Engage Coping Tools
The Coping Kete
Visit The Coping Kete to find over 150 new ways of coping with stress and distress.
The Coping Kete is an online tool for expanding your set of coping resources as a way to build better mental health and survive the crisis points. Use The Coping Kete to practice new strategies and build your own Personal Coping Kete of tools for moments of distress. You will also find tips for using the Coping Kete to survive a crisis, information about coping and suggestions to help you through the barriers we can face when we try to learn new ways of handling stress and distress.
Visit www.engagenz.co.nz/copingkete
The Coping Posters Teaching Resource
The Coping Posters Teaching Resource allows teachers to use The Coping Kete to encourage their students to explore helpful ways of coping with stress and distress while they learn the static image component of the Year 9 English Curriculum. This resource was created in collaboration with Ilana Hill, a NZ secondary school teacher with a passion for suicide prevention. If you’d like to see your class doing something like this, take a copy along to your teacher and let them know it’s here!
Find out more about The Coping Posters Teaching Resource here.
Download the Coping Posters Teaching Resource here (pdf).
The Small Victories List
The Small Victories List is a simple worksheet from the Engage Group programme that prompts you to keep a record of each of the big and small things that you manage, achieve, cope with, and survive each day.
All human minds are designed to pay most attention to the threats and challenges we face and the ways that we could do better next time. This natural tendency can go into super-drive when we are struggling with distress and lead us to overlook or discount the things we manage and achieve, which leaves us feeling even more distressed by what we are facing. Sometimes we need to deliberately pay attention to what we are doing and surviving to make sure we don’t lose sight of our efforts, small successes, and strengths.
You can print and write on the Small Victories worksheet itself, use the ‘type-writer’ tool in your PDF reader to keep electronic copies, or keep a record in your own notebook or digital device.
Download the Small Victories List worksheet here (opens PDF).
The Thriving Lives Worksheet
The Thriving Lives Worksheet breaks positive mental health experiences down into the practices that build them and gives you space to reflect on the strategies you are currently using, and create a plan to start filling the gaps.
Explore seven areas of practice that build the experiences of mental health and wellbeing.
- Meaning and purpose
- Connection and belonging
- Achievement and Mastery / Using and Developing Strengths
- Self-Care and Coping
- Expression and Support
- Enjoyment and Pleasure / Creating Positive Emotions
- Engagement and Interest
Of course all this unfolds inside a social context. We all require a safe, supportive environment where we have access to the resources and connections that meet our needs. There are so many things that can disrupt our contact with those things, increase our experiences of distress, and make it harder for us to cope. If you are in an unsafe situation, it’s normal to be struggling with difficult thoughts and feelings, and so important to reach out for support to keep yourself safe. No matter what, there’s always something we can do to address the stressful situations we face, get through the tough stuff, and strengthen our experiences of mental health. Even those big social issues like racism, discrimination, and climate change, which can seem so outside of our power to shift, can be engaged with in a way that allows us to use our difficult feelings in helpful, productive ways that build meaning and vitality into our lives.
You will need to print the PDF file so you can write on it, save a copy and use the ‘type-writer’ tool in Adobe Acrobat if you wish to fill it out on your computer, or use the worksheet as a guide and write your answers in a notebook. This worksheet was originally created for use in a workshop setting. A more detailed handbook to help guide you is on the way.
The information in The Coping Kete will help you understand the difference between activities that are likely to be helpful and unhelpful in the long-term.
Download The Thriving Lives Worksheet here (opens PDF).
