We all know sleep is essential and vital for our health! When we don’t get good sleep it impacts our mental, emotional, and physical functioning.
According to the American Sleep Apnea Foundation these are some current stats about sleep health in America:
50-70 million Americans suffer from sleep related problems
Excessive daytime sleepiness is an increasing cause of on-the-job accidents and car accidents
There are over 80 different sleep disorders. Some of which are sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, nightmare disorder, and insomnia.
There are ways we can improve our sleep by working to have healthy sleep hygiene, limiting caffeine, and seeking treatment for underlying problems. One thing that helps we relax and sleep better is using grounding techniques.
Grounding Exercise for Sleep
This video I created had a simple grounding exercise to help your body and mind relax to get better sleep.
One of my favorite things that I learned from becoming a Social Resilience Model trainer is the power of attention. This may sound like such a simple concept, but we can build resilience, decrease stress, build new habits, and retrain our brain simply by paying attention. This fills me with so much hope!! We don’t have to be stuck in a habit or way of life. We can retrain our brain!
Attention & The Brain
Our brain builds neuropathways to support the hobbies, habits, and lifestyles we give our attention to. This is why when we first start a new habit or activity it feels hard at first and it requires a lot of thought. But eventually as we keep doing it, it comes more naturally and we don’t have to think about it as much as we first did. This is because our brain has built a neuropathway in order for us to do the activity more efficiently.
Consider a time when you started something new. How did it feel at first? Was it challenging? After a month or two had it become easier? Does it now require as much thought as it did at first?
The Tool of Attention For Resilience
Attention is a key concept in the Social Resilience Model. Using attention to increase our resilience is a great way to increase our overall wellbeing. Here are some ways to use attention to help build resilience:
Attention to Tracking Your Stress. A big part of building resilience is tracking how your body experiences stress and calm. When we pay attention to how stress impacts us, it can become easier to notice and do activities that increases calm within ourselves.
Attention to Grounding. This is putting your attention to a solid surface around you. This is a great way to increase feelings of calmness within ourselves. When we experience calm instead of stress our body functions at it’s best. We think more clearly and thrive when we are not overwhelmed by stress.
Attention to Good Resources. This means putting our attention on the good things in our lives. The things that bring us joy and fills us with peace. This could mean thinking about your favorite pet, hobby, place, season, item, or memory. When we put our attention on these good things we can increase our calm and resilience.
Choose a way this week that you can practice using one of these tools of attention!
Resilience is something that we can practice daily. There are many tools to build resilience. I wanted to share a time recently when I used grounding.
Practicing Grounding
I was starting to feel overwhelmed and my thoughts were spiraling. I could feel the stress increasing in my body. For me this feels like a pit in my stomach and my body tightening. Before I learned about resilience I would feel this way and let myself continue to spiral. This time I knew I needed to decrease my stress. I stepped away and went outside. I sat on a bench and closed my eyes and grounded myself. Here are some of the ways I did this:
I put my attention on the support of the bench beneath me and against my back.
Then I put my attention on the feeling of the breeze against my skin.
After that I allowed myself to put my attention to the sound of the birds around me.
Grounding is all about allowing your attention to totally shift from your stress to one of your five senses. Taking this moment to take care of myself was huge! I felt so much better and my stress decreased. I could now think clearly and wasn’t spiraling anymore. Sometimes stepping away is essential!
How could you use grounding when you get stressed?
The more you practice grounding, the easier it will be to use it to decrease stress.
Comment below with your favorite way of grounding!
Grounding is a great way to start your yoga practice. It can increase calming sensations and help us tune into your body. Here is an audio of me explaining how I incorporate grounding in my practice.
This is a great tool to build resilience from the Social Resilience Model, which was found by Threshold Global Works. When we are focused on things that overwhelm us and make us feel stressed, it can be difficult to build resilience and be in our resilient zone. This is a tool I use a lot in my self-care because I tend to overthink or ruminate on things so it is helpful to intentionally shift my thoughts.
Shift & Stay
The shift and stay exercise is all about shifting away from what is overwhelming and shifting to something that is calming. Shifting allows us to increase feelings of calmness and not be overcome by stress. What are some things you could shift to instead of stressing? Here are some ideas:
A good thing that happened to you today
An item or place that brings you joy
A person that you have a positive relationship with
Anything positive or calming
Practice!
The more we practice the more our brain will support and adjust to a new habit. Here are some ways to practice the shift & stay:
When you start to feel overwhelmed intentionally think about something else more positive. Once you are feeling more calm you can then address the previous situation.
When feeling overwhelmed by negative thoughts pause and take a moment to journal about a positive memory or event.
When having an overwhelming conversation allow yourself to step away and think about something else to calm.
We talk about self-care often and it can sometimes feel like a cliche. Lately, I have been going through a difficult season, as we all do sometimes, and people have been telling me to take care of myself. Internally I question, what does that even mean? Self-care can look different for each of us and can look different across your lifespan. Here are some questions to consider…
What areas in your life are you feeling empty or drained in?
