Remember Compassion for Distracted Minds
One technique that can help with settling down at bedtime is a type of meditation called Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR, for short). Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a relaxation technique that guides and directs focus on one body area at a time, first tensing the muscle and then relaxing it, to promote full-body relaxation (Anxiety Canada; Schwartz & Knipe, 2017).
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There are many ways we humans react to situations that feel out of control. Perhaps you have found yourself sleeping more, or indulging in vices more. Some folks jumped at their new-found free-time for home projects, health & fitness, academic supports for their kids, or their own educational/work-related pursuits. Change can stir up anxiety within us, even when the change is good. I have a formula for that: Uncertainty (lack of information) + perceived inability to prepare = anxiety Did you find yourself leaning into a new project or endeavour? To quote my favourite witty little snowman, “We’re calling this ‘controlling what you can when things feel out of control’.” (Olaf, Frozen 2). Whatever it is that you took on most likely helped anchor you. It gave your attention a focus and your mind a goal, which is a powerful way to settle anxiety during times of uncertainty. So, when things became uncertain and my work hours came to an abrupt halt, I funnelled my energy into a new project. Okay, there was an ulterior motive: my heart ached for all the people who were struggling with the pandemic, who were fearful, or anxious, or feeling isolated and alone. And I wanted to play a small role in brightening someone’s day. So, I took the content from my children’s group (Live Calm Kids) and turned it into a free YouTube series for kids on emotion regulation. We are 6 episodes in, and I have been having so much fun sharing this content with everyone. Check out the links below, and feel free to share them with anyone you think might benefit from it. New videos will be posted each week! Subscribe to the channel on YouTube, and get updates whenever a new video is posted. Find it at: Live Happy Counselling with Susan Guttridge Here are links to each episode:
Download the free summary sheet of here: SummaryofSkills 
AcknowledgeThe images, thoughts, memories, and physiological sensations that accompany a flashback can make you feel as though the trauma is happening right now. Acknowledge you are experiencing a flashback with kindness (i.e. “There I go again, this is a flashback”). Although this sounds simple, the natural tendency is often to push intrusive images out of awareness. However, suppression and denial just cause the imagery to come back stronger and more frequently. Acknowledge the flashback, and notice the emotions, thoughts, and physiological sensations that go along with it. Even though I’ve listed using a mantra farther down in this article, often it can be helpful to use it when you acknowledge the flashback, because it helps establish that the trauma has passed – “It’s over”. And, the mantra can be repeated during the next step: slowing and following the breath. BreatheTake a deep, full breath in through your nose – one that you feel right into your abdomen – and exhale through your mouth. When we feel out of control, our breathing also tends to be out of control. The experience of a flashback can cause emotional flooding, and can immediately trigger a change in our breathing: this might look like extremely rapid, shallow breathing, or breath holding. Both of these can lead to a shortness of breath feeling and can cause light-headedness, numbness or tingling in the hands or feet, dizziness, chest pain, and difficulty putting thoughts into words. These symptoms will exacerbate fear and anxiety, and can escalate a person into distress and panic. The breathing pattern itself can even come to trigger anxiety (for those who experience anxiety). In essence, they become caught in a cycle where anxiety brings on shallow breathing, and shallow breathing brings on anxiety. That is why slowing and deepening the breath is the very crucial second step here. Rapid breathing and breath holding can amp the body up into a state of activation – but this capacity also means that we can harness the breath to shift the body into a settled place of calm. It is by slowing and deepening the breath that we learn to help our body out of activation. In fact, it’s one of the fastest ways to shift out of nervous system activation. Try one of these tips if you are new to focusing on your breath:
Anchor With Your SensesYour senses are an excellent way to ground you back into the present moment. Some examples include:
Use a MantraMantras are statements we repeat to ourselves and which can have quite the potential to impact our attention, outlook, and mood. The sound or words of a mantra are simple and don’t demand a lot of effort. A mantra can be said aloud or silently, and is often most powerful when the words have meaning to you. It’s kind of like a tool for attuning your body and mind. A mantra can be used to increase our level of awareness and provide us with strength and focus, and even give us a sense of mental stability. What mantra would you like to try? Above we looked at “It’s over, in this moment I am safe”. Some additional ideas include:
