But it's also insight, it's how I found meaning in an overwhelming, overstimulated world.

The problem is, capitalism knows. It profits from our exhaustion. The average screen time among adults now clocks at over 7 hours daily, not including work. Algorithms are designed to keep us hooked not on joy, but on the comfort of familiarity, the illusion of control, and while some of us find relief in routine, others spiral deeper into patterns we can't escape.

The Cult Of Rewatching

Rewatching a show ten times isn't always nostalgia, sometimes it's a shield. It's our brain begging for something predictable when the outside world is chaos. But here's where it gets tricky. That shield, over time, becomes identity. Suddenly, the thing we do to survive is the thing that defines us. we become the characters in the show and in a world obsessed with productivity and self optimization, that can feel shameful.

At Alpha Healing Center, I've seen how people redefine their identities in recovery. Not by discarding their coping mechanisms but by recontextualizing them. Instead of "why can't I stop doing this," it becomes "what is this helping me manage?" That reframing alone has kept more people afloat than any one size fits all advice column ever could.

The Role of Mindfulness In Digital Habits

Coping isn't inherently bad. It's how we cope that matters. Are we aware of why we do what we do? Or are we disassociating through it? Mindfulness isn't just about meditation. It's about asking yourself if that next scroll, that next episode, that next splurge is nourishment or numbing.

And if you fall off track? That’s human. At 25, I’ve realized healing isn’t a race or a checklist. It’s an ongoing conversation with yourself. And being at Alpha Healing Center, even as a media person, forces me to keep listening. To the stories, the setbacks, and the small wins that look like someone choosing tea over tequila for the first time in years.

Testimonials & Quiet Breakthroughs

I didn't expect to be moved working in media for a healing center. But witnessing the vulnerable, often brutal honesty of clients, without any prompt, without rehearsals. Challenged my inner cynic.

They talk about their favorite songs, routines, obsessions, and how they once masked pain. They talk about coping. Not like it’s a weakness, but like it’s a form of language. A dialect of pain and endurance. Alpha Healing Center becomes the dictionary for many. A place where you finally learn what your habits are trying to tell you.

Button? Coping Mechanisms Aren't The Endgame, It's A Map

Every time I dive into a hyperfixation, I remind myself: this is how I survived. But I also ask, is this still serving me? Or is it just familiar? Some things I love are coping mechanisms. But they’re also reflections of what I value, what I fear, and what I crave. It’s a way of understanding myself in a world that rarely slows down long enough for self reflection.

And if all I ever do is endure & survive, that’s still valid. But maybe, just maybe, I can learn to thrive in the process. Not by erasing the things I love, but by learning to hold them gently.

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Resources:

• My ancestral ghosts speak to me, they dont know much but it's honest work.