To me coping mechanisms are kind of like falling in judo. (I'm a brown belt/sankyu,) You know there's a possibility at any moment that your opponent may throw you. If you don't know how to fall, you will get hurt. Falling has to be 2nd-nature, "Oh I just did that" - after the fact. Until we get to that point, we practice falling with just slapping the mat with our arms, then with legs, left and right side... Then when we get thrown, its instinct. With coping mechanisms, I try to have a file that says "Oh yeah- this is what I was told to do now." It may even be a sound-clip I have from when I was told that in my head. I find its only these little clips that sometimes save me when my brain is betraying me. If I can just think to call my pdoc, that is HUGE coping technique in itself! Smaller things could be to go away from the situation that's adding to my current state, and do something soothing. Music, see friends, etc. I got into doing that a lot because my mother is frequently the source of my stress. She is constant nasty at times so I just escape and self-sooth. Sometimes that's meant my friends at the bookstore, and sometimes it has meant going to bf's for sex. I think I've OVER done it at times so that I don't get normal life things done- like school or job. But how can you do those things if you're preoccupied by stressers, or if you go into a depersonalization or a derealization or you hallucinate? What if you are in a mixed state? How do you pull out of that, when you are sobbing and know you shouldn't stay in bed all day but your files are being overridden by the very real reality of your body at the moment?