Practice Letting GoThe final step in this coping process is to visualize letting it go. It won’t serve you to think further about the flashback, and may be even more distressing. You have acknowledged it, and by doing so you have recognized that a memory is still distressing. Work through it with a mental health professional. In this moment, practice visualizing letting it go. To do so, as you exhale, imagine exhaling the whole flashback into a balloon. As you exhale, the balloon inflates. Then you imagine tying it off, keeping the memory safely inside the balloon. Picture extending your arm and releasing the balloon, to be taken away on the wind to be kept safe until you are supported in working through the trauma. Every time the flashback comes back, use this strategy. Inhale deeply, exhale the traumatic memory into the balloon, tie it off, lease it for safe keeping. Thank you for reading, and I hope you find this strategy useful. Focusing awareness using this 5 step anchor can shift thoughts away from flashbacks, racing thoughts, and obsessive thinking, and can bring awareness back into the present moment. For more tips on shifting out of a flashback, check out Calm in the Storm: A Collection of Simple Strategies You Can Use Right Now to Shift Out of Anxiety
 Ana Gomez is a child therapist and an EMDR practitioner extraordinaire. With all the changes and stress we have all been trying to come to terms with, Ana wrote a book that can help us explain the virus to children.
Ana is offering the pdf version of the book for free, because she is an amazing human! If you need help explaining what is going on in the world right now to the children in your life, please use this free resource. Ana invites you to share it with anyone you might know that would benefit for it. Thank you Ana! Click this link to access the pdf: AnaGomez_OysterandtheButterflyMar312020 Click this link to access the Spanish Version: AnaGomez_OysterandtheButterfly_Spanish Click this link for a narrated Version on YouTube Rarely do we truly have control. But, the illusion that we do sustains us in our daily life. It gives us a sense of the world around us as a predictable place. Right now as our world is battles with the COVID-19 virus, we don’t have that sense of predictability. And that can leave many folks worried, fearful, and desperate. I’d like to offer a few simple ideas for you to consider bringing into your daily life. In the face of uncertainty, these mindfulness-based tools can assist you in returning to the present moment. Please know that these ideas are not ‘one size fits all’. Take what works for you, adapt it, or grow it to make it more suitable to your daily life.  Start your day with a Reflection: Take a quiet moment before the action of your day amps up. Listen to meditation on your smart phone, or just draw your attention inward and ask yourself what you need to stay well this day. Then, set your intention for the day. Setting an intention can just foster an area of focus for the day. For example, it could be “Today I will be present and kind”. It creates an anchor for you to return to throughout the day. Writing down the intention and placing it somewhere you will see it throughout your day can help ensure your bring your attention back to it as needed. Get out of Bed and Get Dressed: If you are isolated or in quarantine at this time, and your daily life has been interrupted (you are no longer going to work, to school, etc.), please still get up and get dressed. Maintain your morning hygiene routine, or start the one you’ve always wanted and never had time for. Your mental health with benefit from the day being bookended with getting up and getting dressed in the morning, and washing up and putting on pyjamas at the end of the day. Daily Goal Setting: Regardless of your living situation, set 3 small, achievable goals for each day. These goals can range from “I will get out of bed at 8am and take a shower this morning”, to “I will sit on the floor and play a game with my child today”. Set 3 small goals every morning, and take a moment to reflect on them each evening. Achieving the small daily goals will build self-esteem and integrity with yourself, because you accomplished that which you intended to accomplish. Go Outside: If you are socially distancing or in quarantine, take a few moments to go outside. You don’t have to be in a public place to be outside. Take a short walk or even just sit outside. The change of scenery will help bolster your mood. Connect with Love: if you are living with children or have a spouse, make sure to connect with them with love each day. These are uncertain times for them as well, and they are likely also feeling fearful and/or worried. Try speaking their love language at least twice a day. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of love languages, check out: https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/ Don’t Stop Connecting: If you live alone, please maintain your social connections. Call, text, or e-mail with at least one person a day. Do not go this alone.
