Tagged With "stress relief"
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Re: Tell Me Who You Trust the Most
Wow. I saw myself in some of that and my little sister (now age 49 and not so little, but my memories flashed to little Katie) in other bits. I am going to share this on my podcast Facebook page. Beautiful. Peace, Teri
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Re: Tell Me Who You Trust the Most
Thank you Teri! The post was inspired by my five children and most especially my 9-year-old son. It is really quite bittersweet to hear how much it resonates. ~ Carol
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Re: Tell Me Who You Trust the Most
Wow, Carol, that was a viscerally accurate description of what most of us survivors of child abuse go through. How to trust? Whom to trust? That gnawing and desperate need for connection wrecks our every interaction in adulthood.
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Re: Tell Me Who You Trust the Most
Thank you Cheryl! To me it rings as the "feeling" side of the eloquent post you wrote on Limbic Revision.
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Re: A Holiday Guide for Abuse Survivors [psychcentral.com]
Beautifully said and so comfortingly necessary for so many. Thank you.
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Re: The House of Mourning (www.themoth.org)
We don't trust children to be able to handle, with gentle, loving guidance and support, the toughest that life dishes out--such as, in the story in this podcast, a young friend's tragic death--nor do we trust adults to be able to do the same. Much more suffering results from that lack of trust, that handling with kid gloves, so to speak, than of facing and acknowledging what has happened. I suspect most ACEs/trauma survivors feel a lot of relief at finally being able to name what has...
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Re: The House of Mourning (www.themoth.org)
Laura: I couldn't agree with this more: "Much more suffering results from that lack of trust, that handling with kid gloves, so to speak, than of facing and acknowledging what has happened. I suspect most ACEs/trauma survivors feel a lot of relief at finally being able to name what has happened to them and having the truth of its terrible impact validated by someone outside their own hearts and heads, their own self-doubting, questioning, and minimizing of their own experiences." Thank you...
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Re: World Premiere: Stress & Resilience: How Toxic Stress Affects Us, and What We Can Do About It [developingchild.harvard.edu]
Excellent video to introduce the concept of toxic stress to parents, caregivers, and really anyone new to the topic. Its tone is straightforward yet positive and hopeful. I will be sharing this on social media to help spread the word to the "uninitiated".
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Re: Sick and Stressed from CPTSD? Power Up Your SELF CARE (Resilience Series)
True self-care -- difficult to prioritize for anyone, but possibly more so for those with childhood PTSD, because of the tendency to minimize our experiences and to fall prey to depression and anxiety, which often make it harder to just plain function, much less pay attention to and heed our self-care needs. At the same time, self-care essential to healing from childhood PTSD. I don't think healing will happen without it. Thanks, Anna.
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Re: Childhood PTSD and Avoidance: Learning to Be OK in Groups (Resilience Series)
Bingo, again. It can take a lot out of a person to put themselves "out there", especially when, as you say, "we’re just working so hard to just deal." For introverts, the uphill battle is on an even steeper incline. But of course the irony here is that pushing ourselves to do what for so many reasons we resist is one of the very things that will help us become whole. Thank you, Anna, for sharing your blog posts and videos here.
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Re: 3 Steps Toward Managing And Healing Anxiety
Joanna, clearly you "get" what it's like to deal with anxiety, especially that which is rooted in early trauma. Your description of how your anxiety manifests itself sure rings a bell with me, and I'm guessing it does so with many others with difficult childhoods. Thanks for sharing your experience-based suggestions for how to manage and overcome anxiety.
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Re: ‘Burnout is real’: The importance of engaging in self-care practices when faced with secondary trauma [whyy.org]
This is such important information. It's one thing for social workers, mental health care providers, first responders and the like to require self-care to avoid secondary trauma, but when librarians are added to the list, you know things have gotten bad (and I have worked in public libraries, but a few years before conditions reached their current off-the-charts level). Thank you for sharing this with us, Caitlin.
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Lifelines: How Yoga is Helping Women at N.H. State Prison Manage Trauma During COVID-19 [nhpr.org]
By ALEX MCOWEN & PETER BIELLO • MAY 7, 2020, NHPR.org Because of COVID-19, the New Hampshire Department of Corrections suspended all visits and volunteer services at the state’s prisons on March 16, more than 7 weeks ago. Nicole Belonga has been serving time at the New Hampshire State Prison for women in Concord for 11 years. She says these efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus have cut off almost all contact with the outside world, making stressful prison life even more so.
