Tag: Trauma

Self-Soothe Grounding Techniques

Self-Soothe grounding techniques are about taking care of yourself. With self-soothe grounding techniques, you are grounding yourself in things that are comforting to you. One important thing with self-soothe techniques is to listen to your body and do what is comforting to you and not what is effective for others. Each of us is unique and has unique experiences that influence what is comforting to us, and it is important to respect that. When you do activities or imagine things that are comforting to you, it signals to the brain that you are in a good place and that calms the system down.

Take a shower or bath. Notice the sensation of the water hitting your skin

Make a cup of tea or coffee. Focus on the taste. Notice the warmth of the mug.

Wrap yourself in a soft blanket. Focus on the softness of the blanket and how it makes you feel.

Sip a cool drink of water, iced tea, or juice. Notice the difference in temperature and how it makes you feel.

Imagine very relaxing scenes.

Engage in spiritual practices, such as prayer to God/higher power or something else.

Imagine hurtful emotions draining out of you like water out of a tap or sand slipping through your fingers.

Remember a happy time and imagine yourself in it again.

Find purpose or meaning in a painful situation. If you have trouble finding meaning in your current circumstance, try to remember a time you found meaning in a painful situation.

Imagine everything turning out okay.

Focus on the positive aspects of a difficult situation.

Do some self-massage.

Practice yoga or some other stretching.

Get into bed and pull the covers over your head.

Remind yourself of another time when you felt similarly, and things turned out okay.

Encourage yourself:

  • “I will make it out of this.”
  • “This will soon pass.”
  • “I’m doing the best I can.”
  • “I will be okay.”

Imagine yourself leaving the painful feelings behind. This can be walking, swimming, or running away from the feelings. Writing the feelings on a piece of paper and burning it.

Visualize your favourite place. Think about the sounds and scents there as well.

List and visualize 4 or 5 things that bring you joy.

Some of these techniques are from Marsha Linehan’s DBT Skills Training Manual, 2nd Edition.

Present Moment Grounding Techniques

Present moment grounding techniques can help to anchor you to the present and help you find solid ground.

Situate yourself. Repeat to yourself today’s date, the day of the week, month, year, time of day, and where you are currently. Remind yourself that you are safe in the moment, not in the past, and right now you are safe. Notice the season it is outside, and what the sky looks like. Name the street you are on and the postal code/zip code.

Now and plans for the day. Remind yourself of who you are now. Your name, age, occupation. Where you are. What you did today and what you are going to do next and later today.

What is going on? Remind yourself where you are and today’s date. Acknowledge that you are feeling the emotions, thoughts, or body sensations from the trauma coming into the present.

Distraction Techniques

Distraction techniques are best used for tolerating and surviving a crisis situation that you cannot deal with at the moment. It is about moving you away from the extreme feelings, body sensations, and thoughts of the moment. It is important that you do not over-rely on distraction techniques as they take you out of the present moment, and can lead to problems with dissociation.

Math & Counting

Count backwards from 100 by 7.

Count colours in a painting.

Run through a times table in your head.

Pick and number and try to come up with as many equations that will get you to that number (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc.)

Count your breaths.

Categories

List as many items you can think of in a category (dogs, cities, fruits, etc.). Make sure you are able to list at least 10 or switch to a different category.

Pay attention to your surrounding and make lists of items in your surrounding that fit into different categories.

Go down the alphabet and for each letter list girls’ names and then boys’ names. You also can do the alphabet strategy for other categories like countries and fruits.

Reading

Read something backwards, letter-by-letter. Practice for at least a few minutes.

Recite a poem, story, or song.

Spell the weather, such as rain R-A-I-N.

Guessing /Memory Games

Look at people around you and guess their occupation.

Look at a photograph or picture for 5-10 seconds. Turn over the picture and recreate it in your mind or mentally list all the things you remember in the picture.

Emotions (Try to get in touch with a different emotion – the goal is to get out of the current emotion that you are feeling)

Listen to emotional music that evokes a different emotion.

Watch emotional movies, shows, films, or documentaries that evoke a different emotion.

Read emotional books/stories.

Comparisons

Think of a time when you felt differently and compare it to how you feel now.

Watch reality TV shows about others’ troubles or watch documentaries about disasters.