The book is written in a way that can help folks develop a new relationship with emotion, one that lets them off that roller-coaster ride of emotional ups-and-downs, that enables them to feel more in control. When it comes to symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress, we need to know how to regulate emotion – those are all those grounding and containment skills designed to bring us back to the present moment and enabling us to shift out of high motion. Healing the trauma or underlying reasons that spike us into anxiety is important, but folks need a starting point. This book is that starting point. It will ignite hope and spark a renewed belief in one’s inner potential. It isn’t meant to replace counselling, but the book is a great starting point for folks who need to develop some basic regulation skills before delving into trauma work with a therapist. Click here to learn more/get the book!  “Once we discover the ability to settle strong emotion, the emotion itself becomes less frightening” – Susan Guttridge Pick up your copy of Calm in the Storm today, and please check back and let me know which strategies worked best for you.
For sale now at the following locations:  Have you ever been at a loss for what to say when someone you know is having a hard time? Show you care by speaking from your heart. Try one of these statements:
Show up, be available, talk about the tough stuff. The truth is, at any time in our lives, any one of us may struggle emotionally. What would you need if it were you? Thinking about what you might need to hear can help you if you aren’t sure what to say. Remember, not everyone who is struggling will show that they are struggling. As a general rule, treat people with kindness and seek first to understand before making judgments. Any ideas to add to the list? Please share your suggestions in the comments – helping each other will ripple out to help the people we encounter.  We humans are attuned to each other in very complex ways. We can feel uplifted by a person who’s in a good mood, understood by a person showing compassion, and even anxious when someone else is anxious.
Be the conscious creator of your mood. If you start to feel ungrounded in the company of others, take a moment to assess what’s going on. What is the conversation about? What body language and tone of voice are those around you using? What energy are you picking up on from them? Then, take a moment to connect with your breath, and the connection of your feet on the ground. Breath in deeply and fully through your nose, and exhale slowly through your mouth. Acknowledge your ability to be kind, and to live with intention. Project that outward, and watch what happens. Chances are you will start to influence the energy of those around you. And, you’ll feel way more grounded in the process. 🙂  Trauma Therapy ExplainedPeople tend to consider attending counselling for a long time before they reach out to start it up. Making that initial phone call can stir up fear and uncertainty. And once an appointment is scheduled, actually attending it can stir up anxiety and doubt. I believe it does take a tremendous amount of courage to start up counselling: to entrust your story to a stranger invites vulnerability. Yet for each courageous soul that takes the first step, there is hope. Hope says “This will help”, and “I can get through this”. To anyone reading this who has been considering starting up counselling but has been apprehensive, I’d like to demystify the counselling process. When it comes to working with trauma, I use the Three Stage Trauma Recovery Model, which was developed by Judith Herman in the 1980’s. I use the model as a framework within which all therapeutic interventions launch from. Please Note: Each client is unique, and therefore counselling is not a one-size-fits-all service. While you read the following information, please know that it might look a little different for each person. Also, rarely do we move through the model in a fully linear manner, (stage 3 often initiates during stage 2 work). Stage 1 – Safety and StabilizationCounselling often begins with history taking. I typically ask about what brings a person in for counselling, and gain an idea of their history in a “newspaper headline” manner. I use the newspaper headline approach because at this point, I am still a stranger to the client, and he or she may not yet feel comfortable sharing a detailed portrait of their life. Then, we collaboratively develop treatment goals. Within the first stage, the focus is on safety and stabilization. That refers to external (living environment) and internal (emotional safety). Elements in this stage may include:
According to Judith Herman (1982) the goal of stage 1 trauma work is to create a safe and stable life-in-the-here-and-now, which can enable folks to safely remember the trauma, and not continue to re-live it. You might feel as though you want to start working on the tough stuff right away, perhaps feeling a sense of urgency to “feel better” or to “heal this right now”. However, there is great importance of stage 1 work, and we can not skip over it. Think of it this way: If you had a car with shoty brakes, no seatbelts or airbags, no horn, bald tires, and a foggy windshield – you could still get from point A to point B. However, you would likely feel terrified the entire way. The resourcing and affect regulation strategies of stage 1 are like the safety features in a car: they enable you to get from point A to point B without full-blown panic and emotional overwhelm. Stage 2 – Coming to Terms with TraumaOnce an individual has developed the ability to regulate emotion and achieve a level of internal emotional safety, trauma processing can begin. As we work through a trauma, I keep a keen eye on resourcing to ensure a client isn’t become too flooded with emotion. Techniques are used to modulate this process, and I employ several end-of-session strategies to assist folks in stabilizing emotion prior to leaving the office. Here are some elements stage 2 may include:
