Filling the Void: Helpful and Harmful Coping Mechanisms

By Dr. Liz DeBetta 
​As adoptees, many of us live with a kind of void that is hard to describe. It’s the space where answers should be but aren’t, where family history should connect but doesn’t, where the feeling of rootedness should live but feels absent.
For so many of us, the void is ever-present — like a constant dull ache. That void is real. And like all humans, we reach for ways to soothe it.
The problem is, not all coping mechanisms — or even so-called “healing spaces” — actually help us heal. Some offer temporary relief while quietly keeping us stuck in cycles of harm. Others create the conditions for transformation, helping us move toward wholeness. This particular void requires more than simple attention; it requires gentle witnessing, love, and care.

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Harmful Coping Mechanisms
When the pain of loss, identity fracture, or unanswered questions feels unbearable, it makes sense that we turn toward what numbs. Substances, overworking, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or even isolating ourselves can feel like survival tools. In the moment, they might keep us afloat. But over time, they disconnect us from ourselves and from others.
The coping strategies we learn to feel safe can actually become barriers to healing.

• Numbing with substances or staying so busy we don’t have time to feel trains our bodies to exist in a holding pattern — a flight response that conditions our nervous systems to flee instead of feel.
• Perfectionism can look like a positive strategy, but it’s really a fight response that keeps us from presence and connection by blocking our authentic selves.
• People-pleasing is a fawn response that undermines authenticity by conditioning us to abandon ourselves instead of creating boundaries and honoring our needs.
• Isolating is a freeze response that sometimes serves us when we need space to process, but can masquerade as a healthy boundary while actually keeping us stuck.
  
  

We don’t heal in isolation.

Coping mechanisms aren’t only individual. Communities and “healing” spaces can also become harmful. I’ve witnessed spaces where trauma dumping replaces healing, where confirmation bias reinforces stuckness, and where trauma bonding is mistaken for authentic connection.
At first these spaces may feel good. Breaking silence and being validated can be a relief. But when all we do is recycle pain without any action plan, we risk turning trauma into identity. Over-identifying with trauma can make it feel overwhelming to imagine a life beyond it.
Too many of us find ourselves stuck in spaces that reinforce our trauma rather than help us reconnect to the parts of ourselves that exist outside of it. I often say: I have been traumatized, but I am not my trauma. Harmful coping — whether through behaviors or spaces — blurs that distinction and traps us inside the wound instead of guiding us toward integration.

Helpful Coping Mechanisms
The difference between survival and healing lies in the tools and spaces that help us reconnect with ourselves.
On the individual level, this might look like expressive writing, somatic practices, grounding techniques, or rituals of self-care. I know this because I’ve spent more than a decade unlearning unhelpful coping and replacing it with tools for wholeness.
At some point, I realized I could no longer merely exist in survival mode. I needed to do something. For me, that meant learning to sit with discomfort — to feel my feelings instead of detaching from them.

• Expressive writing became a core practice. It allows me to stay connected to the vulnerable parts of myself that still need attention, while clarifying what I feel and why.
• Somatic practices help me stay grounded. One of my favorites is my friend Meredith’s 20 Minutes of Movement Magic, a dance-based somatic workout taught on Zoom every weekday. Anytime I need to return to myself, I can press play and reconnect through nourishing movement.
• Float therapy is another favorite — it’s the only time both my brain and body can fully let go.

On the community level, helpful coping requires more than sharing pain. True healing spaces are built around safety, connection, and managing emotions — the three pillars of trauma-informed care. They invite agency and choice. They honor each person’s language and story. They witness without judgment.
A healing space is more than an open mic for trauma. It is a container that helps us express pain and practice new tools that replace harmful coping. Healing comes from being able to take up space, show up as you are — even messy — and choose who sees you, when you share, and how much you reveal.
These are the kinds of spaces I work to create through Migrating Toward Wholeness: spaces where people reclaim their narratives, integrate fragmented parts of self, and move from being the object in the trauma to the subject of their own lives.

Coping Space vs. Healing Space
The distinction between a coping space and a healing space is subtle but profound.

• A coping space may soothe for a moment, but often replicates harmful dynamics of silencing, comparison, or retraumatization.
• A healing space helps us stay present, name what’s true, and integrate our stories in ways that bring us back to ourselves.
  
  
  

I return often to a guiding belief: More stories = more connection, and more connection = more healing. When stories are held in spaces that reinforce agency and wholeness, healing becomes possible.

An Invitation
As adoptees, we deserve more than survival. We deserve spaces that help us move beyond the void and into wholeness. Because the right people don’t just see you — they hold your truth with care.
I invite you to reflect on the coping strategies and communities you’re part of:

• Do they help you integrate and grow?
• Or do they keep you circling inside the wound?
  
  

Each of us has the right to choose coping mechanisms and healing spaces that honor our wholeness, not just our wounds. When we do, we open the possibility for connection, for transformation, and for futures defined not by trauma — but by our capacity to heal.


About the Author: Dr. Liz DeBetta is a scholar-artist-activist and Founder of Migrating Toward Wholeness©, a transformative program that empowers adoptees and women who have experienced trauma to heal and reclaim their narratives through creative writing and storytelling. As an adoptee herself, she brings a deeply personal perspective to her work, which emphasizes the power of personal narratives in fostering resilience, connection, and self-acceptance. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on creative writing, feminist critical theory, and social justice, which informs her innovative approach to blending art and activism. She is the author of Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness and the award-winning creator of the one-woman show Un-M-Othered, which delves into the complexities of adoption and patriarchy, offering audiences a powerful exploration of identity and healing through performance. Dr. DeBetta’s interdisciplinary approach combines creative expression, social justice, and personal healing to inspire individual and collective transformation.
Follow her socials :  Dr. Liz FB ,  Dr. Liz IG 
Visit her website: LizDeBetta.com

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