Activities

Focus on a task, movie/show, video/computer/mobile game, or surf the internet

Read a newspaper, magazine, or book.

Do a puzzle, colour in a colouring book, or doodle.

Visualization

Visualise yourself putting the problem on a shelf for you to come back to later.

Visualize a daily/common task that you enjoy and go through all the steps mentally that it takes to complete the task.

What is Somatic Experiencing (SE)?

Somatic Experiencing (SE) was developed by Peter Levine and focuses on addressing the effects of trauma. It focuses on releasing people from where they may have been stuck in a traumatic event. For example, someone may develop chronic pain in a body part that was hit in a motor vehicle accident. The reason for that pain may not be physical but may be due to not going through certain processes that release the traumatic energy and therefore the energy stays in the body and creates tensions and pain.

The purpose of Somatic Experiencing is to help the body release the traumatic energy and to enable it to self-regulate.

The focus of Somatic Experiencing is to help the client find places of safety so that the client can experience sensations relating to traumatic events in a safe way and be able to process the trauma.

Somatic Experiencing can be very helpful for trauma and other conditions that involve a dysfunctioning nervous system from trauma.

Further Reading

Trauma Healing https://traumahealing.org

This is the official website for Somatic Experiencing. It has resources, information on trainings, and a place to look up therapists who have passed their official trainings.

Official Youtube Channel https://traumahealing.org/c/SomaticExperiencingInternational

Recommended Books

Healing Trauma – Peter Levine

This book is a simple little book that is a 12 phase Healing Trauma program. It provides the necessary information that is important to trauma healing but not all the science behind it (if you want the scientific background read Waking the Tiger or In an Unspoken Voice for that information). It includes a CD with 12 guided Somatic Experiencing exercises. There are a variety of exercises or modifications that you can use for each of the 12 phases.

In an Unspoken Voice – Peter Levine

This book summarizes Peter Levine’s work in trauma. It explains the science behind the strategies of Somatic Experiencing, why some people develop PTSD and others don’t, what you can do to lessen the chances of developing PTSD after a traumatic event, and what you can do to release the trauma that has become trapped in the body after a traumatic event.

What is Emotional Neglect?

Emotional Neglect is not about what happened to you but what did not happen. It is about your parents or caregivers not adequately responding to your emotional needs. This can happen from a parent having unrealistically high expectations and not listening attentively to invalidating a child’s emotional experiences to the point she/he feels self-doubt. Most of the time, it is not intentional. There are a lot of parents who do not adequately respond to their children’s emotional needs because their parents did not respond to their needs, trauma got in the way of their emotional development, or they got too busy or exhausted to be able to respond adequately to their children’s emotional needs.

In emotional neglect, children learn that their feelings are not important. With childhood emotional neglect the Amygdala (part of the brain that has a primary role in memory processing, decision making, and emotional responses) becomes bigger and more reactive. Emotional neglectful families often look normal, but members of the family may not receive the aspects of family that allow children to develop properly, this can result in:

  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Insecure-avoidant or disorganized attachment patterns
  • Failure to thrive; poor academic performance
  • Aggression
  • Low self-esteem, low self-compassion
  • Apathy
  • Hyperactivity; disruptive & impulsive behaviour
  • Developmental delays
  • Substance misuse and risky behaviour; suicide attempts
  • Withdrawing from friends and family; anger towards parent; negativity during parent-child interactions
  • Appearing uncaring or indifferent
  • Shunning emotional closeness or intimacy; poor peer relationships and the avoidance of interaction with other children; significantly less positive social interaction
  • Self-blame, shame, humiliation, feelings of worthlessness
  • Less emotional knowledge; difficulty recognizing angry faces

Some effects of childhood neglect in adulthood include:

  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Emotional unavailability, numbing out, or being cut off from one’s feelings; difficulty identifying or expressing feelings
  • Shunning intimacy
  • Depression
  • Feeling empty or hollow inside
  • Poor self-discipline
  • Anger and aggressive behaviours towards self or others
  • Difficulty trusting others or relying upon anyone else; trouble asking for help or support
  • Feeling deeply, personally flawed; hiding behind a mask; disconnected from self
  • Guilt and shame; easily embarrassed
  • Feeling like there’s something missing, but not sure what it is
  • Easily overwhelmed or discouraged; frequent feelings of worry, excessive fears, and dissatisfaction
  • Perfectionism with acute sensitivity to feelings of failure
  • Pronounced sensitivity to rejection
  • Lack of clarity regarding others’ expectations and your own expectations for yourself
  • Feel the need to people please
  • Lack of ability to empathize
  • Blame, judgmental, and critical towards self or others

Please note that the effects of emotional neglect can range from mild to severe and you might only have some of the previously noted effects and symptoms.