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Self-Care Tips for Black People Who Are Struggling With This Very Painful Week [vice.com]
COLLAGE BY HUNTER FRENCH | IMAGES VIA GETTY by Rachel Miller , VICE, May 28 2020 , 7:25pm. Friends, I don’t need to tell you that it’s been an especially hard few weeks for Black people in the United States. Breonna Taylor . Ahmaud Arbery . Chris Cooper . George Floyd . Tear-gassing the protesters who had the gall to be upset about a racist murder . All of this, during a time when Black people are disproportionately dying from the COVID-19 pandemic . It’s exhausting. Amid all this suffering,...
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Toxic Stress, ACEs, and Polyvagal Theory
Stress is a normal part of life that no one can fully escape. However, when stress becomes toxic, it can affect our lives in drastic fashions that may change our life’s outcome. Adverse childhood experiences tie into toxic stress and both can cause considerable harm to both children and again when these kids grow to become adults. This article will explore the connection between toxic stress, ACEs, and how understanding them through the polyvagal theory can help us to find ways to defeat...
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The Neurobiology of Trauma: Somatic Strategies for Resilience
The Neurobiology of Trauma: Somatic Approaches to Resilience By Jennifer Walsh As we have all come to experience over the past several months, trauma is simply a component of the human condition. While it affects both individuals and communities in a variety of ways, we have all experienced difficult, stressful, or even traumatic events over the course of our lifetime. Although social workers have traditionally worked with these vulnerable populations, there are numerous professionals...
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You Can Reduce the Stress You’re Feeling Right Now!
During these challenging times, it’s normal to be experiencing increased anxiety. Everyone is! And if your baseline is regularly higher in anxiety or hyperarousal , this will feel like even more to you! If you have a past trauma history, you may feel yourself triggered more often than usual. You may not understand what those triggers are yet or where they are coming from. You may just be feeling feelings so big, and those feelings may be familiar to a time in the past you have felt powerless...
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Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: One-Pager
Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: One-Pager
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What to Do About Suicidal Thoughts in a Pandemic
Who knew when the year started we’d be separated from loved ones for months? And here we are, canceling celebrations, work and vacation plans, and not even hugging our friends. We are facing more stress – financial, emotional, social – than anyone could have imagined. We haven’t seen the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health yet. But as therapists, we know that as chronic stress continues, more people will experience depression and even suicidal thoughts. Let’s not wait to...
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Post-Traumatic Growth: Hope Is a Strategy, Not a Feeling [Juvenile Justice Information Exchange]
When a young person experiences trauma, there is no single answer regarding how that experience may impact them in their later years. Two 12-year-olds experiencing the exact same kind of trauma, for example, may have two very different responses — one crumbles and the other rises. One processes it deeply and the other suppresses it. One becomes a powerful force for change in the community and the other struggles to make their place in the world. Furthermore, what may be considered traumatic...
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Loving An Orchid: Understanding Child Abuse Trauma's Impact [psychologytoday.com]
By JoAnn Stevelos, Psychology Today, August 21, 2020 As a child, I was an orchid but lived like a dandelion. I have always prided myself on my resiliency, for surviving a long and painful childhood filled with abandonment, psychological, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse . Child abuse can do that to you—give you a false sense of self and what resiliency really looks like. Resiliency is not just surviving. This false narrative of resiliency can take years to undo. One approach is to try...
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Staying Strong During Lockdown Means Reaching Out - And Working Your Mind, Too [npr.org]
By April Fulton, National Public Radio, August 18, 2020 It can be tempting, as the pandemic wears on, to shut down — to escape into TV binging, social media and other inadequate ways of blocking out the stress and fears of illness or economic disaster . Dr. Maryland Pao, the clinical director of the National Institutes of Mental Health Intramural Research Program and a psychiatrist who regularly sees children with life-threatening illnesses, says she's seen striking similarities between the...
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4 Simple Phrases to Halt Anxious Thoughts
Anxiety is a fact of life. There's much we can do to calm ourselves in the short and long-term. Here are some tips for immediate relief.
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The Difficult Road to Intimacy: Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is very challenging. It affects every aspect of the lives of those who suffer under its symptoms. In this article, we are going to examine together with a brief synopsis of CPTSD and how this disorder creates difficulty in forming and maintaining intimate relationships.
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Re: The Difficult Road to Intimacy: Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Well done Shirley. Lots of great insight. Informative and helps us to know we are not alone and there is hope and healing. hmnn....I didn't find the article triggering in a bad way. Knowledge is power. Take care.
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New Resource: Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic One-Pager (English & Spanish!)
English: The California Department of Public Health, Injury and Prevention Branch (CDPH/IVPB) and the California Department of Social Service, Office of Child Abuse Prevention’s (CDSS/OCAP) , Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative , ACEs Connection , and the Yolo County Children’s Alliance have co-created a newly developed resource, “Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in both English and Spanish. This material is intended for Californian families experiencing the severe...
