The Gift of Present Mindfulness
I want to share a couple thoughts about the gifts that the work of mindful living can bring.
First off, mindful presence (and what I have talked about throughout my course) acts as medicine for healing the wounds that need tending to AND as nourishment for a life that supports wellbeing, vitality, and engagement. So.. tools for when we are hurting and a lifestyle that strengthen our ability to be with hard and beautiful things that life inevitably brings. I want to be real, No, weโre not going to get all these pieces right all the time - and we certainly need grace for our ourselves in the process. But these factors matter and knowing the pieces can give us agency to create the change. Iโm also willing to bet that you have more resources than realize.
Finally, a beautiful gift of mindfulness and mindful presence is its ability to connect us to our full selves. This path towards healing is also a path towards the core of ourselves. In this practice We get the opportunity to notice where weโre at, what we need, and who we are - in all of our wonderful imperfect humanness. I know that the pull to end suffering can be so strong and we can find ourselves desperately striving for change, but often that change is found in slowing down and tuning in to what is and who we are in it. May you be well on your brave journeys.
Unconscious Learnings
Our brains are meaning making, pattern noticing, learning machines. When we experience a traumatic or difficult event or grow up in a chronic stress or dysfunctional family - our brains are learning things about the world or ourselves from those experiences.
We might โlearnโ that the world is unsafe, or that our emotions arenโt allowed, or pick up a belief that we are unwanted or unworthy. Whatever Those learnings are - they make perfect sense in the situations where they were formed and often continue to live on within us, unconsciously being played out throughout our lives.
I want to give you an example to illustrate this point: If we grow up with a parent who gets angry any time we show sadness/frustration, we absolutely have to learn to not show that emotion - in that context we cannot express our needs through our emotion of sadness/frustration because it puts us in physical or psychological danger, if theyโll ignore/abandon us. In that case, shutting down our feeling of sadness is a brilliant survival strategy that keeps us connected to our caretakers who we are dependent on.
The thing is, Trauma brain overgeneralizes and amplifies - it doesnโt learn โI canโt show sadness with my parents because theyโre not emotionally able to handle itโ it learns โI canโt show emotions with anybody because itโs dangerous.โ When weโre in a situation that feels similar to being with that angry parent, our brain is going to say - โOh i know how to handle this, shut down your emotionsโ
The work here is to pull apart and recognize those old learnings that are no longer applicable or necessary but that we might still be using to interpret the world around us.
Is our loving partner or trustworthy friend actually going to respond like our parents - or would they be open and receptive to us?
Recap: Our brains learn in overgeneralized ways and apply those learning to many situations.
What do we do Next? This is where practicing presence can be a powerful way to support healing and change our interpretation of the world around us,
So weโve got this learning, it helped us get through childhood or a difficult event - Then we move through the world with that learning subconsciously interpreting our experience. In essence, weโre living in an old memory - trauma takes us in the past.
By becoming present - we can start to train our brain to notice that things are different now - these can be tiny moments of healing.
Weโre not children, weโre not in that traumatic situation - weโre here today. Weโre not living in the past or in the haze of that traumatic learning. Weโre telling our brain weโre not there, we're here. โThis is my loving friend or my boss - not my angry parentโ
Then we have a greater capacity to respond in a different way.
Honestly these learnings/beliefs are hard to notice on our own. This where an outside perspective is really helpful like a therapist, close friend, partner, or a trusted family member who knows our history. Ultimately, before we can change these old learning we have to recognize and understand them. Slowing down and becoming present and curious about what is happening inside of us, helps us get there.
Takeaway: Our brains overgeneralize and apply those learning to many situations. Trauma brings us to the past and we view current moments from past lenses. Practicing presence brings us to the now and allows us to take in new information that leads to healing and change.
Soothing our System with Compassion
Compassion: this is a quick bonus on self compassion.
There is a good amount of research highlighting the benefits of self compassion on therapeutic healing. There is also evidence that it works far more effectively at creating change than self-criticism, which has the same effect on our brain that external threats do. Self compassion requires us to notice that weโre having a hard moment, that hard moments and suffering is a part of life, and to bring in kind acknowledgment of those truths. We can practice that like any mindfulness skill and it can become one our most powerful coping tools.