What does thriving in this season of your life look like?
Why is self-care important to you?
How can you intentionally practice self-care in a way that is helpful in your current season?
Self-care is more then bubble baths and ice cream. Self-care is taking care of ourselves in the areas that are most important to you. This can include taking care of ourselves mentally, physically, spiritually, sexually, or emotionally.
I love this idea of considering how building resilience is related to our self-care. Being intentional about building our resilience is a vital part of taking care of ourselves.
Resilient Self-Care
There are two main ways of building resilience and both of them relate to our self-care!
The first way is through sensation-based resilience which is all about increasing sensations of calm and decreasing sensations of stress. This directly relates to our self-care because being overwhelmed by stress can be unhealthy for us emotionally, mentally, and physically. Practicing skills of resilience can help increase calm and holistic wellness.
The second way is thought-based resilience, which is all about managing our thoughts and emotions to increase well-being. Being overwhelmed by our thoughts can increase stress within our body. How we think directly impacts our perceptions, actions, and the words we say. It also impacts how we view ourselves and interpret the world around us. When we use skills to increase resilience through positive and calming thoughts we are practicing mental and emotional self-care.
Tools of Resilience
There are many tools to help build and increase our resilience. Consider choosing one or two of these tools to practice this month!
Sensation-Based Resilience Tools:
Tracking calm and stress sensations within your body
Making boundaries is hard! Sometimes it can feel like having boundaries is not loving or kind to the people around us. But in reality it is a great way to love others and ourselves. Often when we are in situations or in relationships with no boundaries it can lead to those things becoming toxic. Take a minute to reflect on these questions:
What does having boundaries mean to me?
How do I implement boundaries in my life?
Where are areas in my life that I know I need more boundaries?
What are boundaries?
I think of boundaries as how much access others have to you. Access to you in whatever way is a privilege not a right. We can set limitations and boundaries on how much access someone has to us emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, and sexually. This also applies to access to your time and physical items (Campbell, 2021). These types of boundaries are applicable to all areas of our lives and we get to decide what they look like in various relationships and settings.
This is not easy!! It can be very difficult to set boundaries with people. It’s also hard to accept within ourselves the boundaries we need. Consider taking some time reflecting on these questions:
What area in my life do I feel like I need more boundaries?
What category of boundaries is most difficult for me to implement?
Which of my boundaries is most important to me and why?
Resilience & Boundaries
Boundaries help facilitate safety. This is so important to building resilience! It is very difficult to build resilience while we are in spaces that we feel unsafe. That is because our brain and body are detecting that we are mot safe, whether that be emotionally, mentally, or physically, and will trigger our body to be on alert and possibly release stress hormones. This then triggers us to be in a survival mode and not in our resilient zone. When we have boundaries it allows us to be comfortable with the access people have to us, which helps us to feel safe.
Boundaries help us regulate stress. When we don’t have boundaries we can find ourselves in situations that are stressful and possibly triggering. When we have boundaries we can set ourselves up for success in situations that allows us to not be overwhelmed by stress.
Boundaries allow us to identify and communicate our needs. Having boundaries helps us to communicate our needs to our friends, coworkers, and loved ones. It can be hard to communicate what we need, but having boundaries established a head of time allows us to know what we need and implement that.
Grounding is a great way to experience sensations of calm in our body. Grounding is focusing your attention on one of your senses. Often when practicing grounding we focus on a solid surface supporting us or that our body has contact with. But we can also use our other senses. I was thinking of this today as I heard the rain falling and allowed myself to tune into the sound of the rain. When we focus all of our attention on our senses we are able to distract ourselves from what stressors we are experiencing and allow our mind and body to rest in that sense.
I recorded the rain with my phone to share with you. Try listening to the sound of the rain and focus all of your attention on what you are hearing. Feel free to close your eyes if comfortable. If a thought starts to distract you let it pass you by as you refocus on the sound.
Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by stress that you find yourself just reacting?
Have you ever found yourself reacting impulsively when something reminds you of a past trauma?
These are possible situations where our body is in a survival zone. When we are feeling overwhelmed by stress, experience a trauma, or our body detects a danger our brain signals our body to release stress hormones to get to safety. The danger could be emotional, mental, or physical and our body is working to get to safety through enacting a survival response. This is a good system our body has when we are in danger and needing to get to safety. But when we stay in these zones for long periods of time it can have impacts on our brain and body. It impacts how our brain perceives safety and may cause our body to be in a survival zone when we are actually safe. This can impact our decision making, our ability to accomplish our goals, our relationships, and the way we perceive safety within ourselves. We will briefly look at the four survival zones and then discuss how to move beyond our survival modes when we are safe.
Survival Zone
The survival zones are fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. For most of us we probably experience a mixture of these survival reactions in our lifetime. There is not a linear answer when looking into our own stress and survival responses.