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New Resource: Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic One-Pager (English & Spanish!)
English: The California Department of Public Health, Injury and Prevention Branch (CDPH/IVPB) and the California Department of Social Service, Office of Child Abuse Prevention’s (CDSS/OCAP) , Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative , ACEs Connection , and the Yolo County Children’s Alliance have co-created a newly developed resource, “Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in both English and Spanish. This material is intended for Californian families experiencing the severe...
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Family Visits: Ten Self-Care Tips
Lately, a lot of people who grew up with childhood trauma are going “no contact” with their families and loved ones. I hear people talking about it with relief and sometimes a sense of accomplishment. For many people, the abuse was egregious and may be ongoing; in these cases, walking away for good may be necessary and courageous. For others, going no-contact is an emergency form of self-protection that, over time, may not need to be permanent. So I want to share with you ten tips to protect...
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Virtual Self-Care/Stress-Management Session for the Community
Hi Everyone, I just joined this incredible ACEs network. Pleasure to connect with you. I'm the Director of Outreach & Engagement at IsraAID, a humanitarian aid NGO. We respond to humanitarian crises worldwide, incl. refugee crises, natural disasters, and health epidemics like COVID19, and previously ebola. One of our key areas of expertise when we respond to crises is MHPSS. Since the onset of COVID19, we have designed a virtual stress-management/self-care session for professionals, and...
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Make December the First Month of the Rest of Your Life
This month many of us are heading into a holiday season whether it be Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or another notable day. It is traditionally a time when we get together with family and friends, open our hearts, and put our absolute best foot forward in hospitality and grace. The pandemic has changed the physicality of our lives but not the meaning and intention that lies beneath this very special season. The origin of the word season comes from the Latin word ‘satio’, meaning ‘sowing’ and...
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Getting Back Up on That Horse: The Struggle for Resilience in 2020
It’s little contested 2020 has been a sh*# show for most every American. It has personally knocked me down countless times. There are so many aspects of this pandemic and 2020 that have challenged my resilience as an individual, a mother, a small-business owner, and a female leader in my field. Despite what people assume, resilience-lacking 2020 hasn’t been a personal failing. Resilience is not a choice. Resilience is not an attitude or a mindset. Resilience is a physiological phenomenon. I...
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The Role Social Relationships Play In Transforming Stress:
"Nothing about these experiences of adversity and trauma is inevitable in terms of the development of the child."-Dr. Gerry Giesbrecht The adverse childhood experiences study has taught us that 2/3 individuals has experienced some form of childhood adversity between the age of 0-17 years, and that this adversity can have long term negative effects on the individual. But how might this adversity impact a mom and her baby? According to my latest conversation with Dr. Giesbrecht, approximately...
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Some Treatment Options for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)
During talk therapy, you will talk with your therapist about a variety of topics including those which trouble you the most. Your therapist will not give you advice, nor will they give you the answers to your problems. After all, they are not living in your mind nor are they living your life. Only you understand what you want out of life, and only you can find your answers.
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Relieve Pandemic Tension in Your Mind, Body with Yoga and Meditation
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a shock to the system for many -- for individuals, for countries, for economies on a huge scale. As a survivor, you know we will get through this . The only way out is through. But the stress the pandemic has visited on your body has not been kind. Meditation and activities that promote mindfulness (like yoga) can help stem some of this stress and relieve the tension the pandemic has left behind in your bones. If you’re ready to move toward healing and more...
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How to care for yourself during difficult times
Many people with #ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences) are finding that the early #trauma and sense of unsafety they endured growing up are being re-triggered during these fear-laded times, amidst the #Covid #pandemic, political upheaval, and feeling isolated. Stress and uncertainty can trigger old, sticky feelings of fear, anxiety, or loss from long ago and bring up new, painful negative thoughts and physical symptoms. This can be true even when we’ve worked really hard to resolve our...
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Happy Valentines Day - loving resource for you
free resource today for stress relief and more
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Practicing resilience during social distancing
Welcome to the COVID-19 and PACEs Science Collection for Self-Care Practices! We have four topic-specific resource lists related to COVID-19 and PACEs Science. All four will be updated for as long as this pandemic lasts. They are as follows: ACEs in Education & COVID-19 COVID-19 Resources for Healthcare Providers Parenting with ACEs in a Pandemic Practicing Resilience During Social Distancing We hope these lists, and the resources, practices, and information in them, are helpful and easy...
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Healing the Hidden Wounds from Childhood: The Promise of Healing, Part III (by Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D., Lt. Col., USAR, Ret.)