I believe our emotions are worthy of being held and honored. They give us valuable information and are an expression of our lived experiences. Self compassion is how we honor them and honor our humanity. We turn towards our tender experiences and say, โI see you, I understand you now, and youโre ok to be here.โ
A simple self compassion Practice or mantra: with a Hand on your heart, take a deep breath, say: โThis is a hard moment, suffering is a part of life, May I be kind to myself in this moment, may I give myself the compassion I need.โ
Takeaway: Feeling and understanding our emotions gives us access to self compassion. Self compassion is more effective toward change than self-criticism and can โsootheโ our systems.
Emotional Awareness & Feeling our Feelings
Weโve talked a bit about how we are social beings - but We are also emotional beings. Our emotions are our moment by moment expression of ourselves and our interactions with our world.
Many people have complicated relationships with their emotions. Theyโre either afraid of or overwhelmed by them or disconnected and confused by them. Our experience of emotions can shift us into that dysregulation that we just talked about in the Nervous System video. This happens for a lot of reasons, many of which are connected to our past experiences.
The thing is, Being able to connect to our feelings, understand them, and accept them is necessary in healing unresolved experiences (and living fully).
What does it mean to feel our feelings? It means we can notice them, so we build our awareness of how they show up in our system.
(2) we name them, we start to label and identify that experience more specifically,
(3) we work to understand why theyโre here - or what theyโre telling us
(4), we sooth or move through them.
Letโs talk more specifically about How we can begin to notice, name, understand, sooth? This is again where we can bring mindful presence. Here is a great simple practices to try:
Itโs called the SEAT exercise and it's great because we can use it if weโve left our WOT or if weโre simply building our emotional awareness skills.
You may start by taking a breath to slow down and turn inward and become curious - then go through acronym of SEAT: S for sensation, E for emotion, A for Action, T for thought. Letโs try it together.
If you paused right now, what Sensations are you feeling? It might take a moment to notice. Our emotions are felt in our body so drawing our awareness to our physical self helps us to begin to notice what is happening emotionally. If itโs a highly activated moment we might feel our heart beating or heat in our face. If right now is more neutral, you may feel a softness in your belly/shoulders, or stillness in your feet. What psychical sensations do you notice?
Then move to E for emotion, see if you can put a name to the emotion youโre currently experiencing. Maybe with those sensations there's a sense of calm, excitement, interest, boredom, annoyance. There's a saying in the therapy world, that we need to โName it to Tame itโ. Something about simply putting a word to the feeling, can have a regulating effect. This is where we can use the Feelings Wheel resource for inspiration.
A for Action: what impulse do you feel coming as youโve noticed the sensation and named the feeling? Do you want to stretch, hide, cry, hit something, turn off the video, or call a friend. Notice the impulse without judgment
Finally, T for thought: What thoughts come with the experience? Is it a thought that life is good and Iโm ok right now. Or is something a little more heated or neutral?
When we slow down and begin to build inner awareness of whatโs happening inside of us - we see that In a single moment there is actually a lot going on. Breaking apart the moment helps us make sense of what is happening and why we might feel a certain way about a situation, or why we might be overwhelmed or confused by our feelings.
(TIPS) You can also use the NS practices from before - If youโre a person who gets overwhelmed:, External grounding can be helpful, If you lean more towards feeling disconnection from your feelings or body - going inward and going gently can be useful in re-engaging;
Practices from the previous video and the SEAT exercise help us feel our feelings in a structured and manageable way. Remember what I said in the beginning, we have to be grounded in the present to integrate new information and move through old stuck trauma. Our emotions are part of the puzzle that needs to be processed and integrated. When we can slow down and be more present and attuned to the experience, we can become curious about it as well. Why was that emotion there and what was it telling us? Thatโs number 3, the understanding piece.
Then once we understand the why and the what and start to feel through them in sensation - we also have greater access to our self compassion. This is that soothing piece - weโll talk about that more in the next video.
Window of Tolerance & Direct Nervous System Practices
The nervous system is our brain, spinal cord, and a complex network of nerves that send messages from our brain to our body. Part of what our nervous system does is notice and help us respond to stress, threats, and danger. In this discussion Iโm going to focus just on the aspects that relate to our convo in this course and the concept of the Window of Tolerance. My disclaimer is that this is intentionally oversimplified so we donโt want to get lost in the details. If you want to understand the science in more depth, Iโd recommend reading about polyvagal theory.