Fight
Emotionally reactive
Physically and verbally acting out in aggression
Being stuck in this survival zone can cause the body to release excess stress hormones
Freeze
Feelings of numbness and disconnection
Not being able to physically or verbally respond
Being stuck in this survival mode may result in it being more difficult to work through the stress
Flight
Emotional reactivity
Physical or mental reaction to get away
Being stuck in this survival zone can cause the body to release excess stress hormones
Fawn
Seeking safety by pleasing the people around you
Satisfying others at the expense of your own needs to feel safe
Being stuck in this survival mode for long periods of time may cause excess stress hormones when interacting with others we are trying to please.
In this survival response our safety is linked to appeasing other people which could impact how we experience safety within ourselves.
Beyond Survival
Working through our stress and trauma involves a variety of steps and looks different for all of us. Here are some possible considerations when working through our own survival responses, stress, and building resilience.
Working to increase calm in our mind and body on a regular bases. We can do this by practicing resilience skills like grounding, focusing on things we love, and shifting our attention when we are getting overwhelmed.
Consider talking to a mental health professional. This can be a really helpful option to work through past and present issues that are impacting your stress levels.
Practicing yoga. I am a big fan of yoga specifically for increasing calm in our mind and body. Practicing yoga gives us a safe space to tune into our body and to release stress and tension through slow movements. This can be a great thing to add into your life to release some of the stressful energy and to incorporate into your daily calming techniques.
One of the best things about the resilient zone is that it can grow! This is because our brain adapts as we grow in managing our stress.
The resilient zone is a concept from Social Resilience Model and is the space in which we function at our best. When I first learned about this it seemed vague. A simple way to think about this is that it is the zone where we experience balance between calm and stress.
This does require us to pay attention to our body and mind to see how we are experiencing stress and calmness. When I pay attention to myself I know I am getting stressed by noticing my heart is beating faster, having a pit feeling in my stomach, tightness in my chest, my body starts to clinch up, and my thoughts become scattered. In comparison when I am feeling calm I notice I’m breathing deeper, my shoulders and body relaxes, the tightness in my chest loosens, and my thoughts become more cohesive. This is what it looks like for me, but it is important to notice what stress and calm looks like for you.
As we build resilience we are able to tolerate more stress and have more balance. When our resilient zone is small we can become overwhelmed by stress more easily and it can become more difficult to calm ourselves. Often our resilient zone in smaller because we have experienced trauma in our lives or have been stuck in one of the survival modes, flight, fight, fawn, or freeze, for long periods of time.
Author Matthew Bennett talks about a great analogy of this concept using various sized glasses. In his book Connecting Paradigms A Trauma-Informed & Neurological Framework for Motivational Interviewing Implementation, Bennett discusses the concept that being outside of our resilient zone is like having a cup that is overflowing. When our cup or resilient zone is smaller it does not take much for the cup to overflow or for us to be overwhelmed by stress. But as we practice tools to build resilience our cup gets bigger and we can withstand more without being overwhelmed.
There are many ways that we can build resilience. But one of the most powerful things we can do is to notice and pay attention to our body and mind. Tracking within ourselves and paying attention to ourselves is powerful and can help us to see the resilience we already have and allow us to build even more resilience. This doesn’t have to be complicated and can be simply noticing or journaling about your observations.
Reference
Bennett, M. (2017). Connecting Paradigms A Trauma-Informed & Neurological Framework for Motivational Interviewing Implementation. Bennett Innovation Group, L3C.
Think about a time when someone said something kind or affirming to you. Or a time when you received a compliment that meant a lot to you.
How did you feel in these circumstances?
How did it impact your day or week?
Did you do anything differently after that experience?
Positive words can have a big impact, but unfortunately negative words can often weigh on us and impact us a lot more. I’ve heard people say it takes ten positive words to make up for one negative.
Take a moment to consider this concept in regards to your thought life. How often do you think negative words about yourself in comparison to positive words?
Negative thoughts or self-talk can be a barrier to meeting our goals, building resilience, thriving, and feeling mentally healthy. One of the ways we can work to change patterns of negative thoughts is by practicing affirmations. This isn’t a magic fix, but when we stick with it can make a big difference.
Practicing affirmations can also be a great way to build resilience! Capturing our thoughts and focusing them in a positive direction helps us to regulate internal stress and feel the effects of relaxation and joy. What is an area that you find yourself thinking negatively about? How can you transform that thought into an affirmation? An example might be if you think negatively about body and your looks. Then you might practice an affirmation like this:
My body is able, strong, and resilient. My body is beautiful and worthy of being taken care of. My body is unique and special. My body was created for a purpose and will accomplish all that it is meant to.
What a difference it would make if we transformed all of our negative thoughts into empowering ones!!
Our resilience impacts how we communicate!! When we are in our resilient zone we are able to communicate a lot better then when we are in a survival mode.
When we are overwhelmed, stressed, or triggered out of our resilient zone it is very difficult to problem solve and think situations through. The reason is because when we are in these spaces our brain tunnels are thoughts more towards just reacting to survive instead of processing with our thinking brain. In this situation we might experience these communication difficulties:
Reacting aggressively to the people around us
Overreacting or reacting inappropriately
Difficulty problem solving
This can also have huge impacts on our relationships and feeling safe within ourselves.