What can you do to recover from Emotional Neglect?

  1. Work on emotional intelligence
    • Become aware of your emotions as you are experiencing them
    • Listen to music or watch TV shows/films that expose you to more emotions and become aware of how you feel watching/listening to the music/TV show/film
  2. Identify your needs and take steps to meet them.
  3. Check the Facts on any beliefs that you are not good enough, you don’t deserve to have your needs met, and/or you can’t trust anyone.
  4. Be gentle with yourself. Know that the patterns took years to establish so it will take time to change them.
  5. Know that you are a unique, beautiful person but you just cannot feel it because you have either not learned to connect with that part of you or you have not had that belief instilled in you.

Further Reading or Activities

Dr. Jonice Webb – Running on Empty

Running on Empty is a good book for describing how emotional neglect happens and what it is like. It can be a very validating book for people who have been emotionally neglected in childhood.

References

Summers, D. (2016). How to recognize and overcome childhood emotional neglect. https://westsidedbt.com/how-to-recognize-and-overcome-childhood-emotional-neglect/

Webb, J. (2012). Running on empty: Overcome your childhood emotional neglect. Morgan James Publishing.

https://www.allrelationshipmatters.com.au/insights-healthy-relationships/emotional-neglect

What is Trauma?

Trauma is what happens when the nervous system gets overwhelmed. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, things (emotions, thoughts, self-beliefs, etc.) do not get stored in the brain properly, and everyday things trigger them to manifest like they are happening in the present when the emotion, physical sensation, and/or perception is actually coming from the past.

Traumatic memories are “less likely to be recalled in a clear, coherent narrative” and more likely to be “remembered in the form of sensory elements without words, ” such as emotions, changes in breathing or heart rate, body sensations, tensing, or feelings overwhelmed (Fisher, 2021).

What are some of the symptoms of Trauma?

  • Numbing
  • Decreased concentration
  • Anxiety, panic attacks
  • Depression
  • Irritability
  • Headaches, chronic pain
  • Loss of sense of “who I am”
  • Emotional overwhelm, mood swings, emotion dysregulation
  • Insomnia
  • Shame, guilt, self-blame and worthlessness
  • Nightmares, flashbacks
  • Substance abuse, eating disorders, self-destructive behaviour
  • Feeling unreal, out of body
  • Hypervigilance, mistrust
  • Denial, disbelief, shock
  • Few or no memories
  • Loss of a sense of the future, hopelessness
  • Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy
  • Isolation, withdrawing from others

What works best for Trauma?

Trauma can be very individual and unique. So what works for one person may not work for another. It should involve both top-down (thinking/brain-based strategies) and bottom-up (somatic/body-based) strategies. There are some strategies like EMDR that involve both top-down and bottom-up strategies that have evidence to work for different types of trauma.

The problem with top-down approaches (CBT, some DBT skills) is that they don’t work when someone is hyperaroused or hypoaroused because when you are in those states, you cannot think properly. If someone is hyperaroused or hypoaroused they need to come back to a place where they can think clearly before using these skills. These skills can be useful to people who have been traumatized but they need to be used at the right times and be complemented with bottom-up strategies.

Recommended Reading

Peter A. Levine – Healing Trauma

This book has a good summary of trauma plus it comes with a CD that has 12 Guided Somatic Experiencing exercises.

Bessel Van der Kolk – The Body Keeps the Score

This is an incredible book that describes the experience of trauma, how trauma affects the brain, and different treatments for trauma that have been successful. Bessel Van der Kolk is one of the top experts in trauma. This book has been an NYT bestseller and can probably be borrowed from your local library.

Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma – Janina Fisher

This is an incredible workbook that has the essential psychoeducation about trauma as well as step-by-step strategies to start to heal the trauma and cope better with triggers. Janina Fisher is one of the top experts on trauma.