We all have a baseline level of nervous system activity, and itโs constantly shifting throughout our day depending on what weโre doing and what we need. When something challenging or stressful happens we need our nervous system to activate so that our muscles can engage and we can respond to that challenge. When we are in non-threatening situations, then our system can shift into a state that allows for relaxation and rest, where we can digest our food, and connect with our people.
Letโs take a look at this diagram. The middle section represents what we can call our Window of Tolerance, which is our optimal state of arousal. Again, when something stressful happens we need our Nervous System to move up in activation but ideally we also want to stay inside the boundary of what our system can tolerate.
When we are in our window of tolerance, we can manage our emotions, we have access to our higher thinking regions of the brain, and weโre more likely to be in our present moment experience.
Now, letโs focus on the other parts of this picture. When we become overwhelmed and the stress, danger, or threat of stress is too much, we might shoot up into this hyperarousal (overactivated) state. Thatโs where weโll feel that high anxiety and those fight or flight responses. They take over and we can feel overwhelmed or out of control here.This is what we call being dysregulated and out of our window of tolerance.
From overarousal we might then move into a shut down state. Thatโs when freeze and dissociation comes in. Some people move into hypoarousal really quickly, some may stay in the hyperarounsal longer.
When we are in fight, flight, or freeze weโre in our survival states. while, these are adaptive internal processes and necessary in certain situationsโฆ they arenโt as helpful for most of our daily problems of living and those brain states do not allow for optimal healing or integration.
Chronic stress and trauma impacts how sensitive our systems are to signs of threat, how it responds, and how long it takes to come back to our baseline. In essence, difficult experiences shrink our window of tolerance and then we end up in dysregulation too quickly or too often. Sometimes we get stuck in these places and live in those survival zones.
Everybodyโs nervous system responses and triggers are different because we all have unique life experiences. A common goal is to widen/strengthen our nervous systems tolerance for stress so that we can respond more appropriately - without getting so overwhelmed or shutting down.
Everything we talk about in this course widens that window of tolerance - that includes the lifestyle factors from the other section - rest, nutrition, minimizing stress, restorative activities, and having supportive people in our lives.
Grounding and mindfulness practice and other coping skills work directly with our nervous system and at widening that Window Of Tolerance.
(Direct NS Practice) Breathe is our first, most accessible, and direct way in. A caveat being that for some people focusing on your breath is more triggering, again, find what feels right for you.
A breathing exercise can be as simple as pausing, noticing your breath, and intentionally stretching it out. Letโs try that now. Tune into your awareness of how your breath is moving in this moment. Is it shallow, slow, deep, smooth โฆ now intentionally begin to deepen that inhale and then stretch the exhale out. And continue for a few more rounds. For some people, a simple deep breathing pause can be enough to settle their systems. For others, it may offer a greater ability to notice and respond to whatever else might be happening inside. Focusing on our breath might not make the hard thing go away, but it will give us a greater capacity to be with it.
Box breathing is another simple exercise. Thatโs where you inhale for a count of โ seconds creating that first edge of the box, hold your breath at the top for โ seconds, exhale for that same count, and hold. Creating an internal image of a box connected to your breath cycle. Repeating a few rounds.
Taxing your working memory can be also be used as a grounding or coping skill. If youโre feeling activated Try singing the alphabet backwards or doing multiplication times tables. Youโre reengaging other parts of your brain that shut off during overwhelming moments.
Progressive muscle relaxation can be helpful if you feel a lot of activation in your body. This is where you isolate your awareness of different muscles in your body and alternate between creating tension and releasing it. For example, tightening the muscles of your arms and balling your fists, then exhaling and releasing that tension. You can find guided recordings of Progressive Muscle Relaxations exercises online.
Similarly, self touch can bring regulation. It can be as simple as a self hug and deep breath. Or a more intentional exercise.
Places can also have a regulating effect on our NS. There is a huge amount of research supporting the positive impact of nature on our physical selves - including our nervous system. Taking a walk outside, sitting on a porch and noticing sensory information, scan your horizon and widen that visual scope - these are easy applications of this idea.
The use of sound is another resource. Of course, nature sounds are soothing, ocean sounds bring in a sense of rhythm that our system likes. Music and even recordings of binaural beats or singing bowls can be used as tools for different states of activation. Think about creating a playlist and having it ready for when you need to find some regulation. Humming and singing are great options as well.
Finally, as we discuss in our video on safety - Noticing cues of safety and orienting exercise can be used as direct tools.