In comparison, when we are in our resilient zone we are able to problem solve, respond thoughtfully, and think through the situations around us. This is because we are processing the situations around us with our thinking brain, meaning we are able to intentionally think through and respond instead of just reacting to survive. This can allow us to thrive, work towards our goals, and make intentional choices to create better relationships and circumstances.
Take Away
When I am noticing myself reacting instead of thinking through a response or feeling overly stressed and having difficulty communicating I have learned to take a pause. For me this often looks like walking away taking deep breaths, grounding by focusing on a surface around me, or redirecting my thoughts to something that brings me joy. These activities often allow me to calm and think through what’s going on. If I am overreacting because of a trauma trigger then I will ground myself by reminding myself where I am, that I am safe, and just orient myself to my present moment. Often when we are triggered it it is because our focus is on something that happened in the past.
I have loved practicing yoga and it has been a huge part of my journey of learning how to build internal resilience. For me yoga has a similar effect as grounding exercises. I wanted to share specifically how this has worked for me and maybe some of these ideas will be helpful to add into your routines. Talk to your doctor or a local yoga instructor for how these practices could look for you and be beneficial for your health and well-being.
Yoga & Resilience
Yoga is such a great way to tune into your body and strengthen. I have gone to yoga classes but it was really during the beginning of the pandemic that my love for yoga sparked. I was home and had time to create a routine for myself. I knew the goals I wanted to accomplish and looked up exercises and poses for those goals. I had no idea that it was also helping me in a mental and emotional way as well. There are a few key ways that yoga has contributed to my resilience:
Breath-work: deep breathing and coordinated breathing with yoga poses is a core concept in yoga. Deep breathing is actually a quick way to access our parasympathetic nervous system. This part of the nervous system is also called the “rest and digest” system and is what facilities how we experience calm and relaxation. This in it self allows me to be in my resilient zone and to really practice calmness and release stress in my body.
Tuning into the body: I go through a lot of my day often without tuning into the body and just busy living life. When practicing yoga you are kind of forced to tune into how your body is reacting and feeling during the poses. This tuning in is something that I’ve learned to carry with me throughout other activities as well. When I am having a stressful or busy day, I will often take a few minutes to just do some deep breathing and yoga poses to tune in and calm. This is a great way to build resilience.
Learning to Reset and Pause: something about yoga that has been huge for me is that it calls you to be present. One of my favorite things about going to yoga class was that the instructor would begin by saying take a deep breath in and breath out all the stresses of the day. When practicing yoga you can let go of all the other things going on around you and allow your mind to just be present in the yoga practice.
There are a lot of things we don’t have control over in our life. But something we do have control over is our own thoughts, words, and actions. Today I wanted to focus on the impact of our thoughts!
There are two main ways to build resilience, which are sensation-based and thought-based. When working on building resilience or practicing resilience we can use strategies to manage stress, increase calmness, and build our capacity for handling stress by refocusing our thoughts. I was previously trained as a sensation-based resilience educator specifically for Social Resilience Model. Because of that I often share about sensation-based ways to build resilience. But there is so much opportunity for us to increase our well-being and resilience by incorporating these thought-based strategies as well! No matter how you chose to build resilience, the important part is incorporating strategies and ideas in our daily lives to thrive and live fulfilling lives. We will dive into a lot of thought-based strategies for building resilience, but for today I just want to list a few ways that we can do this and offer an opportunity for us to reflect on what methods could work best for us in our individual lives.
Thought-Based Resilience Strategies
Yoga
Meditation
Prayer
Journaling
Distraction or shifting to another thought to avoid spiraling
Challenging our thought process
Exercising
Changing the narrative
There are many other ways to build resilience through thought-based strategies, but here are just some to think about. Below are some questions to reflect!
Which of these strategies works for you when managing stress?
Would you consider trying any of these when feeling overwhelmed by stress?
Has practicing any of these regularly helped you cope with life better on a day-to-day basis?
One of the ways we can build resilience is through something called resourcing. It is a concept that I learned from Social Resilience Model that helps increase feelings of calm and relaxation.
Resourcing
The key to resourcing is to focus your attention on things or activities that bring you feelings of joy, safety, happiness, and comfort. The resource can be a pet, hobby, place, memory, or item. It’s not recommended to think of a person for your resource because often relationships have both joy, sorrow, and complex feelings associated with them and it might not bring about the same kind of feelings of calmness. When practicing resourcing you will want to focus on details about your resource:
Where do you enjoy your resource?
What details are associated with the resource, such as color, feel, or temperatures?
Think of how you experience the resource with your five senses.
The resource I often think for myself is bookbinding. I think of the process of sewing a journal and the feel of the waxed thread in my hands. I think of the sound of the paper when I cut it and the smell of the glue when I’m preparing the journal cover. For me I can’t see images in my mind, so I often look at my bookbinding supplies or pictures when doing this activity.
