I designed this series with respect and love for all the Re-deployed Soldiers trying to find their way back home...
Staying Grounded
Staying present and mindful in the current time is a great strength for those healing from trauma. Some suggestions trauma survivors have made for staying grounded include:
1. Using all your senses to be aware of your physical environment then talking to others about it
2. Being ware of your physical body and how you look.
3. Being aware of your movements as you walk
4. Exercising while being aware of what you're doing
5. Making a plan for the day and sharing that plan with another
6. Challenging yourself with increasing the amount of time you can spend in the present
7. Watching TV and telling your self and someone else what you saw
8. Doing routine activities in a slightly different way
9. Asking others to help you stay connected to them.
10. Taking to yourself about the present.
11. Planting your feet as firmly on the ground as is possible in the here and now.
Safety
Recognize your beliefs about safety and identify what you can do to challenge those beliefs if they're causing you suffering.
Physical Safety
Physical safety means your body isn't in danger. If a dangerous event occurs, you can recognize danger signals, look at options, act on those choices and remove yourself from the situation.
Emotional Safety
This means you're able to identify how you feel in situations, recognize what your intuition tells you, and act on your feelings and intuition particularly if they alert you to danger.
Spiritual Safety
This occurs when you learn to trust in your beliefs about something greater than you and use these beliefs to lead you through your life in a good direction all lifelong.
Exercise: Safety Assessment
1. Will you have a safe place in which to work?
2. Have you set aside a specific time or day or week to do that work?
3. Will you have safe things around you when you sit down to tackle your healing work?
4. Will you have things around you to ground yourself and soothe yourself and make you feel good about the healing work you are doing?
5.If you're not working with a therapist, or helping professional, at this time, what makes that work safe or unsafe?
6. How will you protect yourself from your own strong feelings and thoughts that may surface?
7. Is it important for you to consider your own personal safety in your beliefs and actions? Are you personally safe to yourself? Do you have any strong life threatening desires to harm yourself?
8. Do you have unsafe beliefs and if so what can you do to contain any harmful beliefs or actions and prevent them from taking over and hurting you?
9. If you were to evaluate your personal safety within yourself on a scale of 1-10 with one being completely safe and 10 being very unsafe what number would you give yourself now.
10. Write down three negative thoughts then three counter thoughts for each one.
11. Chart times when you begin to feel unsafe and what you're feeling and thinking then consciously do something that brings you safety and confidence
12. Avoid TV shows and music that's likely to trigger you
13. List what you're currently doing to keep yourself safe
For more support, please feel free to contact me
Ilene Hart, MC, LPC
hart.crow@gmail.com
(253) 279-8146
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