If you grew up without the advantage of therapy, these 10 phrases probably became your coping mechanisms

Most of us didn't grow up with therapists on speed dial.

When things got hard, we didn't have someone to help us process our feelings or teach us healthy coping strategies. We figured it out on our own, cobbling together whatever worked to get us through the day.

And what worked? Certain phrases. Little mantras we'd tell ourselves when things felt overwhelming or scary or too big to handle.

These weren't necessarily healthy coping mechanisms. They were survival mechanisms. Ways to push down feelings, avoid confrontation, or convince ourselves everything was fine when it wasn't.

I still catch myself using some of these phrases today. They're so deeply ingrained that they feel automatic, even though I now recognize them for what they are: attempts to self-regulate without the tools to actually do it properly.

If you grew up without therapy, you probably developed your own version of these phrases too:

1. "I'm fine"

Ah, the classic. The go-to. The phrase that ended a thousand conversations before they could begin.

Someone asks how you're doing, and you automatically respond with "I'm fine" even when you're falling apart inside. You say it so convincingly that people believe you. Sometimes you even believe yourself.

I used this one constantly growing up. Stressed about school? I'm fine. Parents fighting? I'm fine. Feeling completely overwhelmed by everything? I'm fine, thanks for asking.

It sort of became a shield. A way to avoid being vulnerable, to keep people from seeing what was really going on, to convince yourself that if you just kept saying you were fine, eventually you would be.

The problem with "I'm fine" as a coping mechanism is that it stops you from actually processing what you're feeling. You're not fine. You're struggling. But you've trained yourself to immediately shut down any acknowledgment of that struggle.

It takes conscious effort to stop defaulting to this phrase. To actually check in with yourself and give an honest answer when someone asks how you are.

2. "It could be worse"

This one sounds reasonable on the surface. Perspective is valuable, right?

Yes, but when you use this phrase constantly, you're essentially invalidating your own feelings. You're telling yourself that your pain doesn't matter because someone somewhere has it worse.

This becomes a way to dismiss every negative emotion before you have to actually feel it. Nothing you're going through ever seems bad enough to justify being upset about.

I remember using this phrase all through my teenage years. Every time I felt overwhelmed, I'd immediately think of someone who had it worse than me. It felt like I was being mature and grateful, and it really did help me get through the disappointment.

But what I was actually doing was denying myself the right to have feelings.

Your struggles are valid even if someone else's struggles are objectively bigger. Comparison isn't how emotions work.

3. "I don't want to burden anyone"

Here's the phrase that kept you isolated when you needed support most.

You learned early that your problems were yours alone to handle. That asking for help meant imposing on people. That being a good person meant suffering silently so you didn't inconvenience anyone else.

This phrase became your excuse for not reaching out. For not telling your friends you were struggling. For handling everything alone even when you were drowning.

The irony is that the people who love you probably wanted to help. But you never gave them the chance because you'd convinced yourself that your needs were burdens.

Real connection requires vulnerability. And vulnerability requires believing that your feelings and needs matter enough to share.

4. "Just push through it"

Feeling exhausted? Push through. Feeling overwhelmed? Push through. Emotionally depleted? You guessed it, push through.

This phrase became the answer to every difficult feeling. You learned that the way to handle hard things was to simply grit your teeth and keep going, no matter what your mind or body was telling you.

I internalized this so deeply that I didn't know how to stop pushing. Even when my body was screaming for rest, even when I was on the verge of burnout, I'd tell myself to just push through it.

The problem is that constantly pushing through without addressing what's actually wrong doesn't solve anything. It just delays the inevitable breakdown while making it worse.

5. "I can handle it myself"

When you don't really have access to therapy (or to anyone who can actually help), you learned to be self-reliant to a fault. To see needing help as weakness. To believe that you should be capable of managing everything alone.

So you did. You handled your problems yourself, struggled through difficult situations yourself, figured everything out yourself. Even when accepting help would have made things so much easier.

This one served you in some ways. It made you resourceful and independent. But it also isolated you and prevented you from building the kind of support systems that make life manageable.

I still default to this phrase when things get hard. My first instinct is always to handle it myself, to figure it out alone, to not involve anyone else. It takes conscious effort to remind myself that asking for help is actually a sign of strength.

6. "It is what it is"

The ultimate resignation phrase. When something bad happened or a situation felt unfair, this phrase helped you accept it without having to actually process it.