So many people are struggling with unhealed, hidden wounds from toxic childhood stress. For some, the pain is obvious. Others might look outwardly strong, capable, and in control. However, unhealed inner wounds cause needless suffering and can lead to a dizzying array of psychological, medical, and functional problems. Fortunately, there is hope for healing—even decades after traumatic wounding from ACEs occurs—enabling us to be 100% there for ourselves, our families, and others we work and...
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The Mental Health Care Crisis Continues One Year Later...Maintaining Emotional Wellness during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Join Dr. Monique Collier Nickles on 4/13/21 for a live discussion related to this post by registering for ChildWIN's free Zoom event at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAudu2qrT8oHtDAlFX5xEMUt2o9DC_qaimN?fbclid=IwAR1GdgppIzcIrMO8meIdCqoG5_mpuNz1jUAUbt6FcfKOVI9rg9X5Xh8EHBY The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been stressful and traumatic for many people, particularly our children and adolescents. As we approach the pandemic’s one year anniversary, unfortunately,...
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Thirty Ways to Self-Care!
Hello Bridge community! Did you know that April is National Stress Awareness Month? Along with ushering in warmer weather, this new season marks a time for us to take inventory of our stressors and readjust as needed. We know how compassionate and dedicated our Bridge community continues to be, your consistent advocacy is an inspiration to us all! I want to honor your hard work by providing a few tips to help lighten your load this next month. Please feel free to participate in a fun 30 day...
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What Science Reveals About Gratitude’s Impact on the Brain (mindful.org)
New research sheds light on the physiology of gratitude, bringing us closer to being able to understand and harness the health benefits of this powerful emotion. How Gratitude Strengthens the Mind-Body Connection Given the clear relationship between mental and physical health, I thought that understanding what happens in the brain when we feel gratitude could tell us more about the mind-body connection—namely, how feeling positive emotion can improve bodily functions. I also thought these...
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Re: The Difficult Road to Intimacy: Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
I am just starting to go through the topics covered in the last 2 years here, and just commenting on a few articles I have found interesting since I joined up here. If this is the wrong way to comment on older topics, please let me know and I can learn to do it a different way, perhaps by commenting on a comment if need be. Thank You MM
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Re: Can Gratitude Be Good for Your Heart? [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
Laura: Please feel free to share these articles as a post so more people will see them. I LOVE the ingratitude list and your comment. To me, it reads like a blog post and I LOVE your voice. It's clear, curious and honest. I LOVE gratitude lists. Now, after my 40's, but while knee-deep in healing I wanted to punch anyone who said something that felt like, "Turn that frown upside down" because it felt minimizing. It didn't just feel minimizing, sometimes it was, as in denial. Plus, all the...
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Re: Can Gratitude Be Good for Your Heart? [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
Your analogy of baking a cake is spot on (speaking of reading like a blog post )-- the desired ingredients will vary from baker to baker and from cake to cake, but without all the essentials, we're just not going to end up with a cake and we have to admit that and then do something about it or go cakeless .... which would be a shame. Let me reiterate -- I am all for gratitude lists and for an "attitude of gratitude". My husband and I still have a gratitude list still on our laptop desktop...
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A Better Normal: Practicing Resilience | Tools to Reduce Stress & Anxiety | Thursday April 29, 2021
Join us for the next episode of A Better Normal! Hosted by PACEs Connection's Gail Kennedy. Thursday, April 29, 2021 | Noon to 1pm PDT >>Click here to register<< T his will be a workshop format and will not be recorded or reposted. The stressors of 2020 and 2021 are leading to burnout and exhaustion among ACEs professionals. Join IsraAID and PACEs for a specialized, interactive self-care session, on concrete ways to reduce stress and anxiety in order to continue your important...
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Professional Joy Stalker
I was thinking today that I might make t-shirts and coffee mugs that say, “professional joy stalker” and come with a list of blissful things to remind myself and others to appreciate. As my friend Lynn says,” What if joy is stalking us?” and all we need to do is be still long enough to notice and marinate in multiple daily pleasures. I love that idea but it didn't come naturally to me. What came naturally was fear. I was always on the search for danger, betrayal, and disappointment. I hunted...
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Patrice Gallagher
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter June 2021
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter June 2021 http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2021-06-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_June_2021.pdf Hi folks, June is NATIONAL PTSD AWARENESS MONTH I thought I would share a few of the resources that have...
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Free Webinar: 3 Proven Stress-Reduction Techniques You Can Use NOW
ACEs impact the way you manage stress. Learn how to relieve that stress with three simple techniques.