Quick Note:
Different tools are often needed or preferred for different times or different states we may be in: For example
If youโre more in the hyper/over aroused state:, External grounding can be helpful. External grounding is orienting to your present environment by using your senses - You can use the 54321 grounding practice for this. What are 5 things you see, 4 hear, 3 feel, 2 smell, 1 taste,; Energetic movement to discharge energy can also feel good in this more hyperactivated state - think of dancing or running. Again It can be extra helpful if there's an element of rhythm present..
If you're in the more shutdown space and frozen or disconnected from your body - going inward and going gently can be helpful in re-engaging; you can do a body scan or body scan mediation, start by naming the sensations youโre currently feeling, firm pressure and self touch exercises, and slow intentional movement. The intention is to shift from shutdown to more ideal levels of activation.
Takeaway: Direct practices are tools that you can use in a hard moment to find more regulation and that will also, with time and practice, grow your WOT and start to change your NS reactions. Learning your systems patterns and playing with different tools can help you find what works best for you.
Grief and The Holidays
The festivities that bring joy and connection during the holiday season can also be source of heartache for those grieving the loss of a loved one.
While grief is often an ongoing process that changes and unfolds over time, there are things we can do in the present to offer comfort, process those losses, and continue to move towards healing.
Seek Support and Community. Trusted support can be invaluable during times of grief and can ease the feelings of loneliness and longing that may emerge. Take time to connect with friends and family, let people know if you are struggling, or consider volunteer work.
Bring their memory into the celebration. Though this may feel bittersweet, actively bringing in your loved oneโs memory can help maintain a sense of connection to them. Talk about a favorite traditions or happy memory, incorporate something special in their honor, visit a gravesite, or have framed pictures out.
Lessen Stressors & Up Self Care. During difficult times of the year it can be helpful to have a plan for minimizing stress and a commitment to self-care. Try to avoid taking on too much, devote more time for restorative activities, and be mindful of alcohol consumption.
Remember to offer yourself grace. It is normal to feel a range of emotions during difficult times of the year. Allow yourself to feel them all. If feelings do become overwhelming, donโt be afraid to connect with professional support.
Understanding Our Systems
Brain learning, Emotional regulation, & our Nervous system
There are different aspects of therapeutic growth and healing that we need to consider when weโre stepping into trauma recovery or other healing work. We have to do work with our brains (through our unconscious thoughts and beliefs) and what our brains learn from different experiences, we have to feel our feelings and understand our emotional system, and we have to work with our body through our nervous system.
All of these systems are all intimately connected but itโs helpful to think about them in these three realms - brain, heart, and body - to guide our focus/treatment.
In this course, Iโm going to talk about these three areas and share grounding and mindfulness practices that help us stay present and integrate/process difficult moments or memories. These practices can become a part of our coping skill toolkit as well.
Coregulation & Supporting Healing
Supportive Relationships are powerful resources for our healing. Humans are social beings and we need supportive and safe people around us. Our physical bodies even function at a more optimal level when we are in community. Healthy relationships have a sense of reciprocity and weโre able to show up with authenticity and care and we feel that from the other as well. These good relationships deeply improve our quality of life AND can also be a vehicle for healing and change. One way this happens is through coregulation.
Coregulation
There has been a narrative in the self help and psychology world positing that the highest bar for wellness is to be able to regulate ourselves independently. Regulate meaning that we can manage our emotional or physiological responses in distressing moments. Now being able to self-soothe and re-balance our system is a great goal for ourselves and in the other section I share more practices for self-regulation. But this is only part of the story:
Our systems find regulation and also learn how to regulate/manage those internal experiences - through CORegulation. Usually this developmental learning happens during childhood when our caregiving respond to us in attuned and supportive ways. Our system relies or leans on our caregivers regulated system - to help soothe our own during stressful moments. Unfortunately, not all of us got adequate experiences that help develop that ability to self-soothe.
As adults we have the opportunity to reach out for support that we need when we need it and our systems can become better able to self-regulate from those positive experiences of care and support.
The bottom line is that we donโt have to do it on our own all the time, we werenโt really built to be handling hard things alone. Call a trusted friend, ask for the hug and the cuddles, take in the kind or soothing words of comfort. It's not weak, thereโs no shame in needing support - itโs actually more in alignment with our neurobiology.