Resourcing can be a great habit to practice and way to cultivate resilience. It does take practice! To start practicing resourcing first pick a couple of resources. And practice thinking of different qualities of those resources. This could be a great activity to even practice through journaling.
There are so many great tools to use daily to practice and build resilience. One of my favorite tools is grounding. This is the practice of putting your focus on the here and now by paying attention to a solid surface around you. I use grounding all the time to help center myself when struggling with anxiety. One of my favorite parts of the grounding script I use is the beginning, “Look to the left and to the right and remind yourself that you are here, right now in this space.” I love this!! This simple statement has helped pull me out of some big moments of anxiety. Many times when we are anxious, worrying, or fearful our attention is either on the past or the unknown future. Sometimes reminding yourself that you’re not in the past in those moments that caused such anxiety and that you can’t be in the future to know what will happen is huge. This can be a great way to help us to build resilience and stay grounded.
Today I want to talk about our brain’s neuroplasticity. This is so cool! Our brain has the ability to generate new neuropathways and neurons! It can literally adapt to our habits and decisions. This might sound like a boring topic, but it is life changing!! Since our brain is malleable and able to create new pathways it allows us to change our lifestyle, the way we think, and how we live. Our brain creates neuropathways to allow our body to work efficiently. This is why it can be so hard to break old habits because our brain and body have adjusted to the old habits and have neuropathways to support those. But there is hope that our brain can build new pathways to support new habits. Can you think of a time when you first started a new habit and it was really hard? But when you stuck to it and kept practicing it got easier and easier, this is because of neuroplascity. How can we use our brain’s neuroplasticity to support our new habits? The key is the tool of attention! Using your focus, energy, and attention to work towards the new habit. This is very practical to do. How can be use our attention as a tool:
Focusing your attention daily on the new habit through journaling and tracking
Practice the new skill or habit regularly
Make a vision board to focus on your new goal
Training your brain for the new habit by doing research or making a plan for implementing the new habit
Talk about your new habit regularly with an accountability buddy or group
There are so many ways that we are resilient and we weather through so much in our lives. The key to building even more resilience is to be able to focus our attention in directions that brings us feelings of calm, joy, and keeps our body from being in survival mode. When we do this we are able to respond instead of react, our body doesn’t release stress hormones, and we can thrive physically, mentally, and emotionally in our lives. One of the ways that I grow my resilience is taking time to go outside and listen to the sounds around me. I often close my eyes and just listen. There is often birds, traffic, and sounds of people golfing. It is so calming to redirect my attention from the daily stresses of life and instead to tune into my immediate surroundings. Here is a recording of the sounds at my home when I was doing this the other day.
How can you practice tuning into your environment and just listening to the sounds around you? If you do give this a try comment below with how this worked for you!
We are designed to be resilient! This podcast discusses resilience, the resilient zone, the impact of stress hormones, and how we can build resilience. The two ways discussed to build resilience are sensation based and thought based tools. Below are other blog posts about resilience as well.
Stuck in a situation, relationship, or moment, that left you feeling shut down or like there was nothing you could do?
In these situations when we are experiencing the freeze survival response, our body is seeking to restore safety by getting through whatever distressing event is happening by being still. This happens when our body detects that it is not possible to achieve safety through fighting or fleeing. In these situations, the survival response is to disappear and simply get through what is happening (Seltzer, 2015). The freeze response is also associated with feelings of numbness, disconnection, exhaustion, inability to physically respond or move.
The freeze response is different than fight or flight in that the stressful energy from the event is not resolved and stays within our body. One of the videos below talks about how this can impact someone when they are reminded of the past event, in which they coped with the freeze response. Mental illnesses such as phobias, anxiety disorders, and panic attacks may be symptoms of an unresolved experience with the freeze response (Seltzer, 2015).
Here are two videos that I thought were very interesting about the freeze response:
Dr. Peter Levine Discussing the nature of the freeze response (NICABM, 2020)
Dr. Stephen Porges discussing the freeze response (NICABM, 2021).
Tools for Coping with the Freeze Response
These are tools of resilience that can help with coping with being outside of our resilient zone. If you are feeling distressed or in crisis, consider talking with a mental health professional.
Tune into the sensations in your body. Track the sensations you are feeling.
Practice grounding. This is the practice of focus on a surface supporting you. Below is a recording of a grounding exercise.
We experience stress in a variety of ways. Life has so many twists, turns, transitions, and surprises it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed. There are big life events that are stressful, but there are also moments, demands, duties, obligations, and more throughout our days that may trigger us to feel overwhelmed or stressed. I previously made a pamphlet about coping with stress that is available to be downloaded below. There are four kinds of stress:
Acute Stress: fight or flight response when the body is preparing to defend itself. In this type of stress the body may experience increased heart rate, tense muscles, and breathing faster (National Institute of Mental Health; American Institute of Stress).
Chronic Stress: ongoing acute stress without the body being able to find relief (AIS).