It became a way to avoid dealing with difficult emotions. If someone hurt you, it is what it is. If you didn't get what you hoped for, it is what it is. And if life threw you a major, heartbreaking curveball? That's right, it is what it is!

You couldn't change it, so why bother feeling anything about it? Just accept reality and move on.

It sounds like mature acceptance, but often it's just giving up before you've allowed yourself to feel the full weight of what happened. It shortcuts the emotional work of actually coming to terms with disappointment, loss, or injustice. 

I used this phrase to avoid so much necessary grieving. Things that deserved to be processed, mourned, or even fought against got dismissed with a shrug and "it is what it is."

Sometimes acceptance is healthy. But sometimes this phrase is just avoidance dressed up as wisdom.

7. "At least I have [insert consolation prize]"

Who cares if I didn't get what I wanted so dearly? 

At least I have my health. At least I have a job. At least I have a place to live. At least I have people who love me.

Like "it could be worse," this became a way to minimize your own struggles by immediately pivoting to what you should be grateful for instead of acknowledging what was actually hurting you.

Someone would ask what's wrong, and you'd redirect. "Yeah, things are tough, but at least I have..." And just like that, you've dismissed your own pain.

Gratitude is valuable. Recognizing what you have is important. But using gratitude as a weapon against your own feelings isn't actually gratitude. It's deflection.

I spent years doing this. Every legitimate complaint or struggle got immediately countered with "at least I have..." I thought I was being positive and grateful. What I was actually doing was refusing to acknowledge when things were genuinely difficult.

You can be grateful for what you have while also acknowledging that you're struggling. These things can coexist.

8. "It doesn't matter"

For a lot of people who didn't have the advantage of therapy, a quick coping mechanism was dismissal.

Your feelings don't matter. That person's behavior doesn't matter. The situation doesn't matter. Just let it go and for the love of God, move on!

This became a way to avoid confrontation and uncomfortable conversations. If nothing matters, you never have to speak up, set boundaries, or address problems.

You learned to minimize everything. To convince yourself that things that genuinely bothered you were actually no big deal. To swallow your feelings and pretend you weren't affected.

But let's not fool ourselves. All of that hurt is right inside us, building up unexpressed and unresolved.

Things do matter. Your feelings matter. And pretending otherwise doesn't make them go away.

9. "I just need to be stronger"

Whenever you struggled with something, this became your explanation. You weren't strong enough yet. If you were just stronger, tougher, more resilient, you'd be able to handle it.

This phrase turned every difficulty into a personal failing. You weren't allowed to struggle because struggling meant you were weak.

So you'd double down. Try harder. Force yourself to cope better. Beat yourself up for having normal human reactions to difficult situations.

The truth is, you didn't need to be stronger. You needed support, tools, understanding. But those weren't available, so you blamed yourself instead.

I wasted years thinking every challenge I faced was evidence that I wasn't strong enough. It never occurred to me that maybe some things are genuinely difficult and struggling with them is a normal response.

10. "Everything happens for a reason"

Finally, this lovely phrase that sounds so poetic, but can really cause some damage in certain cases.

This phrase helped you make sense of things that didn't make sense. Bad things happened, painful experiences occurred, and you needed a framework to understand them.

So you told yourself everything happens for a reason. That your suffering had meaning. That eventually you'd understand why you had to go through whatever you went through.

Sometimes this phrase brought comfort. Other times it became a way to skip over actually processing painful experiences. You didn't need to feel your feelings or work through your trauma because it all happened for a reason, right?

This one is tricky because it can be genuinely helpful in some contexts. But when it becomes your default response to pain, it can prevent you from actually dealing with that pain in healthy ways.

Final thoughts

In the absence of therapy, professional support, or healthy coping tools, we developed our own strategies for managing difficult emotions and situations.

There's no shame in that. We did the best we could with what we had.

But as Rudá Iandê points out in his book “Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life,” "The more we try to escape or numb the chaos within, the more powerful the currents become, and the harder it becomes to establish a connection with our deeper selves."

So, if you recognize these phrases in yourself, it might be worth examining them. Are they still serving you? Or are they keeping you from processing emotions, asking for help, or building genuine connections?

You don't have to keep using survival mechanisms that were developed when you had no other options. You can learn new ways of coping, new phrases to tell yourself, new strategies that actually support your wellbeing rather than just helping you push through.