Supportive Relationships Takeaway: Healthy relationships improve quality of life. Itโs appropriate and often necessary to lean on trusted others for coregulation.
Healing & Our Relationship with Food
How often do you think about food? Probably pretty regularly - at least a few times a day. Now, How often do you think about your relationship with food? For many of us, the answer might be never. The fact is, food does matter. What we put in our bodies impacts our mental state and mental health - situationally and in the long term. But Our relationship with food may matter just as much. Thatโs what weโre going to explore here.
Eating (and drinking) is a common coping strategy that many of us use in different ways - some more helpful than others. Bringing mindfulness into our eating can be helpful in our overall health (in our choices and digestion especially) and can help us examine how weโre โusingโ food or drinks in our lives. We can practice mindfulness in what we choose to eat and also become mindful about the process of eating - how do you decide what to eat at any given moment, are you eating slowly, are you tasting your food, noticing cues of hunger or fullness, are you enjoying social connections while sharing a meal? Or does eating feel more like a distraction or just something to do. What happens inside of you right before you reach for a favorite snack - is there a sense of boredom, loneliness, anxiety?
Mindful eating can help us shift from using food as an escape from discomfort to using food as a source of true nourishment and enjoyment. Food is life - itโs wonderful - we need it. But if we are unintentionally using it or substances/activities as tools of avoidance, then we might be missing important opportunities to identify and tend to different needs - nutritional or otherwise.
As we begin to slow down with ourselves, we often uncover interesting INFOrmation relevant to our healing work.
And to clarify - I am not suggesting we rush to ditch all our tried and true coping and comfort strategies. Food being one for many of us. Even if we want to do that, moving too quickly can often bring up unintended consequences and only temporary changes. Those comfort strategies developed for some important reason that we donโt always immediately understand. I am encouraging us to become curious about our experience of food and eating. What might we learn about ourselves as we begin to slow down.
Practice: Mindful eating can begin with the choice and preparation of the food and continue through the actual process of eating. For this section, Iโll give you some things to think about and practice for your next meal time.
First off, slow down. As you begin to feel hungry or meal time approaches, take a pause and feel into what you actually may want or need to eat at that moment. Practice mindfully engaging your senses with the ingredients while youโre choosing or preparing your food and allow yourself to do the same while eating. What's the feeling or texture of the bell pepper or tomato in your hands or on your tongue, what different smells are interesting or enticing? Really look at your food and try to take smaller bites and savor them. Serve and seat yourself and try to avoid eating while standing, on the move, or while completing other tasks. Let meal time, be meal time. Then, remember to check in on your sense of nourishment or satisfaction.
This practice of mindful eating can help us to feel more present, aids in digestion, and can begin to shift our experience and relationships with food. If this is difficult, Iโll encourage you to be curious about that, again there may be some important information that can continue being explored.
Nutrition Takeaway: mindful eating can help us to feel more present, aids in digestion, and can begin to shift our experience and relationships with food. Mindful eating can help us shift from using food as an escape from discomfort to using food as a source of true nourishment and enjoyment.
Rest, Restorative Activities, and Healing
Rest and Sleep are different and both important. They also have a relationship with each other. We all know that we need adequate hours of sleep but we also need good quality sleep. Rest improves our quality of life and is a bridge that gets us to sleep better. Itโs also so much more than what we think of as โrelaxing.โ There are actually 7 different types of rest including, physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, and creative.
It might feel counterintuitive when youโre tired or wired - but often using Restorative activities and movement can be far more restful than other passive forms of rest (scrolling on social media for example). Restorative activities (meditation, reading, gentle movement, gardening, art) improve our quality sleep, our physical and mental energy, have a regulating impact on our nervous systems and support our brain as it integrates everyday life. Good rest and good sleep also enables us to process stressors and past traumas more efficiently.
Clearly, there is a huge benefit to examining our rest deficits and being intentional about how we spend our sacred free time.
Takeaway: Rest and Sleep are different and both important in processing and integrating daily life and past experiences. Rest is the bridge that gets us to better quality sleep and offers a more immediate regulating effect on our nervous systems.
Developing a Sense of Safety
The Role Of Safety in Healing
Physical and psychological safety are fundamental human needs. If we are in a chaotic home, abusive relationship, financially treading water, or battling an illness or other major stressor - our system may interpret our situation as dangerous and then act accordingly - weโll talk about that impact in the NS section.