Stage 3 – Integration and Moving onAs we work through trauma processing, elements of the third stage begin to show up. Some of these elements include:
As a result of doing the work of trauma therapy, the trauma starts to feel farther away, as something that happened but that is no longer a daily focus disrupting life. If you are thinking of starting up therapy, and have some questions, please feel free to reach out and ask. The decision to move towards self-growth and healing can be empowering and freeing. I hope you give it a go! If you’d like to learn more about the Three Stage Trauma Recovery Model by Judith Herman, check out these resources:
 When we find ourselves stuck in negative looping thought-patterns, we often need a way out – a life preserver of sorts to pull us to safety. Here are four suggestions that might help you exit those negative thought cycles. 1. Anchor to the Present MomentWhen we find ourselves stuck in negative thinking, we may be ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. We can not change the past, and when we worry about the future, we are robbing today of its strength. Returning to the present moment may be just what you need to let your nervous system settle. Once you shift out of that worry or fear loop, your problem-solving brain can come back on-line, and the negative loop is interrupted. Not sure how to get back into the present moment? Here are some ideas: 5-4-3-2-1: Look around the room you are in, and carefully describe 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch (actually move around and touch the items), 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. Ground with Colour: Look around the room you are in and take notice of everything you can see that is blue. Go slowly, pausing to notice what the item is and its particular shade of blue. Move on from blue to notice everything that is green, then orange, and so forth until you have gone through all the colours or until the looping thoughts have settled. Letter Association by Word: Pick a word any word, and then break it down letter by letter, coming up with as many other words that start with each letter of your chosen word. (For example: if your word is COPING, start by thinking of as many words as you can that begin with the letter C, then O words, then P, then I, then N, then G.) (These strategies are helpful because they focus our attention in a directive manner, and thus can interrupt the negative or looping thoughts that so often accompany anxiety. And the result? You return to the present moment, and the looping thoughts are interrupted.) 2. Connect with Compassion When we are caught up in negative looping thoughts, our heart tends to be closed off. In other words, we might be thinking about the worst-case scenario, putting ourselves down, feeling as though things will never get better, and even thinking negatively of those in our lives. To exit the negative loop, try mixing in some compassion. Dr. Kristin Neff writes, “instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect?”. Having self-compassion means that you honour and accept your humanness – not self-downing but just being present with loving kindness. Not sure how to connect with self-compassion? Here are some ideas:
3. Refreshen Self-AwarenessWhat is beneath your upset? Are you feeling unheard, unworthy, or unaccepted? Sometimes when we are caught up in a negative cycle, we start telling ourselves things that serve to keep the cycle going. These might be called thinking traps, negative core beliefs, or psychological defences. Regardless the name you use – take a moment to deepen your self-awareness and tune in to the narrative you are telling yourself. If it is negative, take a few moments to breathe deeply and return to the present moment with loving-kindness. You might want to question that negative narrative. For example, is what you are telling yourself 100% true, 100% of the time? What would you rather be telling yourself, or what could also be true instead? The latter question will start you down the road of connecting with the positive belief you would like to build. 4. Let it outSometimes talking it out can help. Is there someone in your life that you could vent to? Not for advice (unless you want it) – but rather a sounding board who can witness your tidal wave and be waiting on the shore as you ride the surf out. Emotional settling can occur when we connect with a caring friend or family member and feel heard.
If no one is around, try venting by writing out what you are feeling. You can also draw, doodle, scribble, or paint. Have you discovered some ideas that help to healthfully shift out of negative looping thoughts? If so, please add what works for you in the comments. |
AuthorSusan Guttridge is a trauma-informed Master level Counsellor with the clinical designation of Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCPA). She has 20+ years experience providing individual and group therapy. Archives
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