Eustress/Routine Stress: Stress from daily life with positive connotation, such as work, relationships, marriage, school, hobbies, etc. (AIS).
Stress impacts us physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is important for us to have a balance of stress and the release of stress in order for us to thrive and be functioning at our best. How do we go about doing that though? How do you cope with stress? Some of the ideas below are possibly things you are already doing or might inspire you to try a new technique to cope with or manage stress in your life.
Single continuous line drawing of young tired female employee sleeping on the work desk with laptop and pile of papers. Work fatigue at the office concept one line draw design vector illustration
Coping with Stress
There are healthy and destructive ways that we choose to cope with stress. There are two main ways that we can build resilience, which allows us to cope with stress effectively. The first way is through our sensations and the second is through capturing our thoughts and emotions. Both of these strategies are essential to building resilience and being our best selves.
Calming Sensations
Our body’s natural way of experiencing anything is first through sensations. When we experience stress and relaxation we experience that through sensations in our body. For example when I am stressed I often feel a tightness in my chest, a clinching in my stomach, or tension in my shoulders. When I am feeling relaxed or calm I feel my tension loosen, tingling throughout my body, or deeper breathing. Here are some activities you can practice to possibly increase calming sensations:
Tracking Your Body: It can be uncomfortable or odd to tune into our bodies to see what sensations we are experiencing when we are feeling stress or calm. Take some time to notice the sensations you are feeling in our body, but if it is something that is triggering to you for any reason shift your attention to one of the other activities.
Grounding: put your attention to a surface supporting you. This could be the ground underneath your feet, the chair against your back, or any solid surface. Put all of your attention on that surface and when your thoughts drift just refocus.
Resourcing: focus your attention on a positive experience. This could be a favorite hobby, place, or moment. Focus on what sensations you experience when doing that activity. For example, one of my resources that I think about is bookbinding. I put my attention to what it feels like to have the waxed thread in between my fingers, what it feels like to fold the paper, or glue the covers. Just focus in and allow your mind and body to relax into the resource you are focusing on.
Capturing Thoughts
Capturing our thoughts or using our thinking brain to experience calmness and build resilience can include a variety of activities. The essence of this is resetting, processing, reframing, or shifting our thoughts so that we do not spiral or become overtaken by our stress. Here is a list of ways to possibly do this:
Prayer
Journaling
Therapy
Storytelling
Practicing Acceptance
Positive Self-Talk
Exercise, Walking, Yoga
Going Outside
Listening to Music
Meditation
Comment below if there is a strategy in this post you are going to try or how you cope with stress in life!
Safety relates to our physical and emotional wellbeing. It is being protected against dangers and comfortable to live without risk of harm. There are three levels of safety including internal, micro, and macro.
Internal safety is when we feel comfortable, secure, and protected within ourselves. This could include in our emotions, thoughts, or simply within our physical body. We could feel unsafe internally due to abuse, sexual assault, struggling with unhealthy thoughts, or overwhelmed by our emotions or stress. There has been times when I am in an emotional spiral and having dark thoughts and feel unsafe within myself. What does it look like to feel safe internally? This could be feeling balanced and not overtaken by emotions or past traumas, or it could be feeling comfortable to be yourself, to feel whatever feelings you feel, and be in your body with feelings of acceptance and trusting yourself.
Micro safety is being safe within our immediate relationships, living situation, our daily habits, work, and social interactions. There could be a number of reasons why peopl feel unsafe in these areas. A small example from my life is from the last apartment I lived in. I loved the apartment at first, but the longer I lived there the more I felt uncomfortable with my neighbors because of their lifestyle, their arguments, and unsettling noises. I was on edge all of the time and even started wearing ear plugs or headphones 24/7. I would get frustrated with myself because people arguing and yelling is normal for a lot of family systems, but it was so triggering for me that I just wanted to run away. I laughed with my grandma about this once because even though I did not know these people and the argument had nothing to do with me whenever I would hear them arguing I was definitely going to be falling apart before the couple who was actually arguing. Because I felt unsafe emotionally within my home it impacted other areas of my life too and even my physical wellbeing because I had such a hard time sleeping and I was not able to enjoy my space. It is so interesting to compare that situation to my current living situation. I feel comfortable and my neighbors are very nice. Because I feel emotionally and physically safe I have found that I am crafting more, hanging out at home more, dancing and singing around the house, even gave my neighbors gifts for Christmas, and I got a pet rabbit. Feeling safe in my immediate context has been a game changer.
Macro safety is when we feel safe within our community and in society. Factors that could contribute towards not feeling safe include living in communities with violence or not feeling accepted in society because of racism, classism, agism, or any other “ism” that puts people at a disadvantage. This would also apply to groups that face stigma due to having physical or mental illness. Not feeling accepted, wanted, or valued in society can have a huge impact on whether or not a person or even group of people feels safe. I saw someone post on social media recently that they are tired of this “woke crap.” This is how the dictionary defines woke as an informal adjective, “alert to injustice and discrimination in society, especially racism.” I just want to note that even if you are not in a group or space where you feel unsafe within your community or society, having empathy for others is being willing to consider someone else’s perspective and situation and how that might impact them, even if it is not your particular experience.