In those cases, we are essentially living in chronic states of โdangerโ and so moving towards true safety and managing those current stressors, is a number one goal. Many of these larger challenges are not quickly or easily resolvable - but they do need to be prioritized and may indicate a greater need for supportive practices and lifestyle changes - like the ones discussed in this course. If we think in terms of triage - safety is a top priority.
If we are generally safe and in a stable place, the second goal is to notice that and integrate that information. If weโve experienced painful or dangerous things in our past or current life - our body might not fully recognize that we are ok now and that we arenโt still in that difficult past situation. We want to help our bodies to shift from that survival mode to a state that is more conducive to healing and change. And that typically feels better as well. We can support that shift with mindful presence and other regulating practices
How does your body respond to the message of orienting towards safety? I tend to have a greater sense of openness and a sense of being more aware of my environment and myself in this environment.
When our stress responses are activated, often our focus becomes narrow. With this simple practice we are widening our scope and taking in our current -not past - situation.. In a way we are speaking to our systems - weโre saying weโre OK here, we can relax, be curious, open, we can even learn and heal.
Takeaway: Creating and noticing physical and psychological safety is an important first healing goal. Practices and lifestyle changes support the process of healing and help shift us out of survival mode.
Transcript Taken from my course Healing in the Present
Building a Mindful Lifestyle & Safe Base For Healing
In order for us to do that deep healing work - we have to have a Safe Base for healing. That means we need physical safety, our bodies need to be nourished and well rested, and we need a healthy support system. This may seem obvious, but these foundational lifestyle aspects are often overlooked, the biggest parts of our daily lives, and absolutely imperative in the healing process. Bringing Mindfulness into those places helps us to create positive change and brings in small moments of everyday healing. Often, focusing on these pieces alone is enough to feel better and have more contented lives.
Learn more in my online course, Healing in the Present
The Importance of Presence in Healing
We canโt talk about healing or transformational change without talking about Presence. Trauma has a way of putting us back in the past (and iโll explain this more as we move through the videos). Anxiety often orients us to the future. Healing happens in the now.
This may sound a little cheesy - at a neurobiological level our brains/bodies need to be grounded to the present moment to integrate important information that leads to change and healing.
Simply put, Mindful Presence is the practice of guiding our attention to our present moment internal and external experiences - preferable without judgment. Mindfulness, therefore, is a skill that we can learn to support the process of healing, bring us to the present, and itโs a tool that helps regulate us in the now.
Because this is such an important concept, Iโve tied it into each section of the course. It is also how we will make this interactive. โฆ Or at least as interactive as we can be in a prerecorded video.
Downside to Presence:
Before we begin, I also want to mention that there can be an uncomfortable consequence to practicing mindful presence. So many of us are chronically busy, rushed, and stressed. This can lead to a sense of disconnection to our internal experiences or our external environment. As we start to slow down, and become more attuned to our internal and external lives - we might get hit with some unfinished business or even just new sensations that may feel overwhelming. This can show up in different ways and can be quite uncomfortable.
The tools that weโre talking about can support us in those uncomfortable moments and are an alternative to chronic avoidance or distraction. Yes, We need to numb out sometime, avoidance is common for a reason and may serve a purpose. But to create lasting change, we often have to tune in.
Defining Healing
What does healing mean to you? Healing has been explained and defined in many different ways and as we begin to define it for ourselves, it can often be useful to ask questions related to what needs to change? What needs to change inside, in your external world, or your relationships that would help you feel healed in some way. Getting curious about this question often leads us to examine areas of our lives that need tending to and some kind of shift or resolution. Getting curious about the way we define the process of healing offers us a path towards that change. We are unique and our journey and healing focus need to reflect that and sitting with these questions can bring us a lot of clarity and direction.
Iโm going to share how I think about it from a therapeutic change perspective and Iโm going to encourage you to think about what it would mean to you and in your life.
As a therapist, I think of healing and trauma recovery as a process of resolving difficult experiences that are still affecting us so that they are not ruling our lives or causing us undue pain.
While Coping and coping skills are about managing current stressors and getting through difficult moments - healing is about finding some kind of deeper resolution or larger change. We build coping skills to help us get through daily life and those skills actually aid us in our work towards those long term shifts.
โUnresolved traumaโ or unresolved experiences, might be affecting (1) our bodies, (2) how we feel about ourselves, (3) how we engage in our relationships and the world around us.
