I wouldn't say that kintypes are a coping mechanism for most people, I'd say for most it's a spiritual thing. Sure, people can use their spirituality as a coping mechanism, in fact, I do that. Please don't erase the fact that for the majority of kin/therians, that the belief is spiritual. (Ps, if your kin is purely a coping mechanism with nothing else attached to it, the term would be copinglink. It's just as valid as being kin, just a different term)
I’m not trying to erase anything, so I’m sorry if I came across as rude to you or anyone else! All I have to speak from is what I know, based both on personal experience and what I’ve read. Kintypes can definitely also be spiritual, though I don’t want to call that a requirement of being kin.
As I’d never heard the term copinglink before, I looked into it & it seems to me that that’s a bit different, more of a voluntary choice to identify with a character than a kintype, though it might mean different things to different people!