Empathy word cloud on a white background.
Safety & the Brain
Our brain, specifically our amygdala, is constantly scanning for signs of danger. It is sometimes referred to as the smoke detector of the brain. The amygdala can be triggered by a danger of a physical or emotional nature. There could be times where the amygdala communicates with your body that it is in danger in times when you are actually safe, due to being triggered by something around you, whether that be a smell, tone, appearance, or sound that reminds the brain of a past danger.
Our nervous system has two different responses being sympathetic and parasympathetic. Sympathetic just means our nervous system is activated by danger or stress. Whereas parasympathetic is when we experience calm and relaxation. It is incredible how both states of impacts our whole system. This is due to the vagal nerve that runs through our body, as well as hormones that are released during times of stress and danger (Dana, 2020). You can see this demonstrated in the image below.
Sympathetic And Parasympathetic Nervous System. Difference. diagram with connected inner organs and brain and spinal cord. Educational guide of human anatomy. vector illustration for medical and science use
How Safety Impacts Us
The autonomic nervous system ladder is a concept from Polyvagal theory (Dana, 2020). Author Deb Dana, has written several books that discusses this well and I would recommend these if you want to dive into this concept deeper: The links below are my referral links for Amazon:
When we feel safe we are able to be our best selves, be engaged, connect with others, and build resilience. Like displayed on the ladder as our safety decreases, we disengage and go into one of three survival mode of flight, fight, or freeze. Safety is essential to thriving (Dana, 2020).
Here are some reflective questions to journal or think about to consider safety and how it is impacting you:
How can you increase your feelings of safety?
Think of a time when you felt safe and secure within yourself. What was that like and how did it impact you? How did you feel or what kind of thoughts were you having? Were you in a certain situation or atmosphere that contributed towards feelings of safety?
Imagine what it would be like to feel safe internally. What kind of circumstance would you be in or what kind of feelings or thoughts would you be having?
How has safety impacting your thriving or resilience?
Where do you feel you are on the autonomic ladder?
You are worth protecting and are a valuable person who should be kept safe internally, in relationships, at work, in the community, and in society. If you are in crisis or in danger here are some numbers you could call for 24/7 support:
Emergency Services: 911
Crisis Text Line: 741741
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE
Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services Administration Hotline: 1-800-662-HELP
References:
Dana, D. (2020). Befriending Your Nervous System. Speech. Audible.
What does it look like to be resilient or to grow in resilience? Today we are going to focus in on growing resilience by mastering our sensations and utilizing our nervous system. Our body first experiences everything through our sensations. That is the primary language of our body and directly relates to how we experience stress, trauma, and calmness. Because of this it is very important to build resilience through our body’s natural language of sensations.
When I was first learning about sensations and resilience it was a foreign idea to me. It was strange to tune into my body and notice sensations I felt when stressed, relaxed, or triggered by a past trauma. But taking time to pay attention to our bodies and understand how it is communicating through internal sensations is essential to growing in resilience. For some of us it might be uncomfortable to pay attention to our body because of past traumas. So we have to be patient with ourselves. Healing takes time and is not a linear journey.
BEFRIENDING THE BODY
Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.
In my practice I begin the process by helping my patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. I also work on identifying the sensations associated with relaxation or pleasure. I help them become aware of their breath, their gestures and movements.
All too often, however, drugs such as Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, are prescribed instead of teaching people the skills to deal with such distressing physical reactions. Of course, medications only blunt sensations and do nothing to resolve them or transform them from toxic agents into allies.
The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch. Individuals who lack emotional awareness are able, with practice, to connect their physical sensations to psychological events. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves.”
Resilience, Coping with Stress and Crisis. Emotional and Psychological Ability Illustration Sign. Vector Design. by juliabatsheva
The ideal state for us to be in to grow in resilience is the resilient zone. This is a concept founded by Threshold Global Works. Being in this zone is important because it is where we can experience a natural eb and flow of stress and calm. This eb and flow allows us to experience stress but for it not to build up to unhealthy levels. When there is this type of rhythm our body is able to release the stress before it triggers us to be in survival modes.
This is a depiction of the resilient zone. When we are in the resilient zone we are balanced, adaptable, flexible, able to creative problem solve, and to respond instead of react. In this zone we function at our best. This is because we have full access to our brain and logical processing. When we are bumped out of our resilient zone, our brain signals to our body to release stress hormones, which limits our ability to logically process situations.
All of us have different capacities for how much stress we can manage. Author Matthew Bennett, gives a great visual in his books using cups. All of us have different size resilient zones like having different size cups that can hold certain amounts of stress (Bennett, 2017). When our cup is overflowing with stress we are out of our resilient zone.