For example, If I was in a boating accident I might notice that after the event I have symptoms of panic, nervousness, or headaches, I might take on the belief that I am helpless to save myself, or I might avoid large bodies of water and turn down a friend's invitation to spend the day at the lake. These effects are clues that the experience is still alive in my system and may need some healing.
We find resolution through processing past and current experiences AND integrating that understanding into how we live today.
โProcessingโ is a colloquial term and generally means that we are making sense of an experience, recognizing how that experience impacts how we live today, and - Because trauma/stress affects us physiologically - โprocessingโ also includes working with our body via our nervous system and connecting to our feeling.
In the boating example, that might mean exploring the new beliefs I took on from that experience, moving through my bodyโs response to the accident, or feeling through different emotional layers of the experience. Weโll talk about this in the Understanding Our Systems Section.
As you can imagine, this is an alive and complex process and itโs guided by our unique needs, resources, and experiences. There is no โone-size-fits-allโ to healing. From these tools weโll be learning about, take what works - and also be willing to give something new a real try.
โRegulationโ & โResourcingโ are other therapy specific terms that often describe coping skills that aim to soothe your nervous system or bring it back to its optimal state. Weโll talk more about these ideas in the Nervous System section.
Traumatic Experiences & Calming the Nervous System
When our bodies experience a trauma, our nervous systems respond. Receiving treatment as soon as uncomfortable symptoms begin to emerge can lessen the chances of developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Treatment aimed towards stabilization can provide your body a chance to do the important work of processing the experience and can aid in the effectiveness of psychotherapy.
Mindful S.E.A.T.
Needing a ๐๐๐๐๐ and ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐? Feeling worried, anxious, zoned out, or stuck in swirling thoughts? ๐๐๐ค๐ ๐ ๐ฆ๐ข๐ง๐๐๐ฎ๐ฅ ๐๐๐๐! This is a super simple mindfulness practice that can help bring you back to the present moment and calm your nervous system a bit.
SEAT: Sensation, Emotion, Action, Thought
S)Take a breath and notice the sensations in your body. What are your 5 senses bringing in?
E) put a name to the emotion youโre experiencing
A) notice any urges to do something - wanting to look through the refrigerator or call a loved one?
T) what thoughts come?
This handy acronym was created by Chris Willard, mindfulness expert, and is great for kiddos too! Remember itโs a practice!
Try it out. Teach your kids. Let me know how it goes!
Quick Self Compassion Exercise
Quick Compassion Exercise for Working with an Inner Critic
Self compassion exercise for when the ษชษดษดแดส แดสษชแดษชแด starts to speak.
First focus on those harsh or self-critical words that you are telling yourself right now. Imagine those thoughts and words out in front of you. With every breathe, notice the space between. Now bring to mind a close friend or a loved child. Imagine that person and bring the fully into your mind and heart. Notice the warm feelings that arise. Now imagine them going through a similar experience to yourself and see what words you would want to say to them. Stay with those gentler words and feelings of kindness it brings. Linger in them, and take them with you into your day.
This is a practice. Go slow. Take your time. Patience and compassion go hand in hand.
Mindful Gazing
So many times when we do a mediation or a mindful exercise we close our eyes. Today letโs try pausing and lingering in the gifts of our visual world ๐
๐๐๐๐๐๐ฆ๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ค
So many times when we do a mediation or a mindful exercise we close our eyes. Today letโs try pausing and lingering in the gifts of our visual world ๐
๐ด๐๐๐
๐๐๐ ๐ฎ๐๐๐๐๐
* Start by noticing your breath (this is always a great anchoring point)
* Then allow your attention to move to the muscles around your eyes. Are they tight, relaxed, heavy?
* Allow your blinking to become gentle and slow.
* As you begin to gaze around your space - Notice how your eyeballs feel in the lids.
* First take in the area as a whole - then start focusing in on details.
* How is the light? Colors? Textures?
* Notice something that bring your joy.
* How does your body respond to that object or image?
* Whatโs the meaning you connect to it?
* As you stay with your sight in a mindful way.... Notice how your other internal sensations have shifted.
* Move back and forth between your internal state and the external world that your eyes bring in.
* In closing, maybe offer your eyes a moment of gratitude for being such a vital part of your experience as a human.
May you have many lovely mindful moments.