Set with different types of coffee drinks on white background by New Africa
How can we grow in our resilience or grow the size of our cup? One of the tools to use is attention. Paying attention to how your body responds to stress and relaxation. We can practice this by tracking or noticing the sensations in our body when we are feeling overwhelmed or when we are joyful or in a situation that brings us feelings of peace. Another tool is grounding. When you are feeling stressed or even just as a daily practice it is nice to take a moment and just notice the support of the floor or your chair. Put all of your attention to that support and notice what sensations you feel in your body when you do that. Notice you breath, your muscle tension, and sensations. Consider taking time today or this week to notice the sensations in your body and practice grounding.
Grounding Activity
Social Resilience Model Grounding Script
-Daejanna
References:
Bennett, M. (2017). Connecting Paradigms A Trauma-Informed & Neurological Framework for Motivational Interviewing Implementation. Bennett Innovation Group, L3C.
Stress and trauma impact the way our body and brain functions. Have you ever felt so stressed or upset that it was hard to think clearly? It can be hard to calm our mind and think clearly when we are stressed, working through traumatic experiences, or living in survival modes. But there is hope! We have the power to change our brain! You and I can use tools of resilience to increase our calmness and to release stressful energy and sensations in our body.
Hand holding colorful brain sketch on concrete background. Creative mind concept by peshkova
First let’s talk about how stress and trauma impacts our brains and bodies. Our brain has something called the amygdala that acts as an alert system. When the amygdala detects a trigger of a past trauma or danger to our emotional or physical safety it alerts the body to release stress hormones in order for the body to get to safety. When this happens we begin to be in survival modes of fight, flight, or freeze. When we are in these survival modes we can have a hard time thinking clearly and we may lose our ability to problem solve and can become emotionally reactive. Being in a state of survival for long periods of time can impact our brain and body in negative ways.
But do you remember that hope I talked about earlier? Hope that we can change our brain? It’s all because our brain was designed in a way that allows for it to have something called neuroplasticity. This just means that our brain has the ability to build new neuropathways in order to support the habits we are living out today. This is important because when we are first doing something new it feels really hard and difficult. But eventually as we keep pursuing this new habit it gets easier and easier. The reason for that is that our brain is building new neuropathways to support our life choices.
User practicing mindfulness meditation in lotus pose. Calmness and releasing stress concept landing page. Mindful meditating, consciousness and focusing. Header or footer banner template. by Visual Generation
What kind of tools can we use to create this new habit of feeling calm instead of being in a survival mode or overwhelmed by stress? The key to allowing the brain to build new pathways for new habits is practicing tools of resilience by using the tool of attention. We can use our attention by focusing on things that bring us sensations of calmness. This could be a grounding exercise where we are placing our attention to a solid surface that is supporting us like the seat of a chair, or the floor beneath our feet. During this type of exercise you would just want to focus all of your attention towards that solid surface and allow any distracting thought to be still as you focus in on that support. Another skill is to focus on a good thing in your life or something that is a resource to you. It could be your pet that you love dearly, a hobby you enjoy, a place you love to go, or a memory that is dear to you. Taking a moment to think of something that brings you joy can be a calming experience. Below is a journal prompt to help practice using the skill of attention.
When thinking of resilience we might think of someone who has overcome an extremely difficult situation or completing a goal like being in the Olympics. It’s easy to think of the most extreme situations when defining this word. When I think of resilience I think of YOU! I think of people who are…
Working towards a goal at their work
Striving to be a good parents
Working through traumatic or hard childhood memories
Survivor of an abusive relationship
Getting up daily and going to work and living life even when dealing with chronic illness or mental health challenges
Survivor of sexual assault
Starting a new chapter or a new goal
There are so many examples that we could list of what makes someone resilient and how showing up and doing life takes having resilience. We experience stress, disappointment, heartache, and frustrations that often require being resilient. Resilience is typically defined as the ability to bounce back or recover quickly from difficulties.
I recently went through a ten month training to become a trainer for Social Resilience Model by Threshold Globalworks. It was honestly life changing to learn that it is possible to increase our resilience. This might seem like an obvious statement, but our brain plays a big role in how our body reacts when we experience stress, trauma, and relaxation. It’s through training our brain that we can increase our resilience. There are two well known ways of training the brain to increase resilience including top-down resilience and bottom-up resilience (Van Der Kolk, 2021). Top-down resilience is focusing on our ‘thinking brain’ and doing activities like meditation, yoga, mindfulness, therapy, journaling, and spiritual practices to captivate our thoughts and refocus them to build our resilience (Van Der Kolk, 2021). Bottom-up resilience is using how our body first experiences anything in our environment, which is through our senses (Van Der Kolk, 2021). So it is teaching the body to shift from stressful and traumatic sensations to calming and relaxing sensations. It’s about teaching the brain to shift to things that bring calmness to the body in order to not be overwhelmed or for the body to be triggered to release stress hormones. We will explore all of these areas of resilience and learn together what is helpful for each of us individually. Here is a journal prompt to consider what resilience means to you!
Blooming Resilient 